The City on the Edge of Forever (15 page)

KIRK’S VOICE OVER

Ship’s Log: star-date 3134.6. Our chronometers still run backward. When it started, we followed the radiations, all the way to the Rim of the Galaxy. We have found the planet-source of the radiation, but something else is happening…

(beat)

When we left Earth, each of the 450 crewmembers of the
Enterprise
was checked out stable. But locked in this ship for two years, they have experienced the stresses of time and space. We have continuous psych-probes, but we know some have been altered. There may even be those who have gone sour. We can never know till the flaw shows up. And by then, it’s too late…

Our OPENING SHOT has MOVED IN on the
Enterprise
THROUGH A DISSOLVE to a shot CLOSE on a small, isometrically-shaped metal container, as it is opened by hand. Kirk’s speech over is heard (after beat) as we HOLD CLOSE on the lid of the box, opening with tambour doors, so that the interior rises, and a strange dull light floods the frame. As the container opens, the black velvet interior slides up to reveal possibly half a dozen strange and wondrous glowing Jewels. Yet they are not jewels. They are the infamous and illegal Jillkan dream-narcotics, the Jewels of Sound. They are faceted solids, but not stone, more like a hardened jelly that burns pulsating with an inner light: gold, blue, crimson, orange.

We HEAR a VOICE O.S., a voice that shakes slightly, trying to maintain a tenuous control. “Beckwith, give me one. Stop it, Beckwith” and as the CAMERA PULLS BACK we see one of the
Enterprise’s
officers LT/JG LeBEQUE, a French-Canadian with a strong face; but a face that is now beaded with sweat. And holding the Jewels of Sound is RICHARD BECKWITH, another officer, a man whose face shows intelligence and—something else. Cunning, perhaps, or even subdued cruelty. Cruelty kept rigidly in check, channeled to specific uses. Beckwith smiles as he stares with fascination at the Jewels of Sound.

“How long have you been my man, Lieutenant?” Beckwith asks, softly. He isn’t taunting, merely interested. “How long have you been hooked on the Jewels?”

The Lieutenant’s face tightens. He isn’t a toady, neither is he a weak man. But the Jewels of Sound have been listed illegal throughout the Galaxy because only one exposure is needed to make a man a confirmed addict. Swallow one Jewel, experience the Circe call of the strange music and lights the Jewels offer, and you are lost forever. And so LeBeque will swallow his pride, and answer the man who holds the delight he needs so desperately. “You gave me my first taste on Karkow, that was a year ago. I need one, Beckwith, stop playing with me.”

Beckwith extends one, a golden Jewel. But as the lieutenant reaches for it, he closes his fist over it, closing off the light, and LeBeque winces, as though the loss of light physically hurts him. “I want to know about that planet out there—and what the security log says about valuable commodities. I’ll want a landfall pass and I’ll want you to cover for me while I trade with the natives.”

“After the slaughter on Harper Five, you’ll do it again? If Kirk finds out—”

“He
won’t
find out, will he LeBeque? He won’t find out, or you’ll never hear these Jewels sing inside you again. Remember that. I’m coming back from this a rich man, and I’ll never have to go to space again. Nobody’s going to get in the way of that, LeBeque. I want to live an elegant life, but that takes resources.”

LeBeque gropes for words. “So you cheat aliens, get them hooked on illegal dream-narcotics, and steal what they could trade for cultural advances.”

“Hooked like you, LeBeque. Hooked like you.”

“Yes, like me. And I’m already paying.”

“But you’ll pay a little more. Do I get what I need?”

LeBeque nods slowly. Beckwith gives him the Jewel and the
Enterprise
Lieutenant swallows it. CAMERA HOLDS past Beckwith smiling knowingly at LeBeque, and as a look of almost orgasmic pleasure crosses the lieutenant’s face, we REVERSE ANGLE from LeBeque’s POV and we see THRU HIS EYES as Beckwith’s face begins to shimmer with weird lights, like a Van deGraaf generator. Then we HEAR the incredible music of the Jewels—sounds from another time, another space, sounds that reach into LeBeque’s head and strum the synapses of his brain as the lights collide and merge and swivel and twirl and dance in patterns of no-pattern, and Beckwith’s face fades away with that damnable knowing smile, and for SEVERAL BEATS we SEE THRU the drug-drunken eyes of a man in the grip of an alien narcotic. Then, as we COME BACK INTO FOCUS we HEAR the VOICE of MR. SPOCK as he yells, “LeBeque! Damp that starboard unit, you’re running into the red! You’ll blow the entire drive! LeBeque!”

