Beyond the Stars: Quest for Tomorrow #4 - Hardcover

Shatner, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061051187 ISBN 13: 9780061051180

Publisher: Harper Voyager, 2000

Synopsis

Jim Endicott is not Jim Endicott anymore.

In Step into Chaos, he became one with the Omega Point, and used its awesome intelligence to alter his own past. In that alternate Universe, he didn't kill the man he had always thought of as his father. He saved him.

But does the alternate Jim remember the old Jim? Only dimly aware of his vast Omega powers, Jim "Evanston" must deal with a heartbreaking new revelation: Carl and Tabitha, the "parents" he saved, are not really his parents at all! Who are they? And why are they sending him away--as far away as it is possible to send anyone?

Jim finds himself aboard the Out Beyond, a world-sized intergalactic starship, crammed with tens of millions of misfits, outlaws, and eccentrics. No longer the golden boy on the fast track to the Space Academy, Jim is friendless and alone--until he meets up with the Stone Cowboys, a deep space street gang that teaches him hard-earned lessons about courage, loyalty--and love, in the fetching form of a "cowgirl" with a faint raspberry smell and the biggest eyes in the known universe.

Jim's new life with the Cowboys and his former Omega destiny seem to have little to do with each other, until a strange new mental illness appears, spreading like wildfire through the Out Beyond. It's called the Rage and it doesn't exactly kill people. It makes them kill others, beginning with the ones they love the most. . . .

In this fourth Quest for Tomorrow novel, famed Star Trek veteran William Shatner continues a bestselling series that is filled with memorable characters, crackles with high-tech action, and is crammed with thought-provoking science fiction ideas and settings. Each carefully researched Quest for Tomorrow adventure is complete with a scientific bibliography designed to assure accuracy, provide technical guidance, and suggest fascinating new directions for young readers to explore.

About this title

About the Author:

William Shatner's career as an actor, director, producer, screenwriter, recording artist, author, and horseman has spanned more than fifty years. One of pop culture's most recognizable figures, he is also a major Hollywood philanthropist. Shatner and his wife and three married children live in Los Angeles.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

CHAPTER ONE1

The wrecked cabin stank of charred wood. The sun, its morning light filtered by a scrim of trees, leaked through a drifting haze of smoke. Jim Endicott licked his lips. His mouth was dry. His head ached. He could feel his pulse pumping in his ears.

He squatted next to Carl Endicott, the man who, up until a few days ago, he had believed to be his father, and said quietly, "Can you stand?"

"I think so. I'll need a hand." Carl levered himself into a sitting position. He groaned as the crust of blood on his chest split open. "No. I can't-" He gritted his teeth and sank back. Suddenly he seemed to shrink.

Jim's mother, Tabitha, until that moment seemingly calm despite the terror she had just survived, suddenly gasped.

"Oh, my God!"

"Mom, don't look."

Tabitha knelt next to Carl. She patted his shoulders, his head, his chest, as if her frantic touch could somehow heal him. Her hands came away streaked with red.

"Mom....

"Tab, it's not as bad as it looks," Carl said. He glanced at Jim. "Son, help your mother."

Jim put his hand on Tabitha's shoulder. She wheeled and glared at him. "Don't touch me!"

Jim pulled his hand back. "Mom, I-"

"You shot him! It was you, wasn't it?"

"I didn't mean--"

"This is all your fault! If you'd obeyed your father in the first place-"

"Tabitha!" Carl's voice snapped like a breaking bone. She turned back to him, her lips moving silently, an expression of utter helplessness on her face. Jim's stomach heaved. If there had been anything inside, he would have puked it up on the spot.

"I ... I'm sorry," he said. He couldn't think of anything else to say.

I did all this. I caused it. My fault my fault my fault....

He glanced over at the armored shape of Commander Steele's headless corpse, then quickly looked away.

Carl saw the glance. "Jim, stop it. Look at me!"

"Dad, I'm so sorry."

Carl shook his head, as if the apology were trivial, and Jim winced. "I brought a portadoc," Carl said. "It's in the large bag. If the explosion didn't damage it, I need it." He paused. "As for blame, there's plenty of it to go around. We can talk about it later, maybe. But right now, I'm bleeding. . . ."

A harsh, bright light seemed to explode Jim's skull, cutting through the film of shock that had leached all color from his world. The hues suddenly screamed at him: The crimson blotch on Carl's chest appeared to vibrate.

Blood. Too much blood ...

He turned and ran, not noticing the tears that streaked silently down his smudged cheeks.

"Hurry!" Tabitha cried.

2

Jim lifted the compact square shape of the portadoc away from Carl's naked chest. Carl's eyes were closed, his face pale, but his breathing was steady. The wound stretched from just above Carl's right nipple almost to his shoulder, an angry red welt now closed beneath a glistening, transparent line of instant skin.

Tabitha had pulled all their bags and everything else she could salvage out of the shambles of the cabin and piled them on the front porch. Amazingly, the roof of the porch still stood, though the cabin itself was open to the sky. She looked up as Jim added the portadoc to the pile.

"Jim? I'm sorry. What I said before, I didn't mean-"

He realized his hands were shaking. He took a deep breath. "Mom, it's okay. We were all crazy. Everything was crazy."

Her face was as pale as Carl's, and now Jim noticed the livid purple-and-yellow bruise that began high on her forehead and extended up beneath her disheveled hairline.

He reached toward her head. She flinched away from him, her own fingers involuntarily flying toward the lump.

"It's nothing. That big man hit me. I'm okay."

"Let me look. At least let the portadoc-"

"We have more important things to worry about. Your father ... he needs medical attention. Real medical attention. We have to go back. . . . "

As Jim listened to her, he felt something stir deep within his mind. Something cold, dispassionate, and hard. It seemed to operate like a computer, pulling up facts, examining them, weighing them, discarding some, and generating new facts from old ones.

"Mom. We can't go back."

She stared at him. "But we have to. Your father. . .

He glanced at the unconscious man. "We can't stay here, either, but we can't go back. I don't know where we can go. Maybe he does. I'd better wake him."

"Don't you dare! He's hurt! He needs rest!"

He was shocked at her vehemence. Under ordinary circumstances he would have obeyed her without question. But that new, cold part of him wouldn't allow it. She was too close to hysteria, operating on the ragged edge of sanity, reacting to emotions he knew she was barely able to understand. He couldn't obey her, but it wouldn't do to push her over the edge, either. That would only create another problem he would have to deal with, and he had enough of those already.

"Mom," he said, keeping his voice as gentle and steady as he could, "I have to talk to Dad. Unless he told you what he wanted to do next. Did he tell you?"

She was staring at Carl. "He'll be fine, just as, soon as a doctor . . ." Her voice trailed off. "What did you say?"

"Did Dad tell you what he wanted to do next?"

"Next?"

"Where he wanted to go from here. He couldn't have planned just to stay here. If they found us . . . "

Involuntarily, his gaze strayed to the three silent bodies arrayed in contorted positions around the clearing in front of the cabin.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Voyager
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0061051187
• ISBN 13: 9780061051180
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240