by L. A. Graf
Kirk gave a businesslike nod, tucking his own helmet under one arm. “All right, then. Any questions?”
Chekov raised his hand tentatively, more convinced than ever that some horrible mistake had been made. At Kirk’s sharp glance of acknowledgment, he admitted, as evenly as possible, “Sir, I don’t understand why I’m here.”
“You took the orienteering course at Starfleet Academy.”
The answer was so close to his earlier thoughts that [49] Chekov wasn’t sure at first what to say. “Yes, sir.” It seemed a safe enough option.
To his even greater surprise, Kirk smiled, a little gently. “We’re going into an uncharted cave to retrieve a lost survey team, and there’s a very good chance we won’t be able to use tricorders to map our way in and out. I need someone who can accurately record the route we take into this cave, and read his own map well enough to get us all home again.” Kirk clapped a hand to his shoulder. “Can you do that, Ensign?”
The course had, indeed, covered the basics of mapmaking and surveying. But Chekov had always viewed it as an interesting introduction to the science of navigating, not to mention a complementary elective to go with his other mathematics courses. It had never occurred to him that the primitive marriage of compass and measuring stick would have any practical use once he got to outer space.
There was a lot about serving on a starship that he hadn’t expected.
“Yes, sir. I can do that, sir.”
Kirk gave a satisfied nod. “Then let’s head into the abyss.”
There was something wrong with the Enterprise’s orbit.
Sulu wasn’t sure when he first became aware of the problem. Despite McCoy’s viral detoxification, he’d spent the morning trying to ignore sporadic attacks of hand tremors and the unpleasant feeling that a layer of cotton wool had been inserted between his brain and his sensory nerves. From the sidelong glimpses he’d caught of Kevin Riley clenching his jaw or pinching at the [50] bridge of his nose, he suspected the navigator was feeling much the same. Fortunately, with the Enterprise parked in slow, stable orbit around Tlaoli’s Earth-sized mass, Sulu didn’t think his muzziness posed too much danger to the ship.
Until he noticed that their orbital altitude had decayed by almost twelve percent.
“Mr. Spock, permission to adjust orbit,” he said at once.
Commander Spock glanced down at him from the engineering station, where he was working with Crewman Russ and Commander Scott to finish bringing their warp nacelles into alignment. “Why should our orbit require correction, Mr. Sulu? I do not recall ordering any course changes.”
“You didn’t, sir.” Sulu scanned his monitors with a frown, wondering if his tremors had jerked his hands into doing something his brain had never ordered. But all of his controls insisted that no helm changes had occurred since Stiles and Leslie had first laid in their course several hours ago. Which made their current position even more of a mystery. “According to my logs, sir, we didn’t change course. But somehow, we’re fifty kilometers closer to the planet now than we were an hour ago.”
“Due to a helm malfunction?” Spock crossed the bridge with strides that looked calm and unhurried but still brought him to Sulu’s side within seconds. “Run a systems check, Lieutenant.”
Sulu programmed it in with a quick stab, aware of Riley doing the same thing on his side of the console. In a moment, green monitor lights flashed across both their panels, as one by one the ship’s internal systems were [51] checked and verified. None showed anomalies, but the gap between the perfect yellow circle that should have marked their orbit around Tlaoli and the blue spiral that was their actual position continued to widen. Spock lifted an eyebrow when he saw it.
“Correct our heading, Mr. Sulu.”
“Aye, sir.” Sulu lifted the ship’s nose and nudged it gently to starboard. With a kick of impulse acceleration so subtle that he wondered if anyone besides him even noticed it, the Enterprise slid back onto the plane of her stable orbit, and the blue and yellow lines merged into a smooth white curve.
“Interesting,” Mr. Spock murmured. “As well as disturbing.”
From across the bridge, Montgomery Scott made the deep rumbling noise that was his version of clearing his throat. “It didn’t look as if the ship had any trouble regaining altitude, Mr. Spock.”
