by L. A. Graf
“Yeah, well, I didn’t sign on to this colony to be a pasty-faced lab technician.” She handed his tricorder back. “I recondensed it for you.”
“Thanks.” Anthony passed the scientific instrument up between the front seats, gently nudging Uhura’s shoulder with it when she didn’t immediately respond. “Our report is ready to be sent in to Big Muddy now, Commander.”
Uhura finally glanced up from her frequency display and removed the audio remote from her ear. “I know, Dr. Anthony. But I’m afraid it’s not going be quite that easy.” Her normally tranquil face held an emotion Sulu almost didn’t recognize, he saw it there so seldom. After a moment, he realized it was embarrassment. “I’m getting microflashes of signal that sound like Rand calling me, but they disappear again before I even have time to identify them, much less match frequencies and reply. And the signal from the orbital shuttle is doing the same thing. I can’t even get as much of a fix on it as we did back in Big Muddy.”
“Is it because the Bean is moving?” Sulu asked. He’d left What’s the Point behind as soon as Anthony had finished recording the destruction there, and was already several kilometers farther up the valley, heading for Desperation, the next settlement on his list. “I could hover again, or drop down to the surface somewhere away from the flood.”
“I don’t think that would help. I wasn’t getting any signal at all while you hovered over What’s the Point.” Uhura frowned down at the gleaming remote in her hand, as if it was the source of the problem rather than the bulky box sitting on her lap. “It’s only when we are moving that I get these little flickers of response, and then it’s only once in a long while.”
“Does the signal look weak?” Weir asked. “Maybe it’s been attenuated by the dust.”
Uhura shook her head. “I don’t think so. When I catch a flash of it, it looks strong and clear, but then I lose it immediately. It doesn’t fade out, it doesn’t break up, it just vanishes as if it had never been there.” She cast a sheepish look across at Sulu. “I was so sure Rand and I had finally come up with an olivium-proof system. I guess I should have known better. ‘Just because something works in theory doesn’t mean it works in Llano Verde.’ ”
“Well, there’s one thing that should still work.” Sulu cut all the lateral vectors on his antigrav thrusters to zero and increased power to maximum levels. With one less tissue regenerator and a lot fewer medical supplies on board, the Bean kicked upward like a balloon released from a child’s hand. The maneuver got no reaction from Uhura, since she was used to Sulu’s ruthlessly efficient piloting style, but he heard gasps and curses from the backseat as tricorders bounced and maps scattered. “Hang on, we’re just going up to talk to the orbital platform.”
“No problem,” Weir said cheerfully. “Wow, what a rush!”
Anthony didn’t sound quite as thrilled. “Are we sure Gamma Night is over?” He cradled his tricorder in one arm, holding his maps down with the other.
“No,” Sulu said. “But with all the olivium down here, this is the only way to find out.” They were already in the dust-storm layer above the mountains, and he had to raise his voice to be heard over the sleeting sound of particles hitting the hull. “We’ll just have to reorient on the way back down if you want to keep recording the flood.”
“If we can get in touch with Big Muddy, I won’t have to,” Anthony said. “Once McElroy knows what parts of our hardwired data network to look at, he can use Commander Scott’s signal-noise reduction unit to determine floodwater levels for the whole valley.” A cyclonic wind gust whirled the Bean into a blind sideways skid until Sulu could adjust the antigravs and break free of its grip. When he spoke again, Anthony sounded a little more breathless, but that could have been from the effort of hanging on to all his gear. “If we had enough P537 modulators in stock, we could actually map all the flooding from Big Muddy. But we’ve only got enough right now to watch selected nodes in the data network.”
“Nodes!” Uhura jumped in her seat as if someone had kicked her from behind. “That’s what those flashes of signal are!”
Sulu was too busy wrestling the Bean out of another whirling dust vortex to reply. All he could hear from Anthony was the sound of a muffled curse, but Weir said conversationally, “Wave-interference nodes, you mean? Wouldn’t that give you some fade?”
