Part 1,Part 2,Part 3,Part 4,Part 5,Part 6,Part 7,Part 8,Part 9,Part 10,Part 11,Part 12,Part 13,Part 14
"Flag At the Edge of Space" page, Athena Home Page, Other Stories Home Page.
"You're getting complaints that the water in the lower port side cabins is too cold?" Hall said, as he faced Nicole Dessardiens, who was one of the duty officers.
"That's the report. It comes out of the taps very cold, colder than it should be."
"Earlier, I've heard complaints that the cabins in that section were colder than they should be, and that the environmental controls are set higher than the effective temperature."
"That should not happen."
"Agreed," said Hall. "How can we be losing heat in that part of the ship?"
"I don't know."
Moments later, Gerthe returned to the bridge. He had been sent out earlier to investigate some of the complaints, although he too had no idea why they should be happening. "I first thought that there might have been some deterioration in the components in that part of the ship, some sloppy construction, perhaps, but I checked things over, and as far as my eyes and instruments can tell, the system is just fine. I am worried about the water pipes, though. They are close to the hull, and some of the standing-water temperatures are just one or two degrees. I'm sure, captain, you're aware of what can happen when water pipes freeze--if that ever happens in New Zealand."
"It doesn't get that cold there, not even in the southern tip of the South Island, even though it's fourty-six and a half degrees south latitude."
"Well, it gets much colder where I come from, and, well, you get the point."
"They burst," Abuna remarked, as she joined in on this conversation on the bridge. She had arrived carrying a padd, which she held against her chest.
Gerthe chuckled as he said, "Not exactly a problem where you come from, commander." She did not smile that much, even at the attempt at humour. "Anyway, there's nothing physically wrong, but I do have a theory."
"And that is?" Hall asked, when his chief engineer was not immediately forthcoming.
"The warpfield is sucking the heat out of this ship."
"Really?" asked Abuna, clearly disbelieving.
"Remember, the warpfield is negative energy. We've been running the warp engines constantly, without a pause, for seventy-one days now."
"That's a problem?"
"Not to the engines. They're running well, and when running properly, warp engines require no maintenance. We've done nothing to stress them." Gerthe moved over to the engineering console, and punched in some instructions on the keypads in front of him. He brought up several displays, as Hall and Abuna gathered around. "This could be it. This is the negative-energy flow-through to the nacelles. As you know, the warpfield constantly erodes, due to photons hitting it, and the dust motes and hydrogen atoms that don't get deflected being destroyed against it. To maintain our speed, we have to replenish the negative energy lost. What I've noticed is a very gradual increase of this negative-energy flow-through."
"Couldn't that be a factor of the density of materials and proximity to stars?"
"True," Gerthe replied, "and that shows up in the spikes and valleys. This is a cumulative twelve-hour rolling average of flow-through to eliminate those spikes. It trends upwards. In other words, another source of heat is eroding the warpfield."
"The ship itself?" asked Hall, getting the drift.
"Yes, I believe so."
"But," Abuna spoke up, "the reports of abnormal cold are coming from very limited areas of the ship."
Gerthe called up another display, which showed the affected sections of the ship. "The only explanation I can come up with is that a secondary warpfield is forming inside the primary field, and in some locations, here in particular, the field lines are reaching the ship."
"What would cause a secondary warpfield?"
"Again, it is a function of running the warp engines for a prolonged period. The motonic flows in the warpfield generating coils have been constrained and controlled to create the primary field, but it is possible that secondary interactions are manifesting themselves and intensifying their effects through a feedback reaction."
"I've never heard of such a thing," Abuna said.
"That's because nobody has a run a warp drive as long as we've run the one on the Atlas."
"The solution is, therefore," Hall remarked, "that we drop out of warp for awhile."
"That would disrupt the secondary field, but I'd like to flush the nacelles too and clear out the motons in the superconducting coils completely."
Once more, Abuna spoke up, saying, "Captain, this just might be the best time to do this, to do our planned planetary survey mission. During the overnight shift, we detected a possible class-M planet that is about two light years away from our current location. Given the need to drop out of warp for awhile, and the need to actually conduct this training mission, and even giving the crew a chance to stretch their legs on a planet surface, this might be the best opportunity."
"You're right," Hall replied. He was somewhat surprised that he could make this admission, but she had a lot of good points in her plan, and Gerthe had demonstrated the need to have the ship drop out of warp. He took the data padd from his first officer and scrolled through the readings. They were too far from the planet to determine if it was truly unoccupied, but at the least, it was not occupied by any kind of advanced race. It was not a source of non-natural subetheromagnetic radiation, and even "broadcast-style" electromagnetic radiation was absent.
Abuna continued, "If the planet is primitive, like Earth in the nineteenth century or earlier, then there are still open areas where we can conduct the training mission."
"Assuming it's a class-M planet," Hall added. "This data is not conclusive."
