Lee Carter was sitting at the Helm of the Knight. Because of certain crew shortages, some personnel were being called upon to pull multiple duties, and Carter's flight experience made her an excellent candidate for relief helmsman.
At the moment, she didn't mind the extra hours -- quite the contrary in fact. If she hadn't drawn this duty, she would have volunteered for it! Because sitting here on the bridge of the Knight, piloting the mighty starship where almost no one had gone before, gave her the opportunity to see with her own eyes what almost no Human had ever seen before -- a view of the Milky Way Galaxy from the outside!
Well, maybe not quite from 'outside', thought Lee to herself. But certainly from a unique vantage point -- high above the galactic plane! She was mesmerized by the vista before her. The Orion and Sagittarius arms of the galaxy were clearly visible below them. Their bluish mass curved gracefully for tens of thousands of light-years toward the reddish central bulge. Here and there, gossamer filaments of emission nebula snaked between the stars, and black dust clouds contributed in their own way to the overall pattern of the night sky. It was quite possibly, the most beautiful sight Lee had ever seen.
As the Knight entered the Zinak Cluster, Carter was aroused from her contemplation by the voice of Captain Osagawa. "Sensors out to maximum range. Let's see what we're getting ourselves into," he ordered.
Carter complied. It took a few moments for the results to begin pouring in, but when they did Carter began summarized them for the Captain. "Zinak Globular Cluster... approximate stellar population of 150,000 stars... approximate diameter is 165 light-years... Hmm. This is interesting. The heavy element percentage is rather high for a globular cluster -- 35%. That's probably why it was possible for the ancient civilization the Howard Carter found to evolve here."
"And speaking of the Howard Carter, Commander...." prodded Osagawa.
"Aye sir. Scanning," said Carter, a little embarrassed that she had let herself be distracted from what they were here to find. After another few moments, the sensors had located the missing Federation research ship USS Howard Carter, NRS-47231. "Got it Captain," said Carter. "A Federation distress beacon bearing 337 mark 23, range 78 parsecs, ETA is 14 hours at warp 12."
"Good work. Set course, warp 12. Execute!" commanded the Captain.
"Aye sir," said Carter. At her direction, the great starship pivoted about to face its new heading, and in a transwarp blur disappeared deeper into the cloud of giant orange stars of the Zinak Cluster.
Fourteen hours later, after getting a few hours sleep, Carter was in the main hangar getting ready to take the Griffin out. As she worked her way through the Peregrine's start-up sequence, she went over the mission briefing the Captain had given her. According to the report, the Howard Carter was on a scientific research mission to study nearby globular clusters when they had inadvertently discovered the ruins of an ancient civilization out here where none had any right to exist on a planet known only as P3R-823 in Federation databases. Naturally, they had investigated. After reporting the discovery of an enormous, hollow, pyramid-like structure housing a large torus, all contact was lost with the Howard Carter.
Now the Knight was here, in orbit of P3R-823. Scans had detected the presence of structures on the surface, including an enormous eight-sided pyramid, but the sensors couldn't penetrate into the interiors of any of the buildings.
In addition, polarized reflections from the planet's surface were made out to be rounded metal bits of the sort that might make up a spaceship crash site, but there didn't seem to be enough debris to account for a ship the size of the Howard Carter.
Carter finished her checklist and signaled to the crewman manning the deck controls that she was ready. The ponderous hangar doors slid silently upward. The hangar deck tractor beams picked up the Griffin and proceeded to toss the small ship across the threshold into space.
It took a brief second for Carter to overcome the vertigo caused by her sudden departure from the Knight's artificial gravity, but she quickly oriented herself. She liked to fly in zero-g -- it gave her a better 'feel' of how her craft was responding to her commands. Ancient earth pilots had called it "flying by the seat of their pants".
Suddenly, she was mesmerized again. The view out her cockpit window was even more spectacular than the view out the main screen on the bridge had been! Although she was slightly further inside the Zinak Cluster now than she had been then, there still weren't all that many stars here to block her view of the galactic pinwheel pirouetting in the great cosmological ballet it was a part of. It's grace and majesty almost brought a tear to her eye.
Once again she was returned to reality by an intrusive voice, this time her ship's computer announcing that it was ready to go. A special sensor pod had been attached to one of the hardpoints under the Griffin's wings, and Carter activated it now. The visual feeds built into Carter's helmet automatically began beaming the returning information right into Carter's left eye. The distress signal was still being transmitted, and she aimed the Griffin in that direction and took off.
"Knight, this is the Griffin. I've locked onto the distress signal and I'm going in," she said into the comm unit.
[Acknowledged,] came back the terse reply.
Carter's mission was relatively simple and straight-forward. Since the Knight's sensors were having difficulty getting accurate readings of the planet surface, she was to take the Griffin down and locate the source of the distress signal and do a fly-over to assess the danger level. Nothing more, nothing less. Captain Osagawa had decided that since one ship had already been apparently lost, it would be safer taking the well-armed Griffin with a sensor pod rather than a shuttle or runabout.
So, with that in mind, Carter charged her shields, put the torpedo tubes on stand-by, and then gave most of her attention to the sensor readings beaming into her eye.
The distress beacon was uncomfortably close to the giant pyramid that supposedly housed the artifact that was identical to the "Guardian of Forever", an incredible alien device discovered ten-thousand of light-years from here more than one hundred years ago by the original starship Enterprise.
<<< TOS episode "City On the Edge of Forever" >>>
There must be a connection between the disappearance of the Howard Carter and the presence of the time portal, if that is indeed what it is, thought Carter. She had gone over the old records from the Enterprise's discovery of the other portal. She knew that the Enterprise had encountered very violent spatial distortions the closer it came to the portal. Carter had assumed that she would encounter the same kind of turbulence here, and that maybe this turbulence was what caused the Howard Carter to crash. But there was no turbulence -- nothing to account for the disappearance of the research vessel. On the other hand, the debris was near the portal -- very confusing....
P3R-823 was coming up fast now. The Griffin's hull was beginning to heat from atmospheric friction -- Carter could see the edges of her wings turning slightly orange -- but the shields would dissipate the majority of the thermal energy. Far below, the tops of sparse clouds scudded quickly across a landscape that was mostly brown -- there was very little green of blue. This was an old world indeed!
As the Griffin plummeted ever deeper into the atmosphere, Carter found it more and more difficult to keep control -- the joystick in her hand jerked and yanked unpredictably. Planetary re-entry had never been one of her favorite activities, but it was nothing she couldn't handle.
Then -- there was no warning from her sensor pod -- Carter's ship was smashed hard from below. First, she was slammed back into her acceleration couch so hard that she had the wind knocked out of her. Then, a split second later, the force reversed itself and she was yanked upward with tremendous force against the harness that kept her in her seat.
Gasping for breath but unable to catch any, she frantically tried to re-grasp the wildly flailing flightstick, while at the same time fighting the onrushing unconsciousness. Some unknown force had somehow blasted her from the sky.
The last thing she saw was the ground rushing up to greet her....