FIVE

Joe was in complete darkness. There was not one jot of light.

He was walking forward, his hand resting on a cold surface. He could smell as much as feel that it was a rocky wall, so he figured he must be in a cave. Pressing on in spite of a growing fear, he lifted leaden feet and continued to move forward. Thirty, maybe forty minutes later his boots struck something hard and manmade. Crouching, he explored the floor with his hand. When his fingers touched a long cold metal rail, he realized that he was not in a cave.

He was in a mine.

At that point panic set in.

The lack of light told him he was deep in the earth. It also gave him no direction to shoot for. If he continued on, he might reach the surface, but just as easily he could be working his way down, deeper into the mine's bowels where he would be lost and no one would find anything left of him but his bones.

Joe paused, panting hard. Inaction was not a part of him. It rankled like the stink of a corpse in his nose. Leaning back against the dripping wall, he fought for the memory of how he had come to be here. But there was nothing. Nothing but the blackness, the stale air, and the sound of water dripping, forming stalactites and stalagmites as it had for thousands of years before his birth and would continue to do long after his death.

There was a peace in that. One he could almost surrender to – if he had not heard someone calling his name.

Joe.

He knew the voice, though he couldn't identify it. I'm here. Here! Where are you?

I am beside you.

Joe looked. Of course, he couldn't see anything, so he reached out and found – empty air.

No, you're not.

Yes. I am. You will not find me with the senses you are accustomed to. Do not try. Simply follow my voice.

I don't know where its coming from, he protested.

Reach out with your mind. You will.

For once, Joe did as he was told, though he wasn't exactly sure how to 'reach out with his mind'. He closed his eyes, even though the action was pointless, and concentrated. Surprisingly as he did, far in the distance, a pale glow appeared.

Yes. That is I.

You? Who are you?

The answer is not pertinent to the moment. Seek out my presence, Joseph Cartwright, as you have done before.

Before? When had he done it before?

Also not pertinent. Focus on the light. Reach it. Reach me.

For some reason Joe was more frightened than he had ever been in his life – frightened of the dark, but, in a way, even more so of the light that beckoned to him. He hated to admit it, but...

I'm afraid.

Understandable. You have been confronted with a concept your primitive mind cannot conceive. Therefore, the logical thing to do is to accept the superiority – in this case – of one who does. Go to the light.

Isn't that what you did when you die?

No.

He sensed more than heard a sigh.

Very well then. I shall have to come to you.

Suddenly the light was on him. He caught, at the edges of the cool silver glow, a hint of a world he would never – and should never know. It was all metal, cold and hard. There were no trees, no mountain streams, no cattle or sheep grazing, there was only a vacuum of sound and air.

He couldn't breathe.

You are not there. You are here with me. Here...

"With me."

Joe gasped as if coming up for air from too long beneath the water's surface. He coughed and wretched again, though his empty stomach refused to give up anything but bile. The same strong hands held him. When he'd finished they released him and the man who owned them stood up and took a step back.

"It is regrettable that Doctor McCoy is not here."

The brown-haired man blinked and tried to focus on the speaker. Joe frowned as he noted the man's long lanky form clothed all in black, his shaggy chin-length hair of the same color, and the slightly occidental turn to his eyes and skin. It all seemed familiar – but not.

"What...happened?" he asked.

"During the incident in which your wagon departed the road, you were thrown out and struck your head engendering a concussion. I regret I did not note this before moving you. My concern was for your more evident physical injuries and for the even greater need to remove you from your present circumstances in order to prevent your seizure."

Joe's highly active brows did a little dance. "Are you a professor...or something? You sound like a professor..."

The man's expression remained flat. "Such associations are also not pertinent to our current state of affairs."

Joe bristled. "Would you just...speak English!" he shouted and then instantly regretted it. His voice sounded through his head like it was an empty hollow, causing pain each time it struck the side of his skull. He put a hand to his head. "Please..."

