Within five minutes, Chan had the landing party assembled in transporter room one. She was equipped with an engineering tricorder to look at the escape pod and download the events recorder and any other pertinent data, while the med tech, Clemsen, and the doctor, Dean O'Grotty, carried medikits and medical tricorders. The two security officers whose names had been at the top of the landing party assignment roster were Martin Nkomo and Calij Renadhi. All five of the officers were armed with standard pistol phasers, which were regulation even on planets with only plants for lifeforms, and they had communicators.
"Okay," Chan said, her voice sounding a little urgent and even excited. "Lets go." As soon as the five were assembled on the plates, Chan faced the transporter operator and said, "Energize."
Sharakov hit the final control switches before pushing down the levers that engaged the dematerialization sequencers and set up the remote rematerialization sequence at a preset distance and direction from the ship. Then she looked down to monitor the whole procedure.
The five rematerialized on a flat, open clearing in front of the escape pod. For a second or two, Chan looked around her, noting the moist heat and the cloudless blue sky above. All around her were plants, most of them about two metres tall and they packed the area around the clearing quite densely. The plants were a mixture of green stems, broad leaves and vines that twirled around the stems and branches. The vegetation came in bands, and when it was at its densest, it seemed impenetrable. In other directions, the dried clay ground was quite open and visible.
O'Grotty used his tricorder to scan around the immediate area for lifesigns and other useful information. As the information came up, he said, "Chan, nothing different by scanning down here. I'm reading rich, dense flora, but no animal life of any significance. No insects either."
"At least one blessing," the Odonan woman remarked.
"Most of all, no signs of anybody who had been on the escape pod."
"It's unfortunate," replied Chan, "but we have to assume that those on the escape pod somehow died. We'll have to look around for clues, signs of struggles, discarded pieces of clothing, anything at all. We can't assume that there's nothing but plants here. Something else could be lurking. O'Grotty, Nkomo, Renadhi, fan out in equal directions and look. Stay in communications at all times with each other, and be aware of your surroundings. If the escape pod survivors were overwhelmed by something, I don't want it happening to you as well."
"Understood," mumbled the three, almost in unison, as they spread out.
"Clemsen," Chan continued. She was facing the man whom she had come to know the best among the Alexandria crew-so far-but right now she was running the landing party and could not let any such stray thoughts linger. "I want you to do a detailed search of the area around this pod, looking for things like footprints. This clay here is pretty hard, but perhaps elsewhere the ground might be softer. Also, make sure that the other guys aren't silent. If anything happens, I want to know about it immediately."
"Of course."
Chan turned to look at the ship itself. The escape pod was surprisingly large, certainly larger than on a Starfleet ship like the Alexandria, which was only natural since the average passenger starliner had far more people on board than a typical starship. They needed more and larger escape pods. This one was about twice the size of a standard shuttlecraft. It was essentially built on a shuttlecraft platform and was warp-capable, incorporating the latest advances in microwarp technology that was suitable for such small craft. The warp engines, as well as the impulse and atmospheric engines, were enclosed on narrow, flat pods mounded close to the sides of the escape pod. The craft was roughly aerodynamic as well, with only sharp, abrupt edges at the rear. At the front, the craft tapered to an almost-smooth edge. Chan walked around the escape pod, visually looking at it and detecting nothing that suggested anything but a controlled landing. Curiously, though, Chan found the main hatch open.
In case whatever had happened to the people on board was still inside, Chan drew her phaser before entering. Scans revealed nothing, so when she stepped inside, she was not too surprised to see that it was empty. The interior was fairly large, as it had to be in order to support upto ten people for possibly prolonged periods of time. Replicators provided water and basic foodstuffs, while the environmental systems could keep the air fresh and breathable for up to twelve people for as long as the fuel lasted. In the rear were ten seats, and in the front, behind a partition with a narrow door, two more, for the pilot and the co-pilot. Chan found that the internal systems had been shut off, but with a few switches tapped, those systems came back on. She looked around again, and then scanned the interior. She saw no sign of any disorganization, and no sign of any kind of struggle. As far as she could tell, those on board had left of their own free will.
