Duffy frowned. “You think the Lincoln will be cut up for raw materials?”
“Possibly,” said Pattie, “but perhaps not. In any case, there is a mechanism that could have ‘collected’ the Lincoln without substantially damaging it.”
Gomez leaned back. “Did you copy that, da Vinci?”
“We did,” said Corsi’s voice. “We’re monitoring you very carefully.”
“Thanks, Mom,” said Duffy. “We promise not to leave the yard.”
Duffy thought he heard a slight growl, but it was hard to tell. Corsi’s voice returned, crisp and professional. “Are you sure you don’t want a security team out there with you?”
“No,” said Gomez, before Duffy could reply. “Nothing Enigma has done so far seems to constitute aggression. Having a bunch of goons with phasers waiting around might be seen as provocative. It would only put us in danger.”
“My people are not ‘goons,’ any more than yours are ‘grease monkeys.’”
Gomez chuckled. Foley, one of Corsi’s security people, had let the “grease monkey” quip slip a week earlier, and Gomez was milking it for all it was worth.
“What,” asked Corsi, “is taking so long?”
“We’re being methodical,” answered Gomez.
“That’s ‘safe’ in security speak,” said Duffy. “Besides I’m almost”—there was a click, and the end of the magnetic probe began to glow a soft blue—“ready.”
“Be careful,” said Gomez, “that you don’t depolarize your own suit seals.”
“Careful, careful,” Duffy replied in a sing-song tone. He pushed the probe closer to Enigma’s nearly invisible surface. There was no question this time. The stars imaged near the probe began to shimmer and swirl like runny watercolors.
“Check your safety lines,” warned Pattie. “If we pierce the field, atmosphere could vent from inside.”
Duffy tugged at the line, and braced himself as he turned up the probe’s gain and pushed it against the force field. Suddenly the image melted back, shimmering waves moving outwards from a hole that seemed, literally, to appear out of empty space. “It’s working!”
As the opening reached half a meter or so, Duffy reduced the gain and allowed it to stabilize. There was light inside, and he got an impression of a large space.
Gomez checked her tricorder. “I’m getting a reading from inside. There’s a breathable nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, with enough residual force field to keep it inside. It’s like the fields in the shuttlebay. Radiation flux is above background but nothing we’d need to worry about in the short term, even without our suits.”
Duffy leaned closer to the opening. He could see large machinery inside, dun- and gold-colored metals, pinstripes of silver and black, and glowing blue panels that pulsed with energy. “Will the force fields keep us from getting inside?”
“It shouldn’t be a problem. Try pushing your hand through.”
“Wait,” said Corsi.
Duffy grimaced. They had a ship to rescue.
He plunged his hand through the field before any superior officer had time to reformulate that thought into the form of an order. There was a slight, springy, resistance, like punching through a thin sheet of rubber. He only stopped when he was up to the shoulder in Enigma. He wiggled his fingers experimentally. “Still attached,” he announced.
“Guys,” Stevens’s voice cut into the circuit, “Corsi is turning all red. For your own safety, I recommend not returning to the ship right away.”
“We will,” Corsi’s voice was slow and controlled, “have a talk about this later.”
“Gomez.” It was Captain Gold’s voice this time. “What do you see?”
“It looks like some kind of mechanical space, Captain. Possibly a power generator or an engine room, though the technology is unlike anything I’ve seen before. No sign of crew. Everything appears automated.”
“Captain,” said Duffy, “we have to go inside. We can’t tell much about Enigma from out here. It’s also possible that once inside, we might be able to get a message to the Lincoln, either with our combadges or through an internal communications system we can tap into.”
“Captain,” Corsi’s voice rose in warning.
“Stand by, away team.”
The bridge circuit was muted. Duffy exchanged glances with Gomez. He wondered what the proverbial fly on the wall would be hearing right now.