The man sighed. "It is not wise to waste energy, Joseph Cartwright, when there are men tracking you who do not wish you well."

He blinked. "How do you know who I am?" The pain in his chest was getting a little easier to take. At least he'd put seven words together without drawing a breath. "And, who are you?"

"Also unimportant, but knowing humans..." He paused. "I am called Spock."

"Called? It ain't your name?"

One ink-slash eyebrow peaked. "It is my name."

"Then why didn't you say so?" Joe challenged.

Spock's mouth quirked at the end. "I am beginning to regret reviving you."

Joe shifted. It hurt like Hell, but he had to do something. "What do you mean, reviving me?"

The quirk turned down into a frown. "Mister Cartwright, in the past forty-five-point-two seconds you have asked nine questions. Is this behavior apt to continue?"

"Forty-five-point-two?" He frowned. "You got a stopwatch hidden somewhere?"

Spock sighed. "Alter that to eleven in fifty-one."

"Sorry, it's just... I wake up to find some stranger who doesn't quite feel like a stranger bending over me and then, somehow, entering into my dreams..." Joe scrunched up his nose. "Well, a man's almost duty bound to ask questions, don't you think?"

Spock's lean form was ramrod straight. "For the record then, I was walking along the road when I saw a wagon being driven with dangerous rapidity. I watched until the wagon drew close and noted one young man driving it and four other men on horseback in pursuit following hard upon it. It was immediately apparent that the young man attempted to escape those behind. I meant to offer assistance, but instead was perceived as a threat by the young man who then turned the wagon and was ejected from its seat into the trees as it crashed. I hastened down the hill to render assistance. While noting the man's injuries, I became aware of the continued pursuit of the party of four and made a judgment to lift him and carry him away. Upon reaching a place of relative safety, I found he was unconscious and administered the necessary treatment to waken him."

Joe was glassy-eyed. "The young man being me?"

He could see it in the other man's eyes. That made twelve.

"Yes," he replied, this time stifling the sigh.

The brown-haired man thought a moment. "How'd you get in my head?"

Spock's look was stoic. "It is impossible to 'get' in someone's head."

"You know what I mean. I...heard you. Talking to me while I was out."

The man cocked his head. "Perhaps your injury was more severe than first diagnosed. If you were 'out', as you put it, you could not have heard my voice. Is this not true?"

He supposed it was.

Shifting to ease the pain in his arm, Joe glanced around. "Where are we?"

"On the Ponderosa."

He snorted. "I know that. Where on the Ponderosa?"

"Approximately eleven-point-two-three miles from the ranch house."

"Are you a math professor?"

"I am a scientist." Spock eyed him closely. "Unfortunately, I am not a physician and it appears you are in need of one."

Joe frowned. "How do you know that?"

Spock bent. He gripped his bloodied sleeve and ripped the tough cloth of his green jacket and the shirt beneath with the ease of a knife slicing through warm butter, exposing the broken bone that stuck out of his flesh.

"That will have to be set."

This time Joe didn't ask a question – he already knew the answer.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

The Vulcan-human hybrid known simply as Spock to his companions in Starfleet, crossed the short space between himself and Benjamin Cartwright's youngest son to check on the young man's condition. They had traveled a good portion of the day, reaching the top of a high hill, and so far Joseph was without fever, though he tossed and turned as if one already claimed him. Regrettably, the Vulcan was sure it was to come as the break was an open fracture on an oblique line and parts of the bone was protruding through the skin. Without his tricorder he had not dared use any of the local plants to render the young man less susceptible to pain as he administered the necessary remedy of realigning the bone, the end result of which was that his patient passed out.

His own experience with Doctor McCoy's dubious administrations had shown that this was often the case.

He had been impressed by the young man's fortitude. When informed that no sedative was available, he had nodded his head and told him, 'do what you have to do.' Ever aware of his Vulcan strength and the vulnerability of human bones in comparison, after cleaning the wound as best as possible under such primitive conditions and securing it with a clean cloth, Spock had taken Joseph's arm in both hands and snapped the bone back into place in one quick movement.

