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Captain Thorpe sat by himself in the deck two duty lounge, right below the bridge. He had a cup of Orion coffee in his hands, but it had cooled off considerably and was not quite as drinkable anymore. He was just waiting, waiting to hear from the engineers that the modifications and repair to the phaser machine had been completed. He could have been down there, supervising and inspecting, but decided to leave the engineers alone, because he would really be doing nothing more than getting in the way. A number of Odonans had come over to help work on the device to increase its power and to allow a pulsed operation. Dewuchun was able to deal with both groups and co-ordinate their actions. All Thorpe could do was wait. He could have gone to the ready room and dealt with some ship business, but now, strangely, the war did not matter as much. With his current state of mind, he could never give those reports and evaluations the attention that they demanded and needed. * * * Within a minute, Thorpe and Johnson were back on the bridge. Now, all the consoles were manned by the first shift, with Indesakar at the helm, Vorwoorts at tactical with Jules Torin taking Matsubara's spot at the sensor console and Rocha at the security console. Takoo was also on the bridge, and she looked like she had been there for awhile. * * * The work was boring, back-breaking even. Ensigns Waye and Ninyear had the unpleasant task of helping sort through the vegetation and debris in the large chamber. They, with the help of a number of Adamsburg people, were picking through the rubbish, separating the food from the inedible matter. Piles of leaves, vines, flowers and branches were growing throughout the space, while they found mostly fruits and some vegetables. The fruits were not quite ripe, but included apples and pears and apricots. Beans, peas, carrots and potatoes formed the majority of the vegetables, but they too were not quite ready for eating. Ninyear hated to admit this, but they were recovering just enough food to feed them all for maybe a couple of days. He, along with some of the Adamsburg people, were trying to recover as many seed pods as possible in case their stay was prolonged. * * * "Sir," Dewuchun continued, "the capacitor is overheating and power is running down." The phaser machine had been firing for almost a minute. * * * Two hundred thousand light years away, Turokuot and some of the others had entered the cavern and were picking their way through the twisted tree branches and uprooted shrubs and weeds. Everything was bathed in a reddish light, making the surroundings look decidedly other-worldly. Turokuot also noticed that the brightness in the coils was increasing, which was a bad sign. Ninyear was only a couple of metres away, aiding Waye in removing some of the rubbish that covered one of the Adamsburg people. Suddenly, the light disappeared, causing the man to look up. What looked like a solid sheet appeared above him, and almost by instinct, the man crouched down and held his arms up to cover his head just as the mass broke apart and crashed down around him. Turokuot found himself covered in dirt and weeds and wild grass and their mingled mass of roots. He coughed twice and brushed aside the vegetation and debris that covered him. * * * "Blanking effect," Torin said again. "Radius is now fourty-two kilometres." * * * And finally, in that chamber on a desolate planet in the Small Magellanic Cloud, the reddish glow began to fade. Guerrero and Matsubara had been the last of the Starfleet officers to arrive, with Guerrero having to wake Matsubara. He found her sleeping awkwardly on the uncomfortable bench, and it took a bit of an effort to wake her. When she did awake, she felt a little stiff, and the walk across the open area, through the biting cold-although at least they had no wind to contend with-just seemed to aggravate that stiffness and soreness. She hated to admit it, but she was too used to comfortable sleeping conditions to adjust easily to harsh ones. * * * Thorpe found it hard to believe it was taking the engineers that long to get a probe ready. He went down to one of the engineering work rooms, where components of the probe had been spread out on tables. The problem, he learned, was mating the Odonans' anaphasic subspace transceiver with the probe electronics, especially since the Odonans were not divulging too much on how the device actually worked. Takoo had spent about twenty minutes arguing with Captain Padda to get the chance to use the technology, but finally she had persevered. Maybe it was the part about how if they got through to the structure where the Adamsburg people had gone to, they could find out what happened to the Odonans from Norg. Many wanted to know. * * * On this unnamed planet in the Small Magellanic Cloud, the sun was rising. Matsubara had gone outside, simply to walk around and get away from the odour that was arising from all of that vegetation in the cavern. Guerrero, rubbing his chest where the busted ribs were located, joined her outside. "This planet has a very weird sunrise," the woman started, speaking softly. "Look at it. The sun, it's a little white thing, really, maybe a white dwarf." Go to:
Copyright December 2002 by White Tornado Publishing. "Star Trek" is a registered trademark of Paramount Pictures. No copyright infringement intended by this non-profit, hobby site. Characters and situations unique to this story are the property of White Tornado Publishing. All characters and situations in this work are fictional, and any resemblance to real individuals or situations is strictly unintentional. Do not publish any contet from this site to any other site without permission of the site creator.