“Commander.” It was Corsi. “I’ll be monitoring the situation from here. I have a team suited and ready for immediate beam-out in case there’s trouble.”
“It’ll be fine,” said Duffy. “There’s a duplicate magnetic probe on one of Soloman’s manipulator arms. The module has enough power to hold the breach open indefinitely, which our portable model can’t do. Soloman can monitor us from outside and provide a communications relay.”
“Very well,” said Gold, “permission to enter the Enigma ship is granted.”
They withdrew the portable probe, and replaced it with the one on Soloman’s pod. With the increased power available from the pod’s mini-fusion reactor, Duffy felt comfortable upping the gain to give them a two-meter opening. Gomez insisted on going first, but there was no shortage of volunteers. They were all eager to examine Enigma’s mysterious workings.
There was an operational gravity field inside Enigma, roughly half a standard gravity, and it was oriented so that the opening dropped them onto an angled wall. A towline from the module was fed through the opening first, to allow them to climb down to a level deck about eight meters below. Duffy watched, feeling a slight bit of disorientation, as Gomez lowered herself down.
She waved. “Comm check. Do you read me out there?”
“Signal gain is down seventy percent,” reported Soloman, “but I still read you fine, and I’m relaying a clear signal back to the ship.”
P8 Blue was next in. She bypassed the line, her eight legs allowing her to scurry directly down the wall in the reduced gravity.
“Wish me luck,” said Duffy, as he waved at Soloman in his cupola and climbed through the opening.
“Despite considerable effort on my part, I still do not understand the indeterminate nature of luck. I wish you success, not failure.”
Duffy chuckled. “Close enough.” He felt the gravity field grab him as he passed through the force fields, and climbed hand over hand down the line. He dropped lightly to the deck—it was a little like his first walk on Mars—and joined the others in looking around.
The space was dimly lit, and their hand-lights helped them pierce the shadows. A large cylinder, covered with glowing blue panels along its length, stretched from one end of the space to the other, a distance of perhaps fifty meters. Duffy was drawn to this device, while P8 scrambled inside a large copper-colored piece of machinery at one end of the room. Gomez focused on some illuminated wall panels that might be controls or readouts. With the oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere confirmed, both Duffy and Gomez took off their helmets to conserve their suits’ respective air supplies.
Duffy walked along the length of the device, feeling the pulse of power from inside as his glove slid along its mechanical supports. He knew instinctively it had to be some kind of engine. He stopped occasionally to take a tricorder reading, then moved along. He’d traveled the full length of the device before coming to a conclusion. “I think this is a space drive, a caterpillar.”
Pattie’s head popped out of an opening in the top of the device she was examining. “Excuse me? That last part can’t possibly have translated properly.”
Duffy laughed. “I wasn’t talking about one of your family members, Pattie. It’s a kind of theoretical reactionless drive. Inside this cylinder, a bit of space is being pinched, kinked. The drive then uses that kink to pull itself forward. Once the kink has been pulled through the length of the engine, it’s released, a new one forms at the other end, and the process repeats itself.
“It’s like an inchworm crawling along—again, no offense—or one of us climbing that line hand-ove
r-hand. It’s a perfect stealth drive, no exhaust products, no radiation, no thermal emissions, just a few stray gravity waves that these people apparently have the technology to mask. Thing is, this kind of drive should require a lot of power.”
“Two things,” Pattie said. “One, you really don’t need to apologize every time you make a metaphor to an Earth-based insectoid or vermicular life-form.”
“Sorry.” Duffy grinned.
“Secondly, I believe that this device I am studying is the source of that power. I believe it may be a zero-point energy collector.”
Duffy whistled softly. “Literally energy from nothing. The Federation’s never been able to make that one work, though we’ve had the theory for centuries. Couple this drive to that collector, and you’ve got about as close to a perpetual motion machine as you’ll ever see.”
