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"How do you feel?" Matsubara said, as she approached Guerrero. He was sitting on one of the benches that lined a large, otherwise open room in the "residential section" of the alien complex. The bench was likely not designed to be seating, but that was what it was being used for. * * * A short time later, Matsubara returned to the station, with Turokuot and Culins. The Adamsburg people, she noticed, were giving the station and the areas around it a wide berth, perhaps fearing another attack by the Dorans. Some of the civilians were discussing ways to defend against another attack, using materials that they were finding in the vicinity. Even Matsubara was feeling just a little nervous as she approached the station, fearing that another vehicle could arrive at any moment. * * * The sound of the communications buzzer started Captain Thorpe. He rolled onto his back, and found himself lying in his bed, in full uniform, waking up after telling himself he was just going to lie down and take a quick little nap. Now it was almost six hundred hours. "Oh damn," he muttered. Hours had been wasted, and when he slept like he did, he felt worse than before he laid down. Rolling over and hitting the button to open the commlink, he said, "Thorpe here." * * * Two hundred thousand light years away, Damiko Matsubara sat by the window, looking out. The room was very sparse. It had nothing besides the bench she was sitting on, although the room did have a small light and heat was coming from the vents. She sat by the window, looking out, seeing the other half of the alien structure and the big space door that dominated it. It was night now. The Milky Way galaxy was close enough to the celestial pole that it always remained in the sky, gradually turning about the pole in a way that she could only think was taunting them. Go to:
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Chapter 7
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"Okay, I guess," the man answered, as the woman sat down about a metre from him. She looked tired, he thought. "The Adamsburg doctor recognized that I had a couple of cracked ribs, while I got a shot for the pain from the medikit that Ensign Culins was carrying. Unfortunately, that's not going to last, and there's not a lot of medicine in that kit."
"I know. We're short of everything here. We managed to get some of the civilians to help sort through the vegetation and the rest, but there's not a lot of food there, and dealing with it and handing it out to people and the rest is very difficult."
"Have you eaten?"
"No," Matsubara admitted. "I'm not hungry. They're working on getting us a supply of water, though."
"How many?" Guerrero asked. "How many were taken?"
"I don't know for sure. The Adamsburg people were still trying to organize themselves, so all we can go by is information on who knew who was here and now they know they're not here, and so on. In addition to Margaret and Craig, maybe twenty others."
"You don't think the reason why they grabbed them is what was said earlier?"
"I'm not sure," Matsubara remarked. "These Dorans, I'm not sure that they are cannibals. I don't think eating us is going to help them survive. Maybe they use them as slaves or something."
"Perhaps. We can't speak for what else is going on on this planet. However, we've got to get them back."
"Right now, that's easier said then done. We've only got the thirteen of us still here, and we've got sidearm phasers that we can't recharge. We don't make up a credible military force against the Dorans, whose location, numbers and abilities are unknown."
"But we can't just leave them," Guerrero protested, raising his voice just enough that he could feel the cracked ribs.
"I know that, but we just can't go storming there either, wherever 'there' is."
"So what do we do?"
Matsubara did not answer for the longest time. She sat back on this uncomfortable surface, and leaned against the rough and equally uncomfortable wall. Right now, she wished she was back on the Athena. Were she back where she felt she belonged, she thought she would be in the Acropolis, or perhaps somewhere else, having a nice meal with Captain Thorpe. They would exchange their stories for the day. But that was not the reality now. Instead, the reality was being in this cold, distant place with a thousand or so other people, with very little food and water, and relying on the hope of learning how to operate alien machinery. Right across the open area from where the two sat was the way home, if Turokuot could figure out how to activate the portal. If he succeeded, that would allow everybody to go home-except for those missing people.
"I have thought about it," she said, looking ahead and speaking slowly, as if she was still thinking about it. "We need more information. We need to visit the Odonans."
"Are you sure?"
"They might have information that we can use for the next step. It's better than taking a blind stab in the dark trying to find these Dorans and then going in with our laughable force."
"But can you find the Odonans?"
"That pattern we saw in the station looked like a representation of the galaxy. Two of these structures are active, and the other one is close enough that it could be the survivors from Norg. The map says they're adjacent, more or less, although they could be anywhere on the planet. I don't think that map shows the pattern here, but maps the galaxy."
"That's a lot of assumptions."
"True, but that active location by us can't be the Dorans. We've never encountered their kind before. That map looks too much like the galaxy for it to be a coincidence."
"Very well, but can you operate those vehicles? There were a couple parked in the station, but how do you operate them?"
"That's the part I got to work on next." Matsubara stood up, saying, "You'd better rest. You're right. Medicine is a scarce resource, so you've got to take it easy to deal with the pain."
"Okay, but don't do anything foolish, commander."
"I'm trying not to."
Turokuot at first was a little angry, since Matsubara had pulled him away from his work on the gateway, but he had heard of the station, and realized, especially as he got closer, that he had to see this for himself. He was amazed by what he saw of the station, even if that sight was marred by debris on the floor, like a lost shoe, some other scraps of clothing and what were clearly scorch marks from directed-energy weapons. He could even see Guerrero's destroyed and discarded phaser. He glanced at the map on the wall and the symbols that were used, noticing immediately that only a small number were lit.
Culins was also looking around, but was approaching this from a different viewpoint. "What's really amazing," he started, "was that all of this still holds together and still works. I mean, I'm hearing figures of this being around for a long time, thousands, hundreds of thousands of years."
"Millions," Turokuot said.
"Millions?"
"There is some evidence for a range of dates, ranging from five hundred million years to over two and a half million years, but I'm leaning more towards the lower estimate."
"But that proves my point," Culins continued. "What about entropy?"
"The facility is maintained." The group approached the closest walkover. Turokuot stepped onto it, giving no consideration to whether or not it was safe, since everything he had seen so far suggested very sturdy, very reliable technology. "It's not exactly nanotechnology, since the majority of the robots and automated units are small, the size of a deck of cards to maybe the size of a football, although the controlling computer likely has nanotechnology to maintain it. In addition, the construction involves entirely stable materials configured in reliable, sturdy formats. There's some external weathering, but this whole complex remains in good repair."
"Even after that much time? Surely, the original builders are gone."
"Perhaps."
"They can't be the Dorans," the security officer pointed out.
Matsubara replied, "Why not? They could well be the degenerate remnants of a once great, ancient race."
"Perhaps."