"I'd wager it's about eighty percent likely that it's class-M. It's one of the best matches we have seen so far."
"You've convinced me, Mary." Stepping towards the front of the bridge, Hall ordered, "Helm, adjust course to the star system... K5454343." He had to look down to make sure he got all the numbers and letters right, and then he added, "Couldn't you come up with a name for this world?"
"We're working on that," Abuna said.
"Course laid in and executed," Weisser replied. The stars had completed their diagonal slide across the viewscreen. "I'd say that our arrival time is eight hours."
"Very well..."
* * *
The Atlas dropped out of warp for the first time in seventy-one days, and on the viewscreen appeared something other than streaking stars. The planet was class-M, but still was not the most ideal world out there. Seen from the screen, the world looked to be rather dry. The continents were located in two bands, which roughly correlated with the latitudes that deserts were found on most Earth-like worlds. About eighty percent of the land mass was a barren brown, while vegetation clung to the rest of the land. Even then, the vegetation was not much, with no trees and just endless grasslands in a savannah-type setting.
Abuna, running the science console, reported, "Even from this distance, no signs of sentient life, no energy signatures, no detectable non-natural structures, not any real advanced life of any kind."
"It's as good a world as any," Hall said, as he leaned back in the captain's chair. "Helm, take us into standard orbit over the equator. Will, once we're in orbit, you can start your work on the engines. How long will you need?"
"Ninety minutes would be more than enough, captain," Gerthe replied.
"We'll probably be here longer," Hall said, as he watched the world grow larger and then outgrow the viewscreen. He could see just a small section of this brown and blue world. It even lacked much in the way of clouds.
Weisser spoke up, saying, "Captain, are there any plans for shore leave here?"
"I'm not exactly sure that there is a lot to do here," Hall remarked.
"But just a chance to walk outside, with a sun in the sky, a chance to simply lie down on the grass, it would be worth it."
"I'll give it some consideration," Hall said, even as he was thinking about the idea of shore leave. Sometimes, the crew simply needed to get off of the ship, even if only for a few hours. He did think about the logistical problems of moving the crew on and off the ship, given that they only had the three small shuttlecraft. On the other hand, he did have this fantasy about going for a swim. "Anyway," he continued, "we'll conduct orbital scans first, and then we'll send down the landing parties. The composition of those parties will be determined shortly..."
* * *
The planet was inert, Hall thought. They were not going to find too much here, and it was unlikely that he was going to plant a flag on this world and claim it for Earth. He had dreamed, on a couple of occasions, about being somebody like Christopher Columbus, sailing to a new world and claiming it for king and country. Other times, he thought he was Neil Armstrong taking the first steps on the moon, and planting a flag there. Hall could imagine himself stepping onto some unoccupied but interesting world, and planting the flag of Earth on that world, claiming it for mankind. Even as he sat in the launch bay on the Atlas, in one of the shuttles with four other members of the crew for company, he could not help but to think about planting flags. Of course, there was no flag stowed on the shuttle, just in case he was tempted to make his fantasy a reality. Starfleet disapproved of such things, he knew.
Weisser was getting his wish for shore leave a little early, as he was the pilot of the first shuttle. Also on board was Adam Marshall, the biologist with just a little touch of geology in his background, and two security officers, Jordan Mack and Petr Skivorsky. The rear hold was filled with what they would need, including such things as tricorders, phasers, medikits, sample cases and so on. Looking to his right, to where Hall was seated, Weisser said, "Sir, we've gotten clearance to proceed."
"Is shuttle two ready?"
"Yes," came the response. Abuna was on the second shuttle, with Sachiko Yuniki flying it. The geologist, Grand Davies, was on board, along with two more security officers, Trevor Yuen and Chandra Kooligoo. They too had all the equipment and supplies that they would need.
"Inform the bridge that we're ready to go. Have them depressurize the bay and open the hatch."
"Aye," the pilot said.
The hooting sound of the alert siren started up, warning anybody left in the bay to quickly get out. The inside doors were sealed, and the depressurization sequence started. Weisser watched the gauges as the air was removed, and the hooting sound faded away. With the pressure at zero, the main hatch opened. It was a solid, flat piece of the hull that slid upwards, revealing the blackness of space interrupted by the bright glare of a section of the planet.
"Take us out," the captain ordered, and wordlessly, Weisser complied. Right behind the first shuttle was the second one, piloted by Yuniki. The two small ships entered the atmosphere relatively together, but soon parted course. In order to get a maximum amount of data from this planet, the first shuttle was heading to a band of savannah on the northern continent, while the second shuttle was heading for the desert region on the southern continent.
