One Small Step: Bk. 1 (Gateways S.) - Softcover

Wright, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743418549 ISBN 13: 9780743418546

Publisher: Star Trek, 2001

Synopsis

Scattered throughout the galaxy are Gateways which link star systems across unfathomable distances. The technology that built them has been lost for tens of millennia...but that doesn't mean that it can't be found again. Left behind by a long-vanished civilisation, the mysterious portals offer a means of transport many times faster than warp travel -- as Captain James. T. Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise have inadvertently discovered. Having defeated the hostile computer program which guards an abandoned Kalandan outpost, Kirk and his crew are exploring the artifical planetoid in the hope of discovering more about the ancient apparatus which has hurled the Starship Enterprise a distance of a thousand light years. But the reactivated Gateway has attracted the attention -- and the avarice -- of various alien explorers, not least a mysterious race who claim to be none other than the enigmatic Kalandans themselves!

About this title

Review:

One Small Step is the first of a seven-book series exploring not the Iconian Gateways, but the equally powerful transporter technology first seen in the original series episode "That Which Survives". In that story, while Kirk and landing party were menaced by beautiful but deadly replicas of Losira, the long-dead Kalandan commander of an artificial planetoid, the Enterprise was instantaneously transported 990.7 light years away. The Kalandans were wiped out by a genetically engineered plant virus, leaving an automated defence system protecting their research. The episode left many questions about their technology unanswered, and Susan Wright steps into the breach with this adventure. At the end of the original story Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Sulu were poised to beam up, but in this continuation we discover that they have been infected with the virus. The transporter's biofilter can't remove it from their patterns, so they are stranded on the station as first Klingons and then a ship of mysterious strangers arrives in orbit. The unknown aliens are Petraw, unscrupulous interstellar traders, who pose as modern Kalandans returning to claim their forgotten colony, and its lost technology. The Petraw work alongside the Enterprise crew as they try to figure out how the Gateway works, intending to steal it at the first opportunity. An interesting premise is hampered by a rather plodding execution, including far too much techno-babble from Spock and Scotty. The book ends on a cliff-hanger, and perhaps the alien world on the other side of the Gateway will lead to a more inspiring sequel. --Elizabeth Sourbut

About the Author:

Susan Wright is the author of several Star Trek novels, among them The Best and The Brightest, Violations, Sins of Commission and The Tempest. Her most recent are the Badlands and the Dark Passions two-volume crossovers.

About this edition

• Publisher: Star Trek
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0743418549
• ISBN 13: 9780743418546
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320