Chapter 8
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"There you are," came the voice behind him. He turned, and saw Commander Johnson approaching.
"Anything new to report?"
"Not exactly," the first officer said. She had stopped at the replicator and got a cup of green tea. The aroma was enticing, but Thorpe knew from experience that the taste did not agree with him. "I am puzzled about your reaction to all of this."
"My reaction?" the captain asked. He seemed to be confused.
"You got a head start on this, attempting to break into the structure while we were still asleep." By now, of course, it was deep into the first shift, and the second-shift officers were ready to go on duty. Strangely, Thorpe felt neither tired nor hungry, despite the lack of sleep and food in the past number of hours.
"Every moment counts. We don't know the condition of those on that planet."
"True, but you seem... preoccupied, obsessed even."
Thorpe just hated to have those words brought up right now. He hated it even worse that he was showing signs of those emotions. The natural reaction was to be defensive. "That's possible," he finally explained. "You can understand that. There are fifteen members of my crew and sixteen hundred inhabitants of a town down there that are a long way away. We have a rescue plan, but we can't even begin to use it."
"But it's more than that," Johnson started. She quickly glanced around the room to confirm what she knew was true. The two of them were alone in the room. "It's also about Damiko."
"I understand what you're thinking, Nadine, but I do think about the others too."
"But she comes first and foremost in your mind."
"Is there something wrong with that? I want them all back. It won't be adequate if we can bring back just one person, and it's her."
"I know that," Johnson started, as she thought carefully about the words. "I can understand that you are concerned about the members of the crew. It's the way the captain thinks. He feels for all the crew, feels responsible for all of them, and would do what it takes to get them back. That's a kind of professional attachment. But with Damiko, there's the personal element as well."
"Again, is there something wrong with that?"
"It could alter your thinking."
"Really?" Thorpe said, rising his voice just a little as he felt a slight surge of anger.
"How much would you be willing to try to get them back?"
"What it takes."
"But what if Damiko wasn't among them?"
"The answer would be the same," Thorpe said. It was the instinctive thing to say, and it was the proper thing to say, but even as he said those words, he wondered if it was the correct thing to say. Afterall, one of the many aspects of being the captain was knowing when to draw the line, and when to consider that someone in the crew was lost and could not be recovered.
"But is it?" the first officer replied, raising her voice just the slightest too. "What happens if we simply can't break into that alien structure?"
"At some point, it has to give."
"Yes, I know. Admiral Chiang on the Prodakh used the main ship phasers to eventually get her way, but that destroyed the structure too, and the planet, and condemned many to die, or to exile on some distant world. She went too far. Zhi Len will tell you that. I'd imagine that the now-Councilor Chiang will tell you the same thing. You run that risk too. When it's personal, a person always runs that risk."
"What are you suggesting?"
"I'm just telling you that there might come a point when we simply must accept that the away teams and the Adamsburg people are not coming back. Could you simply accept that moment and walk away?"
"If necessary," Thorpe started, but even as he spoke those words, even as they were forming in his mind, he wondered if that was the truth. Could he really walk away, or would he become obsessed with getting to that distant location, and for how long? "I'm hoping that it doesn't come to that. I'm hoping this next plan will work."
"And if it doesn't, what do we do, escalate?"
"If necessary."
"Escalate how far?"
Looking up at his first officer, Thorpe said, "You almost sound like you want this to fail."
"Not at all. I'm just playing your counterpart, taking the opposite view."
"I see." Hearing his commbadge chirp, the man slapped at it and said, "Thorpe here."
