Consciousness slowly returned to Lee Carter. As the world swam back into view, she realized that she was sitting tilted at an almost 45 degree angle to the left. The only thing that was keeping her in her seat were the crash restraints. She tried to look about, but suddenly came to the next, painful realization that her head throbbed terribly. She lifted her left hand to her head and made a third realization that her left shoulder hurt worse than her head.
"Ow," she said, grimacing tightly.
Ever so slowly, Carter managed to survey her immediate surroundings. The inside of the Griffin's cockpit was smashed. Bare wires and sparking circuit boards hung from overhead, the forward display panels had blown out, and the cockpit window had a huge jagged crack in it. Outside the window, Carter could see a dark landscape, stark and barren. The few stars of the outskirts of the globular cluster glowed dimly like dying embers in the sky, but in the backdrop was the ever-present bulk of the Milky Way galaxy.
Carter's attention turned back to her own injuries. She again lifted her hand to her head, and saw that it came back bloody. She twisted her neck and looked down at her shoulder. The front of her uniform was bloody as well. Apparently, when the display panels exploded, some pieces of the flying plastiform shrapnel had grazed her forehead and some had lodged in her shoulder.
With her uninjured right arm, she pulled off her flight helmet and tossed it into the back. Then she undid the release on the crash harness. Immediately, Carter slid out of her seat and landed on the left wall of the cockpit with a painful groan, "Ooooooooh."
Her first order of business was survival. Where's that med-kit? she thought. She remembered. It was to the rear and right of the pilot's seat.
With agonizing slowness, Carter used the panels and ledges in the wildly tilted cockpit to climb up to the little hatch where the med-kit was stored, and finally she managed to retrieve it. Then, she settled back into a more comfortable crouching position at the bottom-left of the cockpit and began dressing her wounds.
Her head wound seemed mostly superficial. Although she wasn't trained as a medic, she was pretty sure she hadn't suffered any serious head trauma, but like most head wounds, this one bled a lot. She applied pressure bandages until the bleeding was more-or-less under control.
Her shoulder wound was a bit more serious. There was a nice long sharp piece of plastiform stuck in her shoulder, just under the collar bone. She knew that removing it would cause more bleeding, but leaving it in would render her almost immobile, and under the circumstances, that wasn't an option.
Gritting her teeth, Carter gripped the protruding end of the plastic dagger with her free hand, and before she had a chance to change her mind, gave the piece a wicked yank!
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
She had imagined it would hurt, but not like that! Hurriedly, before she lost consciousness, Carter slapped another pressure bandage on the open wound. As her world once more faded to black, she thought to herself that all in all, it wasn't as bad as it had been the time she crashed on Cardassia Prime during the War....
When once again Lee Carter woke, the Galaxy had set and only the few orange smoldering stars were left outside her cockpit window. She tried to move and found that she was quite stiff. On the other hand, she wasn't dead, and that had to count for something.
Carter felt much more lucid now than before and a bit stronger, and took some time tending her bandages, changing them. Her head was patched and her wounded shoulder still hurt like the dickens, but still her arm wasn't entirely useless.
She turned her attention to the next order of business. She clambered over to the compartment where the field equipment was stored and retrieved a phaser and a tricorder and stuffed them into their respective pouches on her uniform. Next, she crawled over to the manual release for the cockpit hatch. When she pulled the lever, the hatch obediently popped open and the emergency rope ladder deployed to the ground.
In an awkward, one-handed way, Carter clambered down the ladder and finally set foot on the surface of planet P3R-823.
It was dark. Even though the sun was in the sky, it was still dark compared to a normal Class-M planet. P3R-823's sun was a diminishing red giant, HUGE in the sky as compared to the size the Earth's sun, but dim. In another mere 100,000 years, its sun would shrink the rest of the way to stellar dwarfdom, and P3R-823 would die its final death. Already it was a charred cinder, burnt to a crisp when the star first burst forth in its death throes in sporadic expansions, contractions and novae.
