Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Young Adult Books #1: The Star Ghost

by Brad Strickland

  “Then where on the station is he?” demanded the Commander.

  “Jake Sisko is not on Deep Space Nine.”

  Sisko and Odo looked at each other. Carefully Sisko said, “Computer: Justify your statements about Jake Sisko.”

  The computer replied, “Jake Sisko is aboard Deep Space Nine. Jake Sisko is not aboard Deep Space Nine.”

  “Which is true?” yelled the frustrated commander.

  “Both,” the computer responded.

  Drawing a long breath, Sisko said, “Let Nog go, Odo. I think we have a bad situation on our hands.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Walking through the station was like walking through a spaceship made of glass. Through the transparent deck plates, red, yellow, and blue-white stars blazed beneath Jake’s feet. He blinked in wonder at the intricate maze of power conduits, sensor cables, and servo devices he could see through the transparent walls. He felt as if he were looking at an X ray of the station. Once or twice he and Dhraako passed a Bajoran or a human, but they never even noticed the two. The misty, dim forms drifted silently past, their features hardly visible.

  This way, directed the speaking device. Dhraako manipulated the instrument of spheres and crystal, and with a flash of light everything grew even more transparent. Come, said Dhraako. Move slowly, Jake Sisko. Follow Dhraako. The Quester sank right into a closed door.

  Jake gulped. He inched forward and felt himself oozing right through the closed metal hatch! It was like passing through a cool, tingly wall of water. “All right!” he said on the other side. “Can we do that again?”

  When necessary. Dhraako manipulated the device, there was another flash, and the station became somewhat more visible. Dhraako had led Jake to a narrow ledge in a hollow cylindrical shaft that went straight down.

  Jake saw where they were heading. “Wait,” he said. “This service tube leads to one of the damaged reactors. The radiation down there will kill us!”

  No, Dhraako assured him. Jake Sisko and Dhraako are perfectly transparent to such radiation.

  It took faith to trust the Dhraakellian, but Jake swallowed and nodded. Dhraako swung to one side and stepped onto a ladder built into the emergency maintenance slot of the lift-tube, and Jake followed. A few red service lights illuminated the tube. Dhraako and Jake had to climb down the emergency ladder because the service lift had been demolished by the Cardassians. Since the tube led only to an unusable reactor, Jake guessed, O’Brien had seen no reason to repair it right away.

  Jake had trouble hanging on to the transparent rungs set into a recess that ran straight down the wall of tie tube. If he fell, would he smash at the bottom of his fall? Or was he so insubstantial that his body would pass right through the walls and into space? He shivered and continued his long climb, trying not to look down.

  They were nearing the ring of Cardassian artificial-gravity generators. Jake remembered hearing O’Brien complain about the primitive devices. In the main body of the station a Federation inertia-damping system had replaced the old-fashioned gravity collars, but so few people came here that O’Brien must have left this one functioning. What would happen when they passed it?

  He soon found out. They reached a brief zone of dizzy weightlessness, and Dhraako spun, so that his head was where his feet had been a moment before. The Quester began to climb—to climb “down” from their former perspective. Jake followed him. Very soon he felt the tug of gravity, and then he seemed to be climbing up, even though he was still moving toward the bottom of the station. It was all very confusing.

  Jake knew that the huge space station was shaped something like a top with a long central shaft. Three bulges interrupted the shaft. From top to bottom, and from largest to smallest, they were the Ops and Promenade decks, the storage and engineering decks, and finally the fusion reactors, toward the very bottom. The Habitat Ring, where the station’s personnel and visitors lived, was attached to the Promenade by crossover bridges, and this extra circle was what gave Deep Space Nine its toplike appearance. The gravity collar lay below the inhabited areas, but above the reactors. That was what Dhraako and Jake had just passed. Now that they were on the far side, gravity had reversed and pulled them “up” toward the collar. The tube led from here right into the dangerous reactor section.

  Two white-hot suns blazed ahead. Jake realized that he was seeing into the heart of the two active fusion reactors. He gasped. If he were here in his normal state, unprotected, the radiation would fry him in seconds. Still he felt nothing, and still Dhraako climbed on. Jake imagined the awful feeling of radiation crisping his skin, burning away his hair, cooking him like a steak. It took a lot of determination for Jake to follow the Dhraakellian.

