USS AthenaTHE DREAM OF FIRE

TEASER

The room was dimly lit, with the main lights off and the illumination coming only from a series of candles that had been placed on nearby tables and on one low table in the centre of the room. Even the holographic projectors that provided the images of a streaking starfield in the windows had been turned off. T’Kor sat on a cushion on one side of the small, low table, her dark face illuminated only by the large candle that burned in front of her. The shadows on her face were deep, and the lines on her skin emphasized. On the other side was Lieutenant Kelsey Hann, much younger, somewhat paler in both his skin and his hair, and with the slight but athletic build of most of those in the security department on the starship Athena. But whereas T’Kor was calm and relaxed, Hann was somewhat on edge. His body was tense, and the sweat was visible on his brow.

“Kelsey,” T’Kor started, looking in the direction of the man without really looking at him. “The most important thing to do is to concentrate. Concentrate on the candle only. Do not linger on any other distraction. Do not let your sight or your hearing impart anything else on you. Focus on the candle.”

Hann tried, he really did. He found it very hard to concentrate on the candle. He focused on the flickering flame and tried to analyze the colours of the flame. It was not easy. His mind could not fully comprehend what it was that was assaulting him. He could think of it only as pictures composed of sound, or sound composed of images. “It’s… hard,” he finally admitted.

“It is not easy. I agree on that. However, it can be done.”“I… don’t know.”“In time, you will learn the ability to ignore the white noise of telepathic images.

At any one time, your eyes and ears are sending to your brain a large amount of data, but your brain manages to ignore all but a tiny percentage of the information and processes only what it needs. With the telepathic senses, your brain is experiencing new information and new stimulation, and it has not yet learned to sort out the information. In time, it will.”

“I know,” Hann said. His voice sounded tired and a little exasperated. “But with sight and sound, you can shut them out. You can go to your quarters and turn off the lights and bury your head in the covers, and you can shut all of that out and go to sleep. But when I lie down, the telepathic images keep on coming. When the other senses quiet down, it is as if more of my brain is devoted to interpreting this new sense. I don’t understand… usually… the images, the sensations. I can’t seem to sleep.”

“Doctor Psakolaps has been helping you.”“But I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep taking medication to get any sleep at all.”

Hann quieted down again. He could sense what T’Kor was about to say to him, about how he had to focus on the candle, to try to shut out that background telepathic noise.

T’Kor realized that the man had read her mind, and so did not speak at all. She did her best to make sure that she did not contribute to the mental noise, but of course, the predominantly human crew of the Athena did not have that discipline. “It’s also not good to stay off of duty as well. I hate to think that my career in Starfleet is over already.”

“It’s not—”“I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say—” And then Hann stopped

speaking. He had been looking at the Vulcan woman, but turned away. He tried to focus on the candle, but it was not easy. “Oh, there I go again. I can read your mind. I can tell you what you’re going to say even before you said it. Did you know how much that irritates other people? It’s almost impossible to deal with them, well, except for Commander Dewuchun.”

“What about the chief engineer?” T’Kor asked.“I can’t read his mind at all. When I’m with him, it’s total silence.”“It is something about the Odonan mind that makes it impossible for telepaths to

read them.”Hann smiled a little. “Well, I guess if things get really bad, I could immigrate to an

Odonan planet. They do allow immigrants, don’t they? Maybe I can be an exchange officer on an Odonan starship, although I heard that’s kind of hard to do. Their ships are different. The people are… different.”

“I am sure that in whatever you decide to do—”“I know,” Hann cut in again, and then stopped. He looked down, and rubbed his

forehead, as if that would stop the flow of information. “If only I could stop this. If only I could learn how to handle this.” T’Kor decided to say nothing now, since Hann would already know anyway what she was going to say. Trying to teach this young lieutenant anything about mental discipline was very difficult. Humans were not known for it, and so few human telepaths were known to have lived that little was known on how they even dealt with telepathy. Hann looked up, “You don’t think I can do it.”

“Not at all. I’m just thinking on how difficult it could be…”

ACT ONE

“Captain’s log, stardate 53621.4. The Athena continues its travels through this generally-unexplored section of space, and rarely have I seen a section of space that has so many stars, including stars in the prime of their lives with class-M planets, without much in the way of life on their planets. This is especially odd considering the wide ages of the stars in this sector of space.”

It was almost a typical morning on the Athena, as the senior officers gathered in the conference lounge prior to the start of the first shift. A few of the officers appeared in the room with their hair still a little damp from their showers, and others had mugs of coffee that they wanted to finish off. These meetings were rather informal, and Captain Leonard Thorpe often found himself calling them simply in the hopes that they could give him some idea of what to do with the mission at hand.

As the others filed in and took their places, Thorpe glanced through the big windows at the rear of the room. The lander and its pylon dominated the view, but he could still see the stars moving past the ship and retreating into the distance. He turned and looked at the viewscreen, which showed a map of this sector of space, stretching

out to almost one hundred and fifty light years in all directions. Many of the stars were shown, and some were tagged as being worthy of a closer look. The other senior officers took their seats, with the ship’s counselor, and occasional third-shift duty officer, Lucia Quintollez, also attending. Her report was simple. “Nothing new to report, sir. We did fly-by scans of three more systems, and they’re the same, class-M planets, ready for colonization, no sentient life or animal life approaching sentience, no sign that sentient life ever existed there.”

“A colonizer’s dream,” remarked first officer Julia Bayanhong, after taking a sip of coffee. “All of these planets, all of these resources, there for the taking.”

“And nobody has,” science officer Damiko Matsubara added.The ship’s tactical officer, Lieutenant Commander Henrietta Vorwoorts, said,

“Maybe that’s because there are no significant space powers in this sector of space. Given the spread of the Federation’s colonization efforts, it’ll be twelve hundred to fifteen hundred years before we need to expand in this region of space.”

“If the Odonans don’t get here first,” Matsubara added. She turned to the ship’s chief engineer and lone Odonan crewmember, and asked, “Why not your people, Rodall?”

“I guess we haven’t had the need to expand in this direction. At one time we were expanding in the other direction. Personally, I’d let that planet with the two hundred billion people living on it get a chance to move in this direction. They could use the space.”

Thorpe looked at the map. “With Lucia’s report, we now have twenty-seven class-M planets with no life on them, and none with life on them. Given that the ages of the stars range from two point six billion to almost eight billion years, we should expect to find something on them, either life developing, or the remains of life. But each planet seems to be the same, almost in an arrested state of evolution.”

Bayanhong spoke up, “Sir, I’ve been thinking of a theory. This might go along with Popios and his people. He seemed to have a great fear of… something… in space. I’m almost beginning to wonder if that something is not also responsible for what we’ve seen in this region of space. My own theory is that a large and powerful empire might have existed in this sector of space, but a long time ago, and they held these worlds, either conquering them or settling them.”

“But then there should be some ruins, some sign,” pilot Sanjay Indesakar said, speaking up while straightening up in the chair. “Maybe on a planet, ruins could get recycled—I recall reading that about ten to twelve million years after sentient life is removed from a planet, all signs of that civilization have disappeared—but in space, on other worlds that are dead, something must survive.”

The first officer continued, “Of course, it is possible that underground, we can find some signs of what might have come before. Archaeological digs excite nobody, and I know that they’re a dime a dozen, but if we could just pick one of these class-M planets, it might be worth a little on-site exploration. Stopping at a planet, any planet, would be more worthwhile than simply flying through space. It’s like looking without touching, not very satisfying.”

The captain had been thinking about much the same thing, about examining a site more closely, but he also understood Indesakar’s point. Doing a comprehensive archaeological analysis of a world would end up being a waste of time if it turned out to have been a small colony whose inhabitants wanted to live a little in the past. He was

looking for those signs, for non-natural artifacts in the system that suggested the world was somehow important. “Okay,” he finally said, “I’ve been thinking along those lines. When we do the next flybys, we should concentrate more on other possible artifacts in the system, otherwise we could be wasting time. Archaeological scans from orbit can be difficult and not very accurate, but I want some proof of an occupation in a system before we commit ourselves to it. We’ll spend the next few days examining possible sites to narrow down the choices for a more comprehensive look.”

“Unless we stumble onto something first,” the first officer said.Matsubara said softly, “And that usually does happen to us, doesn’t it?”

Thorpe checked the computer for the appointments and tasks scheduled for today. The first part of the day had been involved in reviewing crew evaluations and various reports from the departments on the ship. Naturally, everything was running well, and the crew was adjusting to the fact that they were travelling through space and not doing a lot. The crew of the Athena was especially used to that, Thorpe thought to himself. In the afternoon, he had some meetings with various members of his crew, and other officers on board, to deal with.

One of those meetings was right about now. Thorpe heard the door chime sound, and said simply, “Come.”