The group came down the walkway to where the vehicles were parked. They saw several of them, some of them shorter and some longer, although none like the multisectional vehicle the Dorans used in their attack. On the other hand, they did see what looked like mechanical connectors that could link the vehicles. Matsubara approached the first of the parked vehicles, which was one of the smaller vehicles, barely larger than a typical ground vehicle on Earth. Outside, it was very simple, little more than a box with rounded corners, a door on one side near the rear, and a simple window in front. The door opened and closed manually, and when Turokuot tried it, the door opened smoothly. He did scan the interior, and found that it was laid out simply. Up front were two seats that faced forward, and between the door and the front were two benches, which could accommodate two people on each. The rear had a small hatch that could lead to a joined car if one was behind them, and beside that was an equipment locker. It was empty.
Matsubara looked at the very simple controls. Between the two seats and extending up and into the window area was some kind of display, now turned off. Below that was a curious piece of equipment. It was round, with eight slots around the edge. Each of the slots had a kind of peg in it. The pegs were thin cylinders of an inert metal, with electronic contacts at one end, and a kind of a light-emitting diode at the other. None of the lights were on. In the centre of the disk were two rows of empty slots, arranged four to a row, and in between, what looked like a large, rectangular button. That was all the controls that were provided.
"Okay," the science officer started. "How do we control this?"
Turokuot swept his tricorder over the equipment, and checked the results. "I don't believe that we're meant to control this vehicle. The only thing we can tell it to do is to go to a destination, and it does the rest. The display screen might indicate the destination, the route, how long it would take to get there, and so on. This thing in the middle is very simple. The slots the pegs are in now are not even wired, while the rows in the middle are little more than simple electrical switches, as is the button."
"That says a lot," Culins remarked, somewhat sarcastically.
"No," Matsubara started, as she sat down on seats that were at least designed with the basic humanoid body plan in mind. They were comfortable too. "Actually, Richard has told us a lot. I'd suspect that pushing the big button starts the vehicle. Inserting pegs into particular holes in particular patterns is the way that the computer reads the destination, since the pegs set the switches."
"But how do we know what patterns to use? Where are we going to find that information?"
"We already know," Matsubara remarked. Both of the men seemed surprised at the statement. "That wall with the system map has circles, each with two rows of four dots, various numbers white and black, in various patterns. As far as I could tell, each pattern is unique."
"So," Culins said, "to select a destination, put pegs into these middle slots in the order you want, push the centre button and away we go?"
"I guess so," Turokuot answered. "I see no other control systems, and nothing much even hidden. I'd suspect that the computer is actually outside the vehicle and controls it through the rail."
"We'll give it a try," Matsubara remarked. She had scanned the section of the system map that contained the two adjacent, lit circles, and now displayed it on the screen. "One of those is the Odonan location, by my best guess."
"So, what do we do? Does dark mean no peg, or does it mean a peg?"
Culins added, "How do you know which one is the Odonan one?"
"Well, at worse, we'd return home," Matsubara said, "but just before the Doran vehicle came into the station, a red ring started flashing around the lower left one. That's got to be us. The Odonans are then at the second one." Nothing more was said. Matsubara was the one in charge, and she found that she was the one that was going to put in the pegs. She was both nervous and exhilarated at the same time. She had no idea of the risks that she was putting herself into, but she was also excited at the possibility of exploring and seeing new and wonderful things-and she was thinking about Stanislava and Warner, and all the others that had been captured. She could not be tentative now. She took one of the pegs, and confirmed that it scanned identically to each other, so identical that a replicator likely produced them, and put it into the second slot from the left on the top row, representing a white dot on her display. She pressed the peg in, and as it clicked, a white light came on. This seemed to match the white dot better than the black opening of the next slot. She inserted four more pins, one in the third spot from the left on the top row, and three in the three right slots on the bottom row. "That looks about right."
"Do we do this?" Turokuot asked.
"Do you have any objections, anything you've seen that may change our perception of this?"
"No," the man said, "but I wonder about the reception that the Odonans might give us."
"These Odonans should recognize us as humans, not Dorans. Odonans should not be considered a threat."
"If this is in fact the Odonans, and if they do not think we're just another bunch of Dorans."
"It's a chance we'll take." With those words, Matsubara pushed the central button. The level of hum increased in the vehicle, and the display came on. It showed what looked like a simplified version of the main system map, along with some graphical displays in an alien language that had no corresponding record in the Federation database. The vehicle lifted off the magnetic rail slightly, and then moved forward, smoothly and with very little noise. The vehicle turned onto a main track, and approached one of the tunnel hatches. As the small vehicle approached, the hatch opened, revealing a continuing expanse of track, but in complete darkness.
Matsubara sat tightly in her chair, while Turokuot sat to her right. Culins simply stood behind the two, holding on to the seat backs in case he lost his balance. A small internal light at least allowed them to see the confines of the vehicle, but beyond, the tunnel was absolutely dark. Matsubara was increasingly fearful that the vehicle might run into something, an obstruction on the track that the system might not be able to account for. They could crash into something with no warning.
The three, their eyes increasingly adapted to the dark, were momentarily started by what looked like seven glowing rings, each one approximately the width of the tunnel and aligned so that the vehicle could travel right through them. Each one was glowing a bright pink as the train approached quickly. Once within the rings, the vehicle slowed down noticeably, at least judging by the rings. Those on board felt nothing. Within a second, the pink turned to something of a greenish-blue, and the vehicle sped up again.
"What was that?" Turokuot asked.
"I'm not sure," Matsubara remarked, "perhaps a computer interface, traffic control or something." The woman was leaning back in the chair, wondering how long this was going to take and also wondering if she could stay awake for much longer surrounded by this much darkness. However, barely a minute after passing through the rings, the three were startled again when in front of them, a disk of light appeared. That quickly revealed itself as coming from a station similar to their own.
"That was quick," Culins said suddenly.
"That took, what, three minutes? Given how fast this train appears to go, it's possible the Odonans were close enough that we could've walked to their location, if we knew where it was."
The vehicle entered the station on the middle of the three tracks, for the very simple reason that the first track was occupied by a vehicle that was in many ways similar to what the Dorans arrived in earlier back at their station-but with one important difference. The vehicle on the first track was a burned-out wreck.
"What happened here?" Turokuot asked, as the vehicle the three were in came to a stop. They were all looking at the wreck.
"Maybe there was a battle," Matsubara answered. She knew that it was likely useless since she could not scan outside of the station, but she still removed her tricorder.
Culins added, "Maybe there are no more Odonans left."