And we COME BACK INTO FOCUS finding ourselves in the control central with LeBeque being dragged back away from the damping controls by Spock and several other crewmen.

He reels back and the HIGH PIERCING WHINE of machinery stressing to implosion level subsides as Spock damps the units. The extraterrestrial spins on LeBeque, and coldly informs him,

“You’ve been walking around this control country like a man under water for the past two hours. If you’re feeling unwell, Mr. LeBeque, relieve yourself, and leave the bridge.”

“T—two hours…?” LeBeque murmurs, shaking his head as though to clear it. He excuses himself from the bridge and WE GO WITH HIM as he passes down cross-corridors in the ship, pausing to fight with himself, emotions playing across his face that tell us the man despises himself for what he has allowed himself to become. Then, making a decision, he heads for Beckwith’s cubicle, and as we come to them in 2-SHOT we hear LeBeque say, “I’ve had it. Whatever Kirk wants to do with me, I’ll deserve it; but I’m turning you in, Beckwith.”

He turns to go, and has taken only two steps into the corridor when Beckwith, wild with panic, emerges from behind him and we ZOOM IN on Beckwith as he raises a massive block of green jade and swings it heavily, again and again at LeBeque, out of the frame. Another ZOOM IN on a trio of crewmembers, two men and a woman, as they round the junction of corridors and see the murder and then we HARD CUT TO:

CORRIDOR OF
ENTERPRISE
framing a LONG SHOT IN PERSPECTIVE as Beckwith races toward the transporter chamber. There is a guard on the door, but Beckwith rushes INTO FRAME at such a breakneck pace that he is on the guard, and smashes him to the deck before the other can raise his weapon to challenge. Beckwith plunges through the hatch into the chamber, and the hatch sighs shut behind him, even as a throng of
Enterprise
crewmen—led by CAPTAIN JAMES KIRK, Spock, YEOMAN JANICE RAND and DR. McCOY—fill the frame and dash away from us, down the corridor toward the chamber.

McCoy drops, to aid the guard who lies twisted at an odd angle, possibly dead. Kirk and Spock find the hatch sealed from the other side. Yeoman Rand breaks out a phaser and begins to puddle the sealtite as they HEAR the SOUND of the SHIP’S TRANSPORTER. As they burst through the hatch, into the transporter room, they find the transporter still glowing, the TRANSPORTER CHIEF half-conscious, struggling to sit up and pointing at the still-active machine. “B-Beckwith…” he mumbles.

“He’s loose on that planet down there,” Kirk says tightly. “Let’s go get him…”

CAMERA HOLDS on Kirk as the crew rush everywhichway to get a patrol ready to transport down after the killer. CAMERA HOLDS as Kirk turns to stare at the still-glowing transporter and on that eerie humming as we FADE OUT.

ACT ONE:

FADE IN the surface of the dead world. CLOSE ON booted tracks as CAMERA ANGLE WIDENS to show us the terrain. A featureless ball of silver-gray mists and dust-like powder that covers the ground. As though some cosmic god had flicked an ash and it had grown into a world. As CAMERA PULLS BACK we see the tell-tale shimmering and coalescing that mean crewmen from the
Enterprise
are materializing from the transporter. As Kirk, Spock, Yeoman Rand and FIVE ENLISTED CREWMEN appear, we HEAR the VOICE of KIRK OVER:

KIRK’S VOICE OVER

Ship’s Log: star-date 3134.8. This cinder, this empty death of a planet. This desolate mote in the emptiest reaches between galaxies. Its loneliness has the men of my patrol on edge. I know what they feel. This is the source of the peculiar radiation that had our clocks running backward. And now, Beckwith is down here—somewhere. Oh, we’ll find him, we have to. But there is something more important that has them frightened. A dead world such as this should be frigid, it should have no atmosphere.