The door opened, and in walked a Starfleet officer who was not, technically, a member of the Athena crew. The man standing in the doorway—a man that Thorpe could admit privately was somewhat intimating—was the lone surviving senior officer of the doomed starship Kursk. Horace Wekha had been the science officer on the Kursk, a position that was more in fact a sensor officer than somebody who worked in science. The man was tall, about a metre ninety, with a muscular build, rather dark skin and unusual hair. It was all done in thick braids that hung most of the way down his back. Actually, the man now looked weaker and paler than Thorpe had seen him earlier, and some of that hair had fallen out. The bald spots in his scalp were visible, but Wekha had done nothing to hide them.

“Sir,” the man said, his voice rather deep, “I was informed that you wanted to speak to me.”

“Yes,” Thorpe replied, standing up and gesturing for the tall man to sit down in one of the two seats in front of the desk. “Do sit down. Doctor Psakolaps has informed me that you’re nearly recovered from your radiation exposure.”

“Yes,” Wekha said. He examined his hands, and also had seen his face. The scarring and the healing skin were largely gone now, but the memories of the pain and the nausea would remain with him for a long time. “Your doctor has done good work. I feel my strength returning.”

“And so you deem yourself able to answer a few questions?”“Questions about what?” asked the tall man.“About what happened on the Kursk.”“I was not aware that this is a Board of Inquiry, sir.”“No, it’s not. I’m just a mere starship captain who lost some people who were

coming to the Athena to be members of this crew, and I want to know why.”“Haven’t your people already told you?”“They know the basics. They know that the warp engine had been tampered with

by the captain of the Kursk and the chief engineer.”

“So?” Wekha shrugged.“Why?”“To get more speed and more power from the warp core. The ship had sustained

damage in various battles during the Dominion War, and both Vladimir—that’s the captain, Captain Quinn—and Brad, the chief engineer—Commander Shin—had done a lot of work keeping that ship together. They worked miracles.”

“And your impression of what they did to the warp engine?”Wekha just smiled. “That was partly my own idea. When I was in the Academy, I

read articles about an Odonan engineer—his name slips my mind—who came up with the idea that if you can get the virtual motons from the antimatter-matter reaction to move in a circular path, in response to a strong magnetic field, that they would be in the influence of the dilithium longer and more likely to be converted to real particles. I always wondered why that had never been done before.”

“Oh, perhaps because the previous attempts, starting with that Odonan engineer, ended catastrophically.”

“But it was working on the Kursk. Brad and I spent many a long night working on computer simulations on how to set up the injector arrays to get around the magnetic interference, and how to move the magnetic lines of force around so that nodes of positive or negative energy did not build up. After we got the bugs worked out, we were able to get those curved pathways working. Using that, we pushed the speed of the Kursk up to ninety-five percent of the H-factor. Do you know what that means?”

“I do,” the captain remarked.However, Wekha still mentioned it. “It means being able to cross the galaxy in as

little as twelve years. It could well be the next advance in engineering science.”“Yet something went wrong,” Thorpe remarked.Once he began talking, Wekha decided to let it all come out. “Brad had heard

about the Athena, about how all of his modifications and fine-tuning and the rest on the Kursk was not even enough to give the ship even a fraction of the speed and power of this one. I got the sense that he wanted to show to your people, especially Lieutenant Hann, that even the lesser ships like the Kursk were capable of great things. Brad was worried that since we had not used the enhanced warp drive for some time that the system might be out of alignment, but he went ahead and did it anyway. He thought he had it right, and for a little while, it was holding.”

“Were you there when he did it?”“At the beginning. I was helping him with the calculations he needed to start it up.”“And at any time did you suggest that perhaps doing the modifications to the

engines was not a good thing?”“No, not really. Brad was pretty confident of his engineering abilities, and he had

pulled it off before. I returned shortly thereafter, when I had this sensation that something was not all right. When I got back to engineering, I saw Vladimir and Brad and the other engineers struggling with the system.”

“What happened?”“I suspect that nodes of energy were set up inside the dilithium crystal. Those

nodes developed fields for themselves, and influenced the generated fields. The combination led to a feedback loop, strengthening the magnetic fields around it and increasingly influencing the flow of motons within the crystal. The magnetic fields were throwing off the injectors, and causing radiation to rise. That’s why… I left again.”

“You couldn’t help?”Wekha spoke more softly now, and did not look at the captain. “The last thing I

saw in there was Brad’s face. For so long, he was confident, so sure of his abilities, but at that moment… he looked at me. I saw helplessness on his face. He didn’t know what to do. He looked at me. I didn’t know what to do either. I could see the effects of radiation on him. That’s why I left. The radiation alarms were sounding. Engineering had become a death trap, but Brad and Vladimir stayed behind, to try to salvage the ship… to give us time to get off.” Wekha hesitated for a moment before continuing, still without looking up. “That look… it haunts me now. I continue to wonder if I did the right thing. Maybe I could’ve helped, but I ran away. Somehow, the radiation got to me… I collapsed… and somebody must’ve helped me into an escape pod. Did I do the right thing, captain?”

“In hindsight, I would say that you did. Given what you know now, by the time engineering had already become, as you say, a death trap, it was too late. However, given what you knew at the time, I could not say. Each individual is responsible for the decisions that they make, whether they are good ones or bad, carefully considered or done at the moment that it was needed. Only you can answer that question.”

“But I feel such guilt. There aren’t two people in the galaxy I knew better than Brad and Vladimir. That was a unique ship, a unique crew, and I’ll not see the likes of them again. Now they’re gone, along with Renee and the others. I feel isolated, a person without a ship.”

Thorpe knew that ultimately, it had come down to this. It was not really his place to determine how and why things had gone wrong on the Kursk and to pass judgement. It was his place to see if there was any chance that those same mistakes could be repeated on the Athena. He also had to deal with the surviving crewmembers from the ill-fated Defiant-class starship. “Yes, you’re without a ship. Have you thought about that?”

“Not too much, sir,” Wekha admitted. “I was thinking more about recovery, and what kind of long-term effects I might be suffering.” The man looked around the ready room. The Kursk did not have such a room. If the captain needed to speak with a member of the crew, it was done either in the quarters or in the mess hall. “However, I am not fully sure that I would want to stay on this ship.”

“Why is that?”“No offense to you and your crew, captain, but after being on the Kursk, it would

be difficult to be on a more normal ship.”“What does that exactly mean?” Thorpe asked. He had heard what Hann had to

say about the Kursk and its crew, and he wondered how such a diverse and unusual crew could function together.

“It’s just that the Athena is a large ship, with a crew of over six hundred. That sense of togetherness I felt on the Kursk, with a crew of thirty—and we all had many roles to play to keep that ship going—I could never feel here. In addition, with such a large crew, you have to play it by the book. You and your officers have to follow the Starfleet training, follow the regulations and procedures by the book. I know that this might sound… condescending, but Renee—she was our pilot—said that the Athena is a ‘corporate ship,’ colourless, emotionless, not something that you would remember later on.”

Thorpe just shook his head. He had never expected such an answer, or such an honest opinion of his ship or crew. Initially, the captain was at a loss for words. “I see,” he finally started. “You must admit that I cannot really agree with that point of view, and many on this ship would not agree with you as well. Afterall, the Athena has a very low rate of transfers off the ship.”

“That may be so, captain, but I do not believe that I would be able to fit in with this crew.”

“I see. I won’t force you to stay on this ship, but on the other hand, we’re on an exploration mission right now, and it could be some time before we return to a starbase or other transfer point. You’ll have to stay on board, at least for the short term, and I’m not the kind of captain that would accept having passengers on board. Therefore, until such time that we can arrange the transfer, you’ll be considered a member of this crew. You’ll be given duties, and with a science background, perhaps away-team assignments as well, depending on the situation. Do you have any problems with that?”

“No sir, I do not,” Wekha replied. “Although I might feel uncomfortable on this ship, and I would feel very much an outsider since I’m used to being a senior officer, and here I am not, I will serve to the best of my abilities.”

“I expect nothing less.”

It was towards the middle of the second shift, just when Thorpe was about to settle in for a good night’s sleep, that the call came in. Getting back up and tapping the receive icon on the desk terminal, he said, “Thorpe here, go ahead.”

“Sir,” Bayanhong started. She had the bridge on the second shift on this occasion. “We have located an interesting planet, and believe that it deserves closer study.”

“I see,” the man replied. Naturally, as the captain, he had final say in whether or not they would approach this planet. Bayanhong could have given him the details over the commlink, but he said for her to wait until he got to the bridge. Instead of dressing for bed, he found himself putting the uniform back on. Such was the lot of the captain, always on duty.

Moments later, Thorpe walked onto the bridge. Bayanhong was in the centre seat, while the usual second-shift officers manned the other consoles. “What do you have to report?”

Bayanhong turned to face the captain, saying, “What we’ve found is a class-M planet that has no land, just water, a worldwide ocean.” She tapped at a couple of the icons on the console between the captain and first officer seats, causing the viewscreen to change from the current view of the starfield to low-resolution images of a planet. From space, it looked like a typical class-M planet, with the same swirly white clouds and the deep blue of the oceans—but the brown and green so typical of such worlds was missing. The effect was unusual.