"I think there are," the science officer said. "As expected, I can't scan through the walls, but I can scan that there is a forcefield across the open area of the platform."
"Why couldn't we find that control before the Doran attack?"
"This forcefield appears to be added-on technology," Matsubara said, as she opened the door to the vehicle. As far as she could tell, the layout of this station was the same as the one she had started from. She could have walked over to the stairs to the overpass, but found it much simpler to walk through the burned-out wreck, with the others behind her. Just as she did, doors leading into the station entered and four individuals, all Odonans and all armed with unknown weapons, entered, and rapidly took up defensive positions behind barriers and against the walls. They stared at the newcomers for a few seconds, before realizing that they were not Dorans.
A fifth person, a woman, also armed with the same kind of simple-looking weapon, stepped out of the shadows, and approached. The others nervously covered her. She stopped about five metres from the forcefield, and asked, speaking in her own language, "You are humans, Federation officers, are you?"
"Yes," Matsubara answered. The universal translator converted Odonien into English for her, but she had no idea if the person on the other side had the same ability. "Can you understand me?"
"What did you say?" asked the Odonan.
Turning to the others, Matsubara asked, "Can either of you speak Odonien?" They just nodded.
The woman turned back to the other four, and asked, "Contact Shad or Lots. They have translation devices, I think."
For almost twelve minutes, it was a standoff. Matsubara and the other two officers stood on their side of the barrier, talking occasionally to each other, while four nervous Odonan sharpshooters-if such a term could be applied to them-held cover while the woman simply stood there and waited. She could not understand the humans, and they could not make her understand them. It was pointless to talk until someone who could talk to them arrived. Matsubara made the determination to wait as long as necessary for whomever the Odonans were bringing. She knew that the original Odonan ship at Norg, the Prodakh, lost two officers in their investigation of the alien structure, so perhaps it was one of those two that were being summoned. It seemed incredible that the two could have survived sixty-one years here, along with at least some other Odonans.
"Did the Odonans use universal translator implants then?" Turokuot asked.
"I think it was integrated with their forcefield belts," Matsubara answered.
Finally, another group of Odonans walked down the corridor leading to the transport station. In the centre were two men, and they were surrounded by another group of armed Odonans. The two in the middle did not stand out. After sixty-one years, it was unrealistic to expect them to still have their Odonan Space Service uniforms, but somehow, the Odonans must have acquired clothing. It even looked like it fitted them decently, and provided protection from the elements. Otherwise, these two-and the rest of the Odonans-did not look unduly stressed. They looked healthy and clean, and even fit and alert.
One of the men, slightly shorter and paler than the other, said, "Incredible, humans."
Matsubara stepped forward, almost reaching the forcefield, and asked, "Can either of you understand me?"
"The translation device appears to be working," the taller man said. "I'm Shad Kayaha, once an Odonan Space Service officer, rank, ensign, assistant geologist on the starship Prodakh. You are?"
"I'm Lieutenant Commander Damiko Matsubara, of the Federation starship Athena. My companions are Ensign Martaan Culins, security, and Lieutenant Richard Turokuot, engineering."
The other individual was introduced as Lots Ghanash, and he called himself a "former ensign" on the Prodakh, and his department was engineering. It was hard to tell who was in charge, but when Ghanash gave the signal, somebody not visible to the three humans shut off the forcefield. Ghanash then said, "Hurry, and come across. We can't risk having that field down for more than a few seconds."
"Okay," Matsubara said, as she led her group across. She could hear the hum of the forcefield reform behind her.
Ghanash, almost with a strange sense of eagerness, asked, "I have one question to ask, that I must ask right now. Did you come here because an alien device transported you from a planet in our galaxy to here, or has technology progressed to the point where starships can now make this journey?"
"We came the same way you did. A small town in the Federation, on a planet named Charamand, uncovered an alien structure, similar to what was found on Norg. The population of that town was transported over, and later on, fifteen of us from the Athena, as we were investigating, also came over, accidentally of course."
"We have things to discuss," Ghanash said. "This is not the place for it. This is a dangerous place."
Matsubara and the others got a quick tour of the complex. With sixty-one years to work on it, the Odonans had built a virtual colony in their structure and in the surrounding lands, so that they could survive. One thing Matsubara soon learned was that of the original twelve thousand Odonans who had been transported here, about half had died after the first difficult year. Since then, the population had stabilized around six thousand, with some births. Afterall, many married couples were in the original population.
Ghanash and Kayaha led the group up through a number of levels of the residential section of the complex, until they came to a large room with a view in two directions, one back at the other half of the structure, and the other outwards, to the plains that stretched to the horizon, marked only by the occasional, similar structure. Matsubara had a brief look out of the first window. The open area between the structures had been converted into a farm-like operation, and a number of people were working the fields.
The room they entered was furnished in a spartan style, with a simple table and several simple chairs around it. Only one other person was in the room, an older-looking Odonan male. Ghanash said, "This is Vice Governor Akhamod Neteya, now the acting governor of the Norg Survivor Colony." The Prodakh officer introduced the humans, and told him how they had arrived. "So," Neteya said, speaking in accented but understandable English, "that would explain the new lit symbol on the transit map." He paused for a moment, and said, "I am surprised I can still speak that language. It has been so long."
"It has," Ghanash agreed.
"But do the humans have a way home?"
Matsubara spoke up, saying, "Not yet."
Turokuot added, "We have been working on the gateway door, which connects this end with the end back home. I'm confident that in time, we'll be able to figure it out."
"We never could," Ghanash said. "I all but took it apart."
"The facility at the other end was destroyed," Matsubara admitted.
The Odonan engineer looked down, saying, "It was... as I feared. I was away from the gateway when... the event happened. I heard this call, this frantic call, to return. When I got there, I saw just the back wall. The gateway was gone. We were cut off. It took us awhile, but it became clear that they would not be able to reactivate the gateway at the other end, if that was the only way to activate it. I thought that the structure at the other end was destroyed, but I did not want to fully believe it. It was our hope."
Kayaha continued, "And now that you're here, I'm afraid that your ship, what is it?"
"The Athena."
"I'm not familiar with it," Neteya added.
"It's a lot newer than sixty-one years," Matsubara explained.
"A lot has changed," the older man said.
"Indeed."
"Tell me that the Odonan Empire has not committed the ultimate foolishness and joined the Federation."
"No, they are still stubbornly independent."
"That's good," Neteya remarked.
"But a lot has changed. Much more space has been explored, but right now, the Alpha Quadrant has been involved in a war with an invader from the Gamma Quadrant."