“No,” the Vulcan agreed. “But given the record of previous starships that have crashed on this planet, Mr. Scott, I fail to find that entirely reassuring. Please continue to observe our position, Lieutenant. If this discrepancy occurs again, I want to—”
“Hail coming in from the captain!”
The loud declaration from the communications station sliced through whatever Spock had been going to say. As a second-shift bridge officer, Lieutenant Palmer was perfectly competent, but she didn’t have Lieutenant Uhura’s deft ability to announce a hail without disrupting the flow of normal ship business. Sulu could have sworn Spock let out a tiny sigh behind him, but all the [52] Vulcan first officer said out loud was, “Put it through, Ensign.”
A burst of static followed his words, intense enough to make Sulu’s teeth hurt. After a moment, it subsided to a low-pitched drone, and he could hear Kirk’s voice. It seemed to be haloed in echoes, as if the captain were standing in a large empty room.
“We’re about one hundred meters inside the cave system, Mr. Spock.” Kirk sounded as calm and composed as if he were seated on his own bridge. “It’s really cold in here, and we’re already seeing some instability in our tricorder readings, even though we’ve got it rigged to battery power. Any suggestions for shielding it from whatever disruption we’re running into?”
“I believe it may be counterproductive to protect the tricorder’s scanners, Captain.” Spock’s voice held the carefully neutral note that he usually employed to disagree with his captain. “Any shielding device you installed would prevent the tricorder from detecting the source of whatever is affecting it, perhaps leading you into greater danger than if you left it unshielded.”
“Good point, Spock.” One of the things Sulu liked most about his captain was Kirk’s ability to accept criticism and modify his plans accordingly. “Is there anything else we can do?”
“I would suggest, Captain, that you program the tricorder to take an average of several readings and report the error function along with the median value.”
“Did you get that, Mr. Sanner?” Kirk’s voice faded as if he had turned away from his communicator’s voice detection panel.
[53] From farther away in the echoing cave passage, Sulu could hear a muffled male voice saying, “Yeah, but what do we do if the error function is larger than the reading?”
“We’ll worry about that when it happens,” Kirk told him, then his voice strengthened again. “Spock, I’m going to have Lieutenant Uhura begin reporting in every fifteen minutes as we proceed through the cave. If you stop getting reports, try to lock in on our communicator signals with the transporter and follow us from that point. Is that clear?”
Spock exchanged doubtful glances with Chief Engineer Scott, and his voice dropped into careful neutrality again. “Your instructions are clear, Captain. However, given our previous failure to locate the lost survey team on long-range scanners, I estimate the probability of our being able to carry them out to be less than thirty-five percent.”
“Understood,” Kirk said calmly. Sulu just hoped the other members of the rescue party shared their leader’s love of a challenge. “Do the best you can, Mr. Spock. Kirk out.”
Scotty was already closing up the warp control panel on the engineering station. “I’ll get down to the main transporter room, Mr. Spock, and start tracking them now, while we still have a good connection to their communicator signals. We can finish the warp alignment later. It’s good enough now for anything you’ll need to do inside the system.”
“Very well, Mr. Scott.” Spock returned to the command chair, although, as usual, he stood near it rather than occupy it in Kirk’s absence. “Lieute
nant Palmer, please inform Mr. Boma’s base camp that we are going [54] to interrupt the transport of their rock samples back to the ship. I want the transporter free to evacuate the rescue team on a moment’s notice.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” Palmer relayed the Vulcan’s message. A few moments later, she turned from the communications desk again. “Mr. Spock, Geologic Technician Kulessa wants to know if we can beam him and Mr. Fisher over to Team One’s original base camp so they can begin packing up the samples there. He says they left some important fossiliferous specimens behind when they went to move Survey Team Three to the northern karst region.”
The Vulcan tilted his head to one side as he considered the request. Instead of answering directly, he touched the intraship communicator controls. “Spock to main transporter room. Commander Scott, are you there?”
“Just arrived,” said the engineer’s dour voice. “Don’t tell me you need to beam the captain out already?”