“Beyond the fact that it has no land area, what else is there to recommend this planet?”

“Well,” the first officer started, “there are no known examples of worlds that are class-M except for the fact their surface is entirely water. Just to study the kind of circulation patterns, the weather patterns, that must exist there, would be interesting. But there’s more. We’re detecting what appears to be low-level energy readings from that planet.”

“Non-natural?”“I can’t tell. The patterns we’re detecting do not match anything known to be

natural, but given the unusual nature of this world, that does not automatically imply that they’re non-natural. On the other hand, some device or artifact might be present on that world, something that might give us clues on what happened to this sector of space.”

“I see,” Thorpe remarked. “How long until we get there?”The first officer looked up at the captain with uplifted eyebrows and asked, “How

do you know we’re heading there?”“I would assume at least a flyby.”“Okay, one hour then.”Personally, Thorpe wished that Bayanhong had said “tomorrow morning” instead,

but such was life on a starship. Moments when he was needed on the bridge—or would want to be on the bridge—could come at any time. “We’ll at least go into orbit and scan the planet, and see what we can learn. A world entirely covered in water doesn’t lend itself to away teams, but we’ll see. At least it is something to do…”

ACT TWO

The planet was on the viewscreen. The low-resolution images had not done the planet full justice, but now the bridge officers could see the world in full resolution on the screen. The water was primarily a deep blue, with some bands of a lighter blue scattered throughout. The clouds formed distinct bands that were different from the cloud patterns Thorpe had seen around most other class-M worlds. This planet had tropical cyclones, and some of them had a diameter of over one thousand kilometres. On the other hand, the sensors identified no true frontal systems and no midlatitude cyclones. According to Lieutenant Debanggalo Toh, the second-shift science officer, the planet received virtually no rain poleward from about fourty degrees latitude. The huge ocean currents, so large that they were visible from space by a slight variation in the colour of the water, transported most of the heat on this planet. “Even though the sun it orbits is lower on the scale than the sun of Earth, and even though the planet is further from that sun than Earth is—or Kemon is from its primary,” Debanggalo continued, “this is a fairly hot world. It has no polar ice caps.”

“But the energy readings that brought us here?” Thorpe asked.“I’m still working on that. The weather I could scan from a distance, but these

readings require an orbit. However, I can conclude that they are not artificial in origin.”Bayanhong looked again at the graphical display of the energy readings. She had

seen enough graphs of energy readings in her lifetime to know that no natural phenomenon she was aware of could produce these readings. “If they’re not artificial, then what are they?”

“I am working on that. However, it appears that this planet has a strong magnetic field, and it does not appear to be coming from the core.” Debanggalo made some adjustments to the displays in front of him, and ran some scans and analysis again. Things started to become clearer. “This is most interesting.”

“What?” Thorpe asked. He moved over to stand behind the science officer, but Debanggalo seemed more comfortable using Kemon conventions in displaying data that he was reading. The colour combinations were hard on the captain’s eyes too.

“It appears that the energy is actually coming from the oceans. The trace constituents of the ocean include a variety of electrolytes, and dissolved components that are known to be good conductors of energy. The solar energy stirs the ocean, which transports the electrically-active constituents and this in turn causes modifications of the magnetic field that interact with the cosmic radiation, and the result is a predictable, if low-powered, energy signal that we’ve been detecting.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Bayanhong remarked. “What would be the source of the trace elements? On most worlds, the oceans gain these elements through erosion of the land masses, and in time they precipitate out.”

“It is possible that underwater volcanism, or perhaps rifts in the crust of the planet, are emitting these elements. Right now, the sensors are tied into the topography and cartography routines, and should give us a relatively detailed map of the ocean surface between eighty degrees of latitude on each side once we complete this powered orbit. That could expose the fissures or volcanoes.”

“What about lifeforms?” the captain asked.“I am reading lifeforms, but nothing advanced. Nothing breathes air here, no

flying creatures of any kind. In the water, I’m reading a level of life that is roughly equivalent to Cambrian or early Ordovician on Earth. There are swimming creatures, something like tube fish, but without backbones, and spiny creatures and arthropods on the floor of the ocean. On the other hand, there are jellyfish, lots of those—or at least creatures like jellyfish.”

“In other words, nothing that would help us understand why this sector of space is so empty of life?”

“I guess not,” Debanggalo said, somewhat dejectedly. Of course, being in orbit around this watery world and learning about strange new animals and the interactions between atmosphere, ocean and magnetic fields was interesting in its own right. All worlds had mysteries, and it would be nice to find the ones on this world.

Bayanhong spoke up, “We’ll complete this orbit around Aquaworld to get the topography, and then gather more comprehensive data. At least somebody in meteorology or astrophysics can produce a nice little paper on this effect.”

Thorpe was thinking more about one word his first officer had said. “Aquaworld?”Bayanhong simply shrugged her shoulders. “The planet needs a name,

something more than a nine-digit star coding with a planet number suffix. What else?”“Very well, Aquaworld it is.”Moments later, the powered orbit was complete, and the computer plotted the

map and displayed it on one of the secondary screens. Colour coding was used to indicate ocean depth, with the darkest blues and purples reserved for the deepest sections of the ocean, while lighter blues were used for shallower depths. One thing became apparent was that the planet had deep oceans, judging by all the dark blues, but to the right of the map was a broad plateau that reached almost the surface of the ocean. The plateau was rather flat, but at each end were deeper valleys and gorges and it was here that Debanggalo found his volcanic fissures.

“Interesting landform there on the right,” Bayanhong remarked.“Yes,” the science officer agreed. “It’s a large, flat area, approximately five million

square kilometres in area. The shallowest section is only fifty metres deep. The composition of the landform indicates that it was most likely formed as a result of a

massive shield volcano.” Debanggalo paused for a moment, and then added, “This is interesting.”

“What?”The officer caused a small grid to appear on the map, and this was enlarged to

cover the entire screen. It was low-resolution, but even Thorpe could see that the structures that appeared were rather regular. “What is that?”

“Is that natural?” Bayanhong asked.Thorpe added, “Try to enhance.”Debanggalo did his best, but added, “We need new scans. We need to move the

ship over that region.”“Helm,” the captain ordered, “adjust our position so that we’re over the indicated

region on the map.” Ochi mumbled something to acknowledge the order, and then used the impulse engines of the Athena to move the ship in its orbit back to the longitude of the landform that the sensors had detected. Once at that position, she stopped the ship and used the antigravity fields to hold their position about four hundred kilometres above the surface.

Debanggalo had the full array of sensors on the starship at his disposal, and went to work. Within minutes, he had produced a high-resolution map of the area, which was about a hundred kilometres to a side. To Thorpe, he could easily see the layout of a city of some kind, the radial and grid streets, and the structures, made solidly to withstand the conditions, but still there nevertheless.

“Now we have something,” the captain said.“I’m reading no lifesigns and no energy readings. The structures are clearly

abandoned. Even so, approximately fifteen percent of them are still integral enough to contain atmosphere. I’m not sure of the composition or breathability, however.”

Bayanhong asked, “Can’t you scan for that?”“The higher the resolution of the sensors, the more the electrolytes in the water

get excited by the beams and interfere with them.”“Perhaps we can send an away team, or a probe.”“I wouldn’t recommend transport yet, commander,” the science officer continued.

“The active constituents in the water could also interfere with the transporter process. The surface layer is most active. We need to get underneath that.”

“The aquashuttle,” Bayanhong remarked. “It’s not as if we have used it a lot.”“Very well, we’ll conduct a survey of this find… but in the morning.”“The morning?” the first officer asked, looking at the captain with a puzzled

expression.“Yes, the morning.” As if to emphasize the point, the captain yawned.

It was the shrill sound of the computer terminal alarm that woke up Horace Wekha. He had been asleep in his quarters, having fallen asleep to thoughts of what he was going to do next in his career. Through lots of experience, Wekha woke up to that shrill sound and instantly recognized what it was. The computer was attempting to contact him with something that required immediate attention.

Rolling onto his back, and trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes, the man called out, “Computer, what is the message behind the alarm?”

The computer responded in its cold, mechanical voice. “Lieutenant Wekha is required to report to briefing room four at oh eight hundred hours for away-team duty.”

“What?” the man retorted, sitting bolt upright in his bed. “Computer, what time is it?”

“The current time is seven fourty-four.”“Oh damn,” Wekha muttered, as he threw off the covers and almost ran over to

the washroom section of his quarters. “How can I be on an away team? It’s impossible.” All through the quick sonic shower he took—he actually preferred the conventional water shower but lacked the time—he kept thinking that there had to be some kind of mistake. It seemed impossible that there would be an away team. The ship was simply travelling through space. Nothing was happening. Nothing was going on. Sudden wakeup calls and sudden calls to duty were things he had experienced on the Kursk, and did not expect on the Athena, especially since he was not really a member of the crew.

