The Folded World by Jeff Mariotte Page A

I—”
    â€œWait for it,” Kirk instructed.
    â€œAye, sir,” Bunker said. He looked out the forward ports.
    The hangar deck doors were parting.
    â€œDamn,” Bunker whispered.
    â€œPut us down gently,” Kirk told him. “Leave room for the second shuttle if you can.”
    â€œThe McRaven still has power,” Spock observed. “At least minimally.”
    â€œSo it appears.”
    â€œMaybe there are people alive on her after all,” McCoy said.
    â€œLet’s hope,” Kirk agreed. The hangar deck was empty, but it was also depressurized, so there might have been crew in the control room.
    Bunker set the shuttle down with a gentle bump. After a couple of minutes, everybody disembarked to wait for the second shuttle. The artificial gravity was still working, but the team remained in their environmental suits, phasers or tricorders in hand, depending on whether they were looking for trouble or signs of life. In such a situation, either consideration was equally valid, Kirk believed.
    â€œMister Gao, Ensign Romer,” he said, picking two members of the security crew essentially at random, “go up and check the control room. I’d like to know if there’s anybody at the switch.”
    â€œAye, sir,” Romer said. She and Gao clomped up the steps, walking heavily in their bulky suits. Kirk watched them go, then turned his attention to the view outside the bay doors. From the anomaly’s inside, the view was no less strange than it had appeared from the Enterprise . Instead of the blackness of space, he looked out through a kind of uneven violet light, ragged at the edges, like clouds trying hard to rain. Energy pulsed through the bizarre sky in brilliant lemon streaks. He thought he could smell something reminiscent of cherries. That was impossible, though. He was imagining things. Olfactory hallucinations.
    Moments later, the security team returned fromtheir scouting mission. “Control room’s empty,” Gao reported.
    â€œNoted,” Kirk said. He had expected as much. Nothing about this mission was going to be easy. He had already reached that conclusion, and circumstances appeared determined to prove him right.

Twelve
    The McRaven was empty.
    More than empty. Once they had gotten the hangar deck pressurized and had moved into the rest of the ship, they found rust coating the walls, and greenish mold as thick as Spanish moss draping from the overheads and blotching the decks. The lights were on, but dim, the artificial gravity functional, and the atmosphere breathable. They took their helmets off, but kept them close.
    â€œThis looks like it hasn’t been occupied in two hundred years,” Kirk said.
    â€œMaybe it hasn’t,” McCoy said.
    â€œIt’s not that old,” Kirk said. “The McRaven ’s only five years old. It’s impossible.”
    â€œClearly not,” Spock said. “It exists.”
    â€œI’m having my doubts,” McCoy muttered.
    â€œWhat I meant,” McCoy said, “is that we still don’t know the effects of what Spock calls the dimensional fold. Maybe two hundred years in here doesn’t mean the same thing as out there.”
    â€œExactly,” Spock said. He and McCoy agreeing so readily was only slightly less implausible than the condition of the abandoned vessel.
    â€œThe ship’s systems seem to be workin’,” McCoy added. “At minimal power, but functional. So what happened to everybody?”
    â€œIf you’re right about the time differential,” Kirk said, “they might have all died long ago.”
    â€œOr, depending upon the rules of the reality we currently inhabit, they might never have been here,” the Vulcan observed.
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?” McCoy demanded.
    â€œSimply that we do not know the limitations of the dimensional fold,” Spock explained. “It is possible that not just