"Alpha Quadrant? What's that?"
Matsubara explained, "I guess sixty-one years ago, the quadrant labelling was not in general use. The Alpha Quadrant is one of four quadrants of the galaxy, this one centered on the Federation. Another quadrant is the Gamma Quadrant, and it is connected to ours through a stable wormhole. The Dominion is an aggressive, dangerous organization that wants to conquer the Alpha Quadrant to save itself."
"Home could be unrecognizable, with terms like 'Alpha Quadrant' and 'stable wormhole.' Things have changed. Maybe that is why nobody ever attempted to come for us."
"That's because we're in the Small Magellanic Cloud."
"Eventually," Kayaha said, "we realized that."
"No ship could make the journey, but you were never forgotten. As soon as the incident on Charamand was reported and we realized what it was, the Odonans learned about it and immediately sent a ship to assist us, probably with somebody on board who had firsthand experience with this. Unfortunately, we decided to do a little investigating before they arrived, and got stuck here."
"How many in the town that was hit?"
"Twelve hundred," Matsubara remarked.
"That number is almost manageable. If enough seed stock also made it across, you can attempt to plant and grow the crops. There is water out there if you can find it, and the fields are surprisingly fertile, at least for awhile. You have to practice crop rotation and careful management."
"Hopefully, we can return home."
"But I wouldn't count on it. We don't know why the structure at the other end was destroyed. Maybe because it was too old and too dilapidated, and it just failed. Maybe the power source-a direct subspace shunt into the heart of the star, actually, quite advanced and quite effective-could not be contained, and that exploded. You must confront the possibility that the same thing happened at your end."
Matsubara did not want to think about that. She did not want to think about being trapped here forever. The Odonans implied that with hard work and determination, not to mention a fair amount of smarts, it was possible to survive here, but that did not ease the concern in Matsubara's mind. She did not want to be trapped here. She did have one other matter on her mind. "About the Dorans?"
"You were attacked?" Neteya asked.
"Yes. Two fellow Athena officers were captured, along with a number of civilians. Do you know what happened to them? We have one... unpleasant theory."
"As far as we can tell, the Dorans use the captured people for slaves."
"You were attacked too?"
"In the early days, yes, but once we discovered the weapons, and were able to install the forcefield, they have not bothered us."
"Discovered weapons?" Culins asked. "Where?"
"There are equipment rooms in the operations tower-that is-the part of the structure where you first appeared. We found much useful stuff there, including some type of replicator-we couldn't make food with it, but could replicate cloth, water, basic tools, parts for the weapons and the forcefield. Lots designed and built that. The Dorans were in shock when they came after that was installed. Because it's flat, the weapon shots deflected right back at them. They tried firing at it from the cover of their vehicle, but the shots reflected back and eventually set the vehicle on fire."
"The wreck that's there?"
"Yeah, we have no way to move it. It has sat there for almost sixty years now. Since that time, the Dorans have never returned, but we fear that could change any day."
"Did you lose people to them in the first raid?" Matsubara asked.
"Yes, we did."
"And you made no attempt to retrieve them?"
Kayaha spoke up, "We could not. Remember, Lots and I were the only officers, and the rest are civilians. We hadn't found the weapons yet, and the weapons we had were all drained in our journey through the alien complex."
"Fighting what?" Culins asked.
"Defensive systems inside the structure. Did you not encounter them?"
"No, we had not penetrated the structure. We were still outside."
"I see. Anyway, we couldn't communicate with them, and could not really go in and attempt to retrieve those who were captured. Any attempt would have seen those who were making it captured too. It was an unfortunate situation. We also know that those who were captured did not live long."
"How?"
"Bond-links that still existed. Within two months, all the bond-link signals we were aware of had disappeared. We suspected that those who were captured were being worked, and stressed, and had no food that they could use. They could not survive."
"But you just left them," Culins protested.
"We had no other choice. Any mission we attempted would have been doomed to failure."
"But still,"
"Enough, ensign," Matsubara said, sharply, like a person in command should. Culins obeyed as well. Matsubara was also thinking about retrieving the people who had been captured, and she also was thinking that it might be a futile gesture. "Did you not attempt a more diplomatic way to contact them?"
"Their note made it clear," the acting governor continued. "The Dorans regarded us as belonging to them. They had all the advantages. In those situations, why would they negotiate?"
"True." One idea did come to Matsubara, and she could not help but voice it. "I wonder why the Dorans are here. Are they trapped here, surviving the best they could, or are they what's left of the original builders?"
Neteya answered, "Considering how old this place is, I find it extremely unlikely that the Dorans are in any way related to the original builders."
"So maybe they're trapped here. Perhaps they want to return home as well. If Captain Thorpe and the Athena can make it through, and contact can be re-established with this end and ours, you and your people can return home, as can our people, and maybe the Dorans too. We might have something to offer them."
"What you're implying is absolutely ridiculous," Turokuot remarked.
"You have a better idea?"
"We open that gateway, and then we can send a proper party, a security detail from the ship, fully equipped for such a mission."
"They could kill the hostages if we do that," Matsubara said.
"We could still try the negotiation approach, but if that approach doesn't work, we should have a backup plan."
Matsubara was thinking about the consequences of her idea, and what might happen if she tried to carry it out. She realized that she simply did not have the experience to carry out these sorts of things. She was not a command officer, and had no real training in the art. She was a science officer, and now found herself in a position where she had to make decisions, and worse, appear to be doing something. She had to act, and not react. Was that not what a commander had to do? Even so, a commander could not act rashly. She had to think things through, consider the possibilities, the outcomes, the results. It would not be easy. She finally said, "I do think that the idea has some merit, but of course I need to give it further thought, though I worry about the others."
"We all do," Turokuot said.
Neteya listened to the exchange, although some of the dialogue was too fast for him to pick up all the words. He finally did say, "I hope that you're not all working on the unfounded assumption that the structure at the other end still exists."
"I think it does."
"On what do you base that?"
"We know what happened on Norg," Matsubara said. "We know that mistakes were made, and Captain Thorpe is likely doing all he can to prevent the same mistake from happening at Charamand. He knows what your Admiral Chiang did not know at the time, that we are here and so it is vital not to do anything careless with the structure. The Odonans also sent a ship, and hopefully, they'll be able to advise us."
Neteya had held something back, and he voiced that now. "I'm also not completely convinced that it is even possible to go back right now."
"What do you mean?"
