STAR TREK: Strange New Worlds I

by Dean Wesley Smith (Editor)

  Data nodded his assent and turned to the stabilizer to begin work. Geordi returned to the recycler readouts.

  “Geordi,” Data asked, “why would a cat want to leave the safety and comfort of her quarters?”

  Geordi smiled. “Well, cats are curious creatures. They get bored with the same old places and want to see how the rest of the world lives. I remember one time when I was a kid and my Circassian cat got out of his pen. We looked all over for that animal. Three days later, there he was, sitting in his pen, acting like nothing happened. His fur was matted and some of it was missing and we had no idea where he’d been.”

  “Does it not go against a survival instinct, to leave the known area of safety? Is that not a dangerous urge?”

  “Sure. Dangerous. And exciting. Seeking out the unknown, feeling the adrenaline rush, the thrill of discovery. Kind of like exploring space.” Geordi nodded meaningfully toward the hull of the ship.

  Data processed this information, then answered with a knowing, “Aahh.”

  “I take it Spot is giving you trouble?”

  Data adjusted the sensors on his tricorder as he said, “Captain Picard found her attacking his fish in the ready room this morning. I have no idea how she got there.”

  “Wow. That’s quite a hike!” Geordi said. “Not to mention [144] the turbolift ride. Do you think she slipped out when you left your quarters?”

  “That is not possible. She was playing with her toy mouse at that time.”

  “You did reset the security locks to your quarters when you took her back, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, though it is unlikely that Spot could have activated the door on her own. I double-checked the system but it is functioning normally.” Data handed his tricorder to Geordi. “Here are the calibrations. What is my next assignment?”

  Commander William Riker walked briskly from the holodeck where he’d just won an energetic game of Zenball against the holoimage of Dean Edwards, the Interplanetary Collegiate Champion of 2277. Riker had recently picked up the game, an unlikely marriage between yoga’s positions and concentration and the action of handball. The benefits of the sport included a much more flexible body and a clear mind as well as an aerobic workout. The swagger in his stride revealed that Riker had reached a new goal.

  Down around the corridor toward his quarters, Riker heard the sounds of an anxious adult and a giggling child.

  “Rowan? Come back here, sweetie. Come back to daddy.” The voice belonged to Ensign Filer.

  Riker heard a pause, then a wild shriek of laughter and the tiny pounding sounds of little feet running. “Rowan Danielle! Come back here!”

  As Riker reached the corridor, there was little Rowan Filer, her dark hair caught up in a yellow bow, leading her father on a merry chase down the hall. She was running in [145] Riker’s direction, but watching over her shoulder as her father gave chase.

  Riker instinctively crouched down to her level, a position he used often in Zenball. The little girl ran right into his arms. Now, unexpectedly scooped up, she shrieked again. Luckily for Riker, the shriek tumbled into giggles instead of tears. “Whoa!” he laughed. “Look who I caught!”

  Ensign Filer rushed to join them. “Thank you, sir,” he said. He reached to take his daughter from the commander.

  “I should tell you, Ensign, the corridors are not good places for playing chase,” Riker said, letting a degree of disapproval creep into his voice. He handed the child back to her father.

  “I wholeheartedly agree with you,” Filer said. “Misty and I were playing a game with her in our quarters, and the next thing we knew, she was through the door.” The men resumed their walk back down the corridor.

  “The next question is, why wasn’t your door programmed to keep her inside?”

  “It is. Or at least it was. She’s been walking around our quarters for months and this has never happened before.” Filer stopped in front of his quarters. “I’m going to reprogram the whole security panel while this little crew member takes her bath.”

  As if on cue, his daughter’s face crumpled and scrunched, and she let out a mournful wail. Whether she really understood the word “bath” or had just figured out that the game was over, Riker couldn’t say.

  Over her crying, Riker said, “See that you do,” then added in a more gentle tone, “Good night.”

