Star Trek: The Lost Era - 08 - 2319 - One Constant Star

by David R. George III

  “What is it, Commander?” Tenger asked when he reached Fenn. The science officer stood before a testing platform, upon which sat a metal plate filled with a patchwork of rudimentary solid-state circuits. The console before it contained four displays, three of the screens stacked beside a larger one. They each presented a distinct view of a section of the portal. The trio of smaller displays showed, from top to bottom, a panel that looked to Tenger like a solar cell, an emitter node, and the area of the structure that had been compromised, possibly by weapons fire. The fourth screen held an image of an entire arc of the portal that included the two Enterprise shuttlecraft beside it. As Tenger watched the larger display, it jumped.

  “Did you see that, sir?” Fenn asked, her agitation plain. She peered at Tenger with only one of her eyes, while the other observed the console.

  “Do you mean the flicker?” Tenger asked. “I’m sure Commander Buonarroti can have one of his engineers replace a faulty display.”

  “Commander, the display isn’t failing,” Fenn said. “I’ve run two diagnostics on it.”

  Tenger glanced at the other displays just as the larger one blinked again. “I think there might be something wrong with your diagnostics, Commander.”

  “Sir, these—” Fenn pointed to the three smaller screens. “—are exhibiting still images of the portal recorded by our probe, but this—” She indicated the large monitor. “—is a live feed.”

  Tenger watched the display again. Nothing happened for a full minute, and then another, but finally the image once more jumped, and he saw something he hadn’t before: the structure of the portal remained precisely the same, but the two shuttlecraft vanished. So too did the rocky plain inside the framework, replaced by the same grayish white expanse that stretched away outside the framework. After just an instant, though, the image reverted to its previous state.

  “What’s going on?” Tenger asked. “If it’s not an error in the display, could it be a problem with the probe or the transmission signal?”

  “Lieutenant Rainbow Sky ran a diagnostic on the probe, and Commander Kanchumurthi verified that its transmission signal is strong and shows no signs of interference,” Fenn said.

  “Then what is the explanation?” Tenger asked.

  “The portal is failing.”

  The impact on Tenger would not have been greater if the science officer had drawn a phaser and stunned him with it. “What?”

  “When the portal is functioning as designed, we can see within it the destination to which things can travel through it,” Fenn explained, “but when it’s not, we see the surface of Rejarris Two.”

  “It’s the power,” Buonarroti said, speaking as though coming out of a daze himself.

  “Yes,” Fenn agreed. “I think so.”

  “The portal uses solar cells as its primary power source,” Buonarroti said. “With the extreme cloud cover surrounding the planet, though, those cells run at a significantly reduced rate. In passing objects through it and generating tractor beams, it might have overextended the current capacity of its solar energy collection.”

  “What will happen if it loses power completely?” Tenger asked, already knowing the answer.

  “We’ll lose the ability to see the two shuttlecraft and Captain Sulu and the others,” Buonarroti said, “and to communicate with them.”

  “We won’t be able to send anything through the portal to them,” Fenn said. Tenger understood the terrible repercussions of such a situation.

  “Can we do something about it?” he asked. “Can we provide it a different power source?”

  “Maybe, but it would likely require several days,” Buonarroti said.

  “We probably wouldn’t be able to replace the power source before the portal shuts down completely,” Fenn said.

  Even though the recovery of the Enterprise landing party remained the top priority and ultimate goal of the present operation, another situation required more immediate attention. The security chief found the intercom on Fenn’s console and activated it. “Tenger to sickbay.”

  “Sickbay here,” came the response. “This is Doctor Morell.”

  “Doctor, what is the status of the medication you’re preparing for Ensign Young?”

  “We’ve tested several different antivenins and have seen good results,” Morell said. “We’re confident of one particular formulation, but because of the circumstances, where the medication will be administered away from sickbay, with no provisions for anybody other than a medic to treat the ensign should he respond badly, we’re continuing to refine it. We should have it within the next twelve to twenty-four hours.”

  “It might not be possible to deliver the medicine to Ensign Young at that time,” Tenger said. “Which would be medically more advisable, to give him what you’ve prepared right now, or to give him nothing more for several days?”

  Morell did not reply right away. As the silence extended, Tenger fought his inclination to urge her for an answer. She knew her job, and he allowed her the time she needed—though he had no way of knowing exactly how much time they had left before such a decision would be rendered meaningless. Finally, she said, “I cannot fully warrant the effectiveness or even the safety of the antivenin at this point, but failing to treat Ensign Young for several days will probably result in his death.”

  “Prepare the medication for delivery through the portal at once,” Tenger ordered. “Report to the transporter room with it as soon as you’re ready.”

  “Understood,” Morell said. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  Tenger tapped the channel closed. “Keep me informed,” he said to Buonarroti and Fenn. “Both of you.” Then he exited the engineering lab, on his way to meet the chief medical officer in the transporter room in an attempt to save Hawkins Young before it was too late.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Sulu stood at the front of Amundsen’s cabin, staring through the viewport, waiting. Behind her, Ensign Kostas cared for Ensign Young, whose condition had worsened. His breathing had grown more labored, the already rough sound of his respiration through the tracheostomy tube becoming shallower and more erratic.