  At last Dhraako came to a round platform and stood there waiting until Jake reached it, too. For a moment Jake stood, arms and legs aching from his long climb, chest heaving as he tried to get his breath. He was not only worn out from the climb but also tired. It had to be past midnight. Then the Quester pointed, extending a long, skinny, triple-jointed arm.

  Jake frowned. “I can’t see anything, Dhraako.”

  Dhraako will adjust solidity. Close eyes, Jake Sisko.

  Again there was that silent explosion of light, and this time when Jake opened his eyes, the station had almost vanished. Dhraako looked very real and solid now, but Deep Space Nine had become a thin ghost of itself. Against the darkness of space, the fusion reactions glared with a fascinating, terrible light, and around them, sketched in the wispiest form imaginable, were the reactors. There, said the speaking device.

  Jake squinted. The four dead reactors still had fuel in them, and though the fusion reactions had been damped, enough radiation leaked from the cores to make them sullen, angry red balls of light. Close to one of these red glows was a cluster of spheres. They were the size of bowling balls, and they had to be made of something very heavy. They were opaque, dark round shapes against the angry red light of the reactor. Jake counted five spheres, barely touching each other, arranged in a ring. “Yes, I see now. What is it?” he asked.

  Dense matter, Dhraako replied. The Quester turned and looked at Jake, its thin, mobile face twitching in expressions that the human could not understand. Potentially unstable.

  Now that he was looking at the spheres, Jake could tell that they clustered around a pipe that led straight into the heart of one of the dead reactors, although the pipe itself was invisible. “What are they made of? Nuclear fuel?” he asked.

  Dense matter, Dhraako said again. The Quester seemed to have some difficulty in framing a concept. As used by the Cardassians for mining, other purposes. Can be made to release energy suddenly, with violence.

  Jake understood. “A bomb!” he shouted. “You’re telling me that there is a bomb in the reactor!”

  Destructive device, Dhraako replied. Left by the Cardassians. One of the ones who placed it there has returned, the one called Chok. This dense matter has been inert. Now one of the Cardassians has caused reactions to begin.

  “A time bomb,” Jake said, feeling cold. “The Cardassians have set a time bomb to blow up the station.” He reached for Dhraako’s arm and found that it had become solid. His fingers clenched on curiously smooth, cool fabric and on the skeletal arm inside. “Dhraako! How long before the bomb explodes?”

  Difficult to say with exactness. A matter of a few of your hours. Dhraako’s computer is working now to predict exact time.

  Jake felt sick and dizzy. “And what will happen if it goes off?” he asked, already suspecting the answer.

  Destruction, Dhraako told him. The station will explode. Those aboard will cease to exist in this here-and-now.

  Everyone would die. “I have to warn Dad!” he shouted.

  Dhraako worked Jake Sisko’s transformation to Dhraako’s dimension to warn Jake Sisko. Jake Sisko must help think of way to warn others, said Dhraako.

  “Then put me back,” Jake said. “I’ll tell Dad, and he—he’ll do something! We’ve got to save the station!”

/>   The Dhraakellian Quester turned, its red eyes strangely sorrowful. Cannot do, Jake Sisko.

  “What!” Jake yelled.

  Cannot put you back in material universe. Only can move from that side to this, not back.

  Jake’s heart thudded in his chest. He felt ill with fear. Dhraako was telling him that the coming explosion would doom the station and everyone aboard it—and that nothing he could do could possibly prevent the explosion from happening!

  “Interesting,” Odo murmured. “In the future I shall have to see that this corridor is secured.”

  Nog rolled his eyes. He and Odo were out looking for any sign of Jake—and he was showing Odo practically every one of his and Jake’s secret passages, shortcuts, and hiding places. Now Odo wanted to seal them off. It just wasn’t fair! Helping a friend ought to be more profitable than this.

  “Sometimes we met here,” Nog said, stepping through a doorway. Odo followed him inside. The room had once been a Cardassian junior officer’s quarters. Now it had minimal power, enough for lights and the food replicator. Jake and Nog had scavenged enough furniture to set it up as a cozy hideaway with a table, a couple of chairs, and a small computer. The computer had been channeled into the ship’s system, and on its screen a menu of games blinked on and off.

