In his eagerness to reunite with his daughter, Gordon Mises gets ahead of the rest of the crew of the Temerity.  Defender Zik urges caution, because this scenario seems too much like an….

AMBUSH!

From hiding, Morren fires at the person who looks most like how he remembers Zik from their last encounter. But that person is the unfortunate Gordon, whose arm is blown clear off from Morren’s shot!

Gordon falls out of the sky, and while Zik scrambles to catch him, everyone scatters. Bullets are zipping in from all around the crater, and there’s a mad dash for cover while Sten, Tanaka and Trent Quickdraw give covering fire.

They reach the crater floor after some near-misses, and Zik calls out to the Temerity for support – Amelia, come back!

Defender Zik and the intrepid crew of the Temerity arrives at Gamma Apodis 3 and scans its second moon for the crew of the captured ZEMM cargo vessel.  But the evil Jairians have destroyed the ship! Trent asks why they keep doing that, when they could be salvaging the ships they capture.  Defender Zik explains that the Jairians are obsessive about hiding themselves and striking from the shadows, and keeping the ships intact would allow the Zik to track them to their elusive base of operations.

As they approach the landing zone, Zik asks Francisco if there are any traces of the Jairians indicating where they might have gone, such as an ion trail.  Francisco replies that yes, an ion trail exists, and it’s fresh enough to identify the type of vessel they used! Zik decides to let him and Amelia investigate the trail further, because it’s imperative that the Jairians are located in order to negotiate some kind of peace.  The rest of the crew disembarks and examines the wreck of the transport vessel.

A sharp-eyed Trent Quickdraw spots the crew of the transport in the distance, at the central peak of a nearby crater. Defender Zik tries to call out to them, but receives no response. This whole thing isn’t adding up, but since the Jairians seem to have left, Zik calls for the team to head over to the crew to see if they’re all right. Be he warns them to be cautious, because his instincts are telling him something’s not right!

After a few minutes, Defender Zik and the crew of the Temerity are on their way! Zik congratulates the team on an excellent scramble time, and lets them know that this time, it’s not a drill! There is a real mission afoot, with a good chance of combat! After months of playing cat-and-mouse with the elusive and violent communists, there’s finally an opportunity to confront them directly in an effort to foil their hijacking.  Francisco locks in the navigation to Gamma Apodis, and they hit the hyperdrive! It’s go time!

As Defender Zik and Tanaka return to the beach landing zone, the Temerity approaches in the distance. Tanaka remarks that he and Zik make a good team, having already been through three death-defying adventures together! Zik heartily agrees, and again offers Tanaka a place aboard the Temerity. Tanaka accepts! Welcome aboard!!

But what did the insidious Dr. Wagner mean when he mentioned curing all the sleeping people? It’s a mystery for another day, because it’s time to wrap up this epic adventure through the time tunnel!

That’s right, Defenders, we’ve reached the end of this episode! We’ll be back shortly for an all-new adventure with your favorite space hero Defender Zik!

A battered Zik tries to get up, groaning from his painful experience in the singularity machine. Tanaka leaps to help him up, making sure his friend is okay.  Always aware of danger, Zik asks about the gorillaurs, but Misha has bolted from the lab out of a side door. They’ll have to be careful when they leave!

But as they venture outside, Tanaka hears the gorillaurs beating a hasty retreat up the mountain. Their terror at the infernal singularity machine has overcome any avenge to protect their maker! Zik expresses his relief at not having to face such formidable creatures again in his current state.

As the pair of them trek back through the jungle towards the landing zone, Tanaka asks about what it was like within the singularity.  Zik says that it was confusing; a mass of images swam before him, but he thinks it was mostly images from the future. He even saw an older version of his mother! But Tanaka is confused at that, since Zik’s mother perished in an avalanche. Maybe there are other universes that Zik was able to glimpse into!

Then Tanaka feels he must confess that he was tempted to join Wagner in the singularity. He thanks Zik for setting him straight, and promises to lift himself out of his depression and keep acting to better the future. Zik thanks Tanaka right back for having shut down the machine in time. Tanaka was quite the hero today!

The grieving Tanaka is sorely tempted by the offer of an eternity of observation, without needing to act. While he’s lost in debate, a terrified Misha bolts from the lab through a side door.

Meanwhile, Defender Zik is trapped in the time warp! He screams out for help, hoping that his voice will reach Tanaka across the temporal abyss he finds himself in!

Zik’s voice snaps Tanaka into action, and he leaps to the aid of his good friend, shutting down the machine.  Zik falls to the floor of the infernal machine — is he okay?!

With a blinding flash, the singularity is established in the infernal machine! As Defender Zik, Tanaka and Misha look on in horror, Dr. Wagner celebrates his achievement. Shoving Zik aside, Wagner sprints for the black hole, encouraging the others to jump in and experience the entire future of the universe in one leap of faith!

Wagner disappears into the singularity, and Zik begins to float towards it! Can he escape?!

While Tanaka bars the door, Zik tries to ride history’s first centaur rodeo. Misha the gorillaur grabs your favorite space hero off her back and flings him across the room. Recovering quickly, Zik squares off with the giant creature, while the holographic dragon continues to distract it.

Meanwhile, Tanaka finishes with the door, effectively blocking the much larger Marco from entering, and he leaps up onto the steel frame which surrounds the lab.  He gazes down on the chaos and hesitates. Does he really want to help Zik stop the singularity machine, or could this be an escape from the pain of his lost clan?

Defender Zik launches into action, getting Zoot to project a holographic dragon to distract the gorillaur! While Misha deals with the flying phantom, Zik jumps on her back and feeds her some lefts! Meanwhile, Tanaka starts piling furniture in front of the door to prevent the enormous Marco from joining the fray. A furious Dr. Wagner shouts at Misha to see through the illusion and concentrate on subduing the prisoners.  Can they stop the singularity machine in time?!

Zik plays for time, keeping Dr. Wagner talking so he can figure out how to get out of this jam.  But the jam they’re in is worse than they imagined!

Wagner reveals that despite causing his aging to dramatically slow, he is now at the limits of his life.  Since he can’t see all of time unfold by becoming immortal, he’ll bring the rest of the future to himself, quickly! The machine he’s built creates a singularity and channels the warping of space-time so that for everyone in its field, the entire rest of time rushes towards them quickly, allowing them to see everything!  Wagner reasons that this expanded perception must enable total enlightenment of the soul.

Sensibly, Zik asks why Wagner can’t perform this time manipulation elsewhere, where it won’t encompass his entire home planet and its population. But Wagner’s ethos dictates that if you can raise someone to a higher level of enlightenment, it would be unenlightened to avoid doing so. To him, enlightenment can be bestowed, and should be, whether the recipient agrees or not, because they are yet too unenlightened to understand the gift they’re receiving.

With that, Wagner turns to his diabolical machine and begins the process! The equipment revs up with a noise Misha the gorillaur knows only too well, and she starts getting nervous. Zik tells Tanaka to get ready, because he has a plan to use that nervousness to help stop the experiment.  But Tanaka isn’t totally on board! This time warp experiment can give him the ability to stop worrying about what to do next, and passively observe what arrives. It’s what he’s been doing since recovering from the Jairian attack on his clan, and this provides an easy escape from the pain. Zik counters that it’s not up to Wagner to make a decision that robs everyone of the right to determine their own destiny, and with that, he steels himself for action!