  The captain glanced at the padd in her hand and set it down on the main console. A patch of brown dirt clung to one corner, doubtless where it had fallen to the ground. Just moments earlier, an alert had told them that sensors detected a padd dropped through the portal by the Enterprise crew. The captain had retrieved it and brought it back aboard the shuttlecraft, where she’d listened to the single message recorded onto it.

  “Captain, this is Tenger,” the security chief had said, and Sulu could tell that the normal tension with which he conducted his duties had increased dramatically. “Our view of the two shuttlecraft through the portal has become intermittent. Scans show that the portal is losing power, likely because it employs solar cells, which have been adversely effected by the continuous cloud cover. As a result, it is possible that the portal will lose power completely, meaning that we will lose our ability to communicate with the landing party.”

  And also making our return a virtual impossibility, Sulu had thought.

  “Commander Buonarroti believes that he and his engineers will be able to restore power to the portal,” Tenger had continued, “though because we are still studying how it functions, he isn’t sure how long that will take. Because we might be out of touch with the landing party for several days, we are immediately loading a log buoy with the antivenin for Ensign Young. Doctor Morell wanted to do more testing, but she would prefer that the medication be administered to the ensign sooner rather than later.”

  Via messages scrolling across a padd on top of Amundsen, Sulu and Kostas had kept the chief medical officer apprised of Young’s condition. The captain understood that, because neither Morell nor any of the doctors on her staff would be able to monitor in person the ensign’s reaction to the antivenin, she would want to test the treatment as thoroughly as possible beforehand. It seemed the right choice, though, not to risk waiting
days to deliver the medicine.

  “It is unclear how soon the portal will lose all power,” Tenger had said. “For that reason, we will not launch the log buoy, but will transport it to a point above you, as we’ve done with the padds. The buoy will be under power, though, and will descend through the portal and land beside you. We will continue to deliver our regular status reports to you every two hours for as long as we can. If the portal does shut down, we will contact you immediately once it is functioning again.” The security chief paused, and Sulu thought that he might include a personal note—Good luck, or something of that nature—but he simply said, “Tenger out.”

  As Sulu watched the sky through the forward port, she wondered how the chief engineer intended to restore power to the portal. She’d had her own ideas about that, and so she’d recorded a message back to the ship, which she’d delivered by way of a scrolling padd. She feared that modifying the portal to utilize a different power source could alter its function, thus permanently separating the landing party from the Enterprise crew—and home.

  Thirty meters ahead of Amundsen, three dark points suddenly appeared in midair. They descended and lengthened, as though growing out of nothing. Sulu recognized them as the landing legs of a log buoy. The drumlike main body appeared next, but then suddenly the device plummeted, clearly no longer under power. It canted as it fell. One leg struck the side of a boulder and collapsed inward. The buoy crashed against the hard stone, then tumbled to the ground and onto its side.

  Sulu understood at once what had happened. The portal had obviously lost power just as the buoy moved through the transitional plain between Rejarris II and the unnamed world on which the captain and her two crew members found themselves. With the portal no longer functioning, the rest of the buoy could not complete the journey. No longer whole, the part of the device that had come through failed; unable to fly, it plunged to the ground.

  The captain reached to the sensor panel and scanned the wreckage. Depending on how the buoy had been compromised, it could pose a danger, either through the release of radiation or the explosion of its power system—if, for example, the coolant system remained on Rejarris II. Fortunately, Sulu read no such issues, nor did she detect any life-forms nearby, above or below the surface.

  Moving to the hatch, the captain told Ensign Kostas, “The buoy is here. I’m going to retrieve the antivenin.” She could only hope that the medication had not only made it through the portal, but that it had survived the crash intact. Carrying a phaser and a communicator with her, she exited Amundsen.

  Sulu studied the buoy as she approached it. The device looked to her like a wounded animal: its leg bent, its metal casing dented in numerous places, the fractional portion of its main drum looking as though its upper section had been sliced off cleanly by an impossibly sharp blade. It made her think of the terrible ordeal that Linojj had endured.

  Sulu looked in the direction of the spot where Ensign Young had first fallen. Linojj’s arm no longer lay there on the ground, a grotesque, lifeless monument to the first officer’s traumatic injury. The captain had collected the severed limb and placed it in a secure specimen container, which she’d then stowed in the equipment storage area aboard Amundsen. Although the arm would be of no use to Linojj, it seemed wrong to Sulu to leave a part of her friend to rot on the soil of some distant, unknown world.

  At the buoy, the captain examined the two small panels that allowed access to a pair of storage compartments. Located at the bottom of the main body, the hinged doors—and presumably the spaces beyond—had passed in their entirety through the portal. Sulu tapped at the control padd beside one of the panels, but nothing happened. The buoy had lost power.

  The captain lowered herself to the ground, flipped over onto her back, and slid in among the legs of the buoy. She located the manual release for one of the doors and pulled the inset handle. The panel popped open with an audible click. When she extricated herself from the buoy’s legs and checked the storage compartment, though, she found it empty.