“I’m not having much luck making sense of these panels,” said Gomez. “For all I know, I’m trying to decipher a decorative wall hanging. But there’s definitely control activity behind it. If I can find a way to tie in a hard connection for Soloman, maybe he can access their control circuits from outside.” A puzzled look crossed her face as she studied her tricorder. “Is anyone else getting unusual readings?”
Duffy stopped what he was doing. “What kind of readings?”
“These tricorders are modified to be especially sensitive to photonic force fields. Kieran, can I borrow the magnetic probe?”
Puzzled, he unhooked the tool from his belt and handed it to her.
“My readings are inconclusive,” she explained. “This is the only way to be sure.”
She activated the probe to a low gain and pushed it through the lighted panel.
Duffy looked around the room, as though seeing it for the first time. “This is all a hologram.”
Gomez nodded. “A much more sophisticated one than we’ve ever seen, but yes.”
“Look at this,” said Pattie, gesturing at a series of flashing green panels along the wall. “These lit up when you pushed the probe through the panel. You may have disrupted something.”
The flashing lights reminded Duffy of something. As he thought of it, he became aware of something else, a tone at the high end of his hearing range, pulsing in time to the lights. “This is an alarm of some kind,” he said.
Just then, a bulkhead at the end of the room irised open, and a floating ball of light passed through.
Corsi’s voice sounded tinnier even than usual over the com-link. “Away team, get out of there. We can’t get a transporter lock with you inside. Move closer to the opening.”
The ball of light stopped in front of Duffy and changed shape, dimming as it did, and taking the form of something froglike, upright, and only vaguely humanoid. The frog-thing considered him with wet, yellow eyes. “This is a class one service area,” it said. “You can’t be here.” It reached out to Duffy with a webbed, many-fingered hand. “Good-bye,” it said.
Duffy faded out of existence.
Chapter
8
Captain Gold paced the length of the observation lounge. “I want options.”
Stevens leaned back in his chair, fingertips pressed together. “I can send out more ‘pinger’ torpedoes. The pulse should be detected by the modified tricorders the away team has.”
Gold stopped and looked at him. “What does that do for us?”
“Well, they already know we’re here, and we’re looking for them. It should allow them to get a fix on the pulse. If they’re lost inside and trying to find their way out, it might help.”
Gold nodded. “Sounds good. How long?”
“I’ve got a second torpedo in the tube, two more on the fabrication bench. I think a shot an hour indefinitely.”
“Do it. Pulse every hour, on the hour, ship’s time. A logical schedule will make it easier for them to find the pulses if they need multiple fixes along the way.”
Corsi looked at Gold, her expression dark. “I should have had a team in there with them.”
Gold glared back. “I’m looking for options, not ‘I told you so.’ If your people were in there, we’d be looking for them, too.”
“Options then,” said Corsi, her posture ramrod-straight. “Stevens replicates a half-dozen more of these magnetic probes and shows my people how to use them. Then I lead a team of my people inside that thing, and we start poking holes in holograms until we find our missing people and bring them out.”
Lense cleared her throat. “Enigma has an interior volume of just under half a million cubic kilometers. You could be looking a long time.”
“Then,” said Corsi, “if we can’t find them, we’ll find someone or something that knows where they are.” She scowled at no one in particular.
Gold knew her anger was directed more at herself than anyone else, but that conversation would have to wait. He shook his head. “I think that’s out of the question unless we have some idea where to look.”
“The easiest way to do that,” Abramowitz cut in smoothly, “would be to ask them. Have we learned anything else that might let us communicate with them?”
“Actually,” said Stevens, “some of their tricorder readings from inside Enigma were relayed back to us. Data transmission was slowed by the intervening force fields so we didn’t get everything, but I’d say in those few minutes we learned more about Enigma than the Chinook did during its entire study.” He licked his lips. “I think we can punch a comm signal in that they could translate through their modified tricorders.”
“We need more than a signal.” Corsi was like a belligerent dog with a bone. “We need intelligence. Can you improve the images you have of the interior? Maybe find our people, or at least the Lincoln?”
