No Limits

by Peter David

  “Mr. Arex, I’ll be by in a few minutes if that’s okay with you,” he called down the corridor as they separated. It looked as though Arex nodded silently, but Peart could not be sure. He found himself a bit mesmerized by watching the stride of his companion. Arex’s three legs moved in series, not so much as a person on crutches might walk but more as a pinwheel’s blades might spin. Maybe the rushed departure wore the alien down more than Peart himself realized.

  Okay, Peart thought, step one accomplished. From here should be smooth sailing.

  A sonic shower and a raktajino later, Peart was ready to check on his charge, the subject of his first department mission. And he came armed with treats. His walk down the corridor to Arex’s guest cabin aboard the Musgrave drew a few stares from passing crewmen, especially given what Peart carried: a large, sealed jar, through which could be viewed about a dozen palm-sized fluttering insects. The colorful, mothlike creatures flicked their wings on the sides of the jar, making an ululating noise he truly hoped Arex would find appetizing.

  The door chimed to signal his arrival as he stopped before it; then it quietly slid open. Peart saw Arex placing several items into a hard-shelled travel case that was standard Starfleet issue for personnel traveling on civilian business. Setting the jar down on a nearby desktop, he said, “It looks as though you were able to get what you needed.”

  “Yes,” Arex said, wrapping a small circular tin container in an earthen-toned gauze. “The ship’s replicator had no problem creating this meechacha ointment, for instance, so that I may present it to my father on his transition as is our custom.”

  “And this flute?” asked Peart as he held up a slim, wooden instrument to admire for a moment before passing it to Arex. He noticed that, while replicated, its appearance would make it difficult to distinguish from one handcrafted and used for decades.

  “Ah, my sessica. As we travel, I must observe the Contemplation. I need time to myself to reflect in honor of my father’s sacrifices for our family. That reflection is begun by my rendition of the Song of Heritage,” Arex said. “But what I find more interesting than my meager possessions is this jar of insects you have brought.”

  Peart beamed with pride. “Well, in our meeting, I added one instruction for our travel manifest. I had the Musgrave take on some of your native foods. I crosschecked the xenobiology files and starbase food stores during our meeting and made a few quick selections. I hope they are to your liking. These are, um, desert silk flies, I think.”

  Arex approached the jar and studied its contents. “Well, they may be. But as much as I appreciate the gesture, I won’t be eating them.”

  “Really?” Peart felt a bit let down. “You’re not hungry?”

  The alien’s reddish face puckered into a smile. “I do not eat living insects.”

  “You don’t? Um, do you eat anything alive?”

  “Well,” Arex said, “not while it remains alive, no.”

  Peart was stumped. This was the first time he could remember that his skills at information access through his trusted padd had failed him. And of all times now, on his first mission. He resolved not to let this show in his demeanor toward Arex. “I do apologize then,” he said. “I’m sure you will find something more to your liking then when you arrive on Edos.”

  Arex stiffened. His head slowly bowed as he drew a breath. “Agent Peart, now may be a good time to tell you that I am not Edoan. I am a native of Triex.”

  “What?” Peart thought his knees would buckle but caught himself on the edge of the desk. That was it. That’s what his nagging mind was attempting to spur while talking with Special Agent Dulmer.

  You should have paid attention in that damned Academy class, idiot!

  “Um,” Peart began as he regained some control of his thoughts. “Pardon me, did you say, um, Triex?”

  “Yes.”

  “Um,” Peart mumbled as he tried to recover somewhat gracefully, “common mistake?”

  “Not really, I must admit,” Arex said. “Edoans are a much more, well, animated race.”

  “No kidding?”

  “I fear that my native world is far from Edos,” Arex said calmly. “This may require a change in our travel arrangements.”

  “Ah, a change?” Peart shouted as he rummaged through his shoulder bag and grabbed his padd. Practically pounding his fingers on its surface, Peart started to panic once his requested data started to flow. “We’re going in the opposite direction!”

