SPOCK

Then time is not a constant. It isn’t rigid?

GUARDIAN

Time is elastic. It will revert to its original shape when changes are minor. But when the change is life or death—when the sum of intelligence alters the balance—then the change can become permanent…and terrible.

SPOCK

Like changing the flow of a river.

GUARDIAN

A river, a wind, a flow, elastic. It makes no difference how you imagine it to yourself.

KIRK

How long has it been since anyone went—

GUARDIAN

For nine hundred thousand years no one has gone back.

SPOCK

(to Kirk)

I understand now why our chronometers turned backwards.

The Time Vortex has been running through dialogue, now draws near 1930. While CAMERA DOES NOT dwell on it, whatever shot we enter, we should see the scene of the Depression back there, to remind us it’s on.

KIRK

They’ve created a zone of no-time here.

SPOCK

But if this is true…if time does not move at its normal rate here…how long have you been here to get as old as you are…

34 FULL SHOT—THE SCENE—HAND-HELD

But they have no time to ponder an answer, for at that moment McCoy breaks from cover and makes a long run toward the Time Vortex. He is halfway there before they realize what is happening. Kirk and Spock plunge forward to stop him. Spock gets to him first but McCoy slams Spock across the jaw and keeps going. He grabs Yeoman Janice Rand as a shield and roughhouses her in front of him, ever closer to the Vortex. She half-turns and elbows him; he leaves her and Kirk reaches him just as he closes on the Vortex. Kirk sees he is going for the Vortex (from which the 1930s scene is gone, but which still flickers and glows so we know it is in operation) and makes a flying dive for him. But McCoy does a little dance-step of broken-field maneuvering and flings himself forward.

35 ANGLE ON McCOY

as he dives headfirst into the Vortex. There is the SOUND of a LOUD WHOOOOSH! as space rushes to fill the vacuum where he has been. Then the Vortex is as it was before. McCoy is gone. Into the past of Old Earth.

FADE OUT

END OF ACT ONE.

Afterwords

AFTERWORDS

Peter David 
D.C. Fontana 
David Gerrold 
DeForest Kelley 
Walter Koenig 
Leonard Nimoy 
Melinda Snodgrass 
George Takei

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE AND WHY ARE THEY IN THIS BOOK...

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE, AND WHY ARE THEY IN THIS BOOK,

AND WHAT PIVOTAL ROLES DID THEY PLAY

IN THIS CHAPTER OF THE BREATHTAKING STAR TREK SAGA?