About fifteen minutes later, Weisser broke through the cloud banks and approached the surface. The land was relatively flat, and even inland, the elevations did not rise too much. Visually, the land looked uninteresting, just endless expanses of grasses, mostly in greens and greenish-yellows, that waved in the wind. This world did not know trees, nor flowering plants, just this type of grass. No suitable landing spots appeared, so Hall had Weisser fly a short distance, and angled the shuttle towards the coast. Seeing in the distance a river emptying into the ocean, Hall said, "Take us down there. River mouths might be more interesting."
"Aye, sir," the pilot answered. He brought the shuttle down to a smooth, effortless landing approximately a hundred metres away from where the river emptied into the ocean. Given the nature of the land, Weisser was somewhat surprised that the river did not form any kind of delta. Maybe it was because it was a small river, or maybe it was become the underlying rock did not allow for easy formations of a delta, or maybe this river just did not carry a lot of sediment. He would soon know.
"Conduct the outside scan," Hall ordered, and then watched as Weisser ran the initial tests.
"Atmosphere is slightly above Earth norm in terms of pressure, while the atmosphere is slightly richer in oxygen--no animals to burn it all up, I guess. Gravity is just under Earth norms. Sensors are picking up no dangerous gases, or even organisms. It looks like all this world has to offer is grass."
"Must be a reason for that," Marshall pointed out.
"That's what we're here to find out. Gordon, open the hatch and lets get to work."
* * *
About three thousand kilometres away, Abuna looked through the windows and the endless expanse of sand and rock that spread out before her. "Nothing could live here," she said, mostly to herself.
"Mostly right," Davies said, obviously overhearing the first officer. "I'm reading some vegetation, but typical desert vegetation, structured almost like cactuses on Earth. I'd imagine that rain would be a rare event here. I haven't studied the geography too much, but given the positioning of the land masses, I'd figure that there is little seasonal variation, and only the most extraordinary storms gets this far. What is interesting is that there is a lot of subsurface water, a rather pronounced aquifer."
"Where do you want me to put it down, commander?" asked Yuniki, looking over from the controls.
"I guess it doesn't really matter, but do find some place that is more rocks than sands." Abuna watched as the pilot guided the shuttle through the very dry and cloudless atmosphere, and travelled over some dunes and some rock fields before finally finding an open area. All the while, Abuna thought about the disadvantage of being just the first officer. The captain gets to pick the more interesting area for himself.
Yuniki brought the shuttle down with hardly a jolt. As she powered down the systems, Davies ran the check on the environment outside the ship. "Air is breathable," he said. "Oxygen content within norms. Gravity is just a little less than Earth's. On the other hand, air temperature is thirty-one degrees--but you won't really feel it, ma'am. It's a dry heat. Relative humidity is only five percent."
"Imagine that, you won't even feel the sweat before it dries," Kooligoo remarked. "Almost like home."
"Where's home?"
"Alice Springs, Australia, ma'am."
"Okay," Abuna said. "It's a little drier than Curitiba, then. Lets go have a closer look."
Yuen opened the hatch and was the first one out. The air was dry, and the sun beat down from a rather crisp-looking, deep blue sky. He could not see even a hint of a cloud. A bit of a wind blew, just enough to stir up some of the grit and to cause the sweat to evaporate from his exposed skin. He also realized the wisdom of changing into the hot-weather uniforms before making this trip.
Kooligoo stood beside the man, and asked, "So what do we do? Gather samples of sand?"
"Isn't sand the same on any planet?"
"Unless it contains traces of possible mineral riches."
"Sensors would've detected that."
"Maybe one of the plant things, then."
Davies and Abuna moved out. Yuniki stayed with the shuttle, while the two security officers remained close to the ship. Davies was scanning the cluster of three of the brown plants that were about sixty metres away, and he was directing his tricorder further and further underground. "Most interesting," he said.
"What?" Abuna remarked. She was focusing her instrument on detecting valuable minerals. Imagine the coup, she thought, if they found dilithium here.
"Those plants have roots that extend hundreds of metres down, to the aquifers. In addition, I'm getting some bizarre readings."
"What?"
"Look at this." Davies showed his tricorder to Abuna, while explaining, "It looks like some kind of calcified material, and it doesn't look particularly natural either."
"Fossils?"
"If it is, it must be huge."
"Perhaps they are tunnels. Maybe some kind of creature burrows underground, and creates calcified tunnels. We should look for an entrance."
"Not scanning any, though," the man said. "I'm not sure of this, but the tunnels are... filled."
"Curious."
* * *
Hall stepped outside. The temperature was mild and the humidity was minimal. The conditions were almost pleasant, he thought. Above, a mix of cumulus and stratus filled half the sky, with the sun darting in and out. Hardly any wind stirred the grass. On the surface, the grass was about fifteen centimetres high, and was very grass-like in its composition. Single blades, flat with relatively sharp edges, rose out of vines that run underground. It was clear from a few scans that the blades in a single area were from one plant, with many different plants intermingling their vines and blades of glass.