Throwing on a freshly-replicated uniform, and trying his best to restrain his hair, Wekha left his quarters and headed to the nearest turbolift. Now he realized that he had no idea where briefing room four was located, so when he got onto the turbolift, all he could say was, “Briefing room four.” Hopefully, the computer knew. The trip was a very short one, just to deck five, with a short horizontal leg to the journey. Of course, when the doors opened, and Wekha found himself on the corridor, he still had no idea where the briefing room was. “Computer,” he called out, “where is briefing room four?”

“Follow the directional indicators,” the machine replied, and then it started a series of flashing lights along the dark glass covering that was located halfway up the walls of the corridor.

“What is the time?”“The current time is seven fifty-eight.”“Damn,” the man muttered, but at least the journey to the briefing room was short,

hardly more than a few steps. The doors opened, and he walked in to join the three people already there. Briefing room four was one of several smaller briefing rooms scattered throughout the Athena, and they were used more as seminar rooms, where groups of science officers and others could gather for meetings. The room was rectangular, with a table in the middle and ordinary chairs around it. A couple of viewscreens filled out the room, while one wall had a large viewscreen meant to simulate a window. The room was actually an interior room, but one wall was made up like a window, complete with a window frame and ledges to lean on. Wekha looked at that first, and noticed immediately that the Athena was in orbit around a planet, although he saw only the barest edge of that world.

T’Kor looked up at the newcomer, and said, “Lieutenant Wekha, we appreciate that you have decided to join us.”

“I was not aware that I would be on away-team duty,” the man said, almost apologetically. “The last I know, the ship was simply travelling through space.”

“On board a starship, the situation can change quite suddenly. We have arrived at a world that has acquired the name of Aquaworld.”

Wekha took one of the available seats, and looked around at the others in the room. Besides T’Kor, Matsubara was present. He recognized her as he had been introduced to her earlier, since she was the head of the science division on board the ship, and anybody working in the sciences ultimately reported to her. The other man was Lieutenant Mark DeWillis, but Wekha was unfamiliar with him. As far as the man

could tell, DeWillis might have been the pilot, or perhaps a security officer. As he sat down, he turned to look at the Vulcan woman, and asked, “Aquaworld?”

“A planet with a surface covered entirely in water.” T’Kor turned, and activated the viewscreen. What Wekha and the others saw was one of the least informative maps they had ever seen. It was nothing but blue. It looked like a depth map, so the darker the colour, the deeper the water. A broad band of lighter blues did catch his attention. “Normally, this might be of interest only on a theoretical level because of interactions between the atmosphere, the ocean surface and its currents and the planet’s magnetic field. We can gather data for such concerns from orbit, and do not require an away team. However, a sensor analysis of the section of the planet that lies in relatively shallow waters suggests that structures of artificial origin might lie there.” To illustrate the point, T’Kor caused the map to zoom in by a considerable amount until it was displaying a section that was only twenty-five kilometres to a side, and the depth shading was indicating variations of two metres. “The display indicates clearly that what appears to be a city lies underneath this shallow water. Sensors, to the best of our abilities, indicate that no life resides there and no energy is generated there.”

Wekha, used to the custom on the Kursk of just speaking up, said, “If it’s abandoned, then why take a look?”

T’Kor turned to the newcomer, who got the feeling that simply speaking up was not the way it was done on this ship. Nevertheless, she answered, “We have been examining this sector of space for some time, and have come across the unusual fact that the class-M planets here should be displaying the wide variety of life, in different stages of development, that has been detected over similar volumes of space elsewhere in the galaxy. However, what we have found here is that all of these planets have no life even close to sentient on them. These ruins might give us a clue on why.”

“I see. The plan is to beam down and take a look?”“Unfortunately, no. The ocean surface contains a large number of electrolytes

that have a high probability of interfering catastrophically with a transporter beam. It will be necessary to get underneath the greatest density of those electrolytes, which is on the top ten metres of the ocean, before we can transport. Therefore, we will be using the aquashuttle on this mission. The four of us will be conducting this mission.” Turning again to face the former Kursk officer, T’Kor said, “It is my understanding of reading your crew profiles that your science specialty lies in botany and underwater life. You will be conducting an analysis of the lifeforms we encounter here. Lieutenant Commander Matsubara and I will be beaming into the structures, where air at near normal pressure exists, to learn what we can of the builders of this place, and what the purpose of it was. Lieutenant DeWillis will remain on the shuttle to monitor the systems there, and to personally supervise the transport process. Are there questions?”

“Do I have to stay on the shuttle?” Wekha asked.“Depending on the work we might have to do, it could be possible that we will

have to rotate officers and give all of us a chance to go into the ruins, but I do not anticipate it now.”

“I see,” the man mumbled, as he settled back in his chair. He had the feeling that he was not going to get out of this away-team mission easily. Although he went through Starfleet Academy in the science division, and did study marine biology and some other areas of science, he had never served on a science vessel before. His skills and expertise went to operating sensor systems and using them to pry out information that

the designers of the system never intended it to acquire. He had not admitted it, but he had tampered with the sensors on the Kursk almost to the same level that Shin had tampered with the engines, and he was confident that those sensor systems were about the best that could be built—for drawing out enemy ships. This seemed out of his field now, but he could not simply say that he refused to go on this mission. Such a refusal could seriously damage his Starfleet career. He had the feeling that he was almost being tested here, as the senior officers on the Athena wanted to determine his abilities and see if he could fit in with this crew. They would see how he would work on the aquashuttle, with the resources of that small ship at his disposal.

“Very well, the mission will be departing at nine hundred hours…”

It was about eight fifteen when Thorpe arrived on the bridge. Security chief Sal Hakamura had been assigned as the duty officer on the third shift, but it had been a very quiet shift since the Athena had been in orbit around Aquaworld the whole time, and continued sensor probes and monitoring of the planet had not revealed any more of its secrets. The captain was just settling down in the centre seat and was ready to review the various reports from the previous shifts while preparing his log entries when he heard the doors to the bridge open. As was his habit, he glanced at the doorway, and saw that Hann was standing there.

The assistant chief of security walked over, and said, simply, “Captain, can I speak with you in private?”

“Of course,” Thorpe said, as he got up and gestured for Hann to follow him to the ready room. Of course, the younger man already knew that. Thorpe was worried about what Hann was about to say, and what he might want to do—but Hann already knew that too. Inside the ready room, Thorpe asked, “What do you wish to discuss, lieutenant?”

“Captain, this away team mission to Aquaworld, I would like to be on it.”“On what basis?”“None of the four individuals who are going have the necessary certification to

operate the aquashuttle. The atmosphere and the ocean currents involved could produce some tricky piloting. I have the certification necessary to operate the shuttle, and I have not had… the experience I need.” Hann already knew that the captain was doubting him, and he was thinking that T’Kor was a pretty experienced and accomplished pilot, even if she lacked all the necessary paperwork. “But T’Kor might not be fully competent on the aquashuttle. In the duration of the Athena’s mission so far, we’ve never used it.” Even so, the captain knew that there was more to this request. “I understand, captain.”

“I’m not saying anything.”“But I know what you’re thinking.”“This is one unusual conversation.”“Anyway, I need this chance to get away from the ship, and all the ‘white noise’ of

the thoughts of the crew. Just the other four would be much easier to handle, and the mental concentration of flying the shuttle would help divert my attention from this… problem.” Thorpe was about to speak, but naturally Hann already knew what he was going to say. “I can do this, captain. If my career in Starfleet is going to continue, I’m going to have to learn to handle this, but it is easier to learn how when I’m with fewer people. This is important to me.”

Thorpe wanted to give this some thought, but unfortunately, right now, his thoughts were not private. He wondered how the other four would handle having Hann with them, since it would be much easier for him to read their minds when there was only four. Hann was about to speak up, but Thorpe looked up, and caught his attention. “One thing you will have to learn is not to listen, even when you can listen. I have decided that you can go on this mission, but you will be watched. I don’t want you conveniently reading thoughts and following orders before they’re issued, and if something goes wrong, if you find that you cannot give piloting the shuttle your full attention, you will let T’Kor take over.”

“I understand, captain…”

T’Kor was not pleased that Captain Thorpe had made an alteration to the away team. Five people were now going to Aquaworld instead of four. The aquashuttle could easily accommodate eight people, so that was not the problem. T’Kor knew that other members of the crew felt nervous when around Hann and his ability to read minds. He did not have the trained discipline of telepaths to avoid reading minds in casual situations, so others around him were constantly worried that the man could pick up any thoughts, even thoughts that the others wanted to keep completely to themselves. Undoubtedly, T’Kor realized, Hann had detected a lot of thoughts about him that were rather negative. Nevertheless, she had voiced her displeasure, but found that the captain was not changing his mind. She would simply have to make the best of it.

