Chan notified the captain of who was accompanying her, and he did not oppose her choice. She briefly wondered if he had any idea of the amount of time the two had spent together, and what she felt was the man's reactions towards her-and her reactions to him. That too was something that Chan thought she was going to have to work on later. Once the two had their equipment, they made their way to the nearest turbolift station, and took that down to the dorsal pylon that connected the upper and lower hulls. The turbolift ports and the crawlways and other approaches were sealed off, so they had to use the one access port that had a hatch.
Clemsen led Chan to the unmarked, narrow doorway that led to the hatch. He keyed in a code that opened the door, and walked in. Chan followed. They stood on a narrow platform that led to a climbing ladder. They took that down about three metres until they got to the hatch, which was actually a thick double hatch, since the inside hatch was designed to integrate with the hull should the two sections ever separate.
"Nervous?" the man asked Chan.
"Not really," she replied. "We've got the equipment. We've got the mission. This is something that has to be done. We know what we're getting into."
"But do you really?"
"I like to think so. This leads into the secondary hull?"
"Yeah. It also acts as an airlock," Clemsen pointed out. He gestured towards the small and simple controls, although all the panels were dark now.
Chan took out her communicator, and said, "Chan to the bridge. We're in position. Open the hatch to the deck eight access airlock."
"Right away," came the reply.
Within seconds, the heavy hatch split into two parts, and retracted into the side. The hatch below also opened, revealing a similar structure, complete with a climbing ladder that reached to the original ceiling, but a large gap remained. "It won't be easy to get over that."
"Oh, very easy," Clemsen remarked, as he stepped off of the ladder-and floated in midair. "No gravity here." He gave himself a push against one of the lower rungs and drifted downwards. Chan found herself doing likewise, giving herself just enough shove so that by the time she reached the bottom, air resistance almost brought her to a stop.
Chan said, "Scan the corridor just beyond. Knowing our luck, it'll be right outside this door." She also took out the communicator, and said, "Bridge, close this hatch." She watched as the two-part hatches closed again and sealed. "Can you open all the isodoors from the bridge now?"
"I'm not sure that's wise," Parouge remarked over the communicator.
"It'll allow us to move around more easily. As long as we keep it in the secondary hull, the rest of the ship should be safe. How it moves around in here doesn't matter. Besides, I got an idea where it might be."
"Where?"
"Near organic matter of any kind. It must feed somehow. To grow as rapidly as it had, it must have had a source of food far beyond the death of Ensign Scambelli."
The captain thought about that for a few seconds, while Clemsen shut off the tricorder, and said, "Nothing in the immediate vicinity."
"Okay," Parouge finally said. "We'll open all the doors. But do exercise extreme caution, commander."
"As always, sir," Chan replied.
"Where to now?" asked the man.
"Lets go down to the botanical gardens," she said. "Maybe it will seek to be in a familiar environment. We can start from there."
Nearby was a turbolift station, and with the isolation doors opened again, the lifts were working through the secondary hull, but the turbolift cars could not travel into the primary hull. Chan and Clemsen got into the turbolift and directed it to the corridor that led to the botanical garden.
"How long do you think it'll take to find this plant?" the man asked.
"I have no idea. This part of the ship is so large, with so many corridors, rooms, stairwells, hatches, cargo holds and everything. There are lots of places where its lifesigns could apparently hide.
"With our luck, as soon as the turbolift doors open, it'll be standing right there."
"If we're lucky," Chan said, taking Clemsen's works literally. He thought she must have misunderstood his use of a colloquial expression, or maybe she really did believe it would be their good fortune to face the triffid right away. If the weapon Chan had failed, they could make a quick escape in the turbolift.
The small circular car came to a stop. Chan scanned the corridor with the tricorder, but did not fully trust the readings. She stood against the wall, with the modified phaser in hand, just in case. She put a foot where the sensor could detect it and open the door. Chan looked out quickly in both directions, and was ready to duck into the car again. "Everything's clear," she remarked. Clemsen joined her as she stepped out of the turbolift, and the doors snapped closed behind them.
Sweeping the tricorder around, the man said, "Nothing here. I wonder about this tricorder, though."
"Why?"
"The growths that were removed from us had a lot of our biological characteristics in it. Who knows what the composition of this plant thing could be like."
"Watch for things that move," Chan suggested.