"There is some evidence to suggest that the machinery here is really in two parts, an inbound system and an outbound system. We're not sure of this, but we had this implied to us. The inbound system is turned on by the Dorans so that they can bring in more slaves, while the outbound system is turned off so that those slaves cannot leave."
"But it was implied that one Odonan survived coming through the gateway. If the outbound system doesn't work."
"It's possible that the gateway might be a separate system itself. I really don't know. The technology here is alien, sometimes difficult to comprehend."
Turokuot spoke up, saying, "Then how can the Dorans control all the various structures? Do they occupy some kind of central command centre?"
"Yes, I believe they do," the governor said. "If the Dorans wanted to go somewhere else, they have complete control to do so. That they don't suggests strongly what kind of life they really want."
Matsubara pondered that for a few seconds, but was also thinking about the one detail that Neteya had said, and which left them some hope. "Well," she said, "Maybe we should continue to work on that gateway. Lieutenant Turokuot, when we get back, I want you to give it your undivided attention. We need to solve this. We have a little hope, knowing that we can access basic replicators and even weapons. Give us a little time, and the chance to survive, and we just might be able to pull this off and get back home."
"I can sense your optimism," the acting governor started, "but after sixty-one years in exile here, it's hard for me to share it. We will have to wait and see..."
Lucia Quintollez, who had the watch on the third shift on this occasion, answered, "This is the bridge. You asked to be notified when the last of the locals had been removed from the evacuated zone. That has been done."
"What about the modifications to the mining equipment?"
"According to the last reports, that has been done, but they have not beamed it back down. They were waiting for the evacuation to be complete in case beaming it back down tripped the alien device."
"Understood," Thorpe said. He hauled himself to a sitting position on the edge of his bed, and looked again at the chronograph. It was still almost six hundred hours. It was time. Commander Takoo was still on board the Athena. The Bluestar remained at Charamand, with Captain Padda remaining unless the Odonans called the ship back for a mission more critical to the war effort. Because of that, Takoo was assigned guest quarters on the Athena, as she would be remaining, even if the Bluestar was called back. Her forcefield belt, and its communication functions, were added to the ship systems. "Computer," the captain called out, forcefully enough that he heard the system beep. "Locate Commander Takoo."
"Commander Takoo is in her quarters," the computer replied.
As was usual when an officer from another ship, or even another recognized service, was on board this ship, that officer was under the command of the captain and expected to carry out the captain's orders as if he or she was a regular member of the crew. Although Thorpe knew that the Odonans tended to need their sleep, he was impatient. Just sitting there, Thorpe could not help but to think of Matsubara being on that cold, desolate planet, dealing with things, such as the Adamsburg survivors, that she was not trained nor equipped to handle. It could be awful there. People could be dying even as he sat in his bed, so he knew that he had to move. The sooner that they broke into the alien structure and moved through it to open up the portal that linked here with there, the better.
Thorpe took the turbolift up two decks to deck seven, where the crew quarters were located. The quarters occupied by Takoo were not that far from the turbolift, and it took him just seconds to get there. He tapped the door chime, and tapped it again. Just as he was about to use his captain's clearance to open the door, he heard a faint voice from within. "Who is it?"
"Captain Thorpe."
"Do you have any idea what time it is?"
"What time it is here is irrelevant. The mining phaser is ready to go, and the area that needs to be evacuated has been. We're ready to go."
"But-"
Thorpe cut off the woman, saying, "Be on the bridge in ten minutes, or we'll proceed without you."
"You can't proceed without me," Takoo said, her words stopping Thorpe as he had turned to walk away.
"What does that mean?"
"I have to co-ordinate with Captain Padda on the Bluestar to get the subspace transport chambers ready."
"That can wait. First we need to see if we can even break into the structure and at what cost." Thorpe now walked away, and if Takoo said anything more, he did not hear it.
Moments later, Thorpe walked onto the bridge. Quintollez sat in the captain's chair, and two other officers were on the bridge as well, Darren Scotts behind the flight control station, and Ensign Mohammed Hassen was working both the tactical and sensor stations. Quintollez was quite surprised to see the captain on the bridge so early. She was under the impression that even though the tasks of preparing the phaser cutting machine and evacuating people from around Adamsburg were done, they were going to wait until the first shift was back on duty before actually doing this. She could understand why the captain was feeling a little impatient like this, but she had been assuming that to do this task, he wanted to have the first-shift officers at their post. On the other hand, anybody who routinely worked on the bridge could be qualified to do this.
"Who's the science officer on duty?" Thorpe asked.
"Lieutenant Lee," the duty officer replied, referring to Lieutenant Connie Lee, the historian on board, and the one who had gotten the usually-unwanted extra shift manning the bridge on the third shift. "She's on her designated break."
"Recall her to the bridge. Also have the duty engineer called to the bridge."
"Aye, sir," Quintollez replied. She put out the calls, and within a couple of minutes, Ensign Brent Wiley and Lee were on the bridge. Lee, carrying a padd, looked unhappy that her break ended prematurely, but Wiley was not concerned. He simply had been working in main engineering, and when called, just took the turbolift back to the bridge and activated the engineering console to transfer operations to it.
Quintollez remained on the bridge, but she did move over to the first officer's seat. Thorpe looked to his right towards the engineering console, and asked, "Ensign, what's the status of the phaser drilling machine?"
"It's powered down now, but it's ready to go. We can't test it on board, but internal diagnostics check out and we can communicate with it."
"Prepare to beam it down, oriented properly, on my command. Lieutenant Lee, I want you to set the sensors to monitor everything that might happen. According to Zhi Len, as the device 'blanks'-to use the literal translation of the Odonien term-power flows reveal more and more of its structure. Also, monitor the radius of the blanking effects. It's not just on the surface, but actually is a sphere." Lee answered, "Understood. Sensor routines loaded and ready."
"Speaking of Commander Takoo," Thorpe started. "Where is she?" The ten minutes he had given her were likely gone by now, but he was not keeping track. "Ensign Wiley, beam down the phaser machine."
"Aye, sir." The cargo-transporter routines had already been preset, including co-ordinates and orientation of the machine once it had been rematerialized. He simply tapped in the activation sequence and watched the displays as the transporter cycled through its operations. He, like everybody else on the bridge, felt a momentary sense of tension, since they really had no idea how the alien structure would respond to the transport. It could sense that the mining machine was a threat to it, and respond accordingly. However, as Wiley watched, the rematerialization sequence was completed, and nobody said anything about unexpected events happening. "Rematerialization is complete," the engineer said. "Everything checks out."