Marshall had some sample cases out, and was using a pair of large tweezers to pluck off some of the blades of glass. He inserted a couple into a sample case and sealed it. He stood up, and looked about him. As far as he could see along the gently-rolling landscape, there was only one kind of grass. "I don't think there are too many samples to collect here," he said, seeing Hall nearby.
"Why?"
"Everything's the same. The only surface vegetation is this grass. It's all there is in this area. We'd have to travel somewhere else. It might be worthwhile to go, say, about a thousand kilometres along this coast and get further samples, if only to see the rate of genetic drift. Biodiversity's definitely not the name of the game on this planet."
"Then lets call it Uniworld," Skivorsky suggested.
"Uniworld?" asked the captain.
"All the life is the same here. A world of grass and desert, and just one kind of grass."
"There still must be a reason for that," Marshall remarked.
Hall answered, "Maybe evolution just doesn't go very fast here. The environment might be rather constant and unchanging, with nothing to compel the development of new species."
Mack, who had wandered closer to the river's edge, returned, and said, "There is actually some life here. I noticed some worm-like things moving about, near the river, drinking perhaps."
"Lets take a look," Hall said. While Weisser stayed in the shuttle, as regulations required, the other four travelled the hundred metres to the river bank. They had to climb down a slight incline, and during that trip, Marshall completed the last half on his butt. Both Skivorsky and Mack resisted the urge to laugh. The ground by the edge of the river was sandy and muddy, as if the river was at a lower level. They could see what looked like tracks through the mud, leading down to the river. Some of the tracks were even filled with water.
Marshall used his tricorder to scan though the mud, looking for the "worm-like things." He finally spotted one, with the tricorder first, and then his eyes. He found it moving through the mud, and used the tongs to pick it up. "Oh man, look at this." He held up what he had captured, a thirty-centimetre creature that had the basic body plan of a worm. It was segmented, with fleshy sections between what looked like chitinous plating of some type. The worm wiggled for a few seconds, and then developed a very defensive posture. It closed up the shell segments, covering all the fleshy segments. The head even was pulled into some kind of hood-like shell, which sealed up tight. Marshall was left holding what looked like for all intents and purposes a narrow piece of mud-encrusted rock. "Okay," he said. "Clearly this is for some kind of protection, but protection from what?"
"I don't know," Hall replied.
"Do we keep it?"
"Yeah, sure. Put it into one of the sample cases."
"The uniworm," Skivorsky said.
Beside him, Mack retorted, "The what?"
"Uniworld, with unigrass and uniworm. One type of vegetation, one type of animal life."
"You know," Marshall said, "he just might be right."
"But that's impossible," Hall replied.
"Okay, at least in this location. I can't believe it's planetwide, too. Clearly, this world has some of the lowest biodiversity I have ever seen."
"You're right. We'll do a few more readings, and then we'll start to travel along the coast and see how far these two types of lifeforms extend..."
* * *
Abuna and Davies continued to look at the unusual calcium carbonate-lined "tunnels," if that was what they were. The two moved around, trying to find a location where the tunnels were close to the surface. Abuna had the idea of digging into the ground and either getting a sample of the tunnel material or even penetrating the tunnel and seeing what was inside. Davis was close to a section where the material was close to the surface. Near where he stood, the tunnel came to within three metres of the surface, and the material around it seemed looser, more like gravel packed tightly together rather than solid rock. The surface had been hardened into a rock-like consistency but it was really dried mud, Davies realized.
He also saw something interesting in the tunnels. "Commander, you should see this."
Abuna walked over, and stopped near the dark-skinned man, who was clearly sweating hard under the intense sunshine. He was ignoring the uncomfortable conditions as his mind was focused so hard on interpreting the readings from the tricorder. "What is it?" the first officer asked.
"I've got a feeling that something is alive inside those tunnels, and not only that, but it appears to be a single living thing."
Abuna had very unpleasant ideas of some kind of hideous monster living underground, waiting for a reason to burst out of the ground and attack. "Really?" she asked, trying to sound non-chalant.
"I'm not exactly sure what it is. I can't tell if it is a single individual or a collection of individuals, or perhaps life organized in a way that is completely alien to anything seen on Earth. All of these tunnels might be part of a single organism, which would be incredibly huge, or perhaps countless smaller organisms living in some interconnected manner. I really can't tell unless I get better readings. We need to uncover some of the tunnels."
Abuna, with the image of a monster still in her head, had doubts about Davies' plan. On the other hand, she could not let irrational fears guide her in place of more solid reasoning. The creature was not a monster, but life organized differently than what she was familiar with. Given the conditions on the surface, it seemed illogical that any creature would concern itself what was going on on the surface if its environment was underground. "Well," she started, "if it is a living entity, it might not be a good idea to start to dissect it while it is alive."
"I don't believe it is sentient. It might not even be alive as we understand the term. Even uncovering part of the tunnel should work."
