Star Trek #1696: Ring Around the Sky

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: S.C.E. #37, Pocket Books, March 2004

CREATORS: Allyn Gibson

STARDATE: Unknown, soon after the previous book

PLOT: USS da Vinci engineer Mor glasch Tev lived on the Tellarite colony of Karzuh'ulla when he was young, but those weren't happy times. Karzuh'ulla's distinction is that an ancient race had built a massive ring, held up by giant space elevators, around it. But it was damaged in the Dominion War, and one shaft could collapse, bring the whole ring down on the planet, extinguishing all life. The da Vinci crew soon figure out that the locals' efforts at repair will fail, and indeed, have made things worse. They must, furthermore, navigate the problem of Tellarite pride, which would create resistance to their plan to detach the shaft and tractor it out of orbit, especially since the man in charge is an old rival of Tev's (no love lost there). So they give him the solution and allow him to pass it off as his own, part of his ambitious pattern, though it's touch and go for a while when the shaft starts falling toward the planet. The da Vinci manages to cut into pieces with torpedoes and tow the main section away in time. And though Gomez figures out that Tev's rival has built a life on the thesis he stole from him, he doesn't want to expose the crime now any more than he did 20 years ago. After all, it led to the life he has now and with which he's happy.

CONTINUITY: Tev compares the Ring to the Dyson Sphere discovered by the Enterprise-D in "Relics", which took place 8 years before the events of this book. Also 8 years prior, the Enterprise tangled with stated creators of the Ring, the Furies - as described in the Pocket Books crossover Invasion!, specifically the TNG chapter, "The Soldiers of Fear"; Tev served aboard one of the participating ships (the USS Madison).

DIVERGENCES: None.

SCREENSHOT OF THE WEEK - Kharzh'ulla as depicted on the Grand Designs omnibus.

REVIEW: Tev is our new cast member, so a Tev-centric episode was awaited and is appreciated. We learn a lot about him, his youth, his parents, and Tellarites in general, even if the people of Karzuh'ulla aren't strictly part of the Federation and look down on non-colonists like Tev. It makes for interesting character dynamics, and at its best, the book dives into the Tellarite psyche, equating their pride to Klingon honor or Vulcan logic. And for me, S.C.E. is always better when it has some anthropological puzzle to solve, as the engineering stuff can be a little too techy. The descriptions of the Ring are, indeed, quite heady, and its problems fall into the category of hard SF much more than your traditional Star Trek story. I'm sure the math is quite correct, but it goes over my head. But as the solution involves a bit of action, it's not too bad. Despite the focus on Tev, Gibson finds scenes for most of the lead crew (Soloman is perhaps the only one missing), which is actually pretty rare for this series of novellas.