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Seconds earlier, as Picard approached Kirk on the scaffolding and the two of them watched Soran’s strange descent, Kirk spoke with what appeared to be good-natured annoyance.

“I thought you were heading for the launcher.”

“I changed my mind,” Picard said. “Captain’s prerog-ative.” He did not care to admit the truth: that he had had a sudden overwhelming premonition that the legendary captain needed his help. There had still been enough time before the probe’s launch, so he had yielded to instinct. Certainly, the real James T. Kirk would not have required help in his lifetime; then again, this was not the living Kirk, but one who had been dead some three-quarters of a century. Picard could not help thinking of him as old, ancient, from a bygone era, though clearly the hard-breathing, ruddy-cheeked man who stood before him, hair tousled, eyes shining, seemed as vigorous and powerful and purely alive as anyone Picard had ever met.

Kirk said nothing, but wore a slight, cryptic smile as the two of them moved down the hillside toward Soran —and the launcher.

And then, as Picard glanced over at him, the smile transformed into a frown: Picard quickly followed Kirk’s gaze, and saw what had provoked the change.

The plateau that had borne the sleek black rocket and its launcher now stood empty.

Some distance away, dangling from the side of the rockface, Soran smiled in evil triumph, and lowered a small black device in his hand. Yet his gloating expression soon turned to one of panic as the rope suddenly gave way with an audible snap.

Still clinging to it as it undulated serpent-like above

him, the scientist slid downward, accompanied by a cascade of pebbles and soil and rising clouds of red dust. Yet Soran’s luck—and the rope—held fast once more, as the end of the rope tangled then caught on the overhead trestle.

Soran came to a stop so abrupt the control fell from his hand and tumbled downward, coming at last to a clattering stop on a metal bridge spanning two steep hillsides.

“We need that control padd,” Picard said, to himself as much as to Kirk; before the words left his mouth, he was running at full speed toward the bridge, with the vague realization that Kirk was beside him, matching stride for stride.

Yet as he ran, an ominous sense of danger came over Picard, the same one he had felt when first he’d tried to leave Kirk alone to fight Soran. Instinct drew his eyes back toward the rockface, and the dangling rope that had saved Soran from death. Now the rope hung, empty.

“Captain, look!” Picard shouted, coming to an abrupt halt, and lifted an arm to point to the rope. He scowled, scanned the red rock for their foe’s slender, dark form, and found nothing. “Where’s Soran?”

Beside him, Kirk stopped, kicking up a small cloud of dust, and gazed up at the deserted, dangling rope. Just as suddenly, he surged forward, toward the bridge… and the control padd.

Picard hung back, held by a sense of foreboding and responsibility to keep watch over the man he had dragged from paradise. He raised his face and squinted once more in a strong Veridian sunlight at the unrevealing hills.