"Dewuchun, sir. The modifications and repairs to the phaser machine are complete. Basically, all that's left of the original is the shell the equipment is located in. Should I beam it down?"
"Yes, go ahead. We're on our way to the bridge." After tapping his commbadge to turn it off, Thorpe turned to Johnson, and added, "Lets hope the second try works."
Rocha, who had the bridge in the absence of more senior officers, said, "Engineering reports that the phaser machine was beamed down successfully, without any blanking effects."
"Very well," the captain replied. He tried to settle into his seat, but still felt tense. "Lets have a visual signal."
"Aye, sir," Torin remarked, as he entered the necessary commands. The view on the screen switched from an orbital shot of Charamand to the interior of the mine. The dust had settled now, leaving jagged chunks of charred rocks lying about and covered in that dust. The mining equipment left behind by the Adamsburg miners had also been shattered and scattered, and was covered in fine debris. Most notable was the exposed section of the alien structure, which showed the slight curvature of the tunnel but otherwise looked like nothing more than the pre-existing rock having been polished to a perfect smoothness. To Thorpe, it seemed almost infuriating that the structure had resisted their attempts to break into it.
Dewuchun had returned from engineering, and had brought up the various controls to operate the phaser mining machine. "The system is ready," he reported.
"Prepare to fire."
"Charging capacitor now," the engineer added.
Vorwoorts said, "Should we maintain the same kind of circular motion that had been tried the last time?"
"Yes," Thorpe ordered.
Seconds later, the tactical officer added, "Targeting set."
Dewuchun said, "Capacitor charged, all systems check out as nominal."
Thorpe glanced briefly at Johnson and Takoo, wondering what the two of them were thinking. Then he said, "Fire."
Vorwoorts hit the trigger icons. The phaser machine came on, and it seemed much more vicious now. The bolts were yellowish-green and came in pulses with such a variance in strength that the light level inside the mine flashed like a strobe light. A yellowish-white glow started to appear along the circle that the phaser was tracing, and the glow seemed to expand.
Torin reported, "Getting some strange readings now. It's as if I'm starting to read through the rock and seeing what's on the other side, although what I'm seeing is not completely clear."
Rocha, also monitoring the sensors, added, "I am reading some energy flows along what appears to be the cloaking field of the structure, almost outlining it."
Thinking about this, Thorpe realized that if they could map out the structure sufficiently, it might be possible to punch through the barrier fields in a position that was sufficiently far from Adamsburg to avoid damaging the town by using the main ship phasers. However, what they were doing right now just might work. Twenty seconds passed, and then thirty, and the phaser kept on firing. Undoubtedly, Dewuchun would alert him when the phaser overheated or power dropped below what was necessary.
Then a console beeped. Thorpe looked back, but it was Torin that said, "Power surge building."
Takoo looked at the console between her seat and the captain's chair. "It's a blanking effect."
"Surge gone... and so is everything within twenty-seven kilometres of ground zero."
The cavern was quiet, dimly lit from the overhead lights but comfortably warm. Outside, Ninyear had heard, it was quite chilly, down to minus fourteen and dropping. Fortunately, the decision had been made to close the door that linked them to the residential structure across the open area, as people went outside only when necessary.
Without warning, the lighting in the vast space took on a decided reddish tinge. Everybody stopped and looked up, or down. The massive coils on the ceiling were glowing an ever brighter red, while the corresponding coils in the floor below, visible where the floor was a fine mesh grate, were assuming the same colour. "What the..." Waye remarked.
Ninyear remembered how it was when they first got here. "Another mass transport. Incoming!" She shouted out, and gestured for everybody to get out of the way. It was an open question whether or not the others could hear her, or see her, since they were scattered over the large area. However, the civilians remembered their own trip through the alien device, and understood what this meant. The two officers started moving for the edge.
About fifteen seconds after the glow began, the air seemed to be replaced by a mass of green that appeared suspended, about a metre and a half above the floor. This mass of trees and plants and fruit and vegetables, along with all the animals that lived in or among that vegetation, crashed down with a long, rumbling and thrashing sound. Birds wheeled and screeched in the air above, while rodents and insects suddenly scattered about, totally confused. The shock wave that came from all of that mass appearing knocked over the two officers. Ninyear was able to grab Waye and pull him aside just as a large tree branch crashed down.