"Okay. We'll get some phasers out and do that."
Abuna took a couple of steps back towards the shuttle when the ground started to shake. It felt like an earthquake as rumbling through, with the ground shifting so suddenly that Abuna fell down. The earthquake passed through rather quickly, as it was gone in about fifteen seconds. She looked back, and saw that Davies was spread out on his stomach, the tricorder about a metre from him. "I didn't know that this planet was tectonically active," she said.
"I didn't think it was either."
Yuen and Kooligoo approached, saying, "Commander, what happened?"
"Didn't you feel the earthquake?"
"An earthquake? Was that an earthquake?"
"It felt like a seven pointer here."
"But it was--"
Davies cut off Kooligoo by saying, "Commander, the tunnels have shifted. A lot more is closer to the surface now."
"I don't like this at all," Abuna remarked, the fears starting to rise to the surface again. Her instinct told her to get out of here while she still could. Although the fears might have seemed irrational, Abuna was starting to listen to them. "It might be best if we get out of here, just in case."
Once more, the earth moved. Abuna managed to stay on her feet, at least for the first shake. Seconds later, the ground shook much more violently. Fissures opened up in the rock, and gravel and sand and dirt sprayed into the air. Whole sections of the ground lifted up and then broke away. Something lifted out of the ground. For a few seconds, Abuna stood transfixed as the "tunnel" seemingly came alive. It was like a huge articulated worm, with bands of material around it that looked almost like stone, almost like the tunnels that their tricorders had picked up. Now the material expanded, revealing more flesh-like membranes between them.
"Grant!" Abuna yelled.
The man, who had been closest to where the creature emerged, had been knocked down hard enough to be slightly disoriented. He turned, and saw the nightmarish creature bear down on him. He tried to scramble to his feet, but the gravel and debris was so slippery that he immediately fell. The creature's head--or at least they assumed it was the head--reached out and grabbed the man in the midsection. Davies screamed. The mouth on the creature was not all that large, and it was immediately obvious that it could not swallow the man. Davies yelled and thrashed about, even as the pain wracked his body. Kooligoo and Yuen had their phased laser pistols out immediately and opened fire, aiming for the fleshy sections between the bands of rock-like shell. The flesh burned, and the creature screamed loudly--although they could not tell where the screams were coming from--but it did not release Davies. Instead, the creature reared high in the air, and contracted its length so that the fleshy portions were hidden by the shell. The phased lasers bit into the shell, spraying out calcium carbonate, while the creature waved from side to side to reduce the sting of the weapons. Their firing was having no effect on the creature. Davies thrashed and screamed in agonizing pain, even as liquids dropped from his body and splashed onto the desert rock. It looked like rock mixed with... something else. Abuna did not want to think what it was.
The ground shook some more, and this time, it was coming from all around them. Abuna tried to retain her balance, and looked around as she did. More fissures were opening up around her. "Lets get the hell out of there!" she screamed.
Kooligoo yelled back, "What about Grant?"
"We're all going to be like him if we don't move."
The quaking of the ground eased a bit, allowing Abuna to stand more steadily. She turned towards the shuttle, and saw Yuniki standing by the open hatch. She had been watching, in alarm, what had happened. Now Abuna was yelling, "Get it up! Get it up!" She used her hand to gesture a lifting motion. Yuniki disappeared into the shuttle, while the first officer yelled, "Move, move!" Behind them, Davies was now limp and silent. The creature was retreating into the ground with its prize. Even from a distance, Abuna could tell that what was left of the man was not pleasant to look at, but she could not dwell on that now. She started to run towards the shuttle. The lack of whining from their phased lasers suggested that the two security officers had given up firing at creature and were following her back to the shuttle.
Once more, the ground shook, violently enough that the three stumbled and fell down. Yuniki had gotten the shuttle airborne, and was coming towards them. Just as she got closer, the ground rumbled again, and more of the fissures opened up. More dirt and gravel sprayed upwards, and Abuna could see more of the creatures and their armoured bodies emerging. When she looked up, the shuttle was right there. The hatch was still open, so Abuna mustered what strength she could to stand up and all but jump into the open hatch. Yuen was right behind them, but Kooligoo had trouble standing up. Turning around, Abuna said, "Grab hold. Just grab hold!" Yuen was right there beside her, and held out a hand too. Kooligoo grabbed hold of their hands, as Abuna yelled out, "Sachiko, get us up!"
Just as the shuttle was about to lift, it was slammed to one side, and then towards the ground. Abuna looked up, and saw the solid shape of the creature's tentacles--if it was in fact that--slam down hard on the shuttle. The stony shell rung loudly off the hull. The shuttle was almost forced back to the ground. All that accomplished was that it allowed the two of them to pull Kooligoo on board. Abuna all but punched the button that closed that hatch. "Sachiko! Altitude!"
"I can't," the pilot said loudly. "The creature's holding us down."