(beat)

But we aren’t cold—and we can breathe.

While we HEAR VOICE OVER we see Spock indicating the tracks to Kirk, and the Captain deploying his men in a search-pattern as they move forward. VOICE OVER CONTINUES as we LAP DISSOLVE TWICE THRU scenes of the patrol moving across the wilderness, being directed by one or another of the patrol members who stay with the tracks. When we first saw them materialize, they were wearing insulation suits and breatherpaks (transparent plastic envelopes over their heads) but now that Kirk has informed us there is air, the plastic envelopes have been thrown back like hoods.

They carry phasers, and one of the crewmen has a small radiation console strapped to his chest. The DISSOLVES are different only in ANGLE and CLOSEUP for the scenery is seemingly changeless.

As we DISSOLVE THRU TO the last of these tracking shots, the crewman with the console advises Kirk that the strange radiation that affected the ship’s clocks is becoming stronger, coming from the direction in which the tracks lead, over the horizon.

They strike out toward the source of radiation and in the far distance see a series of great mountain peaks, rising up like shards of glass from an ocean of silver. They get a distant impression of a great city on the furthest of those peaks, a series of spires that tower into the cadaverous gray sky without warmth or welcome.

They follow the tracks that head straight for the mountains, and the radiation grows more potent. Soon they find themselves on a mountain top near the city. As they top a rise—and the tracks vanish on the harder surface—they are astonished to see a group of men…but such men as the explorers from Earth have never known:

Old they are. Old as the chill and dying sun that casts only shadows on this empty planet. Old as thought, old as time, old as the cinder on which they live. Nine feet tall, and shapeless beneath the long white robes that reach to the mist-laden ground. Even taller if one allows their mitered headpieces. Taller still by the lengths of their snow-beards, the only part of them other than their lined and weary faces that shows from their clothing.

Kirk and Spock register astonishment at finding these ancient creatures, but the old men finally speak, after long beats in which their motionlessness makes us suspect they may be of stone. And this is what they say:

We are the Guardians of Forever. We have been here since before your sun burned hot in space, before your race came into being. We have been here when this area of space was so filled with young suns that it was always high noon from their light
.

“But why do you stay here when this world is cold and empty?” Mr. Spock demands.

Only on this planet do the myriad pulse-flows of time and space merge. Only here do the flux lines of Forever meet. Only here on this empty corpse of a world is there a gateway to the past, where the time vortex created by the Ancients can work. Only here. And we were set to watch the time vortex, so many hundreds of centuries ago that even we do not have clear memories of it
.

The Guardians explain that they are almost immortal, that they have been guarding “the time vortex” for so many eons, that Kirk and his party are the first visitors they have had since two hundred thousand years before dinosaurs walked the Earth.

Spock inquires if they have seen another Earthman, and the Guardians say no. Yet as we INTERCUT to a rocky niche nearby, we see the hunted Beckwith, listening to every word being said. He looks around him, trying to find a way to escape, but it is a cul-de-sac. The only way out is past Kirk and the
Enterprise
patrol—and the Guardians. The look of desperation grows on his face, but it is mixed with a viciousness that tells us Beckwith is far from finished.

Kirk expresses astonishment at the concept of a “time vortex,” that he had always thought it was the fable of lab technicians when they had had too much pure grain to drink. The Guardians nod their heads in the direction of a shimmering pillar of light, set between the gray-silver rocks. The time vortex. Built on lines of creation that mortal Man will not discover for a hundred hundred times the span of years he has been in existence. Created out of pure matter, and harnessed to this world where the passage of time and space meet just so. The pillar of light rises up and disappears. Into that fire of forever lies the passage to the past.

Kirk asks the Guardians if they would consider it an imposition to tell him more about the time vortex. They smile a little wearily, and say they would be pleasured to do so. “We want to know,” Kirk says gently, and they answer:
We have nothing to do but desire to show you
. Uncounted millennia they have stood here, silent, and to exercise their craft is their delight.

They explain how the time vortex works, and then they offer to show Kirk the past. He asks if they can show him the past of any world, and they say yes.

Kirk asks to see the past of Old Earth.