"Lieutenant Lee?" Thorpe asked.
"Sensors detected absolutely nothing."
"Wiley, activate the internal power units."
The engineer brought up a new series of sequential controls and displays. He started up the internal power units that they had added, and checked that power was flowing through the machine. "Internal power activated. All systems nominal."
"Lets have a visual."
Now Hassen worked, linking the image processing and transmission system with the ship's communications systems. Lights mounted on the machine came on, illuminating in stark tones with a lot of heavy contrast the rocky mining face, and the debris and the dropped tools and the rest. The images appeared on the viewscreen. Thorpe had Hassen zoom in and enhance what little segment of the actual alien structure that they had uncovered. It looked just like the rock.
Lee said, "Judging by what I see, there's nothing but rock there. The sensor routines on the mining machine say the same thing. They can probe into the rock there like they can in any direction, and all they see is rock."
"But we know that something is there," Thorpe said. "According to the Odonans, even if we break into the structure, we can visually see something but still cannot scan into it."
"That's true, but to have spent so much time relying on these instruments with our lives, and now having to simply say that they're lying to us is hard to accept at times."
"I know."
The rear portside doors to the bridge opened again. Finally, Takoo came onto the bridge. Thorpe could sense that she was not happy to be here. One thing that he had heard about Odonans was that they did not appreciate having their sleep interrupted. They were seemingly not quite themselves until the time that they were supposed to wake up. Takoo looked like she was half-asleep, as she struggled to keep her dry eyes open. Her appearance was not the best, either. Her long hair was loose, and her uniform looked a little rumpled, although that was more the effect of getting the forcefield belt back on while half-asleep rather than sleeping in uniform. Thorpe wondered how rumpled he looked right now. No matter how he or Takoo looked, those on that planet in the Small Magellanic Cloud had to look worse. He was focusing on that. He said nothing to Takoo right now. Her appearance was not his concern. Soon enough, she would fully wake up.
"Have you done it yet?" she said, as she sat in the chair on the command level to the left of the captain.
"No," Thorpe replied. Once more looking at the engineering console, he added, "Ensign, power up the phase generator coils, and confirm the settings."
Wiley brought up the power units to full power, and directed their output to the capacitors, which needed to be charged prior to the initial firing. While he waited for the firing strength to build up, he also double-checked the settings to make sure that they still agreed with the values that Takoo had given them. "Settings are confirmed. A full charge in ten seconds."
Thorpe looked at the Odonan, and said, "Nervous?"
"I'm always a little nervous when facing a possible unknown like this one. Of course, I'd be more nervous if I was fully awake."
Once more, Thorpe ignored the remark. He was not sure if he was nervous, or anxious, or maybe he was a little fearful. Just breaking into the alien structure was only the start, and many difficult tasks lie ahead of them even if they were successful in the first one. He waited for an appropriate amount of time to pass before he said, "Fire."
Hassen controlled the actual triggers. He had been checking over the links to make sure he had effective control. Lee was also carefully observing the sensors, and was prepared to jump at any sensor alert tone that might sound. Once Thorpe gave the order, Hassen tapped at the trigger icons. Everybody else looked at the viewscreen. A bright blue beam appeared form the emitter, which was outside of the range of the video sensor pickup. The enclosed space suddenly became a lot brighter as the beam tore into the rock. A lot of the rock was vapourized, and more was turned into smoke and dust, which driven by the intense heat swirled outwards and all around. The rock fractured in places under the impact, with the pieces slammed and swirled about. The firing went on for thirty seconds before the power demands exceeded what the capacitors and the power cells could provide. The beam shut off.
"Any blanking effects?" Thorpe asked.
"Nothing," Lee remarked. She was monitoring any strange energy emissions, and also the vegetation and animals on the surface. Everything outside the original ring was still intact, and animals that had re-entered the barren zone were still there.
"Interesting," Takoo remarked.
The smoke and dust settled, and the mine wall came into clearer view. A large section of the original rock face had been blasted away, but what they were staring at now was about three square metres of polished but intact rock, which showed enough curvature to be consistent with a tube that was about five metres in diameter. "What do you make of that?" the captain said..
Lee answered, "The sensors suggest that it is rock. The computer is processing the data that it collected during the actual firing, and... this is interesting. It appears to be some kind of field, something akin to a cloaking field, I'd say. The energy that we poured into it was absorbed, and dispersed by spreading outwards from the contact point."
"But we didn't dent it?" Thorpe asked.
"No, we did not."
Takoo spoke up, "Sixty-one years ago, we noticed a similar dispersion pattern, but we still had managed to break into the structure. Actually, the original miners broke into it, with their weaker civilian mining machine."
The captain asked, "Then what happened here?"
"I don't know," the Odonan admitted. "Once we got into it, we noticed that it was deteriorating, and showing all the signs of something that had been there for so long. We assumed that the deterioration had nothing to do with that specific structure, but was general feature of something so old and so rarely used. Now, this one just might be different, intact and fully functional."
"Ensign," Thorpe called out. "What was the setting on the power level?"
"We were using it at seventy-five percent of full power. Commander Dewuchun was worried that the emitters couldn't handle full power, and at higher power, throwback of debris and even radiation might overwhelm its protective shields and damage the machine."
"But seventy-five percent power didn't work."
"It was almost two hundred times the power level of the device the Odonan miners on Norg used to break into the structure."
"Try ninety percent."
Wiley wanted to protest, but he did not say anything, except, "That will reduce firing time to twenty seconds between cycles."
"So be it. Charge the capacitors again, and Ensign Hassen, fire when ready."
"Aye, sir," the engineer said, with a touch of reluctance on his voice. He made the adjustments and waited for the power cells to top up the capacitor so that the machine could get that initial jolt of power. "Ready."
"Fire!"
Once more, the beam appeared, but this time, there was no smoke, no dust and no throw-back of rock and debris. All they saw was that the beam hit the smooth, gently-curving rock face and caused it to glow an increasingly bright blue, so bright that it became impossible for those on the bridge to see what was happening in the centre. However, twenty-two seconds after the device started firing, it shut off. The glowing blue disk where the beam hit the wall quickly faded, leaving the rock apparently untouched.
"No damage, no change in the structure wall," Lee reported. "No blanking effects or other unexpected events."
"I don't understand this," Takoo remarked. "That weapon should've gotten through that wall."
"Clearly, we don't know these things as well as we thought," Quintollez remarked.