Abuna, sweating freely and breathing hard, with her body in a blind adrenaline-driven rush, dropped into the co-pilot's seat. She could see one tentacle draped over the top of the shuttle, and she saw the ground erupt in front of the small craft. Another tentacle appeared, and it was like the one that had attacked Davies. It seemingly slapped down on the front of the shuttle, spraying out a yellowish liquid as it did. Where the liquid hit the transparent aluminum panel, smoke erupted and spread, leaving a non-transparent band.
"It must be some kind of acid," Kooligoo remarked.
"Commander, we're trapped here. I can't get lift. We're being held down."
Yuen added, "We're being pulled into the ground!"
Abuna thought fast. She had only one, wild, idea left. She opened a communications link to the Atlas, and all but shouted out, "Shuttlecraft two to the Atlas, this is an emergency. We're under attack. Some creature is attacking us and pulling us down into the ground. Direct the ship's phasers on our location, and fire around us. That might... kill it."
"We understand," came the response from the ship. "Stand by."
The shuttlecraft rocked violently, with Abuna grabbing onto the console to stay in her seat. Kooligoo was not so lucky, and bounced against the starboard wall. "Hurry!" Abuna remarked.
"This might be rough," Quirk said. He was the person in charge on the ship with Abuna and Hall both off, and he undoubtedly had taken the tactical controls himself. "There could be debris. Brace yourself."
"It can't get any worse than this," Abuna managed to reply.
The phasers, bright red beams that appeared to come from straight above, appeared and hit the ground. They heated the atmosphere and caused some sharp thunder-like blasts. The ground rocked as everything was illuminated in a surreal red. More debris flew outwards, with large chunks rattling off of the hull and the windows, denting both. For several seconds, the two phasers moved around the shuttle, tearing into the ground and into the alien shell and flesh. The tentacles convulsed, and more of the acid splashed, but finally, the trembling Earth and the shaking of the shuttle ended. The alien tentacles were still draped over the shuttle, but they were no longer exerting a force. Yuniki guided the shuttle straight upwards, and with some shaking action, was able to dislodge the tentacles.
"We're free," she remarked, as the phasers from the Atlas shut off.
"Thank god. Get us out of there," Abuna replied, as she sagged into the seat. She stared straight ahead, and watched as the surface of the desert dropped away below the shuttle. She realized that her heartbeat was still racing, and her breathing was still hard and fast. Her whole body felt somehow different, in a way she had never felt before. It was scary, she thought. She felt scared. She felt unsure of herself. Something went terribly wrong down there.
Yuen, seated behind the first officer, asked, "Commander, are you okay?"
"I am... physically not hurt," she managed to say. "What happened... down there."
"Was an accident," the security officer explained. "It could not have been avoided."
"Why do you say that?" Abuna asked, trying to sound calm, yet her voice had an edge of panic to it. "Why do you seem so calm?"
"Inwardly, I am shocked too. Yet, ma'am, the rest of us have seen combat. During the Romulan War, we saw comrades die, friends die, sometimes in horrible ways. How Grant died was horrible, but during the war... I saw worse."
"Oh."
"You were not in the Romulan War, were you?"
"No," Abuna admitted. "I did not serve on a ship in that period. Nothing I did... prepared me for that."
"Nothing we ever do can prepare us for that. However, tragedies do happen. Mistakes happen. Something goes horribly, inexplicably wrong. All we can do is learn, and try not to make the same mistakes again."
"That's easy for the survivors to say."
"But it's true. There were times during the war when incidents happen, when knowledge we gained from other accidents, other mistakes, other times when people died, saved lives later on."
"And yet," the first officer said after a slight pause, "that might make me feel better, except that I don't know what the mistake was, what went wrong. We had done nothing. We had simply walked on this world. Was walking on this world the mistake?"
"Perhaps it was."
* * *
Elsewhere on Uniworld, the shuttle carrying Captain Hall and his team was approaching their second landing site when the communications board beeped. Since Hall was seated in the co-pilot's seat and the pilot was concentrating on landing, he answered the hail. "This is Captain Hall. Go ahead."
"Sir," came Quirk's voice. "There's been an accident with the other landing party. Lieutenant Davies has been killed, and the other four are returning to the Atlas."
"How did it happen?"
"The shuttle was on the surface, and Davies and Commander Abuna were investigating what looked like tunnels, or something they couldn't explain. It turned out to be some kind of living creature, a very large creature, wormlike or with tentacles, it's hard to say. Some part of it rose out of the ground and grabbed Davies. The marines tried to fire on the creature, but the stone-like plating offered protection against the weapons. They couldn't recover Davies. The creature or creatures then tried to pull the shuttle underground. I had to use the main ship phasers to destroy the creature and allow the shuttle to launch."
"Any other injuries?"
"No," Quirk replied. "Nothing physical anyway, but they're traumatized."