The aquashuttle was sitting in the centre of the main shuttlebay, already prepared and ready for launch. The shuttle was built on the same basic plan as the larger passenger shuttles, but the hull was thicker and much more aerodynamic and streamlined. The hull, combined with the structural integrity field, allowed the shuttle to dive to a depth of upto five thousand metres. Because it was primarily designed for underwater exploration, the shuttle lacked a warp drive, but had most of the other systems found on shuttles, along with an airlock that could allow divers to leave the ship, and sensor systems enhanced and designed for underwater use.

Getting on board the shuttle, T’Kor found that Hann was behind the pilot’s controls, and Matsubara was at one of the rear consoles. DeWillis was behind the other one, while Wekha was acting as little more than a passenger right now. To T’Kor, the newcomer to the crew looked distinctly unhappy, but she was not worried about that. It was Hann that she was worried about. Sitting down in the co-pilot’s chair, she faced the security officer, and asked, “You are capable of operating the aquashuttle?”

“I am.”“You are not distracted by the thoughts from around you?”“I’m hoping that this will give me the ability to focus my attention on something

else so that I can forget about those minds and those thoughts right now. Doing something is better than just sitting around and letting this unwanted ability control me.”

Wekha leaned over to Matsubara and asked, “What are they talking about? What’s wrong with him?”

“Lieutenant Hann was injured when he crashed on the planet that the Kursk was approaching when the crew abandoned the ship. The natives healed him—and made him a telepath too.”

“Oh man,” Wekha replied. Now he had something else to worry about. How could he keep thoughts private from a telepath, especially an untrained telepath?

Hann activated the communications system, and spoke out clearly, “This is Athena aquashuttle to flight control. We are ready for departure.”

“You are cleared for departure. Have a good mission.”Hann had already gone over the preflight checklist—twice—and took the words

from the flight deck control officer as the clearance to go. He gave the proximity sensors one last look, and double checked that the shield frequency matched that of the barrier field. Once the sensors showed that that the main hanger doors were sufficiently open, he lifted the shuttle through that gap, and through the barrier. As he pulled away form the Athena, he could see the planet below, a world that was nothing but blue mixed with patches and swirls of white. It did not look class-M to him.

Hann followed the sensor mapping down to the surface. Conditions on the surface were not all that pleasant. Once they came out of re-entry, they had to pass through some thick cloud that covered the location they were approaching. Rain and wind lashed the craft, but Hann was able to keep it stable. As soon as the shuttle dove out from underneath the cloud, the wind seemed to pick up. Rain pelted against the shuttle, and the wind buffeted it. “Not very pleasant flying,” the man managed to say. Others in the craft were grabbing on for support.

“That is understandable,” T’Kor remarked, calmly.“Wind speed is one hundred and twenty-six kilometres per hour,” Matsubara

remarked. “Hurricane speed.”“But from space, it did not look like a hurricane,” Wekha said.“With a planet whose surface is all water, you don’t need hurricanes to get this

kind of wind. This place is quite active.” She took another look at the sensors. “Even the waves are nasty. I’m reading twelve to sixteen metre waves here.”

“Turn into the wind until you’re almost at the surface,” T’Kor remarked. “We should attempt to enter the water in between the larger waves.”

“I know, I know,” the pilot said. He was devoting his attention to the craft, and the thoughts from the other four were increasingly peripheral. He was almost enjoying this.

“If would be advisable that we secure ourselves with the seat harnesses,” T’Kor added. “Entry into the water could be very rough and the inertial dampers cannot fully compensate for the unexpected manoeuvres..”

“Just what we need,” Wekha muttered.The five in the shuttle pushed the buttons that caused the harnesses to extend

out from the seat back and the base of the seat. They secured themselves into their seats before Hann guided the small craft between some of the waves. Since they were not close to any shore, the waves were not breaking, but were rising up and down dramatically. Hann suddenly was facing a wall of water that was coming right for him. He just knew that the structural integrity field was set to handle the impact that was coming, and the inertial dampers would do their best, but still, he said, “Brace for impact, here we go!” The aquashuttle slammed head-first into the wave with the whole craft shaking and seemingly spinning. However, Hann managed to keep the ship on a relatively even orientation, even as the water slammed onto the hull. Once they were submerged, Hann guided the aquashuttle down to a level below where the agitation of the waves made the ride rather bumpy. Inside the shuttle, Hann turned the cabin lights down so that they had a better view through the transparent-aluminum windows, and he also turned on the ring of arc lights on the front of the shuttle to illuminate their way.

“Depth?” T’Kor asked.

“We’re twenty-five metres underwater and dropping,” the pilot reported.“Distance?”“Two point two kilometres. We’re over a small trench right now, with a depth of

over one thousand metres. We should be approaching what looks like a cliff. It’ll come to a relatively flat summit, and it is there that the ruins are located.”

“Matsubara?” the Vulcan asked.“We’re under the majority of the sensor-interference layer. Nevertheless, I’m still

not getting clean reads. The complex appears to be non-natural. The architecture is too basic to help us identify it. The ruins consist mostly of square, unadorned buildings.”

“Any with breathable air inside?”“None have really good air. Some have an atmosphere, but it’s mostly carbon

dioxide and nitrogen. We’ll need breathing devices if we go in.”“Very well,” T’Kor replied, as she turned back to look through the windows. As

the aquashuttle continued on its course, the lights caught some of the native lifeforms. They saw what looked like jawless fishes on Earth, but these were basically tubes with an open end for a mouth and a couple of fins at the rear to help it steer. It moved through a whip-like action of its body. The lights also caught a glimpse of what looked like metre-long swimming crayfish, and another creature that bore an uncanny likeness to a grasshopper, except that its legs were longer and designed for swimming. Several times, a larger creature moved across their field of view. They seemed pale at first, almost looking like flashes as they darted across the field of view. One paused long enough in the light to allow those on board to get a better look.

“A jellyfish,” Hann remarked.“Sensors on board the Athena have indicated that jellyfish-like creatures could be

the top lifeform on this planet.”The jellyfish that the officers saw was typical of the kind, with a bulbous body

fringed with waving bands of skin, and extending from that were a number of tentacles. The majority were about two metres long, but the jellyfish had two thicker, more substantial tentacles that were twice as long. Most curious, Hann and the others noticed, this jellyfish had a transparent skin, giving them a clear view of the internal organs. The jellyfish did not remain in the light for long, and Matsubara did not scan it. She was still concentrating on the ruins that were coming up, while Wekha was simply watching, simply again learning why he had been so interested in science when he was younger and why he pursued it into Starfleet Academy. The jellyfish and the other lifeforms here did pique some interest in him.

“Coming up to the ruins now,” Hann said, as the cliff ahead rose and then levelled off.

“Take us once around and then land close to where we will attempt to beam into the structure.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Hann said, after trying to say it earlier. Afterall, he knew T’Kor’s orders even before she said them.

ACT THREE

Hann brought the aquashuttle down to a landing on a large, flat segment of the artificial structures. Although at one time, the roof—if that was what it was—might have been smooth and clear of debris, that was no longer the case, and in fact, the landing

area looked a lot like the floor of the ocean, except that no rocks or other similar formations were present. Instead, space, especially along the walls and the railing-like edges, was taken up by tall, spiny-looking growths. The light was too dim for those to be plants, but if anything, they looked similar in structure to starfish and sea urchins, except for their tall, narrow growth. Other, more ribbon-like entities—again, it was difficult to tell if they were plant or animal—were mounted on more open areas, and reached upwards upto five metres. They waved and turned in the currents at this level. What were clearly animals also moved along the floor. The powerful arc lights illuminated the surface, and sent many creatures moving towards the shadows. The lights picked up a vibrant red and yellow spider-like creature, a tiny body with eight long, multi-articulated legs, scampering for darkness. Small creatures, which Matsubara termed “sea ants” were seen moving up and down the long ribbon-like growths, with some holding on to the tips. A jellyfish breezed past one such growth, and after it passed, the sea ants were no longer there.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Hann remarked.Wekha said, “It’s a total ocean environment. There are no land animals here.

None can evolve. Even what look like fishes aren’t, since they don’t have backbones. Everything is invertebrate.”

“I just get the feeling that somewhere is a sea monster, just ready to reach up and devour something. Places like this just seem to spawn them.”

“That is highly unlikely,” T’Kor remarked, as she returned to the forward compartment of the aquashuttle, carrying a couple of portable breathing devices and the new omnidirectional lanterns. “Lifeform sensors would easily detect any large lifeforms. Such ‘sea creatures’ come from mythologies that developed before the development of accurate and sensitive sensor technology.”

“Well, yeah, but if any place could produce a sea monster, it would be this one.” Despite those words, Hann was subconsciously deciding that he would have the sensor grid on the shuttle set up to give them warning of the approaching monster.

“Nevertheless, it is irrelevant for the current situation,” the Vulcan continued. “Commander Matsubara, can we transport safely?”

“Right now, we’re positioned over a section of the complex that has an atmosphere. Mark is running the transporter test now. The bulk of the containment-beam interfering water is in the top twenty metres. We’ll be beaming through the structure and our hull, neither of which is affected, and about thirty centimetres of the ocean, which is not enough to interfere with the transporter system.”