Thorpe continued, "Ensign Wiley, recharge the capacitor and adjust to full power. I don't think debris throwback is going to be a problem here."
"Aye, sir. However, firing time will be reduced to fifteen seconds or less."
"Understood."
"Captain," Takoo added. "If I may make a recommendation, perhaps if the beam moved rather than stay in one place, it might disrupt the energy dispersal routines that the device is using. Standard Odonan mining techniques is to cut circles into the rock and then shatter it from within. Maybe that was the trick."
"Okay," Thorpe said. "Hassen, program the beam to move around, a diameter of, say, two metres, and try to make each revolution no more than two seconds."
"Understood," the tactical officer said, as he quickly made the adjustments. "Ready."
"Capacitor is charged," Wiley remarked.
Once more, Thorpe said, "Fire!" Once more, the beam came on, but this time, it moved around, and described a circle with a diameter of around two metres. The glowing circle seemed to increasingly persist as the beam continued to fire, moving around at an almost dizzying, dazzling speed. The image being transmitted back to the ship had no sound, so all of that energy and fury was accompanied by silence, except for the usual gentle beeps and twirls of the bridge. Sixteen seconds after Thorpe gave the order to fire, the beam shut off. The circle lingered like a latent afterimage of a bright light in the eye, but it gradually faded away. Thorpe hated to even ask, but he found himself doing just that. "Anything?"
"No," Lee reported. "No change detected."
Thorpe felt just a hint of frustration. "Wiley, recharge the capacitor and try again. Hassen, fire when you get the green light." He really did not hear the acknowledgement, but just waited for the beam to come back on. When it did, he watched it, in an almost mesmerizing way, as it fired and generated that circle of glowing light. Once the beam ended, that circle of light faded away, and he heard the science officer give the same report. It was almost frustrating that Lee was also reporting a complete lack of the type of "blanking" that had sent the inhabitants of Adamsburg and fifteen members of his crew on a long journey. That seemed to imply that their approach was not working, and not even really testing the structure. This attack was not any kind of threat to it. Once more, Thorpe ordered the beam fired, but this time, seven seconds after the firing started, the beam abruptly ended. The image appeared to be jolted from an unseen source, and seconds later, wisps of smoke drifted into view. "What happened?" Thorpe asked.
"The capacitor just blew," the engineer replied.
"Can we bypass it?"
"This machine will never generate the same kind of phaser energy without it."
"Very well. Beam it back to the ship and begin to repair it."
"Aye, sir," Wiley said, but once again, Thorpe really did not hear it. He simply stared at the viewscreen, until the video feed was shut off. Once more, the serene view of the planet of Charamand appeared on the viewscreen. Thorpe did not like what he was thinking. This part, he had told himself, was the known part of the operation, but even the known part had failed. What if they could not break into the device? What if Matsubara and all the others were forever trapped on that distant planet? He just hated the thought, and the sense of powerlessness that he felt right now.
"Captain," Takoo spoke up. "I believe that we may have an approach. Remember, our need to break into the structure was really to get information to allow us to use the subspace transporter on board the Bluestar. The amount of the wall that was revealed just might give us that information. I have an idea, but I need to work with the computer for a moment.
"Very well. Use one of the mission ops consoles."
Moments later, Takoo said, "I think I might have something." Thorpe and Quintollez went to the back of the bridge, where they saw that Takoo had several of the displays showing computer-generated graphics. The first one showed, in a wireframe format, the part of the structure that had been revealed by the phasers. The Odonan explained, "This is enough to give us the circumference of the structure." She caused two displays to merge, with the wireframe outline of the exposed structure wall moving over to merge with a schematic of the alien tunnel as recorded by the Odonans at Norg. It was a perfect fit. "With this information, we might be able to enter the tunnel anyway. I have to contact Captain Padda, and have her send in a subspace transport chamber with the co-ordinates as specified from our data."
"I hope she's not planning on sending anybody down in the chamber."
"No. We'll send the chamber, and program it for automatic return after five seconds. A sensor probe will be on board to get data before it returns. We can take it from there."
Thorpe turned back to face the viewscreen, and its seemingly unchanging image of the planet. This idea from Takoo was at least something that they could do, just when it seemed like they had run out of options after the first attempt. "Very well, go ahead and try this."
It took the Odonans fifteen minutes to get the subspace transporter chamber and its sensor probe ready, making Thorpe wonder what was taking them so long. How many members of her crew did Padda had to wake up? It was inefficient, Thorpe thought. His crew could get that chamber and the probe ready in five minutes. He paced around the bridge, until he realized he was drawing the attention of the other officers. He wondered again why he was feeling so impatient. The crew of his ship, and likely the crew of the Bluestar as well, were doing all they could as fast as they could. He focused on one person, but the others understood the larger picture first. Still, this sense of impatience, this feeling of powerlessness, was becoming most irritating. More than once, he was about to blurt out at Takoo and ask her how much longer this was going to take. He held back.
Finally, the Odonan woman turned in her seat to face the captain, and said, "Sir, they're ready on the Bluestar."
"Will we have any access to the telemetry?"
"No," Takoo answered. "As soon as the chamber returns, they'll analyze the probe, and then transfer the relevant data."
"Okay, tell them to go ahead as soon as they're ready." It is only five seconds, he thought, five seconds for the chamber to return, and surely the Odonan technology was efficient enough that they could download data from the probe almost immediately.
"A problem," Takoo remarked.
More than five seconds had just passed, Thorpe thought. "What?"
"The transport chamber did not come back."
Unfortunately, Thorpe did not understand too much about the Odonan subspace transporter, except that it required the use of the special chambers but otherwise could beam through just about anything. "Is there any indication on why?" he finally asked.
"No," Takoo said. In the background, Thorpe could hear what he thought was Odonien being spoken in the background, but it was too faint for the universal translator implant to translate. "That's not supposed to happen. If the chamber can enter its target co-ordinates, it comes back. It always comes back. The theory behind this says it has to come back. They tried to recall it, but that did not work. They even set the transporter on an anaphasic anaquantic zone transport-something that can be done for non-living things-to pull the chamber back, but that doesn't work."
"What happened to the chamber?" Thorpe asked.
"Captain Padde's best suggestion is that the subspace fields within the device might have interacted with the transporter in such a way to cause a blanking within the structure. Now, the chamber is in the Small Magellanic Cloud."
Turning to face he centre of the bridge, Thorpe asked, "Lieutenant Lee, did you detect any unusual energy readings, anything unusual at all, from the moment the Bluestar activated its subspace transporter?"