“Not if they were frequency-specific.” The Bean’s gyrations didn’t stop Uhura from tapping a data query into her experimental communicator’s console, although she did have to pause occasionally to make sure she’d hit the right keys. “There are only certain electromagnetic frequencies that can refract through the crystals of olivium in the dust at the right angle to amplify themselves. But there are so many different crystal forms of olivium that when Rand and I combined her refraction system with my reflection system, we thought we had a wide enough frequency range to bounce the signal off the dust-air boundary at any possible angle.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Weir said. “So why are you getting interference nodes?”
“Because we forgot about the fact that each individual olivium crystal will still absorb any frequencies that it can’t refract.” Uhura’s exasperation was palpable. “Only a few frequencies should match all possible crystal refraction angles. Those are the only ones that will show a net increase in signal strength over distance.”
“—so only the places those frequencies happen to reflect to are going to see any kind of signal,” Weir finished. “And those places are where you’re getting your microflashes?”
“I think so.” Uhura braced herself to read the console’s display as the Bean lurched through the turbulent upper eddies of the dust storm. Sulu could already see the vague shoulders of the Gory Mountains appearing through the haze to the north and east. “The computer says only two of Rand’s frequencies can refract through every single crystal phase of olivium. The two-theta reflectance angles are seventy-eight and ninety-five degrees, which would create circles of signal reception centered on the spaceport and spaced either twenty-one or thirty-five kilometers apart. There should be an especially strong reception circle every one hundred and five kilometers, where the two bands concatenate.”
“That’s nice,” Anthony said between gritted teeth. “Except that we don’t have any instrument capable of telling us how far we are from the spaceport right now.”
Uhura glanced over at Sulu in concern. “You can’t tell where we are based on your navigation program?”
He snorted. “After all the departures we just made from my flight plan to see how bad the flooding was? I’m not sure I even know what direction Big Muddy is—”
Sulu broke off, feeling the Bean shake off the last tearing crosswinds. The dragon’s hiss of dust across the hull dropped to a whisper, then to silence. “That’s better. See if you can raise the orbital platform, Uhura. They’ll be able to give you our distance from the spaceport right down to the centimeter.” He paused, but the communications officer made no move to lift the audio remote she still held in her hand. He glanced over to see her staring out her side of the Bean’s cockpit, into the blood-red glow of sunset. “Uhura?”
“Greg, do you see that?” For once, Weir actually sounded intimidated. “It’s not an olivium twister, is it?”
“I don’t—I don’t think so. It’s too big.”
Sulu bumped a right lateral component into every antigrav thruster, swinging the craft around in a quick semicircle so he could see what they were talking about. Tricorders skidded and fell in the backseat, but for once there was no response from the hydrologists. They were staring at the dust storm below them.
It cut down through the dust like the whirling tunnel of a tornado, spinning off subsidiary twists and eddies of wind on every side, but never diminishing in intensity itself. Dust poured into it like a whirlpool and was flung outward again, forming a thick storm wall that buttressed the clear air inside. It never moved, as if it had been captured in the tight embrace of the Gorys and the Goosebumps. Intellectu
ally, Sulu knew it was just a cold-air downdraft on a massive scale, twisted by the rotation of the mountain winds around it. But it looked more like the eye of a hurricane, right down to the reflected red glitter of sunset off the water at its base.
“Oh, I get it now,” Weir said.
Uhura threw a puzzled glance back at her. “Get what?”
“Why they call it Bull’s Eye.”
Sulu frowned down at the distant gleam of bloodstained water. “That’s the crater lake down there?”
He heard the rustle of maps being picked up from the floor behind him. “It’s in the right place for it,” Anthony confirmed. Uhura had set down her remote and reached over the bulky box on her lap to activate the Bean’s standard communicator panel. “According to this, the crater sits right where the Gory and Goosebump mountains come together, at the head of the Little Muddy.”
“And this Southfork place you want to go, to check on where the flood is coming from—it’s right on the rim of that crater?”
“Yes.” Weir peered over Sulu’s shoulder at the Bean’s console, as if it could explain what was going on below. “Does that grim look mean we might not be able to land there?”
