Ghostly blue light and a black surface that seemed to draw in that light and swallow it: that was the alien ship from two, three kilometers away as we slowly approached. Already the ship was blotting out much of our field of vision, cutting off the stars like a rent in the universe.
Jean-Luc was right. The alien vessel was enormous, and it seemed we were being deliberately sucked into it. I also felt a hint of what Father O'Day and Father O'Heron had suggested---the sense of some malign quality to the ship, though it appeared dead and harmless.
I was in the front cabin with the pilot, watching the alien starship grow and spread all around us, appearing to extinguish the stars in all directions until there was nothing to be seen but the black mass oncoming at us. I felt lost in all that darkness, and I had the strong urge to retreat from the pilot's cabin, find a window, looking backward at the stars. For a moment I had to close my eyes, overwhelmed.658Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjyYDovCmHv
"Jesus," I whispered, opening my eyes once again to that dark immensity.
"Don't take His name in vain," the pilot said to me.
I turned to her, but there was no indication that she'd been joking. "Sorry," I said. She shrugged, not looking at me, keeping her gaze on the ship ahead of us and the instrument panels. I wondered how many of his own "agents" the bishop had managed to include on this expedition.
We passed near one of the bright blue navigation lights, a space buoy hovering untethered. More blue lights in the distance helped provide a sense of perspective that threatened to disappear as we neared the black vessel. We passed another blue beacon, then another, until there were no more to be seen. Then, directly ahead of us, I made out an oval of dim white lights on the black surface, and some of the surface features became indistinctly visible---half-pods, shallow depressions, a series of raised ridges, long thin projections.658Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoKH5vOWmBj
"The white lights mark the entrance," the pilot said. She slowed the shuttle's progress, and eventually brought us to a halt seventy-five meters from the alien vessel; then she turned the shuttle round so the bow faced away from the ship, and the stars came into view once again. She had orders to leave if anything serious went wrong, and she thought the shuttle and those aboard it were at risk, even if it meant leaving people behind on the alien ship.
I regarded the dense, crystalline ocean of stars, unable to pick out the Enterprise from among them. Although I could no longer see it, I could feel the alien ship behind me, could feel it drawing all of us toward it, both physically and psychologically. My skin buzzed with fear and anticipation.
Once outside, Ben Jammer took the lead, pushing off the shuttle; he drifted across the seventy-five meters and landed gently on all fours just outside the circle of lights. We would use suit jets to get back to the shuttle, since it was smaller and easier to miss, but this was the easiest and presumably safest way to reach the ship.658Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqWKU1s5pbo
"Don't kick with too much force," Jammer reminded me, his voice clear and sharp inside my helmet. "And you'll be surprised at the number of projections that'll serve as handholds." Jammer and Faulken were taking me on a reconnaissance excursion, to give me a feel for the alien ship before we resumed exploration with the new teams.
Like most of the inhabitants of the Enterprise, at least those on the upper decks, I'd made a number of excursions outside the ship, but I was thankful for the reminder. I flexed my knees slightly, then straightened them and floated off. I was overcautious, perhaps, and it took me much longer to reach the alien ship, but I landed only a few meters away from Jammer, barely feeling my touchdown. Almost immediately I had a grip on a smooth-cornered cube projecting from the ship's hull, and anchored myself.
Then I made my first mistake: I looked "up" along the ship's hull. The hull rose vertically to the sky above me like the metal face of an insurmountable cliff. Suddenly I lost my orientation, and the stars seemed to shift, lurching into slow, slow motion; with no gravity, I suddenly felt that if I didn't hang onto the ship I would fall away from it, hurtle helplessly into the cold night of space. I scrambled desperately for a second handhold, while my legs were flailing about of their own volition, my feet searching for some purchase.
"Relax," Jammer said. "I warned you about this. This ship is huge, and the way it sucks light away----Stop struggling and don't look at anything except the surface directly in front of you."
My left hand found another projection, and I did just as Jammer told me---stared at the hull in front of me, and stopped the kicking of my legs. Another minute or two, and my breathing had returned to normal.
"You okay?" Jammer asked.
I nodded. "Yes." My mouth was dry, but I did feel fairly calm. "I'm fine." As a test, I worked my way across the dozen or so meters to Jammer's side, without trouble.
Within minutes Faulken had joined us. We gathered together inside the lights, around a rectangular panel that was larger than I had expected---about ten meters long and eight or nine wide. Jammer popped open a smaller panel above it, twisted something inside, and the large panel slid open. He went in first, swinging himself into the ship, and saying, "Wait here for a minute." A few moments later, the interior of the airlock brightened slightly, and Jammer said, "Come on through."
The airlock would have been large enough for all twelve members of the team; it was illuminated with a ghostly light from two portable lanterns that had been mounted to the airlock walls with adhesive pads. Every passage and room in the alien ship had to be illuminated.