“No, but we have a request for a cross-surface transport. Can you lock onto Mr. Fisher and Mr. Kulessa’s communicator signals in the wetlands region and transport them to the coordinates of Base Camp One?”
“That I can,” Scotty replied. “Locked on and beaming now.”
And that was when it happened. With a deflection so swift and small that it barely escaped the automatic suppression of the inertial dampeners, the Enterprise broke out of orbit and began to slowly spiral down toward the planet again. Sulu activated the systems monitor as soon as he felt the change, and a moment later it confirmed what he already knew. He turned around to report his discovery to Spock, but two other voices overrode him.
[55] “Transporter room to bridge,” said Montgomery Scott’s voice. It sounded even more somber than it had before. “We got those geologists to their destination, Mr. Spock, but just barely. The transporter beam hit some kind of energy field down on that planet, and now our long-range sensors aren’t working at all. I can’t focus in on the cave party’s communicators.”
“Neither can I, sir,” said Lieutenant Palmer. “There’s a burst of subspace static coming from the cave region. I’m barely maintaining contact with Lieutenant Uhura’s narrow-beam communicator.”
Despite the competing claims on his attention, Spock’s keen Vulcan gaze focused directly on Sulu. “Have we experienced another helm change, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir. Thirty seconds ago, the Enterprise veered two degrees to port and five degrees off vertical.” Sulu tightened his grip on his helm controls to still another spasm of tremors. “Permission to correct our course heading, sir.”
“Granted.” Spock came forward to the helm again, stooping to watch the piloting monitor. “Computer, run the helm log buffer backward for the last ninety seconds.”
The monitor obediently flashed an inset miniature of its usual display, one in which the course curves contracted back on themselves instead of extending forward. Sulu glanced from the real-time orbital path which he had just adjusted back to a stable white line, to the data buffer which was replaying the previous ninety seconds of helm control. Two discrepant blue and yellow lines raced each other backward for fifty seconds, then suddenly jogged back into a single white line. [56] None of the engine or helm displays showed so much as a whisker of movement when they did.
“It’s not a ship malfunction, sir,” Sulu said.
“No,” Spock agreed. “Nor does it resemble the kind of natural subspace aperture Mr. Fisher suspected. Nevertheless, I believe we may be seeing what caused the crash of nineteen other spaceships.” His dark gaze lifted to the nondescript, sunlit curve of Tlaoli which filled half the viewscreen. “Some unknown force on that planet is beginning to pull the Enterprise down toward it.”
Chapter Four
THE LAST TIME Uhura had been inside a cave, she had been twelve, and there had been handrails to help you through passages like these.
She edged her way along a sinuous vertical cavern, the glow of her carbide lamp inching forward with each cautious step. Where the light touched the wet cave walls, it made the translucent flowstone shine like polished marble. Occasional cascades of runoff splattered down to pool on the narrow ledge where she walked before they spilled over into the darkness below. Smaller trickles fell from the travertine draperies and stalagmites that rilled the passage above her head. Uhura had learned the hard way to be wary of them. Her sturdy cave helmet protected her from bumps, but it also had an unfortunate tendency to divert trickles of water right [58] down the back of her neck. The nano-woven fabric of her cave jumper wicked away the moisture, but it couldn’t protect her from the shiver of cold that came with each unexpected drip.
“You know what I’d like to see?” asked a voice from the darkness ahead of Uhura.
She thought for a moment, then suggested, “A concession stand?”
“Hey, good idea!” The pleasant tenor could have belonged to any of the three men on the rescue team, but only caving expert Zap Sanner could sound so nonchalant after the hours they’d spent threading through this cold, wet maze. Uhura saw the misty glow of his carbide lamp appear around the shoulder of rock in front of her, followed a moment later by his scratched and dented caving helmet. “How about one with a transporter pad built in, for all us wimps who don’t want to finish the all-day tour?”