"No sir, nothing at all."
"Damn," Thorpe said, mostly to himself. Takoo, he noticed, had walked up to stand beside him, perhaps to tell him again that what happened to the subspace transport chamber was impossible. A lot was impossible here. Fifteen members of the crew were sent to the Small Magellanic Cloud when one of them merely tapped on the rock surrounding the exposed section of the alien structure, while he was sitting on the bridge watching a high-powered phaser unit blasting away at the same thing-and nothing.
"This defies all explanation," Takoo said softly. "I'm pretty sure that I can help with everything involved here except for one, breaking into the structure."
"So what do we do?"
"Two choices. We can continue to use the phaser, perhaps upgrade it to a more powerful pulsing model. I believe the Bluestar has parts that can be adapted. Alternatively, we can try something more powerful, like a tricobalt explosive or an antimatter charge. Those choices, though, might destroy the town of Adamsburg as well as break into the structure."
"Governor Whitmore will have to okay that," Thorpe remarked. "Right now, I'm at something of a loss. We'll try to use the phaser again. Lets see if it can be adapted to use a more powerful pulse-firing mechanism.
She watched the galaxy. She looked at the other half of the structure, and its few points of light. Otherwise, the night was very dark, with many, many stars above but nothing much down below. She was hoping that doing this would help her make the decision, and take the chance. She was not sure exactly what she was attempting to decide. She could just sit here and wait for those back home to rescue them, or she could talk to the Dorans and try to convince them to activate the outbound systems and let them go home. What argument could she give them? If the Dorans had this power, would they not have already done it? She had seen how the Odonans had lived, and it was a hard life for them, seemingly without any chance for advancement or reward. Could the Dorans be living better? She found that hard to believe.
But Matsubara found it hard to keep her mind focused on that. She thought back to what seemed like just this morning. She woke up in her own bed on board the Athena, and had breakfast with Captain Thorpe. That existence seemed remote, almost like a dream now, but it was so recent. She longed to be home again, with "home" being what she had before. She might have been in charge here, and the others were listening to her, but this was not what she wanted. If she was not thinking about what was a long-ago morning, she was thinking about the fact she shot one of the Dorans. She had not actually looked, but she was pretty sure what she had done. The memories made her recall the time when she was in the Academy and she was introduced to a phaser for the first time. The instructor-his name having slipped her mind-told them all flat-out that someday, the very weapon they had in their hands could be used to kill someone. Was it justified? Protecting oneself and fallen comrades was a justified use, she had heard, but she still wondered. The image was burned into her mind.
She heard the door open, and turned to look. It was Guerrero. He was almost her second-in-command here, she thought. That was normal, since he was the second most experienced officer. "Commander Matsubara," the man started. "You really should try to sleep."
"Look who's talking. You're the ones with the bad ribs."
"How can I sleep on surfaces like this?" the man asked.
Matsubara spread her arms out to indicate the length of the bench she was sitting on. "You're right. How can I sleep like this as well? I tried to lie down, thinking that I was tired and that I could sleep on anything, but when I tried, I found I was just lying there, thinking too much and realizing that this bench was extremely uncomfortable."
"I noticed that too. In time, we might be able to do something about that."
"Like get us back home," Matsubara blurted out.
"It's on your mind."
"Sometimes, it's the only thing that is on my mind."
"We should be able to handle this," Guerrero continued. "I mean, we've all had the survival training, and we were all dumped on planets or other locations and told to make due. That did teach us something."
"True, it did teach us that if we survive, we can be rescued. What if we're not? Look at the Odonans. They've been here sixty-one years. I know that the structure at Norg was destroyed but the one at Charamand was not, but even so, what if we can't activate that portal? What if the outbound system doesn't work at all, even with the Dorans controlling it, and what if the Dorans decide that now that we're captured, they'll turn off the inbound system too?"
Guerrero pondered that for a moment, and then said, "I never considered that angle."
"I've been sitting here, and doing nothing but."
"Anyway," the man continued, "I really came here to tell you what we've been doing. We followed the directions of the Odonans and searched some of the lower levels of the other half of the structure. We found the storage areas that the Odonans had, but no weapons. It looked like whatever was there was cleaned out, maybe by the armadillo aliens. We found the replicators, though, but couldn't quite get them working yet. Richard is working on that. That man has been on his feet for hours."
"I know. If there's somebody who needs to rest, it is him."
"And yet," Guerrero continued, as he finally sat down on the bench beside Matsubara, "he's the most indispensable person here. He's the only one with any chance of getting this equipment working, and he's done a lot. He found what he believes are base power feeds, and it should be possible to adapt them to recharge our equipment, the tricorders and the phasers and the like. That won't be as efficient or as fast as the chargers back on the ship, but at least we can have the equipment."
"That's good."
"Many of the Adamsburg people are reluctant to go into the big cavern to help sort and find edible stuff there, because of the bodies of the armadillo people. Now that there's heat, we're worried that those bodies might not stay mummified."
"Maybe we should phaser them all."
"Yes, perhaps. Doctor Tomczak, the Adamsburg doctor, borrowed a tricorder and looked over the armadillo people, or at least one body. He wanted to find out why they died. He said that their bodies did not look emaciated, so they likely did not starve to death, but he could not rule out dying from a lack of water. He looked at many bodies, and found that none had any signs of injury or trauma, and yet, the way the bodies were placed suggested to him that something killed them, and perhaps over a short period of time."
"An attack, poison or something?"
"That's possible. They had enough time to find a place to lie down, but nobody was around to deal with even the earliest deaths."
"That's unsettling," Matsubara remarked.
"I thought you would like to know."
"How long ago?"
"Doctor Tomczak could not say. He said five hundred years most likely, but perhaps less. This environment could lead to mummification, because it is cold and dry. It's also possible that they could be older than that. It's strange, I know, since if they're here, they likely were on Charamand, and there's no record of aliens like that."
"I know."
"Also," the geologist added, as he remembered something. "We looked around, and saw absolutely nothing that looked like it belonged to the armadillo people beyond a few basic artifacts like the one you found. Most of whatever they had, and whatever they found here, had been stripped away, perhaps by the same people who killed them all."
"The Dorans?"
"We have no way of knowing."
Matsubara stretched and yawned. She really wanted to sleep, and yet knew that she had a better chance to sleep sitting up and leaning against the wall than she had of laying down on this hard, cold surface. "We'll just have to keep trying the best we can..."
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