  Odo nodded. “You have been busy,” he said. “Is that a Federation computer?”

  “No!” Nog protested. “It’s just an old Cardassian model. Nobody wanted it, so we moved it in here to play games on.”

  Odo touched the screen. The opening instructions of the game Starfleet Commander began to scroll past. “I see,” the security chief murmured. “You’ve tapped into the arcade systems. Very nice. You and Jake can come here and play any game you want and never have to spend a credit.”

  “But this is just flat stuff,” Nog objected. “It isn’t like the hologames. That’s what we pay for—and we still play plenty of games in the arcade, too!”

  “Well, as chief of security, I cannot overlook the theft of services,” Odo said. “I’ll have to get around to having all this removed … some day. You see no sign of Jake here?”

  “No,” Nog muttered. “I guess you’ll have to tell my father and Uncle Quark that I’ve been stealing game time.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” Odo replied. “They’d only be impressed with your cleverness. I won’t help you gain their respect.”

  Oh, well, Nog thought, you can’t blame a Ferengi for trying. “Come on,” he said with a sigh. “You might as well see the other places.”

  But Jake was nowhere to be found. Nog became more and more upset. “You don’t know what it’s like,” Nog said bitterly. “I don’t have any other friends.”

  To Nog’s surprise Odo unbent just a bit to express sympathy. “I have no friends at all,” Odo reminded him. “Still, I can appreciate your feelings, I think. Is this the last place?”

  “No,” Nog said. “There’s one other.” He hated to reveal this passageway to Odo, because it was the one that allowed him and Jake to roam between levels of Ops and the Promenade without being detected.

  “I thought this was a sealed area,” Odo said as Nog led him through an access door.

  “It’s supposed to be, but the locks and sensors failed. You know what a mess the Cardassians left.”

  Odo studied him. “The Cardassians—or two young fellows looking for secret passages?”

  Nog turned on the security chief, his hands balled into angry fists. “Jake and I found it this way!” he shouted. “Neither of us could disable sensors and locks! But you won’t believe that, will you? You won’t believe anything I tell you!”

  Odo smiled—a very slight smile, to be sure, but a brief and unmistakable smile. “On the contrary,” he said. “I believe you … now.”

  “Come on,” Nog said. He turned down the darkened corridor, pointedly not even mentioning the loose deck plates. He grinned when he heard Odo stumble behind him. “I guess you’ll have this one sealed off too,” Nog called over his shoulder.

  “It’s a dangerous place to be exploring,” Odo replied. “You or Jake could get hurt or—what’s that noise?”

  Nog froze, his huge ears practically quivering as he listened. He heard the grinding whir of a lift coming from close by. But the turbolifts in this corridor were all broken—weren’t they? “It’s coming from up ahead,” Nog said.

  Odo was at his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  They rounded a long curve of the corridor, with the grinding sound growing louder and louder. Nog halted. “This is the one,” he said, pointing to a closed lift door. “It’s coming this way.”

  Odo put his hands on Nog’s shoulder. “Quiet,” he said. “if this isn’t Jake, it could be—” He didn’t finish, but Nog could guess his thought: It could be the Cardassians, up to no good. The wait was not long, but to Nog it seemed agonizing.

  At last the car rumbled to a halt. With a protesting groan, the long-unused doors shuddered apart, revealing a car bathed in the dim red light of an emergency lamp.

  “It’s empty!” exclaimed Odo.

  “No!” Nog screamed. He pointed with a shaking finger. “Odo, don’t you see them? Don’t you see Jake? Oh, no! It’s happened—now Jake is a Ferengest too!”

  CHAPTER 8

  When the lift doors opened, Jake was almost as surprised as Nog. For a stunned moment he stood beside the Quester, staring at the ghostly figures of his friend Nog and the tall, thin form of Odo. Then, faintly, Jake heard Nog’s startled cry and saw him pull away from Odo in terror. “Wait!” Jake shouted as loudly as he could. “Nog! I need your help!”