  “As I said—”

  “I know! I know!” Peart looked up at Arex quickly then back down to the padd as he paged through data. “We can’t go all the way to Starbase 129. It would cost us twelve hours at least. We have to get off of this ship. I’m going to speak with Captain Dayrit.”

  “I hate to be any trouble.”

  Arex’s face looked almost sympathetic to Peart as he met the alien’s gaze. His mistake certainly cost them time, he knew, but it might well have cost Arex his one chance to see his dying father after more than seventy years. “No, sir,” he said. “This is on my shoulders. I brought this on us. I can fix it.”

  Peart raced out of the room and into the first turbolift he could find, directing it to the bridge of the Musgrave. When the doors opened, he practically burst onto the bridge, which was sparsely staffed and bathed in low illumination. His voice cracked the air like a red-alert klaxon.

  “Captain! This is an emergency! We’re going the wrong way!”

  The woman sitting in the bridge’s center seat snapped to face Peart as if he had lassoed her. Her tone was just as terse as his, from being startled if nothing else. “The captain is asleep, sir. And how do you figure that we’re going the wrong way?”

  “Oh! Oh, sorry,” Peart said, lowering his volume and attempting to adopt his professional tone despite his heart’s pounding in his throat. “Um, I meant that we’re going the wrong way, it appears. My companion and I need to leave the ship immediately.”

  “Okay,” said the duty commander, “I’m game. How do you suggest we do this? Shall I slow to warp three and open a hatch for you?”

  Peart paused a moment. “Well, um, I’m still sussing that out a bit. I don’t suppose we could borrow, say, a shuttlecraft?”

  The woman rose from the command chair and walked over to the railing of the command well where Peart now leaned. “I’m aware we are to be at your disposal, Mister…”

  “Peart, Stewart Peart,” he said, and smiled a bit too slyly. “Some people call me Stew.”

  The woman laughed and extended a hand. “Renee Varella,” she said as they shook.

  “The pleasure’s all—”

  She dropped Peart’s hand and held her palm to face him. “I don’t need the charm lesson, Mr. Peart, and we have only two shuttlecraft on a Sabre-class ship. But I’m open to your taking one if you let me know where to pick it up.”

  He sighed in some relief. “Well, um, I suppose our going to the nearest starbase is in order.”

  “Agreed,” Varella said as she turned away. “Helm? Tell me the starbase closest to our current position.”

  Peart craned around to see the answer come from an Andorian male—or was it a female?—at the navigation station. Peart cursed his xenobiological deficits for the second time in these few minutes. He resolved then and there to look into a crash course on the subject as soon as he was able.

  “It looks like,” the navigator said, “Starbase 37.”

  “Thirty-seven?” Peart’s disgust at the revelation tainted his voice. “No, not 37.”

  “Could have been worse,” Varella said with a smirk. “It could have been Starbase 36.”

  Peart allowed a breathy laugh when the navigator spoke again. “Commander, just so you know, a straight-line course from here to the starbase is going to run right through the Mewesian asteroid belt.”

  “Oh, of course it will,” said Peart, rolling his eyes. “Why wouldn’t it?”

  Varella let a serious tone into her voice. “That’s not a big deal for
a starship’s shielding, but it could pose some problems for a shuttle. Take care in plotting that course.”

  “Thanks, I do appreciate that, Commander, but time is not quite on my side,” the agent said. “How quickly might the shuttle be prepared for travel?”

  “Mr. Peart, this is an S.C.E. ship,” Varella said and smiled. “We’re always prepared for anything.”

  “Right,” Peart said, and smiled as he stepped toward the turbolift.

  Now if only I were.

  Listening to the Pan-like, lilting tones of Arex’s sessica helped put Peart more at ease as the two made a beeline through space to Starbase 37 as fast as the shuttle could carry them. Reclining a bit in his pilot’s seat, he let his mind drift as the music, which Arex said chronicled the history of his Triexian forebears, created images of a people practically unknown to him before now.

  At least it did for the first hour of their trip.