The two walked down the corridor, and carefully entered the botanical gardens. Places such as this existed on larger Odonan ships, such as the Omni-class, but not on the smaller ones that Chan was more familiar with. The room covered the entire width of deck twenty-one, which was about twenty-six and a half metres in this area, which meant the room was about nineteen metres wide. The room was five hundred square metres devoted to gardens and plants, with trees, ferns, flowering plants, footpaths, grass, benches overlooking the large viewports and even a small creek with a waterfall. The creek and its attendant pond was even stocked with some small fish-unless the triffid had made a meal out of them. The gardens were a place to relax, but were also used for research, so a lot of the plants growing in here were alien species. The room was bright, as it was in the middle of the day cycle, and the bright lights were used to simulate sunshine. It was also a little on the warm and humid side for Chan, who realized she was not going to spend much free time in here. What was worse was that Chan was unfamiliar with most of the plant life in here, and knew that the triffid could be hiding here.
"Any of this vegetation look suspicious?" Chan asked.
Again, Clemsen used the tricorder, and had the same negative readings. "Nothing," he said. "Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on plants, especially all the alien plants in here."
"Neither am I," the Odonan admitted. As they carefully made their way along the footpaths, examining anything that they could, Chan continued, "This place now gives me the creeps."
"Yeah, killer plants-triffids-will do that every time."
"I've wondered about that word," Chan asked.
"Triffid?"
"Yeah. It's not in the standard human vocabulary, or at least the one I've been using."
Clemsen explained, "The name was first used by a writer named John Wyndham, who lived in the twentieth century on Earth. He wrote a book called 'Day of the Triffids' It was about a meteor strike on Earth, bringing, ah..."
"What?"
"The book. I was rather young when I read it, so I'm not completely sure of the details. Anyway, maybe the meteors brought spores to the planet, which grew rapidly into man-eating plants. That's kind of strange."
"You don't think that... no, you said it was a book, a work of fiction."
"Yes, not an historical account."
"Oh, so this was not an attempt by the Vegan Tyranny-it was extant back in your twentieth century, I believe-to wipe out humans by infesting the planet with Transcestus IV carnivorous plant spores."
"No, although there are eerie similarities. Maybe that is why 'triffid' seems to fit. Anyway, he wouldn't be the first science fiction writer from the prewarp days to come up with an outlandish idea for a novel, only to see something a lot like that actually exist or happen."
"Interesting."
"Personally, I wouldn't mind if the writer who came up with the idea of a Dyson sphere actually see that come through."
"A what?"
"Never mind," Clemsen retorted.
Chan glanced at the man, and asked, "Okay, where did this John Wyndham get 'triffid' from?"
"Maybe he invented it. Later in time, the word 'triffid' came to mean any plant that could move, and could attack animals and people, and eat them. Before Transcestus IV, we never actually encountered such a thing before."
"Were those triffids in the story intelligent?" Chan asked. All the while, she was keeping a careful eye on her surroundings and not letting herself get distracted.
"Actually," the man answered, "I don't remember."
The two walked along the pathway that wound around the gardens. Every plant was met with suspicion, and even a little bit of fear. She seemed to react more when Clemsen noticed something that he was not at all familiar with. Chan felt very tense, enough that she could feel the surge of electricity through her body. This was a normal reaction to fear, since it activated a kind of defense mechanism in Odonans, and it usually did not appear when she felt nervous or was in anticipation of something happening. Her body seemed to indicate what was really on her mind. More than once, she had to warn Clemsen not to get too close.
"Why?" he asked.
"Touching me now could result in a quite a shock, maybe even fatal."
"That's not normal for Odonans, you know."
"True, but the amount of bioelectricity varies by person. In certain situations, I can produce quite a lot."
"This has been something I've wondered about... but if you don't release the electricity, what happens to it?"
"The secondary nervous system acts something like a resistor. The current fades in time, and I end up feeling a little hot and flush, and I sweat too."
"I'll never understand Odonans..."
The two walked through the gardens twice, and then into the botanical labs adjoining the large room, but they found nothing. They also found no sign that the plant had ever been in this area.
"Where to now?" Clemsen asked.
"The organic base matter storage area," the Odonan woman answered.
"What happens if we don't find it there?"
"We keep looking. It has to be somewhere. It might even be attracted to us." Clemsen found that suggestion rather uncomfortable.
The two walked down the corridors to the rear area of deck twenty-one, where most of the cargo holds containing supplies and raw materials for use on the Alexandria were stored. They found that all the storage containers were intact, so they took a ladder up to deck twenty, where more of the modules were stored. Some of these modules had been moved into position to feed into the replicator system that serviced the secondary hull.