Pain at last silenced Joseph Cartwright's endless questions.

Before turning to the small fire he had kindled and placed the young man close by, Spock made a circuit of their camp. He had carried Joseph high up into the hills hoping to elude detection. A fire was imprudent, but necessary. He knew this young man's history. He did not die in eighteen-sixty four before and so, he could not now.

After all, that was what he was here for, was it not? To preserve Joseph Cartwright's timeline?

A slow smile, so closely guarded it was hardly noticeable, quirked the ends of the Vulcan's lips. It was contagious. Two questions in barely less than four seconds.

Satisfied at last that the men who had been pursuing Benjamin Cartwright's youngest son were nowhere in the vicinity, Spock returned to the fire and sat, hugging it close for warmth. It was autumn in Nevada and while the daytime temperatures were tolerable, those at night – dropping to a range between forty-five and fifty-five degrees – were not only uncomfortable for him but, at times, debilitating. Wishing was illogical but acceptable in a case where no real action was possible, and so he wished again that he had packed a kit including medical supplies before leaving the Enterprise. Due to the clandestine nature of his departure and his mission he had opted to leave all technology behind. His concern had been that any of these devices – a phaser and certainly a communicator – could be manipulated by those remaining aboard the Enterprise and used to home in on his position. Spock drew a breath and held it for a moment before releasing it along with a bit of all-too human tension. Unfortunately, he had not counted on human intuition proving more effectual. He'd sensed it when he entered into Joseph Cartwright's consciousness to pull him back.

Jim, as usual, had blazed his own trail. His captain was here.

No doubt seeking him.

Sighing was a less than welcome trait he had inherited from his human mother. Amanda had always smiled whenever he had done it as a boy, though, in truth, most of the time the sigh had come as a result of her exercising her seemingly mystic ability to 'get under his skin' as she put it. He suppressed another one as he thought of his captain's dogged pursuit. Jim had no idea that, by his very presence, he was putting everything he held sacred in jeopardy. The balance of time was precarious at best and even more so now that it rested on the shoulders of one very young and wounded man named Joseph Francis Cartwright.

This was not their first meeting, though Joseph could not know it. Their paths had first crossed in eighteen-seventy six. Spock struggled to keep a scowl from turning his lips down. It had not gone well. Due to his actions – or inactions – a tragedy had occurred that had not occurred before, altering the time stream and allowing Professor Campbell Beckett to discover, in twenty-two sixty-nine, an alien artifact attached to the wrist of a skeleton buried deep in the ruins of the Bodie mine, which had collapsed three hundred and ninety-three-point-five years in the past.

Spock's eyes went to the young man at his side who slept the sleep of intense pain. A skeleton clothed in the tatters of a brown shirt, gray pants, and a brilliant green leather coat.

The Vulcan closed his eyes. He could still see it. This young man, so vital and alive, died in the collapse of the Bodie mine in eighteen-seventy-six instead of living to the date the history cards indicated. What he had come back to prevent, he had instead caused, the result of which had been galactic destruction.

He was here, now, to gain the knowledge – and the ally – he needed to set it right.

When Professor Campbell first approached him regarding the object, he had been intrigued by the offer of extending his scientific knowledge. He'd followed the man to the Starfleet lab where Campbell housed his most recent find. At first glance it appeared to be nothing more than a circlet formed of an unusual metal resembling Earth's hematite. The professor had smiled when he handed it to him, expecting the admiration of a colleague. He had done his best to leave Campbell with the perception that he had succeeded. It was a prevarication. The instant his fingers contacted the alien metal he had become aware of its intelligence and its purpose.

As well as his own.

During the meeting later with Jim, one portion of his mind had remained on the artifact, turning over the information it provided. He had quickly come to the conclusion that radical action was needed. Fortunately Doctor McCoy's entrance with his ever-present bottle of Bourbon whiskey offered a legitimate reason to depart. Excusing himself, he'd told his friends he was retiring to his quarters.

