Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap Accelerator...and vanished...

He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear.

And so Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap...will be the leap home...

A LEAP TO THE STARS

Part I - Rewound the Clock

As always, it happened in the blink of an eye. But as a wise man once said: time is relative, meaning that sometimes a single moment can seem to last a lifetime. Or beyond...

The azure lightning was blinding, as usual. But no matter how many times it took hold of him and ripped him away, the transition to a new time and place always felt...different. Like even though he had experienced it more times then his incomplete mind could remember, each time he was thrown out of one existence and plunged into another the incredible sensation of it all seemed to be completely new. Each and every time.

But...

...this time it was different.

Yes, he could feel it, he could tell, there was something...off? No, not off. Like maybe it was taking longer then usual, and that the quantum powers being enacted upon him were moving, well, differently. In fact, he was was starting to think something had gone very, very

-WRONG!" shouted the dark-haired woman in the seat beside him and as the new reality coalesced, Dr. Samuel John Beckett gasped in stale air and fought to make sense of the insanity going on around him.

He was in the cockpit of a plane, smoke half-obscuring the instruments and all of the sloping canopy, he coughed and waved a hand in front of his face, looked to his unexpected companion, "Wha-what? What's wrong?"

"The button you just hit, sir!" her accent was odd, "You pressed the-oh, never mind."

Never mind? Sam blinked through his streaming eyes and saw the angled outline of her face peering forward, so he followed her gaze and saw that the smoke had partially cleared from the forward glass and

Oh...

They hit.

The impact was terrible, a shock beyond anything he had ever experienced, the chair he was in seemed to grip him somehow, then his narrow grey world appeared to compact and turn upside-down and backwards, all in the same instant! There was a monstrous roar and white light blazed, he felt himself be torn free of his seat and tossed like he was nothing, his head struck something hard and

...and...

...and nothing...

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

He awoke.

The sky stretched high above, bluer then the ocean and clearer then glass. Sam coughed then grimaced at the pain shooting back-and-forth between his temples like a ricocheting bullet. He slapped hands to the sides of his head and for long seconds was lost to the brutal pounding. Then at last it began to fade, at least somewhat, and he was able to think straight. Somewhat...

That...that was awful. I mean, I've been through some pretty bad Leap-ins, but THAT... ...that was horrible. How the heck did I even survive the crash? Nothing and nobody should have made it through something like that, yet I don't think I even have a fractured rib, let-alone a broken arm or leg. So, what gives? How is this even poss-

A woman's voice screamed in agony!

"Oh, my god! How could I have forgot?"

Dr. Beckett sprang to his feet and forced his eyes to focus, he was in a wide-open clearing, surrounded on all sides by the thick trees of a forest, while dead-ahead the twisted remains of the plane-his plane-blazed with orange-black flames at the end of a long impact crater. The woman's voice sounded again, from

Inside! She's still inside! I was tossed free, but she wasn't!

That was his last conscious thought, he just charged forward, vaulting a smoking chunk of debris as he ran, and sprang through a jagged hole into the smoking wreck! Instantly he was surrounded by fire, his left leg was scorched but he ignored it, just crouched and scanned his eyes back-and-forth, searching desperately for-there! Her leg!

Sam scuttled forward under a precariously hanging beam and took hold of a warped control board, heaved it upwards with all his strength. Muscles coiling beneath his tattered uniform, he straightened up and tore the panel free with a screech of metal, exposing the huddled form of his co-pilot. Her dark hair was matted to the left side of her face with green lubricant, leaving the exposed eye clenched tightly shut in pain, most likely due to her left arm which she grasped tightly to her chest. It was partially charred and two of the fingers were bent backwards in an unnatural direction.

He tossed the board away and crouched over her, gripped her shoulder, "You're going to be okay, don't worry. I'm a Doctor."

"Y-You are?" she replied in that strange flinty accent Sam's in-depth linguistic experience just couldn't place. "I was not aware th-that a medical degree was p-part of your already impressive skill-set, sir."

Oops, overstepped myself a bit there...

"Um...yeah, what I meant is, I have First Aid training and-"

"-and shouldn't we b-be exiting? There could be an explosion at any m-moment."

"Right! Good point!" and gathering her up in his arms he turned back to the jagged exit hole. But the fire had spread there now and the gap blazed like a lion tamer's ring of fire. Lion tamer, there's one I haven't been yet. Knock on wood...

Sam shut his eyes, grit his teeth, and sprang!

For a moment the roar of flames swelled and he felt the fire licking at his exposed flesh, then it was past and his eyes shot open, the clearing's purple grass rose up before him, he twisted to the side fast and landed on his shoulder, clutched the woman tight to his chest and somersaulted, there was a sudden moment of silence behind him, then-BOOOOOM!

As bits of fiery wreakage rained down all around them, Sam and the woman came out of their roll and skidded to a stop on the purple grass, he heaved a sigh of relief and released her, she slumped against his side and exhaled as well.

"Thank-you, sir."

"Anytime." he grinned wryly, "Wow, you were right, it exploded. That was close-wait..."

Wait...purple grass?

He sat up fast and peered down between his knees, and yep, the rising organic blades were a stained a brilliant shade of violet. He looked to the trees and yeah, they were purple too.

What, is this some kind of holiday thing, like when Chicago dyes it's river green for St. Patrick's Day?

"Um..." he dared to ask the woman he'd just saved, "...why is everything purple?"

"Why? Because it just is."

She sat up as well and placing a firm grip upon her dislocated fingers, she popped them back into place, then looked at him in concern, "That is a strange question for you to pose, sir. You might as well ask why there are three moons."

Sam blinked at her impressive feat of stamina, then did a double-take and looked up sharply, "Three moons? Huh?"

But she was right, there were three moons in the sky, each one larger then the last, and all of them way bigger then his own was. They stared back down at Dr. Beckett like the angry gaze of a three-eyed demi-god.

"Where...where am I?"

The woman scraped the lock of hair free from her face and curled it's green-flecked length behind one ear, "Are you feeling alright, sir? Did you hit your head?"

"Where!"

She shrugged her narrow shoulders, "Fine. We are on the third planet of the Talitha Star System. Again, are you-"

"Planet?"

Planet?

He looked back-and-forth fast, a nervous grin splitting his face, "This is a joke, right? This is the set of a movie, or a television show. Or... Or I'm dreaming! That's gotta be it, I'm dream-" his nervous tirade was cut-off as she gripped him by the chin with surprising strength and stared deeply into his eyes.

"Captain Archer," she declared gravely, "you are babbling."

Sam Beckett pulled free of the strange woman's grip and studied her face more carefully. And discovered that her ears-they were pointed! And the cut on her forehead, that wasn't green lubricant drizzling slowly from it, it was green blood!

His jaw sagged, "Oh, boy..."

To be continued...