DeWillis returned to the cockpit, and reported, “The test was a success. I transported the test object at quantum resolution, and brought it back. There’s zero degradation. However, in case we have to transport you over a distance, I’d recommend setting up some pattern enhancers and a relay at the transport site, so we can direct the beam through that and then through the structure in case of an emergency transport.”

“That is advisable thinking, lieutenant,” T’Kor said calmly. “I was thinking along those lines myself.”

DeWillis muttered, “Of course you were.”Hann simply said, “She was.”

“Commander Matsubara will accompany me. Lieutenant Wekha will gather data on the lifeforms that we see outside the window, and Lieutenant DeWillis will monitor our activity and be prepared to respond if we should encounter a situation. Lets proceed.”

In the rear compartment, a relatively small area containing workstations, the transporter, storage areas and access to the engine compartment and the airlock, T’Kor and Matsubara put on field jackets, and adjusted the portable breathing devices. The devices, commonly called rebreathers, were small pieces of machinery that were built on a band around the wearer’s head and fitted over the mouth. They would convert the carbon dioxide in the air into oxygen and allow the wearer to breathe it in. To T’Kor, the technology was known and comfortable, but Matsubara had never worn one before, and so needed some instruction in how to wear it, use it and how to speak with it on. Her voice still sounded funny.

“Lets go,” T’Kor remarked, once she had the equipment on the transporter platform. Matsubara joined her there, as T’Kor added, “Computer, activate the transporter for the pre-set co-ordinates and energize.” The machine did not reply, it simply followed the instructions. Seconds later, the two were rematerializing in total darkness. Both were holding the lanterns, and switched them on once the paralysis field of the transporter beam disappeared. The two quickly assembled the three narrow columns that contained the pattern enhancers and the beam relay station. Once T’Kor was satisfied that they were working properly and that she had a clear link to the aquashuttle, she said, “We will look around, and hopefully we will find signs of inhabitation or occupation. Perhaps we will find identifiable technology, or writings, or some other clue that will help us understand what happened here. First, we need to get some dates on this construction.”

The two moved down the corridor that they found themselves in. The conditions were cool and damp, with humidity at saturation and the temperature no more than fifteen degrees. T’Kor, in particular, felt cold and uncomfortable. The omnidirectional lanterns provided much more balanced illumination of this otherwise dark environment than previous portable lights. The device was actually as shaft, with a tripod-style support system that could be activated with the flick of a button. At the top was a wider column that contained many emitters that emitted beams of light in tightly-focused directions. A sensor grid built into the device and a processor controlling it determined how bright each segment should be. A segment facing the person carrying it or another person was somewhat dimmer, while the segment that had nothing obstructing it but distance could shine brightly. The brightness varied rapidly for each segment, depending on how far it had to illuminate. The lantern gave a rather even illumination to the walls and the ceiling and even the floor, and this illumination barely shifted with their movement. The light did give them a better view of their surroundings, but in this case, it was a better view of nothing.

“I don’t know what this was,” Matsubara remarked. “Whatever it had been, the people had stripped it clean when they abandoned it.” She stopped and put the torch down. She made some adjustments to the tricorder and then scanned their surroundings again. “I’m still reading this.”

“What are you reading?” T’Kor asked.“These walls. It’s rock, unprocessed but somehow sealed rock. I get the feeling

that this whole structure was not so much built as it was hollowed out of some pre-

existing formation. This might have been a mountain or an underwater mesa or something, and the aliens carved it into their underwater city.”

“I had been drawing the same conclusion.”“Afterall, I’m seeing the same kind of strata in these walls that the sensors

revealed for the rock in this section of the planet. There are signs that phased-energy devices might have been used in the tunneling, and that’s unfortunate.”

“Because it adds significant radiation and makes dating impossible?”“Exactly,” Matsubara remarked. She was surprised that T’Kor would be aware of

such details.The two came to a series of openings. The opening itself, indicating that the

interior walls were upto thirty centimetres thick, had deep grooves on each side and a narrower groove on the top. The holes in the side of the doorway could have housed a panel door of some description. Matsubara entered the room, and saw how the lantern was illuminating it all. The space was not very large, perhaps only four metres on a side, and the only furnishing was what could well have been a bed, except that it was carved out of the very same rock that made up the structure.

T’Kor commented, “Perhaps these are the living accommodations of those who once lived here.”

“Or perhaps their jails.”“We cannot assume what sort of comfort alien species would seek, or how they

would furnish and appoint their private quarters.” Matsubara just nodded her head, wondering again how she could compete against such logic.”

“But it sure looks like a jail to me.”“We should continue to explore.”

“I don’t know about you,” Hann started, as he paced around the cockpit of the aquashuttle, “but I’d swear there are more of those jellyfish around now than there were earlier. They are sure creepy looking.”

DeWillis remarked, “I’m sure that to them, we’re pretty freaky looking.”“As if they can see us.”“Actually, they do appear to have eyes,” Wekha remarked. He walked towards

one of the side windows, where one of the jellyfish was hovering. He watched as the strange animal just hovered there, its edge of frilly skin moving in a wave-like motion, and the tentacles, both the shorter, thicker ones and the longer, narrower ones, moving in some kind of rhythm. Facing it, he said softly, his voice deeper than normal, “Well, what do we have here?”

“What do you mean?”“It just seems to be looking at me. I wonder what it sees.”“Jellyfish aren’t sentient,” the engineer said. “They’re simple animals, near the

bottom of the chain of intelligence. How many invertebrates have developed sentience?”

Wekha hesitated for a moment before he answered, “Well, there is nothing physically stopping a species of invertebrates from developing significance sentience. Some are quite advanced, like the squids on Earth.”

DeWillis just laughed. “Nobody ever said that the squids have any hint of intelligence.”

“One cannot compare what one sees on a world like this one with animals from Earth.”

“In this case, the lifeforms we see are similar to those in the oceans on Earth. You got your starfish, your sea urchins, your sea cucumbers, and if we go looking, we could find barnacles and coral as well.”

“No mollusks, though,” Hann pointed out. He too was looking at the jellyfish.Wekha was about to go for a tricorder to study the jellyfish further, but ended up

sitting down instead. He was simply not used to the mission to acquire new knowledge. “This is silly,” the man finally started. “We’re sitting at the bottom of this ocean, watching jellyfish through the windows while waiting for a couple of women to explore some abandoned ruins. I almost wonder what the point is. So what if this jellyfish has something different than the ones on Earth. That’s not going to make much of a difference to the rest of the galaxy, is it?”

Hann could sense a little anger from the newcomer. It was quite unintentional, of course, but he got the sense that Wekha really did not want to be on the Athena, and he was counting the time until he could get off. This was not something that he could admit, since that would indicate that he was reading Wekha’s mind. People tended to react negatively to that, Hann surmised. Looking at the dark-skinned man, Hann said, “You’re not used to this, are you?”

“What do you mean?”“You were on the Kursk for most of the Dominion War, were you not?”Wekha leaned back in the seat. “Yeah, I was. It was completely different than

what I expected Starfleet to be. To think that at one time, I thought space exploration was just like this, sitting here watching alien creatures, alien jellyfish.” He looked at the window, and noticed that the jellyfish that had been there had been joined by another. “Then the war came. The Kursk was in the front lines all the way. I started out as part of the task force that liberated Deep Space Nine from the Dominion, and then was there when the fleet attacked and captured Chin’toka—and I was on board when we retreated from that planet. That was such an experience. The stress, it was incredible. That’s what I did.”

“What do you mean?”“Work the sensors, push them beyond what they were designed to do to allow us

to spot the enemy. When we held Chin’toka, we had to run a supply route from there to Starbase 182. The fastest course took us near a nebula, and the Dominion liked to hide ships in there, to ambush the supply runs. We lost a couple of ships, and perhaps two hundred people. When we were given the escort duty, Vladimir and Brad and I were up all night working to modify the sensors to pick out those ships. We succeeded too. We even programmed a couple of propelled photon torpedoes to track through the nebula and hit those ships. The Jem’Hadar likely never knew what hit them that day, but we secured the route. That day, we saved lives. We made a difference—I like to feel I made a difference that day.” Wekha laughed slightly as he added, “Vladimir and Brad and I, we got medals for that one.” He looked around, and appeared to be a little sad. “We lost all of that when the ship exploded.”

“You probably got a lot of war stories,” DeWillis said.“Oh yeah, a lot of them. There was no ship like the Kursk, no crew like those

officers. They were friends to me, a team. I miss them all, badly.” Looking over at the

others in the aquashuttle, he added, “That’s probably something that you don’t really understand.”

“Yes, that’s probably true,” the assistant chief engineer admitted.

“I’m reaching the conclusion that there’s very little here that will help us learn what happened to this sector of space,” Matsubara remarked, as she searched yet another empty room, which was identical to the rest of them.