The ship was eerily silent, with both the impulse and warp engines off line. The life support system was so quiet that Chan did not hear that. She thought she could hear sounds, but when she strained to hear better, the silence just greeted her. They walked around a bend in the corridor, where more of the containers were stored, and Chan came to a sudden halt, sudden enough that Clemsen almost ran into her. "What the-" he mumbled.
"Look," Chan said, pointing to small leaves and a couple of slender vines on the floor.
"Is it around?" he asked.
"I don't know, but it must've been here recently." As they moved along, they saw some of the fluids on the floor. It was almost as if the plant was injured, and had dripped some of its sap-like equivalent to blood on the floor, or perhaps the plant was not able to fully handle the alien composition of the food it was trying to consume. Chan found spots of similar fluid on the walls, and on a heavy set of doors and the controls that worked them. "This is the cargo transporter," she remarked. It was located here to allow these containers of raw materials to be brought on board the ship close to where they were stored and used. "You don't think it figured it out?"
"The system is down, but it still might be in there, though," the young man replied. He stepped towards the door, but not close enough for the sensors to register his presence and open the door, and scanned the room beyond with the tricorder. "I'm not reading anything out of the ordinary in there."
"Open it up," Chan said, and stood off to the side while Clemsen tapped at the controls to override the door controls. Once more, Chan stood with her phaser ready as the doors opened. She turned to face the opening, and found a small room followed by a second set of doors. Chan had never seen this particular cargo transporter before, so those additional doors were a surprise. All she could figure was that they were an extra level of security since the outside corridor was along the hull of the ship, and had hatches that opened into space.
Chan tapped the second set of controls herself, causing the inside doors to open. She stepped inside, and looked around the square room, with its large cargo transporter pad along the far wall. To her right, as she entered, was the elevated platform that contained the control console, and access to the second cargo transporter, which was immediately behind this one. Chan, with Clemsen behind her, walked through both transporter rooms, quickly closing any door they opened, and emerged at the opposite side. Once more she had to reach the conclusion that the plant was not in these rooms and had never been in them.
Clemsen wondered if Chan was thinking the same thing he was. "I'm sure," the man started, "that in the impossible circumstance where the triffid could operate the transporter, the bridge would know."
"I didn't think it could work the transporters, since they are shut off at the bridge, but it seems odd that it tried to get into that room, maybe without success."
"Maybe it was just searching for something to eat."
The two returned to the cargo holding area, where large containers were held to the floor by electromagnets. This area was different on the Alexandria than on other Federation starships of this class. The holding area was covered, and segmented into aisleways. This modification was relatively recent since several situations had occurred when cargo that was suddenly dangerous had to be ejected into space. Instead of ejecting all the cargo, only the affected section could be ejected into space by opening one of the loading hatches. The other segments would be secured by isolation doors. As a result, the area was quite crowded and unexpectedly dark.
"If it is anywhere," Chan started, "it's got to be here."
"No kidding."
The two moved through one of the large, triangular sections that contained an isolation door. The first thing they saw was a damaged cargo module. "Stop!" Chan suddenly said, and Clemsen wholeheartedly agreed. "Sweep this area."
Clemsen did, turning around to look down the corridor as he worked the tricorder. The humming noises from the small device were seemingly quite loud in the otherwise very quiet corridor. Once more, both felt how overpoweringly quiet things could be when the warp engines were shut down. It was as if Chan could hear her own heart beat, and she thought it was beating fast.
"Nothing," the man reported. "No strange lifeforms, no motion."
Chan still did not relax. She had the phaser in her hand ever since they came through the cargo transporter area, and she had no intention of putting it down now. She could just sense that it was close, and had the eerie feeling that it might have been somehow observing her. Turning around, Chan faced the damaged cargo module. Its front panels had been crudely ripped open, but not entirely stripped off. The woman used her forcefield-amplified strength to remove the rest of the panel and look inside.
"How'd you do that?" Clemsen asked, with a great deal of surprise. It took considerable strength to rip such sheet metal off of its mountings.
Chan did not answer the question. Instead, she looked inside. Normally, the inside was filled with organic material that had the rough appearance and consistency of rather moist soil. The material was stored in this form since it was inert, but when needed, it would be broken down into its constituent elements and directed into the replicator system. "I'd imagine that this space was likely full of organic material that could be processed into food. It's been cleaned out."