When Jammer wheeled the outer door shut, cutting off the night and the stars and sealing us inside, I felt a brief shiver of panic. Then the inner door slid open, as large as the outer one, and we moved through dim light growing dimmer until Jammer switched on the next lantern. Even then the passage---far larger than any passage on the Enterprise---remained dark: the lanterns cast faint gray light like the Enterprise lights at night.658Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡytBjjqGnLv
"Raise the brightness," Faulken said. "He's here to see what it looks like."
Jammer looked at me. "They're on reserve mode, to extend battery life. But I can boost them."
"No," I said. "This is fine." The truth was I liked it better that way. I was afraid the wonder and mystery would be dispelled by brighter light.
We weren't very far inside when we entered the spherical chamber I'd seen in Faulken's video. Nylon straps were webbed across the opening through which Helsing had fallen to his death. I drifted over to it, anchored myself, then put one hand through a gap in the webbing. As my hand inched forward, I expected to feel the faint tug of gravity giving it new weight. I felt nothing, and aimed my hand torch through the webbing, playing the beam along the length of the room. It was a very long way down.
"I thought there was gravity in here," I said.
"There is," Jammer replied.
I reached my hand and arm farther into the room, but still I felt nothing. I released the hand torch and it hung in the air by my fingers, drifting slightly but otherwise not moving, and surely not falling.
"What the hell....?" Faulken said.
"How far in does it start?"
"It starts right inside the doorway," Jammer answered. By then he was beside me, and thrust his own hand and arm through the webbing. "I don't get it." He grabbed my hand torch, then gently tossed it toward the far end of the room. It drifted steadily, but never picked up speed, and when it eventually struck the far wall or floor, where Helsing's body had lain, it bounced off at an angle and headed back to us, though far more slowly now.
"I don't like this," Jammer said. "I don't like this one bit."
Faulken joined us, and, as if to confirm things for herself, inserted her own arm through the webbing, all the way to her shoulder. "What the hell's going on?" she said.
We hovered together around the opening.
"Ideas?" I said.
No one offered any at first, then Jammer said, "Maybe after Helsing fell in, it triggered something, and the gravity got turned off."
"Except the gravity was still there for days," Faulken pointed out. "Hell, I think it was there the last time I came in here. That was three weeks ago, but still....." She shook her head. "I suppose it's possible this ship isn't so dead after all."
"What?" I said. "There are aliens still alive somewhere, and they've switched it off?"
"I don't know. You have a better idea?"
"No."
No one spoke, no one offered any answers. Distressed, we moved on.
Now I saw first hand what Jean-Luc had tried to explain to me---that there was no evidence of human hand or mind to be seen. We pulled ourselves along corridors far higher and narrower than those on the Enterprise; or far shorter and wider from the alternate perspective. We entered rooms and cabins and chambers unfathomable in design and purpose---devoid of machinery or tools or instruments or furniture, devoid of objects altogether.658Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTTLeqWkQHs
There were recognizable doorways, like those of the airlock, with mechanisms workable by human hands encased in pressure suit gloves, but our hands did not fit well around or into those mechanisms, and the necessary actions were often awkward and unnatural.
We saw no signs of labels or other kinds of markings anywhere, nothing with letters, characters, ideographs, nothing to convey a message or notice or identification or warning. If there were any, they were unrecognizable as such, like an alien Braille.
Alien. That's what the ship was, there was no doubt.
We came to a long, wide room or corridor that corkscrewed several hundred meters deeper into the ship. This was the site of the second casualty. The walls were ridged with silver-blue metal ribs that glinted in the lantern light. These ridges were sharper than surgical blades, and when a woman named Rose Fisher pulled herself into the room she brushed against the walls and the fine edges sliced open her pressure suit. Not knowing what had happened, Myles Smith rushed to help her, and contact with the ridges sliced open his suit as well. The cuts in the suits were so numerous, and so long and deep, that repairs were impossible. Within minutes they both were dead.658Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLQlCnvTQ6l
Passage through the corkscrew was relatively safe now. A taut cable ran the length of the corridor right down the middle. We attached short safety lines from our suits to the cable---the lines didn't allow enough freedom for us to make contact with the surrounding walls---then pulled ourselves along the cable to the far end.
The rooms and passages in the alien starship were so empty. Barren. It was surely possible that furniture, appliances, instruments, or other accouterments of daily life had at one time been mounted on the walls, connected to power grids, and could be so again. Maybe not, maybe they never had been. Who knows?"
I thought about the rooms and cabins on the Enterprise, different areas of the ship serving different functions, and I could hardly imagine any of them ever appearing quite so empty without aggressive efforts to strip them bare. Why would we ever want to do that? Why would anyone want to do that?
