“I’m here to help you stop Soran,” Kirk said. He bent down and reached for Picard’s hand. For a moment, the captain didn’t move, but then he seemed to make a decision and he allowed Kirk to take his hand and pull him out of the crevice. When Picard stood before him, Kirk said, “I’m- “

“Kirk,” Picard said, obviously bewildered by his realization. “James T. Kirk.”

“Yes,” he confirmed, and then he told an abbreviated version of the tale that his future self had offered. “When I was lost aboard the Enterprise-B,” he said, “I didn’t die. I was pulled into the nexus.” An expression of at least partial understanding seemed to dawn on Picard’s face. “I was able to leave it now, to come here and help you stop Soran from destroying the Veridian star and the two hundred thirty million on Veridian Four.”

“How is that possible?” Picard asked.

“I don’t know, but does it matter?” Kirk asked. “That was Soran firing at you just now, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Picard said. He paused, and Kirk knew that he weighed the current circumstances as best he could. Kirk felt no need to try to convince Picard of his identity or his intentions, knowing that the captain would reach his own conclusions. One fact, he knew, would stand out for Picard: no matter who Kirk actually was, he could easily have subdued the captain when he’d stood over him a moment ago; instead, Kirk had helped him.

“Soran’s got a handheld energy weapon,” Picard said at last, “but he’s alone here. If we attack him from opposite sides, one of us should be able to stop him. The missile he wants to launch into the star is in that direction- ” He pointed. “- but he’s also got ladders and bridges and platforms scattered all over the mountainside.”

“How much time is there before he launches the missile?” Kirk asked.

“Soon,” Picard said. “Perhaps only a matter of minutes.”

“Then we’d better get going,” Kirk said.

Kirk leaped.

He felt the hanging section of bridge beneath him shake as he sprang forward across open space, and then he landed hard on the other side. He took hold of a chain there with one hand, pushing the fingers of his other hand through the grated surface and grabbing on there. That section of the bridge shifted and swayed, its metal components whining and cracking beneath the force of his landing and his continued weight on it. It dropped suddenly to an even steeper angle, and he quickly let go of the chain and clutched that hand through the grating as well.

He heard a clatter above him, and he glanced upward just in time to see Soran’s control pad sliding down the surface of the bridge toward him. Letting go with one hand, he reached up and somehow caught the device. He studied its marking and controls for a moment, then pointed the pad toward where Soran’s trilithium missile sat cloaked. With the bridge trembling beneath him, Kirk pushed a button-fortunately, the right button. Atop its platform, Soran’s deadly weapon faded into view. Below it, Picard climbed the ladder leading up to it, rushing to stop the missile from launching.

Kirk tucked the control pad into his waistband, then reached again for the chain. He intended to pull himself up as quickly as he could, but then he heard the snap of metal fracturing above him. He knew that he didn’t have much time.

That was when the bridge fell.

Kirk had no idea whether he’d retained consciousness or how much time had passed, but he heard what he gradually recognized as the scrape of footsteps in the dirt. He tried to move, but found it impossible even to keep up the effort for more than a second or two. He’d fallen to the ground on his back, and the great mass of the wrecked bridge pinned him there. Though he felt no pain, he knew that he’d been crushed, his organs damaged to a fatal degree. His eyes and ears still functioned, and he tasted blood in his mouth, but he could do nothing now but wait for death to take him.

Somebody or something moved about him, in the rocky surroundings and the metal ruins that would form his tomb. He saw a metal bar slide away, and a chain, and he heard the heavy pieces clanking to the ground. Then, above him, Picard gazed at him through the ruins of the bridge.

Kirk blinked, searching for the strength to speak. “Did we do it?” he asked softly, remembering how his future self had told him the way in which Picard had urged him to leave the nexus. “Did…we make a difference?”

“Oh, yes. We made a difference,” Picard said seriously. “Thank you.”

“Least I could do,” Kirk struggled to say, “for the captain of the Enterprise.” He peered away from Picard, thinking of the odd course the last moments of his life had taken. On the brink of being swept into the nexus, only to leave it to come here in an attempt to save the lives of two hundred thirty million people he had never met, he had instead taken a final trek through space and one last trip through the Guardian. In the end, he had come here after all, had done what he had apparently done once before, namely stopping Soran and preventing the destruction of the civilization on Veridian IV. “It was…fun,” he told Picard. Kirk smiled as best he could.

Time seemed to slow down. He peered past Picard and into the sky over his right shoulder. Amid the high clouds scattered across the field of blue, Kirk saw something. At first impossible to make out, the faint image gradually resolved itself into hazel eyes, a slender nose, lips that curled upward in an inviting smile. Edith, Kirk thought, and in that moment, he felt fulfilled all of the desperate hopes he had never even dared to have. He knew that, impossibly, she waited for him on the other side.

“Oh, my,” Kirk said. Though he did not close his eyes, his vision faded, dimming from the outside until he could see nothing. But in his mind, the image of Edith’s face remained.

More ready than he’d ever been to rejoin his true love, Jim Kirk let go of life.

EPILOGUE

The Edge of Forever

James T. Kirk stood in the middle of the great, empty plain, watching as first the images and then the mists within the Guardian of Forever faded. He had just viewed the life of his counterpart, whom he had transported out of the Enterprise-B’s main deflector control room and into the shuttlecraft Archimedes-where before that earlier Jim Kirk had materialized, Kirk had been pulled back here by the Guardian. Although he hadn’t known whether the time vortex would accede to his request, Kirk had actually asked to be returned here if he managed to prevent the converging temporal loop. Once he had beamed his alter ego out of the path of the energy ribbon, that had been the case.

Now, he stood before the mysterious portal, having just watched the last moments in the life of that other Kirk, confirming that he had aided Picard and had thereby saved the population of Veridian IV. Remarkably, everything had transpired more or less as he had planned just before he had left the nexus the second time. He had no idea whether any echo or other version of himself remained within that timeless other-space or not, since he had stopped himself from entering it in the first place. And he didn’t quite understand how he had essentially managed to replicate himself, since five billion years from now he would die on Veridian Three beneath the mass of a metal bridge.

He did know this: he stood here on a world before Earth’s sun had formed, all of his responsibilities satisfied. The converging temporal loop had been averted, the crew of the Enterprise-B had been rescued from the clutches of the energy ribbon, the people of Veridian IV had been saved, and he had avoided altering the timeline between 2293 and 2371. The universe believed him dead. Now, alone here with the Guardian, his thoughts turned to Edith.

When Kirk and Spock had traveled back in time to 1930, the only option they’d had in restoring history had been to stop McCoy from damaging it. In the years since, though, when he’d been unable to keep his memory from returning to Edith, Kirk had occasionally imagined taking some action not only to save the life of his beloved, but to allow him to then spend his life with her. He’d considered going back to the Guardian and somehow finding a way of bringing Edith safely forward, or of remaining in the past with her, without altering the timeline. Although he’d had a number of ideas on the subject, he’d never seriously considered attempting any of them.