"There must've been a tonne of material in there. You don't think there's more than one, do you?"
"Don't even suggest it."
The two moved on to the next module, which appeared undamaged. "What's in there, more of the same?"
Chan glanced at the manifest attached to the module, and also scanned it to confirm that it contained more of the organic base matter. "The same stuff, Chi," he finally said. "It's intact, though." They moved to the next one, and repeated the process. "Same again."
"There are sure enough of these modules."
"The ship needs enough to see it through an entire five-year mission, with a two-year allowance for the unexpected. We're barely into the tour of duty."
"But it sure gives the plant things a great source of food."
Clemsen turned to face the Odonan. "Yeah, I guess the planners never anticipated-" She was standing about five metres away when something came up behind her. "Chi!" he suddenly screamed.
"What the-" she said, spinning around, just in time to see it. The triffid was now over two metres tall. It was primarily a central column of interwound wines and stems. From all over, vines branched outwards, each liberally equipped with the broad, fang-tipped leaves. Thicker masses of vines at the base provided a method of location that Chan could not immediately comprehend. What she could comprehend was how fast it could now move. Using its vines like tentacles, the triffid engulfed Chan so quickly that the startled woman dropped the phaser. It skiddered to the floor close to her, but the plant had grabbed her and was trying to immobilize her.
"Chi!" Clemsen said, taking a few halting steps towards her, while trying to figure out what to do.
Chan did not speak. Her mind was fully consumed on other matters. She already had the forcefield momentum turned up to maximum, but the triffid had unbelievable strength and was starting to overwhelm the field and push it closer to her. For a few seconds, Chan tried to remain calm and concentrate on just one thing, to get as much electrical charge build up. When the triffid tried to grab one of her hands, she let it. The plant tentacle touched an orsotic tip, and automatically the current flowed. Discharges of electricity began to snap and pop, as the fluids within vines and tentacles boiled and started to explode. It was as if this plant could feel pain, since the discharges made it much more agitated. It started to move much more violently, and tried to drag Chan, who in turn was struggling hard. The plant secreted the same types of acidic juices that had dissolved the clothing and bodies of the other victims, but this fluid was highly conductive to electricity. By squeezing the woman so that the forcefield was pressing into her body, and by extension the exposed orsotic tips, the current was moving through the forcefield and conducted along the acidic fluid. Current arcked and snapped, and smoke wisped off of the seared plant fibres.
Clemsen watched in almost transfixed horror as Chan struggled with the plant. He could see the static discharges and the arcs of electricity that shot out like miniature lightning bolts or highly exaggerated static discharges. Flashes surrounded the Odonan woman, who was struggling and kicking with all the enhanced momentum the forcefield belt gave to her. Vines, their fluids heated, exploded, and bits and pieces of charred and green plant dropped to the corridor floor. Smoke curled up, giving the air a somewhat foul stench.
Clemsen could see that Chan was losing. The body could only produce the bioelectrical current for so long, and it was never designed for sustained attacks. The triffid, with surprising strength, was beginning to overpower the field. Chan was sweating visibly, and breathing hard. The strain on her whole body was easy to see, as she poured everything she had in maintaining the forcefield and fighting off the plant. She was being visibly drained. She was no longer quite so vigorous as the plant started to drag her away.
Clemsen took a few steps in following her, and picked up the dropped phaser. Chan saw this, and through her torturous struggles, managed to say, "No, Terry! Don't use it. It'll kill you! It's too dangerous." She found the words were increasingly difficult to get out as she fought to keep the forcefield at maximum strength and the electricity flowing. Already she had caused significant damage to the plant, but it kept on going. "Don't. I can manage!" If only she could made the forcefield oscillate.
Clemsen held the phaser outwards, his arm fully extended. He fired, hoping that Chan was right when she said the forcefield could stop the radiation from reaching her. Clemsen saw no visible beam, just a lot of smoke and even some flame coming off of the plant. Clemsen kept firing, and kept moving as the triffid moved increasingly rapidly and tried to put Chan between itself and the weapon. The man jumped from side to side and just kept the trigger down, and was almost oblivious to the heat the phaser housing was producing. He was sweating too much and was too driven by the adrenaline to notice it now.