T’Kor answered simply, “Unfortunately, I must concur.”“This has to be a prison. It is the most logical conclusion one would get based on

what we’ve seen so far.”“On what do you base that conclusion?” T’Kor asked, sounding calm, and without

the hint of frustration that Matsubara was showing on her voice.“The power of deduction, T’Kor,” Matsubara answered. “Clearly, no lifeform on

this planet built this installation. Somebody came to this planet and built this here. Why? Is this a resort hotel? If it was, I think that the rooms would be better furnished, and would have a view too. On the other hand, this would be a good place for a prison. It’s under water, and so could be easily monitored. The electrolytes in the water and other interference make it harder and riskier to beam out. The planet’s likely out of the way too.”

“Your analysis is thorough,” the Vulcan admitted, as she continued to walk alongside the younger woman. Even as she spoke, she was using her expert eye to look for any clue of what had happened here. They had been using their tricorders to attempt to locate a central, control facility, but several approaches had been blocked by collapsed or inhabitable sections. “However, the main problem is that the prison cells appear to lack any form of restraint. We saw something that might be doors, but there would be no electronic restraints. The doors could be easily bypassed.”

“Maybe they were political prisoners.”One thing that the two occasionally came to were bulkheads, somewhat like

those on a starship. The only problem was that whatever metal that the doors had been made of had corroded. The doors were fused in place. The bulkhead that they approached now was at least jammed slightly open. The slender Matsubara could easily slip through, but T’Kor made it through only with some difficulty. While waiting for the Vulcan to get through, Matsubara again fiddled with the rebreather. More than once, she had attempted to adjust the breathing device over her mouth, since the air was humid and sweat was building up along the edge of the device. T’Kor seemed unconcerned.

“Removing that device could prove dangerous. The air might be toxic.”“It’s only nitrogen and carbon dioxide,” the science officer replied. “It wouldn’t kill

me, but I would be gasping for air. Oxygen is minimal to non-existent.”“But high enough levels of carbon dioxide are toxic for humans.”“But this level isn’t high enough for that.”T’Kor had no reply. She continued to look at the walls, at the empty rooms and

the abandoned corridors, looking for any sign of who might have built this place and why. It was Matsubara who first saw something unusual in one of the rooms. She stopped, and that got the attention of T’Kor. “What is the cause of this delay?” she asked in her calm voice.

“I saw something in that last room that we had passed.”

“What did you see?”Matsubara hesitated for a moment. She had this feeling of panic, of dread, that

something was about to happen to her. This place gave her a powerful sense of the creeps, a sensation that she could not remember having experienced before. She really did not want to see what was in that room, but ended up stopping and then shining her light into the enclosed space. She gasped at the sight and almost stumbled out. “What is it?” T’Kor asked.

“A… body.”The Vulcan now looked. Sitting on the edge of the slab that was likely the bed

and leaning against the wall but almost doubled over, was the skeleton of an occupant of this mysterious ruins. The remains were skeletal, with the skull a dull gray and stained, while the visible hand bones had started to come apart. It was impossible to tell if the alien had three or four fingers to go along with the thumb. The skull was that of a humanoid, except that there was a pronounced ridge bisecting the forehead, and the front of the face sloped severely forward to create a pronounced snout. The lower jaw had also dropped away, revealing quite large molars and underpowered cutting and biting teeth. Clearly the being had evolved to be a vegetarian.

“Does it look familiar?” Matsubara asked.T’Kor was not squeamish at all. She approached the skeleton, while Matsubara

could not bear to look at it. She had the tricorder out and was conducting an analysis. The skeleton was wearing clothing, with what looked like a heavy gray fabric that might have been form-fitting. It was stained in places now, with some rips and threadbare sections to it. T’Kor analyzed the skeleton and the clothing, and then redid the analysis since the first one made no sense. “Now,” she started, “I understand that radioisotope dating is an inexact approach, since it depends on initial input of radioactive molecules. This being might work on a different biochemistry, but it would appear that this skeleton has been here for a long time, perhaps as much as a hundred thousand years.”

“Really? Wouldn’t the clothes have decayed more than that?”“The organic component of the clothing has decayed, but it appears that the

clothing contains a great deal of permanent, chemically-based fibres, and those have survived. Based on that, and based on radioactive isotopes in both the bones and the clothing, and assuming that those isotopes exist in approximately the same ratios here as elsewhere, the results indicate that this body might have been here for a hundred thousand years.”

“That seems incredible considering that this structure is still here.”“You must remember that it is hollowed out from a natural structure on the planet.

The walls are thick, and they are without seams or gaps. The arches and the curves and angles we have seen in the walls and ceilings all represent advanced designs in load-bearing. The builders were sophisticated, and I got the feeling that they intended this structure to exist for a long time.”

“As a prison?”“If that is what you believe,” T’Kor pointed out.Pointing to the skeleton, Matsubara replied, “And you think he was free to go at

any time, but did not want to?”“It is impossible to determine what he or she was thinking.” As T’Kor looked

around, her sensitive eyes caught onto something. Matsubara watched as she

approached what looked like a blank, if grimy, wall. “There is writing here,” the Vulcan remarked.

“I don’t see anything.”“It is very faint. I can barely make it out.”Matsubara put down the light, and scanned the wall with her tricorder. She was

able to generate an enhanced image of what was on the wall, and she could make out what looked like characters. At first, she thought they might be imperfections in the stone wall, but soon realized that the characters were too regular and the number of designs was too small for anything but writing. “Yeah, I can see it, barely.”

“I’ll scan the entire wall. It might be possible, if unlikely, that information on this writing system, including translations, might be in the computer on the Athena, but we should record that nevertheless.”

Once more, the science officer looked back at the skeleton. The basic shape was held by the garment that would not rot away, and Matsubara had the feeling that she could knock it over and turn it into a pile of bones on the floor. She hoped that she would be able to get a good night’s sleep after seeing this, and the rest of the creepy sights in this structure.

“We must continue,” T’Kor finally said, once her recording was done. “We are close to what I think is the control centre. We might learn more there.”

“Hopefully, without bodies…”

Wekha and DeWillis exchanged their war stories, while Hann sat back in the pilot’s chair and tried to rest. He had hoped that coming on the aquashuttle would help him at least have some quiet time away from all of those minds and their endless voices back on the ship. He found that he could tune into the two on board the shuttle and then tune them out. T’Kor had said that it was possible, but it seemed more possible when the number of those mental voices was small and he could fix on each one to shut it out. Oddly, he had done nothing to close his mind to Matsubara and T’Kor, but he could not sense them. They could not have travelled that far that they were out of range, but he sensed nothing.

He started to mentally look for them, but got no results. What he did realize was that the level of background noise was increasing. He was getting more of those strange, indecipherable images, or sensations. Words failed to describe what he was sensing, but it was like a whole mass of people were closing in, moving just outside the range and slowly coming closer. It was impossible, of course, since they were underwater, and the only life here was crabs and sea urchins and jellyfish—or their equivalents here on Aquaworld. The background sound was almost soothing and relaxing. He found himself struggling to stay awake.

The noise in the cabin—both the actual sounds and the mental imagery—came and went like waves, soothing and arousing Hann. Wekha laughed, and said, “I’m surprised. I had no idea that the Athena had seen so much action. I knew about Torkor—we were too far away at the time to join in—but I had no idea it was the Athena that was involved. That trip in the lander to the surface… wow. That must’ve been something else.”

“It’s what I said,” DeWillis remarked. “Every ship was involved. We all had our stories, our moments in the war. We might not have been in the middle of everything

like you were—I mean, that incident at Jonipoor and how you got out of it, wow—but we had our moments.”

“With this ship, I’m surprised.”Hann suddenly sat upright. Something dawned on him. “We’ve got a problem.”

He said that loudly and firmly.The other two, obviously concerned, looked over at him, but it was DeWillis who

said, “What kind of problem?”“I’ve lost contact with Matsubara and T’Kor.”“There’s been no attempt at communication.”“I mean mental contact. I had been able to sense them, but no more.”“Oh damn,” DeWillis said, as he made for the communications panel in the

aquashuttle. He called up the frequency that was routed through the transporter enhancers located in the structure below the shuttle, and called out, “Commander T’Kor, do you read? Come in. Commander Matsubara, do you hear me? Can either of you respond? Come in.”

Wekha was at another console, and said, “I can’t read them on sensors. I can’t read anything on the sensors.” DeWillis continued to attempt to hail them, while Wekha looked up. “Oh man,” he said, almost voicelessly. “Look at all the jellyfish…”

ACT FOUR

The three men inside the aquashuttle approached the windows, and looked out. The main lights on the shuttle were still on, and perhaps that was attracting the jellyfish. They gathered around the windows, pressing together and moving up and down and waving their tentacles, while the fringes of skin on their undersides were undulating as well. To Hann, it looked like a wall of semi-transparent flesh had encased the shuttle.

DeWillis went over to the engineering console and ran some scans. “It appears that the jellyfish are generating some kind of interference field that is jamming the sensors and the communications as well.”