According to all the science Carter knew, nothing should have remained on the surface of this planet after the star's novae, but the tricorder she held in front of her now clearly showed the presence of a veritable city in the very near distance.
The tricorder also showed something else, the possible presence of humanoid life forms there. The crew of the Howard Carter? Considering her condition and the fact that she didn't have any supplies, Carter decided that was the direction to go. She began walking.
It wasn't long before the tip of the octagonal pyramid the researchers had reported appeared above the rocks of the ridge in front of her. Relieved and strengthened by the fact that her objective was in sight, Carter clambered to the top of the ridge and looked down.
She was once again awe-struck. Below her was a wide valley. Dominating the center of the long depression was a colossal structure, an eight-sided pyramid the likes of which Carter had never seen. Its sides were pristine and undamaged, and were carved from base to crown with archaic runes and symbols. A single brilliant beam of light lanced upward from the point of the pyramid to the firmament above.
To either side of the central peak were lesser buildings of all types. All were heavily eroded and crumbling, but the shape of most could still be determined. Some were long halls, some were domed structures, there were a few courtyards that resembled ball courts and the were a few step-pyramids at the far ends of the valley.
Carter started her scramble down the loose rock of the inner wall of the valley and headed for the central pyramid. If the Howard Carter's survivors were here, they would be there. By now her uniform was quite the worse for the wear.
As she neared the imposing structure, she was again struck by how seemingly ageless it was. The carvings on its outside seemed to remind her of something -- something from out of Earth's ancient past, although that of course didn't make much sense.... Carter turned her tricorder on the building. It was apparently constructed of stone, although the stone had been treated in some way that was beyond the Federation's technology that made it able to withstand the fury of a star's nova.
Annoyingly, the tricorder couldn't penetrate into the interior of the structure. Nor could it determine if there were any life forms about nearby -- there seemed to be some sort of interference. Carter stuffed the device back into its pouch and began reconnoitering the pyramid. Each of its eight sides was about one thousand feet long at the base, so it took quite some time for Carter to make her way around to the other side, but finally, the Gate hove into view.
"Wow," said Carter, momentarily transfixed.
She pulled out her tricorder again, and this time she was rewarded with faint readings of temporal and spatial distortions. The distortion waves seemed to be leaking out of the huge gates in front of her. She moved in that direction.
As Carter walked closer to the Gates, she realized just how massive they were. It would have been a tight fit, but she was sure a CONSTITUTION CLASS STARSHIP could have fit through these doors! She checked her tricorder again. The doors were seven hundred feet wide!
Unfortunately, the doors were closed. Carter arrived at the point where the two portals met in the middle of the doorway. They were also seemingly made of stone and were covered for thousands of square feet in bizarre carvings, the likes of which Carter was more sure than ever she had seen before somewhere, but couldn't place.
In aggravation, Carter placed her hand on one of the carved pictographs on the door. IT MOVED!!! Ever so slightly, the door moved. No. This can't be! thought Carter. This thing must weigh tens of thousands of tons! Incredulous, Carter laid both hands on the massive stone door and shoved. It opened!
Carter walked inside. To say that the space beyond was "cavernous" would be an injustice. In fact the space inside the octagonal pyramid was so huge that none of the other walls could be seen -- they were lost in the dim distance. The space inside the pyramid seemed to be indeed, "Space".
Except for the floor, that is. "Space" did not have a floor, but the inside of the pyramid did. It was a smooth rock floor. And in the far distance at what Carter judged to be the center of the pyramid, directly underneath the central point, was the Portal, and it was glowing. There was the object the research ship Howard Carter's crew had discovered-- the exact replica of the Guardian of Forever!
Carter slowly approached the enigma, tricorder drawn. It was delivering unbelievable readings -- readings which rent her perceptions of time and space asunder.
Carter stopped in front of the device and peered into its depths.
"Oh my,,,"