Sulu’s frown got a little deeper when he realized she’d been checking the duranium gleam of the instruments for his reflection rather than their readings. “I won’t know until we get closer to the surface, but there’s a good chance—”
“Sulu, I’ve got the orbital platform,” Uhura said abruptly. “They want to talk to you. Patching through to main speakers.”
Static filled the Bean’s cockpit as a wayward plume of dust drifted past them, thrown out like a waterspout from the chaos below. Sulu put all his antigrav thrusters back on vertical lift, and after a minute the static cleared. “—your mission,” said a firm, familiar voice. “According to Governor Sedlak—”
“Sulu to Kirk.” He wouldn’t normally have interrupted his commanding officer with the higher priority of a hail, but the mention of Sedlak’s name had filled him with misgiving. “Sir, we missed the first part of your message. Are you aboard the orbital platform?”
Uhura’s head shake told him she knew the answer even before Kirk said, “Negative, Mr. Sulu. The Enterprise is still in fringe space around the Belle Terre system.”
“They’re piggybacking on the orbital platform’s signal to get around the curve of the planet,” Uhura said softly. “And to punch through the dust haze we’ve got even up here.”
“We have at least a dozen potential pirate vessels lurking out here, and I’d rather not let them out of my sight,” Captain Kirk continued. “Update me on the status of your mission.”
Sulu winced, knowing Kirk wasn’t going to like the first part of what he had to say. After all, it had been Kirk’s orders Chekov had skirted by volunteering for that relief supply mission in the first place. “Sir, we invited Commander Chekov down to spend some time with us on the planet. He hitched a ride—”
“—on a civilian cargo shuttle,” Kirk finished, somewhat impatiently. “Governor Sedlak has already told me about that, Mr. Sulu, and about the loss of the shuttle. Have you found any trace of it?”
“No, sir. We’ve tracked back almost half of the stops it should have made, and we haven’t found any dropped cargo yet.” Sulu steeled himself to deliver the news that would irrevocably change the nature of their mission. “While searching, Captain, we discovered a massive flood in progress in the mountains of Llano Verde. The people in the capital don’t know about it yet. We have an urgent data packet to send to Chief McElroy of the Hydrologic and Meteorologic Division of Technical Services.”
“Transmit it to the Enterprise.” Few people could match James T. Kirk’s swiftness in adapting to emergencies, but he had trained his bridge crew to be almost as fast. Uhura reached back immediately for the tricorder, making Anthony grunt in surprise. The hydrologist fumbled around, then finally found it under the maps piled on the Bean’s floor and handed it to her. She had the tricorder plugged into the main communicator panel and uploading in seconds.
“Data packet received,” said Spock’s calm voice in the background. “Flood conditions confirmed, Captain.”
“Send that information down to the continental authorities now, as well as to the main colony headquarters,” Kirk told his science officer. “How bad is the flooding you’ve seen, Mr. Sulu?”
“Potentially catastrophic,” said a loud voice from the Bean’s backseat.
Sulu glared at his instrument panel, hoping Weir caught that expression, too. “One settlement has been totally evacuated and another is partly under water. We don’t know how much worse it will get until we investigate the source of the flooding. That should be at our next stop.”
“The problem is that we can’t warn the towns downstream if they’re in danger, Captain,” Uhura cut in. “We still don’t have a working communications system.”
“Governor Sedlak told me that, too,” Kirk said. “He seems to feel I wasted your time by assigning you to this mission. However, since he wouldn’t be finding out about this flood if Mr. Scott hadn’t developed a dustproof shuttle, I’m not particularly inclined to agree.” They could hear the thoughtful breath the captain took, even through the patched-through connection. “Sulu, best estimate. Are you going to need the Enterprise down there?”
Sulu opened his mouth to say yes without thinking, then closed it again. He couldn’t just defer instinctively to his captain’s superior ability to deal with a crisis. Kirk had a serious situation on his own hands, and he was asking Sulu to weigh the danger Llano Verde’s settlers faced from flooding versus their vulnerability to alien pirate raids. In that balance, the possibility of rescuing Chekov barely tipped the scale. With any luck, Sulu thought glumly, the cargo shuttle would turn out to have gone down far away from the Little Muddy River.