“I’d settle for one with a restroom.” Uhura shifted back a step along the ledge, to where the footing was a little flatter and drier. If Sanner was backtracking, that meant he intended to confer with the rest of the rescue team and perhaps make them retrace their steps. Again.
The geologist confirmed her guess by hunkering down on the edge of the bedrock ledge they’d been following, his muddy arms folded across his knees. “I’d settle for a tape measure, to see just how far down this solution fracture goes.”
“Why? So you could figure out how long it would take you to fall if you slipped?” The caustic female voice was followed by a third halo of light inching its way forward beneath the overhanging flowstone. Medic [59] Diana Wright was even shorter than Uhura, but built along sturdier lines. She had to be careful to keep her shoulders parallel to the rock face so as not to overbalance and tip backward into the open chasm, which made the tartness of her voice a little more understandable. “Maybe you could take a tricorder reading while you were going down.”
Fortunately, Sanner was as good-natured as he was oblivious to cold and damp. “You’d probably get a better measurement by counting how many seconds it took before you heard me hit the bottom.” He gave his geologic tricorder an exasperated look. “Even using Mr. Spock’s error-averaging technique, I’m pretty sure I can spit farther than this thing can scan right now.”
“Want to try another chemical battery?” Angela Martine came around the curving passage in Wright’s wake. Even after two hours of cave exploration, the weapons officer looked barely encumbered by her pack-load of power sources. Uhura felt almost guilty about carrying a light day pack with only rations and water and a narrow-beam communicator inside. She had offered to share Martine’s load, and had been politely but firmly turned down. All she could do now was squeeze a little closer to Sanner, to make more room in the curving passage for the arriving members of the team.
“It’s not the battery,” Sanner was saying. “It’s the weird subspace interference that comes out of the rocks down here. It’s like it reaches out and grabs whatever power is flowing through the electronic circuits, so no matter how much the battery generates, it’s never enough. All my data looks wacky now, even the stuff I [60] collected before when Mr. Spock’s averaging program was working.” He glanced up at the rest of the team. “Are your instruments working any better?”
Uhura carefully wriggled out of her backpack and slid the narrow-beam communicator out of its waterproof case. The last time she’d used it, it had been able to open a subspace channel to the Enterprise, but the internal amplifier hadn’t been able to separate words from the fierce crackle of static. She hoped the computers on the ship had been able to pro
cess her status report out of the subspace background noise. Whether the source of the problem was a transperiodic ore deposit or not, there was no doubt they were drawing closer to it. When Uhura toggled the communicator this time, the dim glow of the wavelength monitor didn’t show a single frequency open for hailing.
“We’ve got no subspace reception,” she reported. “The ship may be able to track our signal with its sensors, but we can’t hear them and we can’t hail them.”
Diana Wright freed her medical tricorder from where she had slung it beneath one arm and bent her carbide light directly on it. The tricorder came to life with a chirp that sounded odd even to Uhura. After a moment, Wright looked up at them with a wry smile.
“Here’s how well my instrument is working. According to it, we all have Andorian distemper.”
Martine snorted, dropping her pack beside her and hunkering down on her heels to sort through it. “Is that fatal?”
“Only if you’re an Andorian camel. Which, apparently, is what we now are.” The medic snapped her instrument shut and stowed it back under her arm. “What about your phasers, Martine?”
[61] “Their circuits are working,” said the weapons officer, lifting one up to carbide lamp level to run an internal check. “But if you keep them fully charged, they lose power at a ridiculous rate. I have them all drained and disconnected now, so we’ll have to snap in new charge units if we need them. And I’m not sure how long they’ll hold out.”
“Then let’s hope we don’t need them.” James Kirk came through the curve of passage behind them, as surefooted and secure as if the wet ledge of bedrock were his own bridge deck. He was shadowed by the smaller and stockier figure of the young command-track ensign he’d brought along to carry the rescue gear and map the cave the old-fashioned way, drawing all of its twists and turns in a waterproof plastisheet notebook. Uhura hadn’t quite caught the ensign’s name when he’d first been introduced, and all she remembered now was that it was something Slavic.