"Understood. Keep me informed of any changes. Hall out."
The good-natured bantering that had gone on inside the shuttle, as the five argued about what they would find in the second location, and whether it would be the same grass and the same worms, stopped during the transmission. The other four remained silent throughout. Marshall glanced back at the specimen container in the shuttle, and at the worm-like creature within. It had sealed itself in its rock-like shell, and now seemed completely inert. Was this the same creature, or related to the creature, found in the desert? It was a chilling thought.
After several seconds of silence, Weisser spoke up, "So what do we do, land and continue with the mission?"
"No," Hall said, softly. "Abort the mission. Return to the ship. I want to find out what happened first, to avoid something like that happening again."
"Aye, sir," Weisser replied, as she worked the controls to pull the shuttle's nose upwards. He hit the thrusters, causing the small craft to rapidly climb into the atmosphere.
* * *
"That's the way it happened," Abuna said, as she finally looked up. She had been sitting in the ready room, while Hall sat behind the desk, paying as close attention as possible. "That's everything I can remember. Unfortunately, we don't have Grant's tricorder, and the data on mine is inconclusive. We have just our memories of what we saw and heard. I've had the others with me compose their own reports. Maybe they have something else to add."
"But, the most important conclusion is that Grant did nothing to provoke the attack."
"No," Abuna started. She tried to be more composed now, as the events were starting to get distant in her mind, which made them easier to handle. Then again, she had yet to try to sleep, or spend any time alone, since it happened.
"He was talking about trying to get samples of the calcium carbonate shell, or even of the creature itself."
"He was talking about it."
"But not doing it?"
"He had done nothing, except walk to the location where the shell came closest to the surface."
"And there was nothing there, nothing that would allow the creature to detect that something or someone was above it?"
"Sir?"
Hall explained, "On Earth, there is a creature called the sand spider. It burrows into sand, and waits for ants to come along. The spider has just a very narrow, almost invisible antenna above the sand. The ant wanders within range, and that antenna can detect it. The spider reaches out and grabs the ant. Something similar might be at work here. Something, a slender thread-like extension, may have been in the dirt. It could even be a network of thin fibres in the ground. It's hard to say. It might seem odd that some creature would exist in the desert like that, waiting for a possible victim to come along, considering the lack of lifeforms we saw here, but that's all I can think of."
"Grant said nothing like that. His tricorder might've recorded something, but we don't have it." Abuna looked up, and added, "The transporter. We could use that to beam it onto the ship, if it is intact and has salvageable data on it. At least Grant's last moments would not be in vain."
"Okay, lets try that."
For Abuna, it felt good to actually be doing something, since that gave her mind less time to wander in directions that she did not want it to go. She went down to engineering with Gerthe. The transporter on board the Atlas was located at the rear of the engineering section, and close to the cargo holds, since its purpose was to bring cargo on board, or to take it off. Abuna had only the vaguest idea on how the transporter worked, since any explanation of it involved a lot of technical terms that she was not very familiar with. The basic idea had been theorized for a long time, in that it was possible to make a copy of an object and transport that information to another location and reassemble that object identically. This required a large amount of energy, and it did not all come from the ship. Most of it came from the original object itself, which was broken down by the transporter.
The room was not large. The control console was at one side, and on the other, a raised platform surrounded by panels and various machinery. The rest of the machinery was housed in the walls around the platform and under the floor. According to Gerthe, the transporter machinery was actually quite extensive. "It's a fantastic device," the engineer remarked. He had personally worked with the transporter as it was installed and tested on the Atlas, and he was excited to be able to use it for the first time in an actual mission.
"I've heard," the first officer remarked. "Somebody even said that one day, people could be transported through this machine, and come out at the other end alive."
"They're working on it."
"But how is that possible? I mean, now the big thing is that nothing living can survive the transporter. All of our stored food was beamed on board, effectively killing any bacteria or other germs found on it."
"It's hard only in the engineering sense," Gerthe replied. He entered the room, and began to power up the machine. As more of the panel lit up, the level of humming and the number of little flashing lights increased. "Theoretically, it's possible. However, the energy and data flow-through rates must be dramatically increased, as well as the safety features. If a piece of cargo goes bad, well, that's not a great loss, but if a person is transported and something goes bad, that's a tragedy."
"Yes," Abuna said softly. The word "tragedy" suddenly caused those mental images of Davies in the jaws of the alien creature to flow back into her mind. "I don't think I'll ever seen that day."
"It's closer than you think. They might be doing trials on living creatures soon."
"You'll never get me to step into that thing, to have my body literally torn apart and then recreated from its constituents somewhere else. I don't think so."
"On the other hand, commander," Gerthe started, "consider the possibilities during the trip to the planet's surface if we had such transporter capability, and Davies was first captured."
"He could've been ‘beamed out'?"