Which he did, for one-point-two-five hours during which time he did not sleep but searched the ship's records, following the descendant trail of one particular man in Earth's nineteenth century. The alien presence within the bracelet had explained that one of the Originators – those who, in the far past, had created the time portal – had grown weary of the non-interference policy of his race. His desire was not for order, but for chaos to reign in the galaxy. He'd used the Guardian of Forever to seek a fixed point upon which this future turned and had located it on nineteenth century Earth on a piece of land in Nevada known as the Ponderosa. In order to carry out his plans, the rogue Originator had stolen a significant number of the bracelets – the time manipulators – and placed them in the hands of unscrupulous beings whose 'price' was to do his bidding. One such group was here, now. He suspected they were the ones who had driven Joseph Cartwright off the road in an failed attempt to abduct him.

Of course, it would not succeed. Not unless time was already out of joint. The information contained in the visions the Guardian shared with him through the telepathic touch of the bracelet had showed two deaths for the youngest son of Benjamin Cartwright, neither of which occurred in eighteen-sixty four – one of old age in the nineteen-hundreds, and the other crushed and buried under a ton of rock deep within the bowels of a mine in Bodie, California. This occurred in eighteen-seventy-six. That had been his first stop. He had met Joseph Cartwright then as an older man, though still young at thirty-four. In what proved to be a very unwise move, he had enlisted Joseph's aid to try to stop the men procured by the rogue Originator. It had been a mistake.

And had led to his death.

Spock pulled back the sleeve of his black duster and gazed at the time manipulator. Placing his fingers on its highly polished surface, he closed his eyes and listened. Again, his old friend – for so he thought of the Guardian – warned him that he must not hold this course too long. Sadness rippled through his mind. He answered, lying, and assuring it that he would take no unnecessary chances.

The bracelets were attuned to the Originators' genetic code. Anyone else employing the technology was summarily warned that they should not. On the inside of the device there was a series of nearly invisible needlelike projections. These tiny pinpoints were impregnated with venom from one of Gateway's long extinct creatures that acted as a poison. Five warnings would be given. So far he had used it two times, first to travel to eighteen-seventy six and then to come to this time. He would have to use it at least once more time to return to the twenty-third century where he belonged. By the fourth use, the voice of the Guardian warned, the wearer' mind would be affected.

Before the sixth, he would be dead.

The latter threat did not concern him. The first, however, did. Death held no fear for him. He would either continue in another form or cease to exist. But the thought of losing his mind...

Behind him he heard a noise. Joseph Cartwright was stirring.

"Pa," the youth muttered as his eyes rolled behind the lids. "Pa..."

Unaware of the content of the human's dreams, Spock knelt beside him and placed a hand on his right shoulder. He was discomforted to find it felt near normal – for him – which meant the young man had developed a fever. Apparently there had been contamination in the wound, which his meager skills as a surgeon had not been able to eradicate.

All of which did not bode well for Earth's future.

"Joseph," he said, his voice pitched low. "It is time you wake. We must get you to a doctor. I am no longer able to see to your needs. It will require someone with greater skill." He paused. "Joseph."

The young man's expressive brows knit together in the middle. He drew in a breath and opened his eyes. When they had focused, he pronounced, "You're not Pa."

Ah, a statement at last.

"No, I am not. I am Spock."

Joe's eyes opened and closed in rapid succession several times. At last, he seemed to remember. "Spock. Right. The man who saved me."

The Vulcan rose to his feet. He would have welcomed an inquiry at the end of that statement.

"We shall see."

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"Here, Pa. Look." It was morning and Adam Cartwright was crouched on the ground beside a large tree. Relief flooded through him. This was the first sign they had found since...well, since the busted and twisted wreck of the supply wagon had been located halfway down the side of a hill wrapped around a tree.

Even as he finished, his father appeared at his side. "What is it? Something of Joe's?"