The cavern fell into silence, though the red glow remained on. "You okay?" Ninyear asked.
The man answered, "I think so. We'd better start looking for the others."
Ninyear heard her commbadge chirp. She tapped it, saying, "Yes, Ninyear here."
"What's happening?" Turokuot asked.
"They just brought in a whole lot more trees and junk from Adamsburg-chickens. My god, there are chickens here now! We might have trapped people. We'll need help, tricorders, phasers maybe, to find people."
"Okay..."
"Shut it down," Thorpe ordered. The beam died, leaving the glowing circle and the lights on the machine as sources of illumination. The circle of light did dim. "Torin?"
"I got some indications of a tunnel, but it wasn't clear. I can't see enough to understand what happened to the subspace transporter chamber from the Bluestar. Once the beam shut off, the field re-established itself within four seconds."
"But that is progress," Thorpe said, almost excitedly. They were moving forward now, if only by very tiny steps. "Dewuchun, let the capacitor recharge. How long?"
"Firing will be optimum again in fourty seconds."
Thorpe watched the chronograph display, counting down those fourty seconds while staring at the viewscreen and trying to fathom the mysteries behind that smoothly-polished stone wall. After giving the engineers five extra seconds, he said, "Dewuchun?"
"It's ready."
"Fire."
Once more, the beam appeared, the same as before, bright and flashing, and it transcribed the same circle on the wall of the alien structure. Torin studied the sensor data that was coming back, but it was incomplete since the power of the beam was interfering with the readings. However, it looked like the beam was penetrating into the structure through the cloaking field. Something was dissolving whatever material formed the structure, and if enough dissolved to totally disrupt the cloaking field, they would get their objective.
The console beeped. "Blanking effect."
"You alright, sir," Ninyear asked.
"I believe so," the man replied, as he shook out dirt and leaves and plant bits from his bushy black hair. "We've got to get out of here."
"What's going on?" Waye asked.
"I think that back home, they're doing something that is causing the system to respond by transporting everything here. That might be a good thing, if we only had some warning."
The three of them removed the branches covering the civilian. He was unconscious, but the tricorder Turokuot had indicated he was alive. Waye and Turokuot started to carry him towards the edge. Ninyear used the tricorder to scan for other people in the immediate area. She said, "It looks like we're getting more food, but no more people, but why is the vegetation so messed up? The first time, everything came across neatly, apparently."
"It could be because the system is transporting material over a radius wider than this space."
"Oh."
"That includes Jonesborough now," Johnson said. "Susantown is next. A radius of fifty-four kilometres will capture it." That town of four hundred had been evacuated too. No other towns were located within a hundred and twenty kilometres of Adamsburg.
Dewuchun added, "Shutting down the phaser." Seconds later, the beam shut off, leaving the glowing yellowish-white circle on the alien structure. When it faded away, a distinctive discolouration remained.
"Something's going on," Thorpe remarked.
"Curiously," the science officer said, "the sensors cannot penetrate the cloaking field, but it looks like the weapon is getting through, and damaging the material behind it. We can see that. We just can't scan it."
"Reset the phaser for another round."
"Aye," Dewuchun remarked.
Vorwoorts spoke up, "Sir, Governor Whitmore has just contacted us, asking if we're making progress and how far we're prepared to let this blanking expand to."
"Inform the governor that we are making progress, and we're aware of the size of the evacuated zone and we will not exceed it." What Thorpe did not say was that he was perfectly willing to expand the evacuated zone if necessary. "Torin, any sign that the structure is repairing itself?"
"Negative. I'm detecting no changes."
Takoo, who had remained quiet through all of this, finally spoke up, saying, "I'm surprised that the structure has lasted this long. At Norg, we broke into it with far weaker weapons. On the other hand, we did find that the structure there was in increasingly dilapidated condition, and assumed that was due to its sheer age. Maybe this one is in better shape."