The engineer simply nodded, as he added, "It would greatly add to the efficiency and safety of the landing-party missions."
Abuna was silent after hearing that. She focused on her part of this operation. She activated the sensor systems included in the transporter, and entered the transponder code for Davies' tricorder. Unfortunately, she did not detect it that way. "This isn't good."
"What?" Gerthe asked.
"I can't find the tricorder."
The engineer checked the readings as well. He also scanned for the composition of the tricorder, but found only fragments. "I don't think it survived. The ground is pretty chewed up down there, when we had to use the ship phasers."
A little downcast, Abuna said, "Well, it was something to try. It's too bad that you couldn't use the transporter, though. It would've been interesting to see it in action."
* * *
Commander Abuna entered the mess hall shortly after seven thirty in the morning, which was just about the busiest time in that place. The cooks and the servers had breakfast prepared, and on this occasion, it was toasted bread with a side dish of what was called "scrambled eggs," but Abuna just knew it came from a package and not from any real eggs. She had the option of cereal, or french toast, or just an orange and a side order of toast. The oranges did not look too good though. The sad fact about starship life, she knew, was that the packaged food often tasted the best. She took the toast and the so-called scrambled eggs, and poured herself some hot water for tea. Only when she had her tray and her utensils did she turn and look at the viewscreen. It was showing the infinite-speed-of-light view outside the ship. They had left Uniworld and were back at warp. The stars were slowly carving their tracks across the screen while one star remained in the background, brighter than the rest. They were back at warp.
The mess hall might have been nearly full, with every table occupied, but the other personnel on board knew better than to sit at the senior officer's table. Hall and Dr. Torres were both sitting there, leaving a couple of places available. As usual, Abuna looked at Torres' choice of breakfast. He had picked the orange and the cereal, while the captain had the same thing she had. If anything, he appeared to be enjoying it.
"Good morning," she managed to say.
Hall looked up, and said, "Good morning, commander." He watched her as she sat down, and started to eat. He wondered again if it was possible to tell a person's moods and their feelings by watching them eat breakfast. Finally, he gave in, and asked, "How are you feeling?"
"I'm alright," she answered, but the enthusiasm was not obvious on her voice.
Torres asked, "Were you able to get some sleep?"
"I did," Abuna said, between forkfuls of the scrambled eggs. It did not taste that bad, she thought, but then again, maybe it was her mood. "I was worried about that, worried about seeing that image in my mind. I wanted to avoid that, really. It'll always be in my mind when I need it, but I don't want it to keep coming back. I laid in bed, and forced myself to fill my mind with other details. I forced myself to think back to my younger days, as a child growing up in Curitiba. I relived so many old memories, times in school, times in the park with friends, the hiking, the summers spent at a farm that my grandmother had. I even thought about the first time I went to Rio de Janeiro for Carnival. It was anything to keep my mind away from... that. Eventually, I fell asleep."
"Everybody has their way of coping," Hall said.
"What's yours?"
"I try to think back of all the missions that went right, rather than the few that went wrong. I think of the disasters that were averted, and the mistakes not made. I try to think of what made those missions go right, and apply them to what went wrong. It's a hard skill to master, but you have to get over the ones that went bad and are not your fault. Instinctively, you know when the mistake is your fault. You might not say it, and you might not want to believe it, but in your gut, you know. I believe that your gut is telling you it was not your fault. You can't always be perfect. The missions don't always go flawlessly. No matter how much we learn, how advanced our technology is, no matter how much experience we get, there's always something out there that is unexpected, and different. It's the nature of travel and exploration in space. When I need to, I focus on the successes, so that I don't have to dwell on the failures."
"I see," Abuna remarked. "It probably never gets any easier, but maybe the coping is easier. I thought I had been prepared for it all, but... I don't think I was."
"It's impossible to be fully prepared. One thing about being in Starfleet, and in a starship a long way from home, is that you never stop learning. You can never admit that you have learned everything, and are ready for anything, because you are not."
"I know that now. I didn't see the things that most of you did. I thought I never would, but I guess I was wrong." Abuna ate some more of the toast and scrambled eggs, and washed it down with the tea. All were pale imitations of the things she had eaten on Earth, but they would have to do. Once more, she looked at the viewscreen, and said, "We've resumed our journey to Rigel?"
"Yes," Hall admitted.
"Nobody else went down to the planet."
"No. We've logged it on our star charts. Anybody else who visits this planet will be aware of the dangers."
After several moments of silence, Abuna looked up again. She said, "Sir," gaining the attention of the captain. "When you compose the message of condolence for Grant's family, I'd like to add to it. Is that permitted."
"It is, and you can..."
Part 1,Part 2,Part 3,Part 4,Part 5,Part 6,Part 7,Part 8,Part 9,Part 10,Part 11,Part 12,Part 13,Part 14
"Flag At the Edge of Space" page, Athena Home Page, Other Stories Home Page.