“We’ve been reviewing the data from the first imaging pulse, but I don’t know there’s much I can do to improve on it. We have a mass of duranium we believe to be the Lincoln. We have various other scattered duranium traces, none of which add up to a hundred-kilometer ship, or anything remotely like it. We have organic concentrations that we believe to be life-forms.”
Gold stopped his pacing, and stared hard at Stevens. “How many, Stevens?”
“Somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty million.” Stevens looked grim.
Corsi’s mouth fell open. “Thirty million people in the crew, and nobody is answering our hails?”
Stevens shrugged. “They could be unconscious, or dead for all we can tell. We could be reading farm animals, or the occupants of a zoo. They could be some other kind of biological concentrations entirely—trees or bioreactors full of bacteria. We just don’t have the resolution to tell. However—” He seemed reluctant to continue.
Gold crossed his arms over his chest. “Spit it out, Stevens.”
“During the first burst, we observed some minor disruption of the holographic matrix. Given that, and our success with the modified magnetic probe, it’s just possible I could come up with a special torpedo to disrupt at least their outer holograms. It might be only be temporary, twenty minutes or so while the fields regenerate, but it would give us a look at what we’re dealing with. It might let us get a direct comm signal in, or beam our people out.”
“How long?”
Stevens punched at the screen of his padd. “We’ll need to run some more analysis on the data. More scans next time we pulse Enigma. Design and fabricate the weapon. Maybe thirty hours.”
“Make it twenty,” said Gold.
* * *
Duffy looked down at the surf sloshing around the boots of his space suit. “I am definitely overdressed, for this beach.”
He, Gomez, and P8 Blue were standing on a sandy coastline under a sunny, pink sky. Pattie—smaller, lower, and generally more vulnerable to the waves—scuttled up the sandy slope away from the water. Thirty meters beyond, a cliff made of dark, volcanic rock reared up into the sky.
Gomez looked at him. “Any idea how we got here?”
“Felt like a transporter to me.”
“Where,” asked Patti
e, “do you think we are?”
“Still inside Enigma, I’d say.” Duffy took out the magnetic probe and looked around for something to test it on. He could have simply tried it on the sand, but the environmental suit made it difficult to bend that far.
Ten meters to his right, a black outcropping of rock the size of a shuttlecraft rose up out of the sand. He trudged over, activated the probe, and shoved it against the outcropping.
To his surprise, the probe didn’t penetrate, but neither was the surface entirely solid. Instead, it gave slightly, like wet leather.
There was a rumble, almost subsonic, so deep and loud Duffy felt it in his ribcage as much as he heard it. “Ouch,” said the universal translator, in the very generic voice it reserved for the most extremely alien of languages.
A few meters to his left, a flipper the size of a man lifted out of the sand, traversed a five meter arc, and dug into the sand. With a grunt, the “outcropping” laboriously pulled itself a few meters farther up the beach.
Duffy staggered back, then turned and ran from the behemoth. He managed ten meters or so in the clumsy environmental suit before looking back.
The thing wasn’t chasing him. It labored to move on land, and he could have kept ahead of it at a slow stroll. “Did that turtle just talk?”
“Do not mock me, small visitor,” said the behemoth. “No turtle am I. Rogendera Godo-click, I am, far-traveler, brave adventurer, home from the stars after many seasons’ travels. Home to lay her eggs in familiar sand, and tell her children tales of distant worlds. Home to stay am I.”
Gomez stepped closer. “You’re a space traveler?”
“I was, as you must be. Strange is your form and speech. Never your like have I seen before, not in all the travels, mine.”
“We’re space travelers,” said Duffy, “but we’re a little lost.” He considered a moment. Whatever this thing was, it was real, and it didn’t seem to know it was on a ship. “In your travels, did you at some time collide with some unseen object?”
Enigma Ship Page 6