Chan moved to the cockpit and dropped into the comfortable pilot's chair. She brought the instrumentation back on-line and studied the environmental systems display. Everything came up as fully functional, and within a few minutes, she could feel the cooler, drier air that was more normal for starships-and more comfortable for Chan-start to push out the warmer, more humid air of Transcestus IV. A tricorder sweep indicated that the air coming out of the vents was of the proper composition and temperature. As far as she could tell, nothing was wrong with the life support system. Perhaps, she thought, they felt that the life support system had somehow failed and they really did not know what to do to get it working again. Instead of resetting the system, they might have made the problem worse by playing with the controls.
Chan went outside, and towards the rear to check on the engines. The engineering tricorder she had kept saying the same thing; nothing was wrong with the engines. As far as she could tell, the escape pod was in perfect working order. Clemsen was still nearby, and approached once he saw the woman emerge back into the sunlight. As he got close to her, he saw her shake her head slightly. "What's up?" he asked.
Chan looked up, and smiled faintly, perhaps involuntarily. 'There's nothing wrong with the life support system. Unless this tricorder is faulty in a curious way, this escape pod appears to be fully functional."
"Then why did it come here?"
"The only reason I could come up with is that somebody unfamiliar with these systems might have altered the settings, and the rest of those on board could not undo what had been done."
"So they landed here without really needing to?"
"Perhaps, or maybe they never could not figure out how to undo what they did and decided not to take chances." She removed her communicator from a pocket and flipped it open. She touched a small button that connected her to the bridge communications station, and said, "Chan to Alexandria."
"This is the Alexandria," came the reply, the captain's voice very obvious on this clear signal. "What's going on down there?"
"I've checked over the escape pod. The life support system, once restarted, is fully functional. The ship appears to be in perfect shape."
"Any sign of those on board?"
"None at all. I think there's more going on here than we first thought."
"Yes, perhaps you're right, commander. Have you checked the logs on the pod?"
"I'm doing that right now," Chan answered, noticing Clemsen smile at her as she stretched the truth just a bit. "My bet is that there'll be nothing in them."
"Check anyway, and keep me informed."
"Very well," Chan replied, closing the small unit and holding it tightly in her first. Facing the other man again, she asked, "What do you think has happened here?"
"It depends on what was on the Colonial Explorer. It's perfect for some kind of criminal activity." Clemsen continued his explanation as the two walked back towards the entrance. "Something of value was on that ship, and the criminals might have rigged the ship to explode to cover up the fact that they stole whatever it was that had the value. They did it so that the passengers and crew had enough warning to get off in time, while those in on this scheme conspired to make sure they all got on the same escape pod. They claimed life support failure, landed on this planet and were picked up by another ship."
Chan regarded that theory as far too speculative and the plan would be difficult to implement. However, before she could think about it or comment on the idea, the two of them heard a man scream, a tortured, sickening kind of scream that suggested a great deal of pain and agony. It continued its horrible, desperate wail, even as Chan turned her head to get a fix on the direction.
"What's that?" Clemsen asked.
"Maybe an answer," the Odonan woman replied hurriedly, replacing the communicator in her hand with the phaser. "Lets go." She took off at full speed, momentarily oblivious to the fact that no human could keep up with her running speed. As she ran towards the source of the sound, she heard a phaser being fired, in a sustained mode at high power, and coming from the same direction.
Within seconds, Chan was there, witnessing the gruesome sight that she had come across. "Ov dok don," she muttered to herself.
Nkomo was standing about five metres away, firing his phaser, but it appeared to have no effect. He looked scared. "Phasers don't stop it!" he yelled above the din of his weapon.
