by L. A. Graf
“You never found any alien ruins in your survey?”
“No,” Fisher admitted. “But Tlaoli’s deeply eroded. Anything that was built on the surface has turned to dust or deep-sea mud by now.” He craned his head to catch the last glimpse of the planet’s dried-blood twilight. “But maybe the aliens who used to live here built something underground for protection, some kind of planetary defensive system that could explain what happened to the Enterprise.”
“It still wouldn’t necessarily threaten people who went near it.” Sulu swung the Drake around to line her up with the orbital plane of the Enterprise.
“No.” Fisher heaved a worried sigh. “Unless maybe it thought they were there to attack and disarm it.”
[172] As the Enterprise approached, Sulu could see the shuttle bay doors roll open along her secondary hull. On his previous trips, the doors had to be manually wrenched open and closed, taking four engineers in spacesuits several minutes to achieve what normally would have taken a few seconds. But Commander Scott must have finally restored full power to the bay, allowing the shuttle to swoop in without even needing to brake. The doors rolled shut behind them and Sulu felt the usual turbulence shiver through the shuttle as air flooded back around it. He held the Drake steady until it was done, then dropped onto its landing pad, where empty grav-sleds and full pallets of medical equipment waited side by side.
“Go back and help Kulessa get your samples ready to offload. I want the shuttle emptied as quickly as possible,” he told Fisher.
The geologist rose from his seat obediently enough, but paused in the cockpit door to give him a quizzical look. “You’re not making another trip back down tonight?”
Sulu forced himself to look back at Fisher without a giveaway glance at the red warning lights on his console. “Why not? The cave team could be out on the surface now.”
“But landing on that karst surface, in the dark—” Fisher broke off, shaking his head. “Better you than me, buddy.”
Sulu waited until he’d gone, then leaned forward to reboot the shuttle’s instrument buffers. They blinked and went dark, then began coming back on one at a time. Some of the gauges still flashed red, warning that even at this distance Tlaoli’s subspace racket was [173] interfering with their ability to function, but most came back a solid, reassuring green. The pilot grunted in satisfaction and began running the shuttle through a preflight mechanical safety check. In the background, he could hear the thump and whir of grav-sleds being maneuvered out of the hatch, a straggle of conversation cut short by Fisher’s voice, then silence. A few moments later, as he’d expected, a single set of footsteps echoed up the hatch and through the empty passenger compartment.
“Lieutenant Sulu.”
Sulu glanced over his shoulder, startled. He’d expected to see Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, intent on making sure that his makeshift magnetic shielding was still strong enough to protect the shuttle’s warp core and engines from Tlaoli’s mysterious power fluxes. But the wiry figure in the doorway wore science blue rather than the red of ship’s services.
“Dr. McCoy.” Sulu glanced from the physician’s intent face to the old-fashioned black bag he had slung across one shoulder. “Here to give me another antiviral booster shot?”
“Nope.” The doctor came forward to sit in the copilot’s chair, dropping his bag beside him. “Although I probably should. Scotty says only a lunatic would think about making a flight down to that damned planet after dark.”
Sulu tried to make his face as impassive as possible. “It’s not that crazy. I’ve been down there twice already and I know what to expect ...”
McCoy waved him to a stop. “I’m not arguing with you, son. The sooner we get down there, the better I’ll like it.”
[174] “We?” Sulu said, startled again. Before his first trip to Tlaoli, he and Commander Spock had agreed that it made no sense to risk a second life in a shuttle that had a statistically significant probability of crashing. The probability was now much more than just statistical, but if he pointed that fact out to McCoy, he would risk getting the trip itself cancelled. Sulu searched around for another reason to reject the doctor’s company. “Sir, this cargo shuttle is only rated for twelve passengers plus pilot. And there are already twelve people down at that cave site.”
“Some of whom may be very badly injured,” McCoy reminded him gruffly. “What’s the good of getting down there and finding someone too hurt to fly out again?”