Thorpe replied, "So you really can't say how much effort it would take to break in?"
"No."
Dewuchun said, "Sir, the phaser machine is ready, capacitor charged, power units still functional. I'd say that we have four more rounds like we have used before the power supply runs out."
"Understood. Fire."
The process was repeated. The beam fired. Torin noted that the apparent deterioration of the wall on the alien structure continued, but the overall fields were holding. The device expanded its blanking radius to fifty-six kilometres, and then to seventy-one kilometres, and finally one hundred and two kilometres. "It's getting dangerously close to the edge of the evacuated zone," Johnson remarked.
"I know," Thorpe replied, a bit more softly. The zone was expanding faster than they were penetrating the structure.
"Do you want to expand the evacuated zone?"
"If necessary."
"Governor Whitmore will not be happy."
"I know."
"Before much longer, the inhabited area of this planet will be inside the evacuation zone. The latest blanking was within sixty kilometres of Charamand City."
Once more, the beam shut off. The scarring was still visible, but the cloaking field was intact. Visually, the scarring was not significantly more extensive than after the phaser shut off the first two times, which to Thorpe was a problem. The zone being blanked was expanding further than they were getting results. Looking back, and trying to sound hopeful, Thorpe asked, "Are we making progress?"
"I'm not fully sure. The sensors on that device are limited, and the energies being unleashed inside that tunnel are slowly damaging them. If only we could send somebody down."
"That's rather risky right now," the captain said.
"I know."
Vorwoorts spoke up, "I wonder why the so-called blanking zone keeps on expanding. It seems that we're doing damage to it, and it's trying to strike out at what is causing it, but the phaser machine is not moving and is just metres away."
Takoo answered, "Sixty-one years ago, when the Prodakh attacked the structure on Norg, with its main phasers, the blanking zone expanded. We suspected that it was trying to reach out to the ship to stop the attack. This device might be doing the same thing. It might have realized that no animate lifeforms are working the phaser machine, but it can track the extensive signals back and forth-the visual and sensor readings for example-to where they're coming from, us. It is reaching out to attack us."
"And our shields will not protect us?" Thorpe asked.
"I can't answer that question, sir. I can't count on it, though." Takoo paused for a moment, and then said, "Clearly, we're high enough up that if the blanking zone expands far enough, all the people on Charamand would be at risk, as well as ourselves. I was thinking, if we could eliminate the trackable signals, maybe the exclusion zone will not expand."
"How?"
"We need to get a probe within the blanking zone. The probe itself will control the information to and from the phaser machine, and since nothing living will be on board, it will not respond to the blanking."
"But how would we be able to control the mining machine and get data from it? Surely the device could track the relay."
"Maybe, but we can try using an anaphasic subspace relay."
"What?"
Takoo explained, "It's wartime technology we've been working on. In essence, it takes subspace carrier waves and puts them out of phase with the rest of the universe, making them virtually undetectable and impossible to intercept or jam by the Dominion or anybody else who's not supposed to receive them. If we put one of those transmitters onto the probe, perhaps the alien structure cannot trace it and will focus its blanking attempt on the probe." Taking another quick glance at the captain, she added, "It's an alternative to asking the governor to expand the evacuated area. That could take days to do, and they're running out of places to put people."
At this point in time, Thorpe was willing to try anything. Almost absently, he said, "Okay, go ahead..."
Matsubara was surprised by the sight in the cavern. She thought that the open space was simply huge, but now it was filled almost to overflowing with a mass of vegetation. In addition, a great deal of animals were also present, moving about, trying to hide or simply lost.
Turokuot came out to meet the two, explaining, "A number of transports had happened, bringing in a great deal of vegetation."
"Any people?" Matsubara asked.
"No. The tricorders showed none. A bunch of the Adamsburg people, and Ninyear and Waye, were working to sort through the original load of material that was brought across."
"Anybody hurt?" the science officer asked, a natural question despite the mental pictures she had of people being showered with dirt and weeds and shrubs. On the other hand, a large number of trees also filled the place. If they could find cutting tools, they would have firewood for months.