  The manual release for the second access panel proved more difficult. Sulu didn’t know if its mechanism had been damaged in the crash, or the door wedged shut, but she ended up having to force the handle with a well-chosen rock. When she opened the compartment, a clear, yellow-tinted liquid spilled out.

  Bitter disappointment clutched at Sulu, who understood the implications for Ensign Young. When she looked inside the storage compartment, though, she saw not only the pieces of a broken container, but a second, intact ampoule, as well as another padd. She reached in and grabbed both items, then read the small label affixed to the vial: ENSIGN HAWKINS YOUNG; ANTIVENIN FOR VENOM OF UNKNOWN ANIMAL. A list followed of the chemicals utilized in creating the serum. When Sulu checked the padd, she saw a single entry recorded on it.

  Back in the shuttlecraft, the captain handed the vial of antivenin to Kostas, and then the padd. “It contains a message to you from Doctor Morell,” she said. Sulu assumed her chief medical officer had instructions for Kostas about treating Young.

  While the ensign listened to the message and then apparently read through some written material appended to it, Sulu waited, pondering what she should do next. For the moment, she would assume that Buonarroti and Enterprise’s engineers would be able to reactivate the portal. That might not come to pass, but she could deal with that if and when the time came. In the meanwhile, she needed to be prepared once Tenger reestablished contact with her.

  “I’m ready, Captain,” Kostas said. Sulu watched as the ensign pulled her medkit from beneath the antigrav stretcher. She extracted a hypospray, inserted the ampoule into it, then—after hesitating for just a moment—injected the antivenin into the front of Young’s shoulder.

  Sulu didn’t notice any immediate difference in the wounded ensign’s respiration, but Kostas picked up a tricorder and scanned her patient. “There’s already a small improvement in his lungs,” she said. “Since the edema has lasted as long as it has, it may take some time to clear up.”

  “Well done, Ensign,” Sulu said.

  “Thank you, sir, but I’ll need to keep Ensign Young under observation,” Kostas said. “It’s important to ensure that the venom is completely counteracted, and that he suffers no side effects from the medication. Doctor Morell issued instructions about what to watch for, as well as about prospective treatments.”

  “Good,” the captain said. “The portal has lost power, and so for the time being, we’re out of touch with the Enterprise.”

  Kostas nodded and glanced nervously at Young, but then she recovered enough to conceal her obvious anxiety. “So then what do we do now?” she asked.

  “That’s a good question, Ensign,” Sulu said. At the moment, the captain could think of only one thing to do next, which troubled her. As a starship captain, as a leader of more than seven hundred crew members, often in dangerous situations, she liked to have options. Facing circumstances that allowed for just a single reasonable course of action could be liberating in a way—it removed the responsibility of having to weigh various possibilities and make a choice among them—but Sulu thought that it more often than not meant that she had failed to consider every aspect of a situation. “For now, I’m going to continue what I’ve been doing: searching for the people who constructed the portal. When Ensign Young recovers, you and he can join me.”

  “What if we can’t find them?”

  “From all we can tell, the inhabitants of Rejarris Two successfully escaped a catastrophic asteroid strike on their world,” Sulu said. “They did not have warp capability, but they had to have gone somewhere. The portal seems their likeliest salvation. And remember, I did find evidence today of somebody having visited this planet.”

  “But that was just one small crash site,” Kostas said. “What if that’s not evidence of the people who built the portal? Or even it if is, what if we can’t find them? What if those who escaped through the portal intentionally changed its destination after passing through it? Or what if its
settings changed over time?”

  “Those are all possibilities, Ensign,” Sulu admitted. “But while it’s important to be prepared for different eventualities, it’s a mistake to concentrate on the pessimistic view. We have to figure out what will provide us the best chance of returning to the Enterprise, and then work to make that happen.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kostas said, lowering her head.

  Sulu offered the engineer a tight-lipped smile. “It’s all right, Ensign,” she said. “Look after your patient. I’m going to chart search routes for us.”

  As Kostas took additional tricorder readings of Young, the captain walked back to Amundsen’s main console. She downloaded the navigational logs of Pytheas to Amundsen before beginning to plan the route they would take across the planet. She would first revisit the site of the apparent crash, then continue in that general direction.

  In the back of her mind, though, she asked herself all of the questions that Kostas had, and more.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Rafaele Buonarroti wanted to throw something. More than that, he felt the urge to race from the engineering lab to the transporter room, beam down to Rejarris II, and level a phaser at the portal. The device should not have been so complicated.

  Except it’s not that complicated, is it? he asked himself. And that’s part of the problem. A device constructed with a greater degree of technological sophistication would have been easier to understand, and easier to modify. The sciences team still hadn’t determined just how the portal managed to create a link between two noncontiguous points, or even whether those two points were separated by space, time, or both—or whether they even existed within the same universe.

  For his part, Buonarroti had surrendered the task of figuring out how to reverse the flow of the portal, in favor of working to reenergize it. It had taken more than a day to realize that the singular integration of the solar cells might point to the lack of a backup power source, and it had required another day to examine the massive structure and confirm that. Forty-eight hours after losing contact with Captain Sulu and the landing party, they had made no progress.