“But the shuttle’s weight limit—”
“—won’t be exceeded, provided we leave all their gear and samples behind.” McCoy pulled a data padd out of his bag and punched a file up on it. “Captain Kirk deliberately selected the smallest crewmen he could find for his cave rescue team, and the two of us aren’t much bigger than they were. If you add in the survey team—well, Tomlinson’s pretty hefty and I’m always amazed by how much Yuki Smith weighs for her size, but those other cave experts are all lightweights, too.” He turned the padd to show Sulu his final calculation, and the pilot winced. There was no question that it was several percent less than the shuttle’s weight allowance, even taking into account Scott’s new magnetic shielding.
“I still think you should stay here, sir,” Sulu said. It [175] was one thing to risk his own neck, but he couldn’t let another member of the crew come along trusting in a safety margin that wasn’t there. He saw McCoy’s stubborn headshake and took a deep breath. “Doctor, what I’m trying to tell you is—”
“That if you left now, it would be on a suicide mission,” said a deep and completely unexpected voice from behind them.
“Spock!” McCoy swung around in his seat, glaring at the Vulcan who stood in the shadows of the cockpit door. “Don’t you know better than to sneak up on people when they think they’re the only ones on board? You could have given us both a heart attack!”
“As first officer, I have examined the quarterly medical reports for both Lieutenant Sulu and yourself, Doctor.” Spock’s voice retained the impassive tone that he usually used when verbally sparring with McCoy. “Neither record suggests a susceptibility to myocardial infarction.”
“That’s not what I meant!”
“Then I fail to understand why you said it.” Spock ducked through the cramped passageway to the passenger hold and straightened to his full height in the cockpit. Sulu suppressed an urge to lay his hand across his red-flashing instrument panel as a keen Vulcan gaze swept across it. The motion would have been just as damning as the telltale gauges, and he had the distinct feeling that it didn’t matter anyway.
He was right. “Mr. Sulu, may I see the instrument log from your last flight segment?” Spock asked blandly.
“I’ve already zeroed it out, sir,” Sulu confessed. There [176] was no point in continuing to prevaricate when a superior officer had obviously guessed what you were up to. “It was mostly error readings anyway.”
“Yes, I know.” Spock flickered an eyebrow at Sulu’s startled look. “You should have known that Chief Engineer Scott would never install a brand-new device on a shuttle without adding a monitoring circuit to report on how it was functioning, Mr. Sulu. The subspace interference prevented us from making real-time observations during most of the flight, but as soon as the Drake came back into secure transmission range, all of her data banks were copied to engineering. Mr. Scott called me when he saw the size of the error readings.”
“Well, what about ’em?” McCoy demanded. “You wouldn’t expect subspace instruments to work right down on that power-sucking planet, would you?”
“No,” Spock agreed. “But when sudden vertical displacements in the shuttle’s altitude exceed the error margin of her proximity alarms by a factor of ten to one, it is clearly unsafe to fly at night. Especially in a terrain such as the Tlaoli karstland, where the elevation can change by thousands of meters from one second of flying to the next.”
Sulu met the chief medical officer’s astounded look with a wry smile. “I tried to tell you that you didn�
��t want to come,” he said. “Would you Like to give me that antiviral booster now?”
McCoy scowled. “What I’d like is to get down to that damned planet as quickly as possible! For all we know, people are dying down there—” He swung around to glare at Spock as if that were somehow the Vulcan’s [177] fault. “—and you’re telling me we can’t even leave until the sun comes back up?”
This time, to Sulu’s surprise and delight, Spock’s lifted eyebrow had a distinctly ironic slant. “I do not recall making that statement, Doctor.”
McCoy looked even more frustrated by that reply, but Sulu had already guessed what the science officer’s response meant. “Moonlight!” he said. “Mr. Spock, when does Tlaoli’s moon rise? And how full will it be?”
“Gibbous.” Spock said it so calmly that Sulu knew he must have weighed this option long before he’d ever arrived in the Drake’s cockpit. “It will rise over the horizon of the karst plateau four hours from now.” He gave Sulu a considering glance. “At that time, Lieutenant, and no sooner, you will receive my permission to take the Drake down to Survey Team Three’s relocated base camp. Not to the cave itself.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” said Sulu.