The wide-beam, gamma-ray-firing phaser was working. Parts of the plant turned black and dropped off, and in the process gave off a putrid, sooty smoke that fouled the air. Chan struggled even more viciously as the vines and the tentacles burned up and shriveled and fell off. Now the triffid was being wounded beyond what the redundancies in its form could handle, as it was streaked with black, its surfaces splitting open and oozing out fluids in noxious colours. Finally, it lost enough strength to hold Chan. She was able to break free. At the same time, Clemsen dropped the phaser, screaming with the pain in his palms and fingers. He looked, and saw the bubbly, blistering red marks of a burn that neatly outlined the handle of the phaser.
The Odonan woman, once free of the plant, shut down the forcefield belt that her weak body could no longer maintain. Weakened further than she thought, she stumbled forward and almost fell. Clemsen was over by her side immediately, grabbing hold of her to break her fall. Almost by instinct, he had his arms around her to steady her, and had her closer to him than he could never before imagine. He did not want this moment to have come this way. Chan was sweating hard, with small streaks of sweat flowing down her face and dripping to the corridor floor. She was also breathing hard, as if she had run flat out for a sustained distance.
"Oh," she managed to say between hurried breaths, "I should've... noticed it. Should not have... been surprised."
"You couldn't help it," Clemsen said, realizing how short of breath he was also.
"But you... fired that phaser... lethal radiation."
"I don't feel anything."
Chan slowly recovered, catching her breath and feeling her heartbeat slow down. She still felt hot, and now was very thirsty. Clemsen was the one feeling worse, as he was getting queasy and felt nauseated enough that he was worried about losing his last meal. He looked over Chan's shoulder-and immediately shouted, "Oh god!"
Chan turned, and backed away with Clemsen still holding on to her. "It's not dead yet," she said, as she watched it twitch. The central stalk was still vertical, and was trying to move. It leaned against the wall, and tried to ease its way along the wall. Dismembered parts of it were still twitching, and one was trying to move in a snake-like undulating motion. "The weapon," she said, getting the words out with effort.
"It's no good," Clemsen replied, as he reached over and picked it up. The casing was still hot, but it was clear that the weapon had malfunctioned. Even the outside controls were fused and somewhat melted. "Can you walk now?" he asked, almost hurriedly.
"Yeah, I think so. Strength's coming back."
"Go down to the isodoor there and close it."
"What are you-" Chan started to say, and then realized what he had in mind.
She worked up enough strength to stand on her own, and as quickly as she could, she moved towards the nearby triangular frame. A small panel controlled the door, and which could be activated by a code when there was no pressure difference across the doorframe. She keyed in the access code and touched the button that caused the door to slam shut quickly. However, the wounded triffid was moving in the other direction, towards the other door.
At the same time, Clemsen rushed towards the other door, but he found himself suddenly slowing down and feeling so queasy that he almost doubled over. He fought back whatever was causing this-and he was hoping it was just fear and adrenaline having an unpleasant reaction with each other-and made his way to the cargo access hatch. He flipped up a panel and tapped in another access code. Two yellow buttons lit up, so he touched the one on the right, and then set the timer below to twenty seconds. Once Chan was close enough to him, he pushed the second button. That caused the red alert klaxons to start to sound in a familiar hooting pattern.
"Lets go," Clemsen said, as he came alongside Chan, who was still struggling and a little disoriented. She was still sweaty, and he had never seen her so disheveled. He got her to hold on to him, while he fought back his own sense of nausea. "We've got only twenty seconds."
"That's all that you put on it?" the woman asked, but her mind was not really in it. Just as Chan was slowly recovering, so was the triffid. Enough of it remained viable that it could move. It was hard to kill, Chan knew, and what was worse, she would not be surprised if the smaller parts, if given the chance, could grow on their own into full plants. "This is a scary creature."
"I know," Clemsen said, as he helped Chan down the corridor to the second isolation door housing, while giving the triffid a wide berth. Once more, he felt a wave of nausea, and he almost felt like he was going to collapse and not make the door. However, he urged himself on-and found that it was now Chan who was helping him. Because she was still weak herself, she could not hold on when Clemsen fell to his knees just metres from the door. Chan helped him up, but he found standing rather difficult. "Oh, what's happening to me," he managed to say, his voice weak against the din of the klaxons.
"Hurry!" the woman said loudly. She used what strength she had left to help him up.
"I don't know."