"None of us, but three of the Adamsburg people were killed, mostly by debris that crashed down on them."
Guerrero remarked, "That brings the death toll-not counting the captured-to nine."
"I know," Matsubara remarked.
"We're trying to rescue the others now. Many are trapped, and simply buried by the mass of vegetation. It's piled eight metres high in places. Getting through this is awfully difficult."
"The red glow is fading," Guerrero remarked. The ruddy tint applied to everybody and everything in the vast space was disappearing, and replaced by the more natural lighting. "The transports must have ended."
"I wonder why it happened at all," Turokuot asked, "beyond the attempt by the Athena to do something."
"Whatever they did failed," Matsubara said. "They don't know all that we know. Maybe it's impossible for them to do anything for us, and we would have to do something at this end. I suspect that all of this plant matter came about because the volume of the sphere where everything was being transported expanded, perhaps in response to whatever the ship was doing, and the fact that nothing happened here, besides this, is that they are failing. If whatever they do causes the zone to expand, then at some point, they'll have to stop. I could imagine that they would clear out people from the immediate area of Adamsburg, but what about from the whole planet?"
"What do you think?" Guerrero asked. "Would Captain Thorpe try to do just that?"
"I don't know. At some point, others around him, like Governor Whitmore, perhaps even Starfleet Command, are going to have to tell him that the Adamsburg citizens and fifteen Starfleet officers are gone. Based on what the Odonans told us, they can come here, but we can't so readily go home."
"Then how did that Odonan officer apparently make the trip back and forth?"
"They opened the gateway, but they opened it from the other end."
Guerrero replied, "Then these incidents might be an attempt by the ship to break into the structure. If the Odonans had done it earlier, then perhaps they knew how to do it, and could advise the captain and others what to do."
Matsubara had to admit that was possible, and it was also possible that salvation might come through that inert gateway at any moment. She even glanced backwards, in the direction of the lower section and its console and that gateway. So far, they had seen nothing. "Okay, that's possible, but once they get here, they still have the task of getting Lieutenant Stanislava and Ensign Warner, and the others, back."
"With a properly-prepared security force, we can do that."
She had heard that line before, but now seemed to accept it more readily. "Okay," the science officer finally said. "Based on what we've heard, it'll take time for them to work their way through the structure and get the gateway working from their end. In the meantime, we can work on rescue efforts here. Now that the red glow is gone, we should be able to move through the area with the confidence that something isn't going to instantly transport over our heads. We should also recover food. What's that out there, chickens?"
"Egg-laying hens, actually."
"Omelets are good," Matsubara remarked, as she realized that now she was rather hungry.
"I think they're a little stressed out to lay eggs," Turokuot remarked.
"Chicken is good too."
"And there are cattle, dairy cattle, I believe."
"Aren't we lucky that a lot of people on Charamand practiced old-style agriculture?"
"Yeah."
"And I'm lactose-intolerant."
The rescue efforts went on. The bodies of the three dead civilians, all crushed by trees that had been transported, were recovered and taken outside to a remote location. In the morning, Matsubara thought, they would bury them, trapping them here on this desolate, remote planet for all eternity. At least that was better than having the living trapped here for all eternity. Matsubara remained with Turokuot at the gateway, their connection to home that was so close, and yet so far.
"I'm pretty confident that I've got this figured out," Turokuot said. "If the central control station, as the Odonans pointed out, could activate the outbound function, I could work this. Because it's being blocked, and I'm nowhere near familiar enough with this technology to bypass that block, I can't do anything."
"Is there any way for us to be aware that something is happening on the other end?"
"It's possible. If something unexpected happens to these lights, or if there are changes, that could be a signal that something is happening, but I can't be sure."
And so they waited, as one hour and then a second passed by.
"The technology is still classified," Takoo explained, as she stood alongside the captain. "It's only in the testing stage, but I heard that it has some promising results. The war effort would be enhanced if we can communicate with our ships and other installations without fear of Dominion intercept or jamming."
"Any plans to share this technology with your allies?" Thorpe remarked.
"You know I would, but that's not my decision to make."
"Of course."