  As Arex played into its second hour, Peart respectfully maintained silence for Arex, but began busying himself with almost anything he could find to do within the cramped confines of the shuttle. He calibrated sensors, he monitored the flow of energy to the craft’s nacelles, and he ran diagnostics on any shipboard system he could isolate and test. He even considered engineering some problems that he could turn right around and fix, but he considered that to be pushing his luck—particularly on this trip.

  In the third hour, he tried to sleep. He fitfully attempted to get himself comfortable in the pilot’s seat, but decided he might as well have tried to do so on top of some cargo containers. He faded in and out of a slumber that would have been equally restful for him were he sleeping next to a snoring Tellarite.

  Fading, and then awakening with a start, Peart checked the shipboard chronometer. It marked their fourth hour in space.

  And Arex played on.

  Partly on purpose, Peart looked toward Arex and coughed loudly as he stretched and brought his seat into an upright position. The alien’s yellow eyes snapped open and music stopped issuing from the sessica as if Arex had thrown a switch. “Oh! Are you ill?”

  “No, no, Mr. Arex,” Peart said, now a bit embarrassed that he had done it. “I’m fine. I’m just not used to sitting like this for so long. I daresay that our trip won’t be so cramped once we get to Starbase 37.”

  Arex paused, then moved to place his sessica back into his travel case. “Maybe you would enjoy a break from my playing.”

  “Oh, not at all,” Peart lied. “But I must admit that I didn’t expect the performance to be so, um, rich in detail.”

  “You mean ‘long,’ Mr. Peart,” Arex said, and smiled. “I am sure it seemed a bit droning for you. But this is an important part of my observing my heritage as I prepare for my father’s Day of Death. Each motif of the Song of Heritage tells a tale important to my family surviving and thriving over many centuries on Triex. It is a song to be performed in its entirety only on events as nodal to my family as this.”

  Peart felt sympathy for Arex’s coming loss gnaw at his growing embarrassment. “I do not want to interrupt your ceremony. Please continue.”

  “Not for now,” Arex said. “I was nearing its conclusion, anyway. I was about to recount my grandfather’s clash with a tusked gradak that cost him an arm and a leg.”

  Peart coughed again, this time to stifle an involuntary giggle.

  “Are you sure you are well?”

  Peart scrambled for words. “I must admit, Mr. Arex, that I am finding my interest in your people growing. I would like to hear more.”

  “Maybe you would like to hear more about a great many races of the Federation, young man?”

  He felt the bottom of his stomach drop out as Arex’s voice took a serious turn for the first time on their trip. “Um, pardon me?”

  “I have to wonder whether Triexians are not the only race for which you have a lack of information.”

  “Well, um,” Peart stammered, feeling as if his hand had been caught in a cookie jar. “Does it show?”

  Arex tried his twisted smile again, and Peart relaxed a bit. “And you think some of you do not look the same to me? I just wanted an honest response. It is a way for us to learn each other’s capabilities. We are in this mission together, you know.”

  Peart knit his brow. He had not really considered this trip their mission, only his. But certainly, it was fair to consider that Arex had just as much personal investment in their success as he did. Sure, the success of the trip could be a career-breaker for him, but Arex had his own obligations to a family he revered—and had not seen in more than seventy years. It was time to lay his cards on the table, as Peart recalled his uncle Neil used to say.

  Yes, we are in this together.

  “Right. Well, I was raised on Earth, in England, actually, if it matters,” Peart said. “I’ve always been much more interested in history than I have been in space and life in the ‘great beyond,’ as my father is fond of calling it. My studies led to Starfleet and my aptitude scores guided me to Temporal Investigations, which I must admit fascinates the hell out of me. I am pretty good at getting information on the fly and I scored well on mechanics and all, but, um, I fear I did pretty lousy on all the alien things.”

  Arex nodded. “The alien things being?”

  “Oh, all of it. I barely passed xenosociology,” Peart practically gushed, feeling a sense of liberation in his honesty. “I can recognize most races on sight, but I have no facility with languages or physical attributes or cultural commonalities. For practical purposes, assume I can’t tell a, um, Caitian from ah…ah…a Calamarain.”