The scene was out of a nightmare. Renadhi was caught by the large plant, and was increasingly gripped by vines and leafy branches that enveloped him. The plant was squeezing with incredible force, opening many wounds on the man and turning his body to pulp. Chan could even hear the bones break, but nothing was more horrific than the screams that Renadhi struggled to make. The plant, with twenty thick vines around him and with more than two metres of height towering over him, was already secreting enzymes, which were burning off his clothing like acid. The skin burned and more blood sprouted from the dozens of wounds. Chan hesitated, as she had to aim in such a way not to strike the man, but the plant was moving too much. Others were closing in. Her beam, and Nkomo's beam, started to slice in on the other plants as they wrapped their own vines around the man. The body fell limp, and then it started to fall apart. Still, the two officers fired, slicing off tentacles and branches and burning through to the trunk, but the plants did not stop. The odour of burning flesh and burning vegetation hung thick in the air until Chan was almost ready to gag.
Clemsen, panting hard from the exertion, ran up beside Chan and saw what she saw. The form of Renadhi was barely recognizable. "Oh god," he mumbled.
Chan stopped firing her phaser, and Nkomo did likewise. Those plants were all around them, and they could strike again at any moment, a fact that the officers were suddenly becoming aware of. "That's what happened to the survivors on the escape pods," Chan finally said. "Carnivorous plants, big enough to eat a man."
"What a way to go," Clemsen said, stunned by what he had just seen. He heard a rustling sound, and looked around, in time to see a plant advancing on him. He fired his phaser, and though the beam burned through vegetation, it only slowed the plant down.
"Lets get the hell out of here," Chan suggested, and then yelled, "Nkomo, come with us." The plants, though mobile, were not very fast, as even the two humans could outrun them. As she ran, Chan took out her communicator and flipped it open on the fly. "O'Grotty," she shouted.
"I'm here, nothing to-"
Chan loudly cut him off, saying, "Get back to the escape pod immediately, as fast as you can. These plants are carnivores."
"I'm on my way!" the man retorted.
The three, now slightly out of breath, returned to the clearing by the escape pod. O'Grotty took a bit longer to return, forcing the other three to wait. "I don't understand this," Clemsen said to the other two. "How can you have carnivorous plants on a planet with no animal life?"
"Maybe they ate all the animals," Chan replied. All around them were those large plants, standing closely packed and seemingly rooted to the ground. So far, the plants around them had not attacked, perhaps because they had already consumed the survivors from the escape pod and had not needed to eat again. Chan wondered what kind of sense organs the plants might have had, and how they moved and how they killed. Although not unknown, carnivorous plants on this scale were extremely rare. To her recollection, no commander, Odonan or otherwise, had ever encountered lifeforms like these before.
"Terry," she said to the man standing beside her. "I think we can rule out the criminal theory."
"But there's still the matter of the life support system. Maybe they had a plan, but it went badly wrong when they came here."
"Look!" Nkomo suddenly blurted out. "One moved!" Chan noticed it as well, a plant that moved about a metre into the path that they had just come back on. Maybe, somehow, it had sensed the passage of a potential meal.
O'Grotty, breathing hard, arrived back and quickly asked, "What happened? Where's Renadhi?"
"A victim of that!" Chan yelled, pointing out another plant that was moving. Several more were also rustling, forcing the four to stand close to the escape pod so that they would not be surprised from the rear. As she spoke, she popped open the communicator and hit the small switch that opened the link to the transporter room. "Alexandria, transporter room, four to beam up. Emergency, four to beam up!" She heard no response. "Clemsen, try it," the Odonan said hurriedly, thinking that perhaps her communicator had malfunctioned.
The man beside her had his communicator out, and was saying the same thing, "Alexandria, come in. Four to beam up, emergency!"
Chan switched the communicator to the setting to reach the bridge, and said, "Chan to Alexandria."
"What's going on down there?" Parouge asked, obviously picking up the urgency in the woman's voice.
"We've been attacked by carnivorous plants. Renadhi's dead, and we can't contact the transporter room. Get somebody to beam us up now!"
"Right away," Parouge said, his voice now just as tense as Chan's.
"Damn," Chan muttered. "Why isn't there somebody in the transporter room?"