"Not now," Chan cut in, and then half dragged the man past the triangular isolation door frame. If her reckoning of time was unaffected, she judged she had less than five seconds. As she turned to face the door, she saw that the triffid had regained most of its mobility, and could almost sense the impending danger. It was as if it knew what was going to happen. Chan pounded on the emergency switch on the isolation door panel, causing the thick door to slam across the opening and seal shut. As it clanged shut, Chan could hear, and slightly feel, the muffled thud, and the roar of the air. Inside the small section, the hatch cover had been blown off by explosive bolts. The sudden decompression sucked out the air and anything that was loose, including the fused phaser, the dropped tricorder, the smashed module cover, the debris inside the module and the triffid and all of its sheared parts. The vacuum caused it to explode into thousands of pieces that swirled in the out-rushing air before being sucked out into the cold, harsh and dead realm of interstellar space.
Clemsen leaned against the wall, and Chan. She noticed how pale and sickly he looked. She saw his right hand. "Oh god, the phaser," she muttered.
"It... burned me," the man managed to say. He was dizzy now, and was struggling to regain consciousness. He looked at the hand, and saw that it was much more than a burn. His entire hand was covered in bloody, pus-filled blisters, and they seemed to expand as they watched. The burns were also on his wrist, and no doubt throughout his body, which had been riddled with gamma radiation.
Chan heard the intercom beep, and on that, the voice from someone on the bridge. She ignored whomever was talking and whatever they were saying, and said, "Open up this hull! Get somebody down here from sickbay quickly! It's an emergency!"
The Alexandria simply did not have the facilities to deal with the radiation damage to Clemsen. Starbase Fourty-Four had more advanced facilities, but Chan knew, even with the ship straining its engines at warp twelve, it was not going to make it. It would not even be close. According to internal sensors, the modified phaser had put out far more gamma radiation than even Chan had anticipated, and it was extremely high-energy radiation that had pretty well damaged most of the cells in the body of Terry Clemsen. As she saw the readings, she was surprised that he had even survived as long as he had. Now, he had tumors forming through his body, while other cells had been damaged so badly that they had stopped functioning.
It was another mistake on her part.
Slowly, Chan entered the small room in sickbay where Clemsen lie sleeping, in isolation from the rest of the ward. Solok and the other doctors had treated his surface wounds, and had given him specialized cordical simulation treatments to ease the pain, but the damage to his body simply kept the doctors one step behind. It was just too widespread. His bone marrow had been totally destroyed, and his immune system wiped out. Chan, carrying germs that could not affect a human, was about the only person allowed to see him. He had already lost his liver and kidneys, and his lymphatic and circulatory systems were breaking down. A technology that could produce vessels that could travel among the stars at speeds far faster than a photon could not repair that kind of damage. Not even Odonan medical technology could undo that.
This was not a visit that Chan was looking forward to, but one that she knew she had to make. In her long experience, she had never dealt with anything like this. She had no idea what to say, or even how to react. She had seen death before, and had to deal with those who were dying or their survivors, but this just seemed different. Chan was plagued by her own sense of guilt. She had modified the phaser to act as she did, and she went ahead and used it without adequate testing. She had been obsessed about the triffid, and felt now that she had acted rashly. She had been unprepared. She had been surprised by the plant, and she had dropped the weapon.
The door slid open, allowing Chan to enter. Clemsen was lying on the lone bed in the room, awake and seemingly alert, although that could have been an aftereffect of the cordical simulator that was still on his forehead. On the other hand, the vital-signs display on the monitor above the bed indicated his weakened state. His more heavily-damaged right arm was covered in artificial skin, and was strapped to the side of the bed so that it would remain immobile. Several tubes had been inserted into that arm.
For the longest time, Chan just stood there. What was she supposed to say? What was she supposed to do?
"You can sit down," the man managed to say.
"Yes," Chan mumbled. She sat down in the small seat beside the bed. Looking at him, she again was fighting for words. "I guess I could not ask how you're feeling, but it's pretty obvious, isn't it?"
"Actually," the man said, with surprising strength in his voice. "The doctors have done something to me. It's this new-fangled medical technology that interrupts the pain. I guess I don't need to feel pain anymore, but can just feel like this... until the end." He turned away from the woman and looked towards the ceiling. Chan could tell by the gentle beeps and tones that the vital signs were in fact diminishing. About the only thing that was really going was his mind.
"I keep thinking," Chan finally said, "you didn't have to fire it."
"You would've died yourself," Clemsen replied. "I could tell. You were losing against the triffid."