“Huh.” McCoy was less intimidated by the severe tone Spock adopted when he was functioning as ship’s commander. “And what if something awful happens to them in the meantime?”
Spock let out a slow and measured breath. “There is no higher probability of ‘something awful’ happening in the next four hours, Doctor, than of it having already happened in the past ten.”
“I know,” McCoy said, a little grumpily. “That’s what I’m worried about.”
“Bring me up another marker!”
Sanner shouted his request back to Chekov in the [178] same way he had at all the previous stops—as though he fully expected Chekov to trot up to join him, hand outstretched, a variety of reflective spot markers to choose from. In reality, the passage’s fifty-centimeter head clearance made it hard for Chekov to even dig the markers out of his jumper pockets, much less crawl within and arm’s length of anything but Sanner’s feet.
“Here—” He thumped his hand awkwardly on the sole of Sanner’s boot, then tossed two or three markers past the geologist’s hip in the hopes one would land within reach. “Sir, perhaps it would be better if you carried the markers.”
“Are you nuts? I’ve barely got room to carry the stuff I’ve got.” Light swung at apparent random across the floor, the low ceiling, into Chekov’s eyes as Sanner twisted to grope for the markers in the mud. “Don’t worry—I’m getting a really strong breeze up here. We’ve got to be close to the exit by now.”
“I hope you’re right, sir.” Chekov raised himself up as high as he could on his elbows to stuff the remaining markers deeply enough into his pocket that they wouldn’t work themselves out again. Ironically, he banged his helmet against some outcrop or other not in lifting up but on the way back down again. “I’m not sure how we’re going to get the others even this far.”
He felt Sanner stiffen, almost as though a physical chill had blown through their dark crawlspace. “We’re not leaving anybody down here.” Sanner’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet and grim.
“Of course not, sir.” Chekov hadn’t meant to imply that they would. But he couldn’t help thinking about [179] how pale and silent Davis had been when he last checked back with the party in the big chamber. Or about how Jaeger, despite his stubborn good humor, had the softness of a scientist about him, and hardly looked capable of making such a cold, arduous crawl even when he hadn’t first toppled down a breakdown pile. Chekov knew with every fiber of his heart that they couldn’t abandon anyone to this frozen underground. He just honestly had no idea how they were going to avoid it.
Not for the first time, he wished Kirk were still here.
“Come on,” Sanner grumbled abruptly, “let’s keep moving.”
Chekov waited until Sanner had dragged himself a few meters further down the passage, then took a deep breath to steel himself, and started after.
When they’d first dug past the last rubble of the breakdown pile in the big chamber and found the narrow vertical shaft that led up to this level, Sanner and Jaeger had both assured Chekov that the force of the breeze that greeted them meant that a substantial passageway existed beyond the restricted opening. Once or twice along the crawl, it had even looked like that might eventually be true. But every time the passageway seemed as though it might trend toward a little taller, a little wider, a little less muddy or crowded or crooked, it cinched back down again a few meters later and stretched further into what seemed like infinity.
More than once, Chekov had wanted to ask Sanner at what point they gave up. When did a caver admit that a passage went nowhere? That they were just crawling [180] farther and farther away from knowing where they were? The tunnel around them barely looked like a cave anymore. Mud slicked the floor like engine lubricant, and tree roots dangled in irregular clusters from the low ceiling like woody stalactites. During one fifteen-minute delay while Sanner sawed through a particularly thick obstruction with a completely inadequate utility knife (which at least the geologist had thought to bring with him, thank God), Chekov had pushed himself backward out the way they’d come in to reassure the waiting party members that he and Sanner were all right, they hadn’t gotten lost in the claustrophobic maze. As it turned out, that thought hadn’t even crossed anyone’s mind. While they’d been waiting patiently for a report, it had only been less than an hour, nowhere near long enough to worry. It only felt like longer when you were on the inside.