  * * *

  [146] “At last,” Geordi said to himself. “That’s the end of the daily reports.” He’d stayed on duty an extra shift so he could get caught up, then returned to his quarters to finish his reports. As long as the rest of the preventive maintenance went as scheduled, the ship would be ready for the inspection when they arrived at Alpha Kiriki. Ensign Stone had found nothing obviously wrong with the recyclers, but she reinstalled the whole works again. Now they worked beautifully.

  He was in the middle of a big stretch when his communicator sounded. He tapped his insignia and said, “La Forge here.”

  “O’Brien here, sir. Sorry to disturb you.”

  “What is it?”

  “We’re getting reports of minor systems failures from all over the ship. Nothing serious, just inconvenient. Environment and replicator problems mostly, but there’s enough that we thought we should let you know.”

  Geordi sighed. “Okay, I’ll be down in a moment. In the meantime, run a level-5 diagnostic on those systems. La Forge out.” His shower and bed were going to have to wait a little longer.

  Geordi had a hunch he wanted to explore before he showed up in engineering. It wasn’t too late in the evening or too far for a visit with Wesley Crusher.

  He sat in Wesley’s bedroom. The walls were covered with schematics of the major classes of Starfleet ships and various posters of star maps. “How are you feeling?” Geordi asked. “Your mother told me you picked up a nasty bug somewhere.”

  [147] “I’m feeling better now,” the young man answered. His voice had the deep grumbly sound of someone still suffering from congestion. “What’s up?”

  “I was just curious to see what kind of projects you’ve been working on the last few days.”

  Wesley furrowed his brows. “Projects? Like for school or something?”

  “Yeah,” Geordi said.

  “No. I haven’t done anything except order gallons of honey tea for the last four days.” He laughed, which sent him into a coughing fit. When he regained control, he asked, “Why?”

  “Oh, well,” Geordi stalled. How to explain gently? “Did I ever tell you about the time I was working with the team that developed the Maeda data-tracking program?”

  Wesley shook his head.

  “It was during my senior year at the academy. We’d worked all term on the program, and toward the end, it got so that any addition to the code caused changes in the weirdest functions. My buddy Mark was the expert on the system, but every time he would add a new function, it affected some other part of the system. We got to the point that if something went wrong, we’d go straight to him first. He knew the program so well that even when he wasn’t the cause of the problem, he knew where to go to fix it.”

  “This is all very interesting,” Wesley said, “but what does it have to do with any of my projects?”

  “Well,” Geordi said, “we’ve had some folks reporting some unusual subsystem failures and interesting malfunctions and I—”

  “Now hold on a second, let me get this straight,” Wesley [148] said. “There’ve been unusual subsystem failures and interesting malfunctions and you think I had something to do with it?”

  “That’s not what I said,” Geordi sighed.

  “Not in so many words,” Wesley said. “Look, I know I’ve caused some problems before, but I learn my lessons.”

  “I know you do,” Geordi said, “but sometimes a good troubleshooter has to check out all the options. One of my options for fixing the current problem was to talk to you.”

  Wesley started to object, but Geordi held up a hand and said, “Yes, I admit it. I thought you might have been wo
rking on something that affected the replicators. Not everybody’s projects are that involved or complex. That’s a compliment, by the way. On the other hand, you may also have solutions nobody else would think of.”

  Wesley sat quiet a moment. “Thanks. I think,” he laughed. “So tell me what’s going on and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Miles O’Brien was waiting for Geordi in engineering. “Sorry I took so long,” Geordi said as he scanned the readouts at his terminal.

  “We were just hoping the turbolifts hadn’t started malfunctioning,” O’Brien said.

  Geordi shook his head and said, “No, I just played out a hunch.”

  O’Brien’s eyebrows raised in a silent question, and Geordi admitted his suspicions that maybe young Mr. Crusher could have been at fault.

  “You accused Wesley of messing up the systems?” O’Brien asked.

  “Not in those words.”

  [149] “And?” he urged.

  “He’s been down with the flu most of the week. He’s innocent.”

  “I wish I could have seen his face when he figured out what you were after.” O’Brien laughed. “It was a good intuitive guess on your part,” he admitted.