He shook his head. "Footprints. Two pair. There, look," he pointed at the smaller of them, "that's Joe. I'd know the print anywhere. He nicked his heel a month or so back. There, you can see it."

The older man nodded, the tension in his form easing but not disappearing. His near-black eyes went to the other set of prints. Before asking, he glanced up the hill to where some of the hands were conducting searches. "Do they belong to Theron Vance?"

Adam shook his head. "No. Vance is about Joe's size and weight. This man is a little heavier and definitely taller. I'd say around six feet."

His father crossed his arms and pulled at his chin with one hand. He looked across to where another man was kneeling, picking in the grass.

"What do you think of Vance's story?"

Theron Vance had arrived that morning on horseback just as they were saddling up to ride. He said Joe had been pulled into a poker game and, as he had no interest in gambling, he had left him behind and headed back to the Ponderosa on foot, arriving around dawn and going straight to the bunkhouse. When he saw Cochise wasn't in the barn, he'd decided Joe had stayed in town for the night. There was a new saloon girl at the Bucket who was wowing all the men. She'd been eyeing Joe all night, he said.

It sounded like his brother. Still...

At first his father had accepted Vance's story, asking only one or two questions to clarify it. But then, as the sun rose and headed toward noon, the older man had grown agitated – angry at first and then, as though the anger had gone cold with the passage of time, afraid. At one o'clock he'd ordered them to saddle up and ride out with him to look for their brother's trail. They'd found it soon enough, here on the road to Virginia City at the edge of a hill, mingled with the wooden remnants of the supply wagon and the corpse of one of the horses that had pulled it.

"Pa! Adam! Come here!"

It was Hoss who called this time. He was farther down the hill. Middle brother was still a bit shaky from whatever had happened to him the night before, but the blood tie that bound him to Joe was keeping him on his feet.

He and his father exchanged glances and then headed down the hill. At the bottom they found Hoss – and Joe's hat.

Its brim was tinged with red.

"What do you think, Pa?" the big man asked, his blue eyes wide with concern. "Joe...ain't here. You think he up and walked away?"

Adam took the hat. It was a tangible tie to his lost brother and as such, brought a lump to his throat. "We found some tracks about halfway down. There was someone else here. It looks like they carried Joe away."

Hoss nodded. He pointed to a single set of tracks near the place where he had found Joe's hat. "I thought that was one mighty heavy man. Too heavy for Joe unless he was carrying someone."

Adam was kneeling again, feeling the grass. When he lifted his hand, the fingers came away coated with blood. "Someone is injured," he stated as calmly as he could.

"It has to be your brother," their father said, his voice breaking on the last word. "He couldn't carry a man that size."

"I don't know, Pa," Adam said, standing. "Joe carried me when Cochise's man shot me. Remember?"

His father closed his eyes briefly. "How could I forget? Still, the boots look like the longer ones we noted up the hill. That wouldn't be Joe."

He had to admit the older man was right.

"It's a good sign, ain't it?" Hoss asked, hope lighting his voice and his eyes. "Looks like someone's helping him."

Adam nodded absently, his eyes locked on his father's. They had found other tracks on the road above – horses' tracks – at least four of them. Someone had been chasing Joe. He'd been fleeing for his life. That's why the wagon had crashed, throwing their little brother into the trees. It was possible whoever had been following Joe had him, though the tracks they'd found on the hill had been made by only one man.

"Until we know otherwise," his father answered at last, "that's the scenario we will go with. Call in the other men and send them back to the ranch," he added, thoughtful. "I think its best we complete the tracking on our own."

Adam scowled as he looked up and noticed Vance had risen and was watching them. "What about Theron?"

His father reconsidered. "You're right. It's best we keep him in sight. Tell Vance he'll be joining us and Adam..."

"Yes," he said, turning back from his proscribed path.

"Keep what we've found close." He turned. "You too, Hoss. I'd like to hear Theron's opinions on the subject as we proceed."

Adam exchanged glances with Hoss and then nodded.

That was something he wanted to hear too.