In the end I was left with a terrible sense of disappointment. I'd expected wonders, indecipherable devices, marvelous instruments and tools whose purpose could not be divined, enigmatic chambers filled with artifacts so perplexing yet awe-inspiring, they would leave the mind reeling, overcome by amazement. But the utter emptiness seemed to dispel the wonder that might otherwise have existed.
Near the end of my "tour," Jammer pointed to the doorway where Darius Hayes was killed. After working out the mechanism for the door---a thick, metal panel that slid back into the wall to create an opening----Hayes started through the doorway. The metal panel slammed shut on Hayes, crushing him. There was no suit rupture, but by the time he was freed and rushed back to the Enterprise, he had died of extensive internal bleeding. Now, even though I knew the panel was secure, I pulled myself quickly through the doorway, my stomach tight.
At last we came to a wide, cylindrical room with coppery walls, entering what seemed to be the "bottom."
"This is as far as we've explored," Jammer said. "Hamic died here."
"What happened?"
"We don't know."
"You don't know?"
"She was on a team with two others," Jammer explained. "They'd just worked out the entrance to this room, but they'd been inside this ship for hours at that point, so they decided to hold off, return to the module, then come back later. The other two left furst. They hadn't gone far when they realized Hamic wasn't with them. They called to her, but she didn't respond. When they backtracked, they found her drifting in this room. She was dead. No call, no signal....not a sound."
"Cause of death?"
"Unknown."
"Autopsy?"
"They did one, yes. But they couldn't find a thing. She just---died. That's when they decided to suspend exploration for a while."
"Aren't you afraid to be here?" I asked.
Jammer shook his head. Faulken said, "Not really. That's why we're here with you and not someone else." She smiled at me. "Are you afraid?"
I looked around that coppery, cylindrical room, at what seemed to be another hatch or door at the far end, and thought about the prospect of resuming the exploration of this enormous and mysterious vessel. I tried not to think about the zero gee room or the bishop's clandestine excursion to this vessel.658Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ4Bf7uxGpM
"No," I finally replied. "I'm not afraid.
There seemed to be nothing else to say. We started back.
Later that evening, Garcia came to my makeshift cabin. I was on my pallet, reviewing the notes I'd made from repeated viewings of the previous excursion recordings. I didn't expect any new insight or revelation, but it was something to do.658Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk9xCZ2IOFY
"Sorry if I'm disturbing you," she said. "I need to speak to you, privately."
A churning began in my stomach. I had no idea what she'd say, but I figured it couldn't be good. "Close the door."
She shut the door and held herself against the wall, facing me. I'd always admired Garcia, partly because she was a member of the crew---I admired everyone in the crew, to an extent, because they were so much their own people, staying outside of all the social and political machinations on the Enterprise---but also because of the way she represented them on the Executive Council. Like Hernandez, she always argued for what was best for the ship as a whole, not for herself or any one faction. Although I would never have said we were friends, she was one of the few people who I believed did not actively dislike me---that was worth a lot.658Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ10EVGL81CT
"Oh, I don't know that it's bad, exactly. Weird. Three things, and you should know about them. Jean-Luc ordered me not to speak of one, and he doesn't know I'm aware of the other; I don't think he's even aware of the third. But I won't keep them secret any longer. Not when we're about to start explorations tomorrow." She cocked her head. "Whether you choose to tell the others, I leave to you. It probably doesn't matter. But you should know, since you're in charge."
"I'm glad someone thinks so."
She smiled, but only briefly. "This first thing is mostly just a mystery, maybe some physical phenomenon that we don't recognize, but it could have some significance we can't yet determine. We also can't do anything about it, but it's worth being aware of." She shrugged uncomfortably. "We maintain a steady three-thousand kilometer distance between the Enterprise and the alien ship. The problem is this: every two days we have to retreat a bit, because the Enterprise drifts closer to the ship." Another shrug. "Well, we drift closer to it, or it drifts closer to us, or we're drifting together, it doesn't matter which."658Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGDZU9toDkI
"Frame of reference," I said.
"Right. However you chose to view it, every two days we have to make a several-minute burn of some of the attitude rockets to pull back to three thousand kilometers."
That was weird, all right. And frightening.
"What's the mass of the alien ship?" I asked.
"We've already run that, and it doesn't work. That damned ship is huge, dense in some sections, and it's got significant mass, but not enough to account for this, not at three thousand kilometers."
Garcia may have thought it was just a mystery, but I didn't like it."
"Any ideas?"
"Nope. We still don't pick up anything from the ship except a hint of ambient heat, which isn't much higher than its surroundings. Nobody's been able to suggest an explanation."
"That's encouraging." I shook my head. "What about the Little Enterprise? We'll drift into the ship as well, won't we?"