“According to the scientists who’ve seen the data firsthand, sir, the situation could get a lot worse. If it does, we don’t have the capacity to evacuate the downriver towns in time.” Sulu heard Weir let out a breath of relief behind him, but he wasn’t done yet. Honesty, and his long months of exposure to the independent settlers in Llano Verde, forced him to add, “On the other hand, I’m not sure the colonists would want the Enterprise coming to their rescue.”
“Neither am I,” Kirk said ruefully. “I’ve got Pardonnet waiting on one channel and Sedlak on another, and I suspect they’re both going to tell me to do something different. I’ll make my decision about whether to return to Belle Terre after I’ve talked to them—and after you’ve reported back on the source of that flooding. Understood?”
“Understood, sir.” Sulu had known the search for Chekov would have to be delayed to deal with the flood crisis, but the direct order from Kirk still made his stomach twist. His commander must have heard his dismay even in that brief reply.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Sulu. We’re not going to give up on the missing cargo shuttle,” Kirk assured him. “I’m under orders from Starfleet to deliver a first officer to the Reliant, and I intend to carry them out. We’ll just have to trust Mr. Chekov to take care of himself until we have time to find him.”
“Stop . . .” Baldwin’s voice, desperate and breathless, tugged at Chekov from two meters back. “C.C., please . . . we gotta stop . . .”
Chekov nodded, not at all sure Baldwin could see the gesture through the persistent haze of blown dust and the swaddling of cloth they both wore. But he slowed cautiously, twisting his grip on the roll of sheet in his hands and veering toward the only tangle of dead brush in sight. Even that extra distance proved almost too much; he dropped to his knees as soon as he was halfway out of the wind, leaning back to lower the sheet and its occupant to the ground with as much control as possible. He heard Baldwin stumble to a stop with a weary grunt, and hoped neither of them had jolted Reddy too badly in trying to get him out of the weather.
When they’d left the homestead, the plan had been to head downslope in thirty-minute increments. Baldwin—by vi
rtue of owning a working wrist chronometer—would signal their stops, and they would rest as long as necessary to keep themselves from succumbing to the olivium and Reddy from suffering too much from the travel. They had most of a day’s sunlight in front of them, and both the five-liter bottles of water. Surely there were other homesteads between here and the base of the crater. If they paced themselves carefully, Chekov was confident they could get most of the way down Bull’s Eye’s slope before dark, even with Reddy suspended on a sheet between them. They would be out of the dust and back on track for Eau Claire by morning.
That original plan blew away on the first blast of radioactive wind. Even bundled in every spare blanket and sheet they could find, they hadn’t managed ten meters before both were coughing up dust and stumbling with olivium-induced fatigue. Baldwin called their first stop what felt like hours after they walked out the homestead’s door; Chekov suspected it was more like fifteen minutes. Any chance they had of surviving depended on their ability to creep down a hostile mountainside, fifteen minutes at a time, ahead of whoever had ambushed them on the lakeside. The lump of anxiety clenching his stomach rolled over into a more primitive fear. For the first time since landing on Belle Terre, Chekov found himself unable to imagine how any of them could come out of this alive.
After that, they focused simply on moving. Whichever of them needed to stop called for it; they’d both done so an equal number of times. They downed the water by careful mouthfuls, sat back-to-back to form a windbreak for Reddy’s stretcher, and didn’t even argue anymore. Chekov had a feeling this was because Baldwin was rapidly losing the motivation to keep fighting at all. Taking Reddy to help was the only thing holding the two of them together, and very likely the only thing keeping Baldwin alive. Chekov didn’t let himself worry about how he was going to take care of Baldwin once Reddy finally stopped breathing. If he thought that far ahead, nausea and dizziness squeezed in too tight, and it was all he could do to pull himself up out of the sand and start walking again.
