James Doohan once got lost driving with his agent in a bad part of L.A. when a gang of toughs pulled up next them. "We were scared," says Steve Stevens, "but they smiled and said, 'Hey, Scotty, beam us up!' " The Vancouver-born Doohan, who died at home on July 20 in Redmond, Wash., at 85 of pneumonia and complications from Alzheimer's disease, had a way of making people beam. Like his Star Trek character, the starship Enterprise's chief engineer, Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (on TV from 1966 to '69 and in seven Trek movies), "he was a beautiful, irascible man," says Nichelle Nichols (Uhura). The D-Day veteran (who lost a finger to machine-gun fire) did have issues with a certain star. "I like Captain Kirk," Doohan told PEOPLE in 1994, "but I sure don't like Bill [Shatner]." Later on, the two patched things up. Doohan's third wife, Wende, 48 (with whom he had three of his nine children), has arranged to have some of his ashes shot into space by a private company this September. "He was such a down-to-earth guy," says George Takei (Sulu), "but now he'll be in the galaxies."