All around them, they could hear the rustling sounds, and they were clearly closing in. Chan, facing Clemsen, saw the vine creep around the cornor of the boxy escape pod. It was thick, covered with broad leaves and at the tip, two specialized leaves that looked a lot like fangs. The vine moved with incredible quickness. "Terry!" Chan yelled.
The man moved, just as the thing gripped him on the right shoulder. The fang-like appendages buried themselves into the skin. Instinctively, Chan reached forward with her left hand, grabbing the vine with the right parts of her fingertips and with the personal forcefield momentum turned up high. The electricity flowed through the orsotic tips, with sparks flashing loudly between fingertips and the plant. The sap, or whatever substance was inside, boiled and exploded, severing the vine. With the plant matter limp, Terry was able to pull the remains off of him easily. Blood oozed out of the puncture wound, even as the man clamped the opposite hand on it. The pain was visible on his face.
Seeing the plants getting closer, Chan shouted out, "Get into the escape pod!" Nkomo and O'Grotty were climbing on board even as she spoke. She helped Clemsen onto the ship, and hit the door controls. Another vine was reaching for them, as they backed into the interior while the heavy hatch slowly closed. When the hatch did close, it severed the vine against the doorframe, leaving the small section inside the escape pod.
"Damn idiots," Chan cursed, mostly to herself. "Why is there nobody in that transporter room?"
O'Grotty ignored the outburst from the Odonan. He already had the medikit out, and was taking care of Clemsen's wounds, which had left the right side of the top of his uniform covered in blood.
"We should be safe here," Nkomo said.
"I don't-"
The craft started to rock, as if the plants had converged around it and were using their apparently significant plant strength to upset the escape pod or somehow break into it and get at the source of food within.
"They might be desperate for their next meal," Chan said. "We're getting out of here."
"What?" Clemsen managed to ask, even as he winced with the pain of the treatment.
The woman ignored him. She climbed into the cockpit seat, and fired up the engines. Because the navigational panel was simple enough for anybody to use, Chan had no problem figuring out how to do the basics that she needed done. Her hands were a virtual blur over the panel as she brought up the atmospheric engines to power and activated the antigravity lift. Life support, she noticed, continued to function normally. Just as she was about to lift off, the viewscreen came on. It showed that the craft was covered in vines, branches and leaves, some of which were surprisingly thick. The plants were all but pounding against the escape pod. Chan activated the forcefields, making them oscillate back and forth to slice up the plant matter that had been covering the escape pod. Apparently the plants could not feel any pain, as they kept on coming and kept on attacking, even as bits of themselves were sizzled or dislodged by the fields. With a final burst of desperation, Chan used the antigravity controls to give the small craft a lot of lift. After a few seconds, it struggled off of the ground, but soon flew more freely once the last of the plants dropped off.
"You can't fly in this thing," Nkomo protested, as he stood behind the Odonan woman. "The life support systems don't work."
"They work just fine," Chan replied, still sounding somewhat angry, although she did her best not to let it show to the other members of the landing party. It was not their fault, afterall. "I checked out all the systems, and everything's functional."
"Then why did they bring it here?"
"I don't know, and now, I doubt we'll ever know."
As soon as Chan had made her hurried message back to the ship, Parouge punched in the intercom code for the main transporter room. He got no response, so he sent Allende down to find out what had happened.
Sensing a potential emergency, the first officer got to the room as quickly as the turbolift and his legs could carry him. As the doors to the transporter room opened, he saw a junior operator behind the console. Allende knew that the chief, Ilsa Sharakov, was supposed to be on duty, so he asked, "Where's Sharakov?"
"We were doing routine maintenance in transporter room two when we had an unexpected circuit problem," he replied, oblivious to the harried tone of the first officer's voice. "It demanded Sharakov's immediate attention."
Allende pushed aside the startled junior officer, and hooked the transporter sensors into the transponder signal from Chan's communicator, and then took a general reading. The scan indicated four individuals were closely grouped, but they were inside the escape pod, and the escape pod had its shields raised. What was more, the signals were moving at an increasingly rapid rate, suggesting that the escape pod had been launched and the four were escaping the danger zone in that fashion.