"But... but..." Chan said, stumbling over her words once more. It was even worse, she thought, having to do this while not speaking her native language. Whatever she said could sound cold and clinical, as if she had no feelings at all. She simply lacked the means to express her feelings.
More weakly now, the man said, "I didn't... couldn't see you get eaten by that thing. I had no choice. The phaser was at my feet. I did what anybody would've done. I knew that you would have died had I not acted, while I might've died. Remember on the planet... remember."
"What?" Chan asked. The man's voice was ever weaker, so she found himself looking close to him. From her memory of just days earlier, she held onto his left hand, grabbing it between her two hands. She had the forcefield belt turned completely off, and so could feel his cold skin. He looked so pale.
"On the planet... you saved me from getting eaten... saved my life. I owed you the same consideration."
"But there was no risk to me then."
"But you... realize that there was. If the plant had grabbed you... we saw what could've happened. No, there was risk. Besides, us humans usually don't consider such things. In some of us anyway, it's instinctive. Someone is in trouble, and you try your best to save them."
"Of course," the Odonan woman said softly. She really did not know if Odonans normally acted the same way, since she had seen some examples where they had-and some where they had not. "But... but those things should never have happened."
Once more the man turned to face Chan, despite the fact that every move seemed to cause discomfort in both of them. "Chi, space is full of unknowns. Guilt over errors only matters if you use it to prevent the same thing from happening again. It was not your fault... I volunteered to go with you. I almost forced you to take me with you. I understood the risks. I understood the risks picking up that phaser."
"But there were mistakes, mistakes that killed three-two people." She was unsure of the count now.
However, Clemsen was not. "Three."
"Yes... three. Back home, that would be unacceptable."
"Maybe among Odonans, with their longer lifespans. Mistakes that cost lives... I can see how that would affect Odonans." He looked at her again, perhaps for the last time. His eyes seemed somehow sharp, but distant. "I saw you when you first came on board. Even before, I had heard we were getting an Odonan exchange officer. This exchange program... is really nothing more than a glorified chance by the Federation to let others spy on them, and vice versa, I thought at the time. Why would an Odonan come? What could Odonans learn from us? But it was you... a remarkable person... one that I wished I could've known better."
"So do I."
"But I did. You came here, bringing something inside... of you. Now, you fear it is happening again. You do the best you can. Nobody can be perfect, but we always learn from our mistakes, maybe not so much these precise mistakes since you'll never encounter carnivorous plants again, but the process that led to the mistake. Maybe that is where the learning is. However, to learn from a mistake, you can't get the guilt of the mistake consume you. That guilt can be destructive."
"I doesn't make things any easier."
"A person who commands... if only a landing party, a search party... has this risk, this responsibility. I was working on that. I thought command was in my future. I can... almost... understand. It's a difficult thing to do, but the best can do it, and learn from it and do their job better. The weaker ones... lose their command."
Chan heard the words, but said nothing immediately. He was talking almost as if he was reading her mind, replaying the memories that she wished she could suppress. "Yes, I know."
"I don't want to remember you as a person who tried and failed." Even as he spoke, the vital signs on the monitor got weaker. He could now barely keep his eyes open.
"Yes, I understand," Chan said softly. Being in space was not easy. It was, as Clemsen had said, full of risks and dangers. Those in space knew that, and understood the dangers. Technology could just minimize but not totally eliminate those dangers. The hardest part was coming across something nobody had come across before, having to make decisions with no idea of the consequences or alternatives. It was the knowledge of experience, and intuition, and the sheer sentient will that Chan-and Clemsen too-felt that allowed them to succeed, even if only on occasion. Decisions were based on all of those factors, but rashness was not one of those. It was something that Chan should have known, as she had undoubtedly heard it before, but sometimes it took experiencing it to fully understand.
Clemsen spoke again, his weak voice enough to break Chan's concentration. "It's too bad we... could not have served together longer, seen many planets... many things. That is perhaps the saddest part of all."
"I feel it too," the woman replied. "A chance to learn... now lost."
Chan noticed one last thing. The beeping on the monitor board had almost totally faded away. The vital signs were almost at zero, and even the brain function was declining. A silent alarm was flashing here and sounding elsewhere, and Chan suspected that Solok was on his way. It did not matter now. She was still leaning over him, and the fragment of his consciousness, his mind, that was still there. She heard, or thought she heard, what he said with his final breaths.
"The Alexandria. It's a good ship. Serve it well, Lieutenant Commander Chan Chi Lee."
(End of Story),