  Too late. The young Ferengi jerked free of Odo’s hold and went stumbling and running down the passageway. Jake ran after him, yelling for Nog to stop. He did not know if Nog could hear him at all. He guessed that if he could make any sound that ordinary people could detect, it would be a tiny, faraway noise, like the high-pitched hum of a Denarian smallfly. Nog looked back over his shoulder once or twice with an expression of sheer terror. Jake finally stopped chasing him, and his friend barreled out of sight around a corner. When Jake retraced his steps, he met Odo. The security chief passed him—but suddenly he stopped, turned, and tilted his head, and his lips moved. Jake strained to hear what the shapeshifter was saying. He could barely make out the precise words, “Is anyone there?”

  “Yes!” Jake yelled. “Me, Jake Sisko! Help, Odo!”

  Odo stood irresolutely for a moment. Then, with an angry jerk, he turned and walked away. The Quester glided silently toward Jake. “No one can hear me,” Jake complained.

  True, Dhraako’s speaking device agreed. Their sounds are faint to us. Ours they cannot hear—except for the young.

  “That’s right,” Jake said thoughtfully. “Molly! Can we talk to her?”

  The small one can hear. How much she understands, Dhraako does not know.

  “She doesn’t have to understand,” Jake said. “All she has to do is hear what I say and repeat it to Keiko—or to Chief O’Brien. Come on—I know where she lives.”

  As they moved through the ghostly corridors of Deep Space Nine, Dhraako suddenly activated the speaking device. Jake Sisko. A possible way of returning you to your universe of material existence has occurred to Dhraako.

  “What?” Jake asked.

  It is complicated. Dhraako has witnessed the operation of the device you call a transporter.

  “Yes,” Jake said. “What about it?”

  Dhraako’s fingers moved over the crystal rods. When your body is in transit from one place to another, held in the transporter beam, it is here.

  “Here?” Jake asked. He stopped, and so did Dhraako. The red eyes gleamed. Jake said, “You mean, a person who is transporting is in the dimension where we are?”

  Yes. Except the person is here for only an instant, and in that instant the person has no awareness. But if the transporter can put you here, even momentarily.

  “If it can put me here,” Jake said slowly, “it can take me out of here,
too! What do we have to do, Dhraako?”

  The features of the Quester flickered. Jake suddenly realized that it probably communicated that way among its own kind, without using sound at all. No wonder it had found human speech puzzling. The thin fingers manipulated the rods of the speaker, and the calm voice said, There would be much to communicate to those on the other side. If a precise time could be arranged, and if you could be where Dhraako has lived, then the operator of the transporter might be able to locate you, to—

  “To lock on,” Jake said.

  As you say, to lock on. The transporter then might make you materialize again on the other side. The features of the Quester shifted and rearranged themselves. At least, that is possible in theory.

  “In theory?” Jake stared hard at the Quester. “What else could happen?”

  Reluctantly Dhraako fingered the rods. Jake Sisko could be lost between this dimension and his own.

  Jake shivered. Lost in a transporter beam—that would be a terrible kind of death in life. He had heard of “transporter dreams,” fleeting impressions that a few people had now and then while in transit. No one could explain them, and most scientists believed them to be just illusions. They did not seem to hurt anyone, and normally the few people who had them forgot about them. Jake shook his head. “I guess we’ll have to try that,” he said reluctantly. “But first, let’s find Molly. Come on—she’s our only hope of communicating with Dad.”

  They walked on in silence. It was very late by Jake’s time, and he was exhausted, aching for sleep. Still, he realized that the bomb might go off at any moment. He had no time to rest. When they arrived at the O’Briens’ quarters, Jake said, “She’s in here. I guess we’ll have to, uh, thin out to get through the door.”

  The Quester raised its device, pointed it at Jake, and Jake felt the sickening little twist as the station faded away. He and Dhraako stepped right through the closed door, and then the nursery door. Then Dhraako adjusted Jake’s “realness” again, and they were standing beside Molly’s bed. The light panels had been turned down to give a soft night-light glow. The little girl lay sound asleep, a teddy bear beside her. Dhraako made his speaker say softly, Dhraako has never awakened the little one before. Dhraako would not frighten her.