Allende hit the intercom switch for the bridge, saying, "Captain Parouge."
"What's going on down there?" the captain demanded. "Why was the transporter room unable to beam out the landing party?"
"I don't know, but I'll find out. They have apparently launched the escape pod and turned the shields on, so we can't beam them out now."
"Understood," Parouge replied, his voice just a little relaxed. At least they were out of immediate danger.
After shutting off the intercom, Allende faced the junior officer, and asked, "Was Lieutenant Sharakov in here when you came?"
"No," the young man replied. "It was an emergency. The lieutenant called me here, and told me to get here as quickly as possible. I did so, but found that the lieutenant had left the room. The post was unmanned for thirty seconds, maximum."
"Thirty seconds that almost cost us the entire landing party."
Terry Clemsen, his wounded shoulder covered in a temporary medicated protoplasmic patch and enough antibiotics fired into him to kill just about anything of an alien xenotype in his system, crawled into the cockpit seat beside the one occupied by the Odonan. He looked briefly at the screen, and saw the dim purple of the high atmosphere.
"Thanks, Chi," he mumbled, perhaps embarrassed at having to say something like that. "You saved my life back there. Once one of those plants gets you, you can't escape." Chan said nothing, mostly because her Odonan upbringing did not give her the words or the cultural references to respond to such a statement. Clemsen continued, "That was your bioelectricity, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," Chan finally answered. She did not look at the man, as she continued to monitor the controls and kept her eyes on the viewscreen. Talking about the bioelectricity was not something that was easy for Chan, since most Odonans kept that attribute about themselves quiet. Non-Odonans, and humans especially, found that ability repulsive and somehow abhorrent, as if the ability was not something that had naturally evolved in Odonans, but a freakish genetic modification. Whenever the bioelectricity was demonstrated, she almost found a need to explain it, and to apologize for it. "With all that was going on around us, I developed a charge. It's natural. How are you feeling?"
"Just deep punctures. Solok will fix it up perfectly in no time once we get back to the ship. He'll check and see if the plants introduced anything into me. Dean says that the fang-like things might have some kind of a paralytic venom in it, but it takes massive doses of it to work."
"We were damn lucky that this thing was still working," Chan replied, with just a touch of anger remaining in her voice. "I can't believe that the ship would take so long to get a landing party beamed up in an emergency. I assume that Starfleet regulations require somebody stay at the transporter controls at all times there is a landing party out there, especially in a situation like this."
"Of course there is such a regulation, but there is probably a very good explanation for it. Maybe they had some kind of trouble or something."
"The Alexandria has four regular transporters, each totally independent. If something goes wrong with one, there's another."
"The reason must still be valid, Chi," Clemsen remarked. "The captain would never allow any kind of slipshod, dangerous practices to get established on his ship."
With each word, the bitterness seemed to come back on Chan's voice. "What happened is still inexcusable. Back home in the Odonan Empire, we hear a lot about slipshod operations in Starfleet. I hate to say it, but we laugh over them. Odonans make a lot of cruel jokes about the casualty rates in the Federation space service, and now I get an inkling why. Our regulations require a specially-trained operator on transporter duty at all times. It's a junior operator and not the transporter chief, because the latter might get called away at any time for whatever reason, leaving a key station unmanned for even a few precious seconds. The junior operator has no other job but to man the transporter while the landing party is out there. I saw Sharakov up there, beaming us down. I assumed that was all she was doing, and would leave the rest to a junior operator, but now it appears that she stayed there. Is that kind of stupid or what?"
"We always feel it's best to have our most experienced and trained operators at the transporters in these situations. Besides, it's hardly fair to compare the Odonans with the Federation. The mindset of your people is different. You live longer, and so you're less inclined to take risks, and you do take excessive precautions and have extensive regulations. I've even heard that the Odonans do not seem to accomplish as much since they are more cautious, and less of risk-takers, even with their faster ships and forcefield belts and all of that technology."