She nodded. "Probably. A couple of choices. We can set down on the ship's hull, anchor the shuttle with a few cables. Since there's no rotation, and there will be a tiny bit of natural gravity, it wouldn't take much to secure us. The cargo hold has all the necessary equipment."
"Thinking ahead."
She gave me a quick shrug. "I just wanted to be prepared. The other choice is to tell the pilots that the mass of the ship is enough to cause a small attraction, and let them use the shuttle engines regularly to keep us parked."
I nodded. "Preference?"
"Land on the ship and anchor to the hull. If that ship is dangerous, being seventy-five meters away won't make much difference."
"I agree. We'll make a final decision tomorrow." I sighed. "Okay, what else?"
Garcia hesitated a long time before answering, which only increased my anxiety.
"Did you ever wonder how it was we found this ship?"
Sure, I had wondered----a dark mental creature of doubt had gnawed away at my thoughts, although I had always managed to suppress it for a time. I hadn't wanted to think about it too much. I knew something was wrong.
"Just coincidence," I tried. "On our way out from Antioch, it was just there, near our flight path. Coincidence. Luck."658Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡD6f4RxVGTX
Garcia made a kind of snorting noise. "This ship, this alien vessel, in nowhere near anything. You take all the possible flight paths we could have charted out from Antioch's system, and just by chance we choose the one that takes us right to this starship."
"We were on a flight path to make a jump to the bishop's next star?"
She shook her head. "The bishop hadn't made a selection yet. He doesn't usually make one immediately, but he'd never hold off that long. Either Captain Picard somehow convinced him to postpone his selection, or the bishop and the captain worked together on this. I don't know how it played out between them."
"Tell me."
"A few hours after you entered the chamber on Antioch, the transmitter at the original landing site sent off a long, highly directional signal burst. It stayed on long enough for Communications to chart its path. Didn't seem to be directed at anything in particular----the nearest star in its path was hundreds of light-years away. Working backwards in time, it still would havd been a couple thousand years ago before anything would have been much closer."
"So Jean-Luc got curious."
"Apparently. He set course to follow the signal path, and we stayed under impulse power all those months until we picked up the alien ship. Even so, we almost missed it; we nearly went right on by. The only reason we didn't is because the captain had all the ship sensors on red alert, looking."
"So you think the signal was directed at the alien ship."
"What do you think, Pavel?"
"And Jean-Luc doesn't know you know about this?"
"Good heavens, no. He ordered the people in Communications not to speak of it to anyone. When he set our course, he gave no explanation, just gave the orders to the navigators."
"Then how did you learn about it?"
She hesitated. "The crew obeys most of the captain's orders, but not in certain matters. We have open communication among ourselves. We keep no secrets from each other."
"Any ideas about the signal?" I asked. I had a couple myself, but they were only partially formed, and I wanted to hear what Garcia thought.
"We talked about it. The crew, I mean. A number of suggestions, but most highly unlikely. Two primary possibilities, we concluded." She held up a finger. "One: it was a signal to the alien starship that the chamber had been discovered. Or breached."
"But you said the signal wasn't sent until several hours after we'd entered. Why the delay?"
Garcia smiled. "We worked that out. Long enough for Antioch to rotate and bring the transmitter into a position where it could send the signal to the proper location."
I nodded. "Second possibility?"
She held up another finger. "The signal was meant to lead us here."
"A trap?"
"Of sorts. Except there's nobody left alive on the ship. The trap, if that's what it was, can't be sprung."
"That's what we think. Maybe it's what we're supposed to think."
Garcia shrugged. "Haven't seen any signs of life yet."
"There's always tomorrow," I said. "You said there were three things."
"Yes. The third bothers me the most. It's the bishop."
My gut tightened still further. "I'm listening."
"Well, I'm not sure what to tell you. It's been three weeks now since exploration of the alien ship was suspended. During that time, the bishop has made three excursions of his own, three trips here with a shuttle and a crew. I'm fairly sure Jean-Luc doesn't know about the trips, and the bishop probably thinks no one does----he managed to overeride all of the security alarms, took circuitous flight paths, arranged for the bridge to shut down sensors and detection equipment until the shuttle was far from the Enterprise, that kind of thing. Very thorough."
"Not quite thorough enough, I'd say."
Garcia gave me a hard smile. "People usually underestimate the crew."
"Jean-Luc knows about one trip."
She nodded, still smiling. "And I guess I underestimate Jean-Luc."
"What was the bishop doing?"
"I don't know. But we think he brought something back to the Enterprise on his second trip." She shook her head. "I've no idea what."
That was distressing. And I wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that there was no longer any gravity in the room that had killed Helsing.
"Any suggestions?" I asked. "An action plan?"
"No, not really. The crew's looking, but it's not likely they'll find anythying. The bishop's too smart, and the Enterprise is too big. You want a plan? We keep a close eye on the bishop. Wait, and watch our backs."
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