Finally, the engineers got the device installed into the probe, and completed other adjustments and modifications to it. The Odonan engineers moved along to the ship's main communications antenna, where a second unit was installed to receive the anaphasic signals. This unit installed much more easily into an auxilliary port, since the connectives matched easily. To Thorpe, that was convincing evidence that the Odonans were designing and building this technology for use on Federation ships as well. Once both units were installed and the probe was moved back to the launch bay, the technicians had to test it to make sure that it worked.
"Well?" Thorpe asked, as he returned to the bridge.
Takoo had taken one of the mission operations consoles at the rear of the bridge, and was testing the communications system. She was also using the sensors to see if there was any way to scan for or detect the signals. "It's working. The probe and the installed unit are communicating, and the sensors are showing nothing. They're showing nothing, even though we know what we're looking for. I'd believe that the alien structure cannot detect this either."
"We're assuming," the captain remarked. "We don't know the capabilities of the alien technology. Maybe their systems involve some sort of anaphasic subspace signals as well."
"True, but I'm still confident that this can work."
"I hope it does. We can barely let the radius of the area being blanked expand much more. One more time, and we're too close to Charmand City. It's already filled with evacuated people, from areas where the vegetation has been stripped. They're getting restless, I heard."
"Not much sympathy for the missing people, is there?"
"Actually, not much sympathy for putting their lives and livelihood at risk for the missing people." Thorpe walked down to the command level of the bridge. Although the time was now well into the second shift, only Sandra Ochi at the flight control station was an actual second-shift officer on the bridge. Torin, of course, was temporarily assigned to the first shift in the absence of Matsubara. As he was sitting down, Dewuchun returned to the bridge and once more brought up various control and information screens on the console.
"Sir," the engineer reported. "The probe is ready for deployment. We've installed some hard-wired control routines into it, along with the communications relays and internal navigation controls. Our links with it should be minimal, to reduce the chance of the structure detecting it."
"Good. Launch the probe."
Dewuchun gave instructions to the officers in the launch control area. The probe was actually launched from a hatch below the cargo deck. A tractor beam pushed it out into space, and once it was sufficiently far from the ship, its engines came on as it began its trip to Adamsburg. It would take about ten minutes to get there.
During that wait, Thorpe just sat there, occasionally glancing at the side consoles, and conferring with the others. Takoo informed him that a communications test with the probe in flight had been successful. They could communicate with it and relay instructions through it. Johnson returned to the bridge from a brief break, and was quickly updated. Sitting down beside the captain, she asked, "Do you think that this could work?"
"Actually," Thorpe started. "We haven't done anything yet. This is just a way to attempt to break into the structure without expanding this blanking zone."
"But what if this doesn't work? What if the device can detect the anaphasic subspace signals, or perhaps just continues to expand the blanking zone? Governor Whitmore is losing her patience. She wants us to try another approach."
"This is another approach."
"And if it fails?"
Thorpe could not immediately answer that question. He hated to think ahead, because at some point, thinking ahead led to a conclusion that he did not want to face, that the missing members of the away team and the lost citizens of Adamsburg were unrecoverable. The alien device might eventually give up its secrets, but every day longer the people spent in the Small Magellanic Cloud, the more of them could die. Sensor analysis indicated that of the vegetation that had been "blanked," to use the Odonans' term, a significant quantity of fruits and vegetables had been included. They would have some food, but would it be enough? Could they even find and access it? Remembering the question from his first officer, he answered, "I would like to make sure we exhaust all options before we declare them to be unrecoverable."
"Of course."
He did hate to think about it, though. It was one thing to know that Matsubara had been killed in some incident. He would hate to lose her friendship and even her intimacy, but knowing she had died would give him some sense of closure. This was worse. He was unsure of her fate. She could be alive-in fact, she was more than likely alive right now-and she could be attempting to return from her end, if that was possible. Given what Takoo had said about the booby traps inside the structure, Matsubara and the others could be walking into a dangerous situation. If they found no way back on their own, they might end up spending their remaining days wondering why nobody had come for them. Matsubara would just think, until her dying breath, that they had been abandoned. He briefly considered the idea of finding a volunteer who would beam down close enough to Adamsburg to be within a blanking zone, and he would make the trip across two hundred thousand light years to at least tell them that the Athena and the Bluestar and everybody else was working hard and doing all they could to get them back. He wondered if anybody would volunteer for such a mission, or if he could order somebody to carry it out. He just hated the thought that those people so far away might think, at least might think someday, that they had been abandoned, like those Odonan survivors had.