Chan spoke up immediately, and she had wanted to speak halfway through Clemsen's words. "That doesn't matter here. What matters here is preserving lives. I don't think that Starfleet would do anything that would increase the chance of someone dying. I saw and heard Renadhi. Those plants are strong, and given time, they could overwhelm the forcefield. It's designed to help the wearer get away from trouble, and not endure it forever. It's an edge that gives us a few more seconds to get to safety, to have procedures followed."
"Still, Chi," Clemsen continued, moving in the seat slightly and wincing. "You are going to be in trouble, though."
"Why?"
"You left your communicator open back there, with the link to the bridge open. Parouge probably heard every word, and what he could not understand of your language, he probably had translated."
"Damn," Chan muttered.
"You're going to have to watch yourself, you know. On the ground, you did the best you could. The life support system screwed you up, and prevented you from seeing what really happened."
"I've never experienced carnivorous plants before," Chan said. "I thought that they were fiction, stories told by starship crews about planets whose locations they had forgotten, or which had been visited by a ship a friend of a friend used to serve on. Besides, with no animal life to feed on, carnivorous plants seem a little extreme."
"Still," Clemsen muttered. The antibiotics were making him drowsy, so he wanted to rest more than he wanted to sit here and argue with the Odonan. He had watched Chan operate the escape pod, and no doubt felt she was competent in handing it once he was no longer paying attention.
Within a couple of minutes, the escape pod was in orbit around the planet. The Alexandria was not hard to find since it was in a powered geostationary position over the landing party site. Chan had spiraled the craft upwards so that it would not stray too far from the position of the starship. From a considerable distance below it, she saw the large Federation starship hanging seemingly motionless against the background of stars. On the final approach, she climbed to the same level as the Alexandria and turned in towards it from the rear.
Chan found the communications controls, and dialed the frequency controller to match that of the Alexandria navigational control. "Chan to Alexandria," she said, trying to get the tension out of her voice. "Requesting permission to come on board. Open the hanger doors, please."
"Stand by," came the response. Chan was hoping that Clemsen had been just joking when he said that she had accidentally left her communicator open. While doing such hoping, she eased the escape pod into a direct line with the hanger deck and slowed down. She waited for the clearance to approach the deck for landing.
The Alexandria actually looked somewhat impressive as it hung in space above the planet. The ship was more streamlined than older classes of Federation starships that Chan had seen, with cleaner-looking warp nacelles and more functional and complete weapons and shielding systems. The Federation had learned its lessons in the design and operation of its ships, or so Chan had been told. Heavy cruisers, such as the Enterprise-class and the classes that preceded it rarely returned from the extended deep-space missions. Captains that brought a ship back home were heralded as heroes. In the Odonan Empire, ships were expected to be brought back. The Federation liked to put their loss rate down to risk-taking and the simple dangers of space, although the Odonans viewed the Federation and its Starfleet as incompetent. Now, Chan had assumed, the Federation had gained enough experience to weed out the reckless captains and had enough experience to be able to anticipate and handle the risks-although her presence here in this escape pod indicated that the process was not yet complete. Nevertheless, the odds of a ship completing a tour of duty and returning intact was higher now than it had been in decades past. When a blunder still occurred, as rare as they were, Chan still felt somewhat rankled.
"Alexandria hanger control to escape pod. We will open the bay doors momentarily. Dial in the forcefield frequency to the one coming over the datalink and do not modulate out of that frequency."
"Understood," Chan replied. She saw a number flash up on a general reference screen. To her left were the small knobs that controlled the shielding frequency settings. She had to match the field on the escape pod to match that of the forcefield across the opening to the hanger bay. If the frequencies did not match, then the escape pod would be unable to enter the shuttlebay, with unpleasant consequences for those on the pod. She adjusted the settings of the shields to what was shown on the display, and locked in those settings. "Shields adjusted," Chan finally reported. "Confirm shield frequency modulation on the escape pod."
"What?" came the quizzical reply.
"Scan the escape pod to confirm that the shield frequency matches that of the barrier field."