Now, another half-hour further along, he found himself growing numb to the pain in his arms and shoulders, and to the passage of time. There was nothing to look at, nothing to talk about. Even Sanner had run out of appropriate wisecracks what felt like miles ago. Whenever Chekov let himself think about anything besides dragging himself forward, one arm’s length at a time, his mind invariably circled back to Kirk, like a ship dragged into an event horizon, unable to tear itself away. Kirk, who was more powerfully built than any of them, even Yuki Smith. Kirk, who was nowhere to be found in the cathedral-like space of the upper chamber, but who could not possibly have passed the party unnoticed on their way back from the “ice cave.” Kirk, who could [181] only have exited that upper chamber by squeezing out through this same tiny passage that Chekov and Sanner had been clawing their way through for the past two hours, and who simply could not have done so. Could not. Not by any stretch of anyone’s imagination.
If Chekov didn’t dare suggest that their injured party members couldn’t make this crawl, there was no point in drawing anyone’s attention to the impossibility of a completely healthy Kirk having done so.
“And thar she blows!”
Ahead of him, Sanner’s feet suddenly slithered forward and rolled off to one side. Chekov restrained the first surge of hope that tried to swell up in him—he was too tired to survive another disappointment. But by the time he’d managed to drag himself alongside Sanner, the gentle brightening of the air around them had become more apparent, and the muddy walls had fallen away until there was no mistaking what Sanner lay on his back laughing up toward.
Chekov rolled over and followed his gaze upward. “Daylight.”
“The last of it, at least. God, that looks good.”
Chekov reached up to dim his helmet light, the better to appreciate the ruddy sweep of clouds just visible through the sinkhole above them. “It also looks far away.” He tried to visually estimate the height from where he lay, but found it surprisingly hard to do while on his back.
Sanner reached to sink his fingers into the nearest wall. The opposite wall was more than a man’s height away, but looked to be coated in the same slimy, dripping mud they’d just squirmed through. “This crap isn’t very [182] climbable, either,” Sanner decreed, wiping his hand on the leg of his jumper. Some of his puckish humor returned with a crooked grin. “Wanna try standing on my head?”
/> Chekov didn’t need a better height estimate to know the answer to that. “I don’t think we’d be tall enough.” He pictured Sanner standing, then multiplied the image two more times. “But more of us might be.”
“Look at us! We’re in the circus!”
Even though Sanner and Tomlinson differed in height by only a couple of centimeters, Yuki Smith wobbled atop their shoulders with a good bit less stability than Chekov had hoped for. But the top of her head came within two meters of the surface, and there were enough tree roots and vegetation overhanging the lip of the sinkhole to make up for the rest of the distance. They didn’t technically have to reach the surface with their pyramid in order to get themselves out.
Sanner grimaced and slewed against Tomlinson as Smith shifted her weight yet again. “I don’t think we’re gonna make it.”
“I’ll make it,” Chekov told him. He hadn’t crawled all the way back to the upper cavern and led Tomlinson and Smith out here just to fail now. He tied another knot in the rope Sanner had looped around his waist. “If you would, Lieutenants ...”
Sanner and Tomlinson shifted slightly to make a stirrup with their hands, and Smith whooped delightedly as she teetered. Chekov wasn’t sure if he should feel reassured by her fearlessness, or alarmed by her complete lack of concern for the stability of their structure. He [183] decided his nerves would be steadier if he settled on the former. At least Sanner had been smart enough to suggest they all put out their carbide lamps until they were done climbing on each other. They could avoid burning each other in embarrassing places even if they couldn’t manage to effect a graceful escape from this cave.
Planting one foot in the stirrup, Chekov stretched his arms up to catch at Smith’s hands as he heaved himself upward.
She caught him with surprising strength and ease, and guided him to place his feet atop hers on the other men’s shoulders. For one uncomfortable moment, Chekov realized how close they all were to overbalancing and tumbling back down into the bottom of the sinkhole. Smith braced her back against the muddy wall behind her, and Chekov was forced to reach past her shoulders to steady himself when Tomlinson and Sanner staggered under their combined weight. I’m an idiot! he thought angrily. Not only will this stupid idea never work, we’re just going to end up with four more injured party members to try and drag out of this cave! Then Smith’s hands closed on his waist, and she hefted him high enough to plant one hand on her head and one knee on her shoulder. From there, he moved as quickly as he could into a standing position and stretched overhead to reach for what looked like the most secure loop of exposed root.