  “You could if you had served with one, Mr. Peart,” said Arex with what Peart saw as almost a wistful look in his eye. “Well, this is good to know. Anything else?”

  “Well, I have some experience in—” Peart’s words were cut off by a rapidly repeating audible signal from the shuttle’s control console. “It’s a proximity alert. We must be nearing that asteroid belt they warned us of.”

  “I see,” Arex said, with that smile of his not leaving his face. “Now, Mr. Peart, it’s your turn to learn about some of my skill sets. Slow us to impulse and raise the shields.”

  “Are you sure you want to go through this belt, Arex?” Peart surprised himself by his lack of formality in speaking while he tapped the commands into the console before him.

  “I have confidence we can navigate this belt without much difficulty,” Arex said. “My most intensive Starfleet training was in navigation, and I doubt the equipment has changed so much that I can no longer use it. And in turn, to be honest as you have been with me, I admit that our travel time is a growing concern for me. We are unsure of our passage beyond the starbase, and by traversing the belt, we will make time work in our favor.”

  Peart wanted to speak more from concern than from curiosity, so he chose to risk appearing blunt to Arex. “Did your family say he was failing fast?”

  Arex moved forward in his seat. “I have not spoken to my family. I am going by the content of an electronic written communication I received from them not three days ago.”

  Peart nodded. “Yes, but, um, you arrived only yesterday.”

  “This is true. The timing was quite fortunate for me.”

  “And this letter was sent three days ago? That’s…not possible.”

  Arex laughed lightly; at least, Peart imagined the clucking noise that came from his mouth to be a laugh. “Why, of course it is.”

  “And you haven’t spoken to them?”

  “No. They are sure to have begun observing the Contemplation. They will not respond to any communications from me.”

  Peart was becoming more frustrated with what seemed to be nonsense answers from Arex. “But they sent the letter to you!”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “But they don’t know you’re here in 2376!”

  “Mr. Peart,” Arex said in a steady voice, “I am quite sure they don’t know I left 2305.”

  “Um, come again?”

 
Arex laughed lightly once again. “I have a family that is long-lived and large in number compared with those in human custom and familiarity. We have much family activity to follow among my parents and twenty-five siblings—”

  “Twenty-five?” Peart practically shouted.

  “With eleven brothers and thirteen sisters, I make twenty-five, yes. So with that, and our concepts of passing time being so different from yours, it did not surprise me that members of my family continued their regular contacts.”

  “But they never got a letter back in seventy-one years!”

  “Well, I never was a good one to stay in touch, myself,” Arex admitted.

  Peart paused a moment to sort out the past moments of conversation while feeling his frustration rise into his voice. “So you flew a shuttlecraft into a black hole—”

  “I was not piloting, and technically, it was a wormhole.”

  “Wormhole, right,” Peart said, not missing a beat. “You come seventy-one years forward in time, get picked up by Starfleet, you go someplace to check your electronic communication log and sort through seventy-one years’ worth of messages only to find out that your father is dying…today!”

  Arex said, “It was kind of Starfleet to keep my log active as long as it continued to receive messages. And I was declared missing, not dead, so there was no reason for my family to think the worst.”

  “It’s been seventy-one years!”

  “Can we focus on the matter at hand, please, Stewart?”

  Peart stopped short at hearing his given name, noticing that Arex was leaning forward and peering into a small data viewer. While his crash course in Triexian logic continued to baffle him, Peart chose to set Arex’s family matters aside for later discussion. “Right,” he said, and followed with a heavy exhale. “What can I do to help?”

  “Focus the scanners and gather the most detailed reading you can of the belt ahead,” Arex said. “I want as much as you can get about each asteroid: individual mass, trajectory, spin, and speed, all within a one-kilometer swath on either side of the shuttle. Then I want you to feed the data into the navigation computer banks in a constant stream. I want the most current scans fed in directly. Can you do that?”