"Okay," replied the person in the hanger deck control area. He was unsure how to handle this unusual request, since it was not in the standard operating procedure. The barrier fields were very stable and the shields on mobile vessels, even escape pods, were precisely controlled. If the displays indicated that the forcefields matched, then they did. The scan was not necessary. Nevertheless, he conducted it. "Scanning now," he finally said. After a slight delay, he added, "You're clear. Opening the bay doors."
The escape pod was less than two hundred metres behind the starship. Chan watched as the large, clamshell-shaped bay doors slid open, revealing the dark and cluttered hanger deck. "Oh man, look at that," Chan said softly.
"What?" asked Clemsen, startled slightly by the remarks he assumed were directed at him.
"How am I supposed to land on that?"
"You're supposed to land on the highest level. Let other crewmembers worry about this thing afterwards."
"If that highest level is large enough," replied the Odonan woman, as she eased the control rods towards her just a little, giving the small craft a little thrust. The escape pod moved forward slowly, relative to the Alexandria. She cleared the barrier field with no trouble, as the two aligned forcefields merged perfectly, and aimed for the middle of the marked area at the highest level. The laser guidance system flashed out its lights seemingly randomly, but Chan could not pick them up, perhaps because the escape pod was not designed for such a system. She relied on instruments and her own eyes to guide the craft to the right location and land it solidly on the deck. Clemsen gave her this look as he felt the jolt which was unexpectedly hard. "Oops," Chan explained. "Kind of forgot exactly how much a metre was."
The four on the escape pod filed out onto the hanger deck, with Chan noticing the severed part of the vine from the triffid that tried to get on board was still lying on the floor, and it was a long enough segment that it had a leaf on it. She picked it up. Outside, the group was met by Captain Parouge and first officer Allende. Parouge looked at them, noticing most obviously Clemsen, with his torn, blood-stained shirt and the protoplasm sprayed into the wounds.
"My god, what happened?" the captain asked as he walked towards the wounded security officer.
"Those plants," the man replied. "One attacked me. Fortunately, Chan was able to get it off of me."
"Is that a part of it?" the captain asked, pointing to the piece of vegetation in the woman's hand.
"No," Chan answered. "This is part of another plant, not the one that attacked Clemsen. This is only the end of one of the many vines on one of those plants. We had to get inside the escape pod and-"
"I understand," the captain interrupted. "Clemsen, you'd better get down to sickbay and have Solok take proper care of that injury."
"Right away, sir," the man replied.
"And Chan, I want to see you in my quarters in one half hour."
"Yes, sir," the woman replied in a sullen voice, fully aware of what that meeting was going to centre on.
Captain Parouge left, while Allende relieved Chan of the specimen, no doubt to take it down to the botany lab for further study. Allende also had to stay behind to instruct the hanger deck crews what to do about the escape pod. First, they would go through it to determine who was on board originally, how many and what became of them. If they could find out why those on board had landed on Transcestus IV, so much the better, the first officer thought.
Chan went along with Clemsen towards the turbolift station just outside one of the exits from the deck. Once they were in some degree of privacy in the turbolift car, Clemsen said, "Man, you're going to get it in half an hour."
"Thanks for the expression of confidence," Chan remarked sharply. "I did screw up down there."
"No you didn't. You saved me from becoming plant food."
"One man was lost."
"Accidents do happen. We in Starfleet are painfully aware of that." Clemsen was about to go on about the aspect of danger in Starfleet, and resume the conversation they had started on the escape pod.
"Accidents like that aren't supposed to happen."
"You can't be that hard on yourself. Parouge's not going to criticize you on what happened down there, losing Renadhi. His death is unfortunate, but there's nothing you could have done to prevent it. Parouge will be more concerned about your comments and criticisms, but he might let you off easy since you're an exchange officer and can't be expected to be fully integrated into this crew yet, nor unable to compare Starfleet with the Odonan Space Service."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
Clemsen thought about it for a moment, and then answered, "He might think that what you did was a typically Odonan response to a situation like that..."
(End of Part 4)