"Sir," Vorwoorts finally spoke up. "The probe is in position."
"Dewuchun," the captain called out. "Transmit the instructions from the probe to the phaser machine, and check for status."
Seconds later, the engineer replied, "The machine checks out. The long cooling-down period probably did a lot of good. Visual signal now." On the viewscreen, the close-up view of the surface of the planet-the Athena was at an altitude of one hundred and thirty kilometres-was replaced by that familiar internal view of the mining area. The scarring on the wall of the alien structure was still visible, and as far as Torin could tell, had not been repaired to any extent.
Torin added, "We're receiving communications from the probe, but all my attempts to detect it are unsuccessful. It's almost frustrating, like trying to crack a code when I can't."
"That's by design," Takoo remarked. "You don't think the Dominion would want to intercept the communications."
Dewuchun said, "The capacitor is charged, and all functions on the phaser machine read as nominal. We're ready."
Thorpe settled back in the chair, and said simply, "Fire."
Once more, the phaser device shot out the bright, pulsing greenish-yellow bolts, which moved in a circle scoring at the part of the wall already damaged by the previous attempts to fire. Fifteen seconds passed, and then thirty. Torin watched the displays, to see if the phaser was somehow, if only partially, getting through the resilient alien structure. He thought he was seeing something. Rocha monitored sensors over a wider area, and reported, "The energy is being absorbed and transmitted over a wider area of the structure."
"Any blanking effects?"
"Nothing yet. Wait... energy surge detected."
Just then, the image on the viewscreen vanished.
"Or maybe something bright but a long way away. It's hard to tell visually."
"Of course, astronomer," Matsubara retorted. "Look at that, a little red at the horizon, and then the sun climbs, and only a little blue-indigo really-around the horizon. High in the sky, the sun could shine and the sky would remain black. I don't know why. The atmosphere down here is thick enough to breathe, but it must taper off pretty fast to prevent the usual scattering."
"I don't know either," Guerrero said. "Afterall, as you just pointed out, I'm not an astronomer. The only thing I can think of is that either some other property of the planet keeps the atmosphere close enough to give us breathable densities at the surface, or maybe there's a forcefield around the planet to keep the atmosphere in."
"I thought of that. I can't scan it. Then again, even as the sun crosses the sky, that galaxy remains in the sky. It's always there, always to remind us of what we lost. It's hard to believe that we're so far from home that we can see the whole galaxy in a single field of view. It looks... beautiful."
"They always say that home is beautiful, especially when it is inaccessible."
From the other side of the doorway came the shout, "Red glow!"
Matsubara and Guerrero heard it, and quickly got back inside, Matsubara much faster than the geologist. They walked up the stairs to the main level of the cavern, just in time to see the glow reach its peak. The others, who had been scavenging through the vegetation mass to sort out the food-and recover the stocks already found the first time-all ran for the edges. The trapped people had already been rescued, and the people were now working from the edges inwards. None were very far from safety, and all made it back in the fifteen seconds or so the glow would persist before the object being transported actually appeared.
Matsubara, with Turokuot on one side and Guerrero on the other, braced themselves for what was to happen, either more vegetation as the zone being transported expanded, or perhaps even additional people. She had no idea what to expect. The fifteen seconds passed, and the glow started to fade. Matsubara was about to ask what was going on when Turokuot said, "Look!" He pointed upwards.
Hovering over the centre of the cavern, about twenty metres above the surface, was a standard planetary probe, the labelling on its side indicating clearly that it had come from the Athena. It remained there, motionless, even as the reddish glow reflecting off of its metallic surface faded.
"Now what?" Guerrero asked.
"I have no idea what's going on. Maybe there's information on the probe."
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