  “Yeah, but unfortunately I was wrong.”

  “Your story does explain one thing, though. Wesley forwarded this information to us just moments before you arrived. It’s simple and to the point. We’ve not encountered any subspace anomalies, or space-time continuum faults, or unusual radiation exposure in the last fifteen days.”

  “He’s nothing if not efficient,” Geordi said.

  Geordi turned to the results of the level-5 diagnostic. O’Brien was briefing him on some of the newest developments When he suddenly stopped talking.

  “What is it?” Geordi asked. He looked up and saw that O’Brien was looking at the workstation across from them. Geordi followed his gaze to find Reginald Barclay at work there.

  Geordi faced O’Brien, and O’Brien said, “You don’t think ...”

  “What. You mean ... Barclay?”

  “Well ...”

  “You can ask if you want to,” Geordi said.

  “But you’re his superior here—”

  “Excuse me,” Barclay said. He was now standing to Geordi’s right. “I just ran a level-3 diagnostic on the affected systems, and I think you’ll see some interesting ... uh, sir?”

  “Oh. Thanks ...” Geordi said. He caught O’Brien’s [150] meaningful look, then turned back to Barclay. “Uh, say, Reg, what projects have you been up to lately?”

  Barclay looked puzzled. “Sir?”

  “He was just wondering what you’ve been, uh, doing,” O’Brien interjected.

  “Oh. Well, I’m nearing completion on the task list you gave me at the beginning of the week,” Barclay said.

  “Good. Good,” Geordi said. “Any interesting off-duty projects?”

  “Oh, off-duty. Yeah. I’ve been practicing Vulcan meditation and it’s a wonderful—”

  “Fine, Reg. Glad to hear it,” Geordi interrupted. He gave O’Brien a shrug, then turned back to Barclay. “Now, you said you have some information for me?”

  “Yes.” The puzzled look nickered on Barclay’s face again, then faded as he pointed to the ship’s diagram. “As you can see, the affected areas have one significant point in common, that being this junction in the Jefferies tube here. I suspect that something has disturbed this junction.”

  “Good show, Reg. Take someone with you and report to that site.”

  Barclay beamed with pride as he answered, “Yes, sir.”

  Geordi examined the report more thoroughly. “Wait a minute,” he said, turning to O’Brien. “If that’s the case, we should be seeing problems in the holodecks.”

  Sweat ran down Worf’s face in rivulets as he thrust his bat’leth at his opponent. He twisted to his right, throwing the other off balance enough to allow for a one-handed swing of the deadly blade at neck level. With a victory cry, Worf put [151] all his strength behind the move, expecting the bat’leth to meet with resistance.

  At that moment, however, Worf noticed a flicker in the lights. His weapon never connected with his target, and he fell to the floor. He rolled to his back in time to see his opponent poised over him, laughing an abnormally high-pitched giggle, his bat’leth point at Worf’s throat.

  “Computer. Freeze,” Worf ordered. The image standing over him complied in midlaugh.

  Worf stood and realized that everything in the holodeck program had shrunk. Unless—No, he banished the notion that he had grown. “Computer. Reset Klingon Calisthenics Program.”

  The images in the room shimmered out of existence and shimmered back, still too short. The opponent barked out the challenge to battle, but his voice was too high-pitched to be taken seriously. Worf slumped his shoulders and ordered the computer to end the program. He would have to reset the program’s parameters, but he would leave it for tomorrow.

  The room cleared again, leaving him to wipe the sweat from his brow. “Computer. Run program Worf 27 A.” Yes, he thought to himself, a good soak in the hot mud pools would be just the thing to work out the tension knots that were building in his shoulders. The room shimmered around him, the smell of sulfuric steam filled his nostrils. He started to pull off his sweat-soaked battle garments, but he stopped when he noticed that the pool of bubbling mud was half the size it should have been.

  “Computer, increase pool size,” he growled.

  “Pool size parameters are currently at the maximum settings,” the computer informed him.

  [152] Grumbling, Worf squeezed into the smelly mud pool to find that the only way his shoulders were going to get soaked was for him to stick his legs out of the pool entirely and scrunch the rest of his body into the mud.

  His frustrations were overpowering any benefits that his puny mud bath offered. With a menacing growl, he unwedged himself, ended the program and stomped off to his quarters.

  Barclay crouched near the mass of wires and conduits. “What a rat’s nest!” he said to Vukcevok, the Vulcan ensign he’d recruited for the current job. He timidly reached and lifted a bundle of shredded insulating material and quickly dropped it when a burst of sparks erupted from it.

  “Lieutenant Barclay? I think you should see this,” Vukcevok said from further down the Jefferies tube.

  “What do you have?”

  “I am not sure,” he said. “Observe the ragged edge here in the panel. It appears to have been chewed.”

  Barclay leaned in close and looked over the destruction. “What do you think could be causing this?” he asked.

  “I do not know.”

  They stared at the damaged panel, the constant thrumming noise of the tube enveloping them.

  Barclay straightened as much as the narrow workspace would allow. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “I thought I heard something. Back here, behind this panel.” Barclay thought that he should have brought Ensign Kihn instead. He found conversing with a Vulcan to be frustrating at times, and besides, Ensign Kihn was blond and pretty.

  Vukcevok turned his pointed right ear to the panel in [153] question. “If what you are referring to is a metallic, syncopated slapping sound, then yes, I hear it.”

  “It’s moving in this direction,” Barclay said, pointing to the damaged panel. He felt his muscles tense and his pulse quicken. He blinked.

  In that moment, Vukcevok threw a torque amplifier which clanged off the deck near Barclay’s feet.

  “What did you do that for?” Barclay squeaked.

  “Sorry, sir,” the Vulcan said, “but I saw something move. I did not intend to frighten you.”

  “That’s comforting,” Barclay muttered. “Just what did you see?”

  “It was very close to the ground, approximately fifteen centimeters long, light blue with many tentacles. It moved very quickly. I regret that I do not have a better description,” Vukcevok said apologetically.

  “
Don’t worry about it. I think I know what we’ve got here. It’s called a Gorsonian Zool and they’re nearly impossible to eradicate.”

  Captain Picard drummed his fingers against the conference table as the rest of his senior officers filtered in. He didn’t like this at all. His starship, infested by Zools! Well, it was probably Zool, singular. If Lt. Barclay was correct in his identification, multiple Gorsonian Zools would have crippled the Enterprise by now.

  “Thank you for coming,” Picard said as the last few officers sat down. “First, I’d like to thank Commander La Forge and his crew for the round-the-clock efforts at keeping the damages repaired. Fine job. Lieutenant Worf, fill me in on your efforts to trap this creature.”

  [154] “We’ve posted traps throughout the area and guards at every major intersection in the tubes, but the Zool is avoiding the traps. It is too fast for my men to take aim at, and it can squeeze between the conduits and out of reach of the phaser beams. I’d like to request we do a sterilization sweep of the tubes as soon as possible, to keep the destruction to a minimum.”

  At the urging of the biology teacher, Picard had ordered that the creature be taken unharmed so that the students could study it, but enough was enough. He looked around the table and asked, “Any objections?”

  Geordi shook his head. Picard was certain he’d like to be able to get on with his work. He was running short due to having a 24-hour crew to repair the damages.

  Beverly Crusher didn’t object, nor did his Number One, Riker. Picard wasn’t sure, but he thought he detected a gleam in Worf’s eyes at the prospect of ridding the Enterprise of this menace. Everyone except Data and Counselor Troi seemed relieved at the suggestion.

  “Counselor, any problems?” he asked.

  “Sir, normally I would object to killing an animal, but under the circumstances, the need to solve the problem outweighs my objections,” she said. Her expression suggested that she’d still rather find a different solution.

  “Noted,” Picard said. “Mr. Data?”

  “As efficient as the repair crew is, the Zool has exposed several sensitive areas. At its present rate, we cannot keep up with the damage, and the sweep will cause more damage to those exposed areas, perhaps shutting down some functions.”