“What about transporter?” Hann asked.“I’m not sure about that.”Wekha had watched the jellyfish for a few moments, and then went to get a

tricorder. He found it very curious that the jellyfish were holding tentacles. As he watched, one of the jellyfish let go of another’s longer central tentacles and then wrapped the tips around those of another. Several others extended the tips of the longer tentacles to touch those of the first jellyfish. For Wekha, that was totally unexpected behaviour. He scanned the jellyfish, and their tentacles. Although the range of the instrument was severely limited by the interference, he was able to scan those jellyfish right up against the window. He checked the readings, recalibrated the tricorder and tried again.

“What are you doing?” DeWillis asked.“Look at them. Look how they’re clutching their tentacles, or at least the longer

ones, to each other. The tricorder is picking up a great deal of vibration in those tentacles, and the frequency of those vibrations is rapidly modulating.”

“You don’t think?” the engineer started.Wekha added the rest of the statement, “Yes, I think they’re communicating with

each other.”

“That would imply a certain level of sentience.”“I would not be surprised,” the science officer continued.“Why? Why do you say that?”“I finally did what I should’ve done earlier, I scanned one of those jellyfish. They

seem to be nothing more than free-floating brains. Brain tissue and nerve tissue make up more than seventy percent of their mass.”

The figures seemed so unbelievable that DeWillis looked at the tricorder display himself. He reset the instrument and tried again, and got the same result. “This is… unusual.”

“I’ll say,” Wekha started.DeWillis asked, “How would something like that evolve brains like this? What’s

the evolutionary advantage of being able to think and to communicate with their compatriots through vibrating tentacles?”

“Nevertheless, it appears to have happened here. It might be interesting to more fully study this world and see how its lifeforms fit together.”

“But,” Hann spoke up, “we’ve got to worry about Damiko and T’Kor. We can’t communicate with them. Perhaps we should try to communicate with the ship.” He turned around and accessed the communications functions in the pilot’s panel, and tried to link with the Athena using various frequencies and coding parameters and power levels. Nothing he tried even got a signal through the interference that was being generated. He was sure that the ship had to be aware of this problem and perhaps knew that they were not able to communicate with them. “No response from the ship,” he finally said. “I’m still trying to raise the away team, but there’s no response.”

“We might have to beam down to contact them,” DeWillis remarked. “The jellyfish are generating an interference field through the water. The amount of water is minimal between the lower end of the shuttle and the structure. It might be possible to get through.”

“Try the test cylinder again.”DeWillis went to the rear compartment, leaving Wekha and Hann in the front, to

watch the jellyfish. “How many?” asked the security officer.“I’m reading hundreds.”“Maybe thousands,” Hann admitted. “I’m sensing such a large number. They

must be the ones who are producing all of this mental noise. It seems almost soothing because I cannot understand them. It’s more like a white noise.”

“Maybe you can communicate with them?”“Somehow… I doubt that,” Hann replied. He was trying, but he was getting

nothing from the jellyfish. Maybe he just could not understand what they were trying to tell him. “Mental images and thoughts are different between races. I only feel those on the Athena because I’m human and most of the crew is human, and the physiological processes of thought are the same in all of them. I can understand those thoughts. These thoughts… are beyond me.”

“Perhaps we should leave this location. That might chase them off.”“I don’t—” Hann started, but just then, the lights and life support inside the shuttle

shut off. The consoles all died, and those in the front compartment were plunged into near darkness. Only a tiny amount of light filtered down from the surface.

“What happened?” Wekha asked.“I don’t know,” Hann answered, and just then, DeWillis walked back into the room.

“That wasn’t me. Something just gave way back there when I was setting up the transporter. I’m trying to see what happened.”

Hann already knew that it was not the fault of DeWillis, in a sense. It seemed like the engineer had tampered with some of the controls, but he did not do it voluntarily. “I know. Check the settings again. I’m not fully sure that the systems failed because of the outside situation. The systems should not fail so easily.”

“Okay,” the man remarked.

“Finally,” Matsubara said, as she eased herself through the gap in the doorway. T’Kor got through with more difficulty. They had to pass through a pair of doorways with the way partially blocked by two doors, one much heavier than the other one. The doors were corroded into their tracks, with thick flakes of rust pressed into equally-corroded rails on the floor. Beyond those doors was a circular room, which Matsubara interpreted to be the control centre for the complex.

“Yes,” T’Kor said in agreement. “This would appear to be the location that we had been seeking.”

“But it doesn’t look like it did us any good. There’s nothing here.”The two set up their omnidirectional lanterns towards the middle of the room to

give them more thorough illumination as they looked around. The two thought that this room had an eerie similarity to the bridge of a starship, or the operations area of a starbase. It was a large, circular room, with four support pillars and archways rising up to form the bulk of the ceiling. Bracketed by those pillars were banks of control panels, which were a combination of touch-plate and fixed controls. The only problem was that the materials used in the construction of the consoles were corroded and rotted. The glass coverings were cracked and discoloured, and the controls were fused with corrosion. T’Kor used her tricorder to scan the interior of the consoles. She said, “I’m detecting nothing more than the usual, processors, circuit boards, wiring, power supplies, switchplates, and an assortment of electrical devices. They’re all decaying or corroded and simply do not work anymore.”

“As if there was a power supply.”The room had some viewscreens lining the circular walls, and they appeared to

be intact, although covered in grime. Nevertheless, an up-close examination revealed that they too were corroded and the electronics rendered useless through contamination. The room had no bodies, as Matsubara determined by walking around the area, but she did notice the chairs. The covering on them was perhaps organically based, and had deteriorated to bits of brittle cloth. The backing had mostly fallen off, leaving a metal frame and Matsubara had no doubt that if she were to sit down on one of those chairs, she would go right through.

“Well,” the science officer said, finally. “There’s nothing here. We’ve learned next to nothing about who built this place, and what happened.”

“On the contrary, we have learned something,” T’Kor started. “We saw a few skeletons, perhaps individuals left behind because this was a prison. However, it looks like everything here was shut down in an orderly fashion. I see no sign of any struggle or violence in this room. The consoles are showing the effect of simply sitting here for millennia, but none are damaged. None are smashed. I see no evidence that a struggle took place here. In addition, the tricorder readings indicate that everything in this room

fits together perfectly, with no signs of equipment added later, upgraded or even repaired.”

“What does that mean?”“It means that the facility, such as it was, was not inhabited for very long.

Whoever built it must’ve built it for a specific purpose.”“A prison,” Matsubara blurted out.“Yes, that does seem to be the most logical conclusion. Nevertheless, this race

went through a great deal of effort to build this facility, and then they abandoned it in short order.”

“So not only do we not know who built this place and why, we now don’t know why they abandoned it so quickly. Maybe it was something about this planet. Maybe the race was affected by the electrolytes in the water.”

“That is possible. However, you are correct in that we did not learn very much about who built this place, and if it is related to the very dead nature of this sector of space. We should check in with the shuttle.” To that end, the Vulcan tapped at her commbadge and said, “T’Kor to aquashuttle. Lieutenant Hann, respond.” She did not get an answer. “T’Kor to aquashuttle. Respond.”

“Maybe the conditions here get to commbadges,” Matsubara suggested. Nevertheless, she tried her own and got the similar lack of response. “I hope nothing has happened to the comm relay and the pattern enhancers we left behind.” T’Kor started to scan in the direction that they had come, but she quickly moved her tricorder and started to scan all around. “Now what?”

“I’m detecting an unusual energy field in the water around this structure.”“You don’t think that we activated any kind of security or defensive measure, do

you?”“I’ve detected no power readings, and I’m still detecting no power readings now.

This facility lacks something like a geothermal tap, so there’s no power generation at all.” T’Kor adjusted the settings on the tricorder, and continued with the scans. “It almost seems as if something is influencing the electrolytes in the water, and they’re acting in a more coherent manner to block electromagnetic radiation from moving through.”

“Then hailing the ship would be out.”“I do not believe that would work. We should return to the beam-in point, since

that would be the best location for us to attempt to communicate with the shuttle.”“Or they could be waiting there for us.”“That’s possible.”

The systems, including light and life support, came back on inside the aquashuttle, but they only stayed that way for a few seconds before they went out again. This time, Hann was aware of what DeWillis was doing. “Mark,” the man called out. “Why did you switch off the master power routers again?”

“I did not,” the engineer protested, and then, in a softer voice, added, “I did.” DeWillis seemed puzzled by this. “What’s going on? If I’m not thinking about something, then I’m doing things that I would not normally do. Something’s influencing us.”

“It must be the jellyfish,” Wekha remarked. “Maybe they don’t want us here.”

“We never thought this would be a first-contact situation,” Hann said. “Apparently an unwanted first-contact situation.” Something seemed to register on Hann’s mind, as he called out, “Mark, don’t attempt to bypass the cockpit control systems. Leave them alone!”

“What am I… oh, god, I can’t believe this. It’s as if something’s getting into my mind.”

“Get back to the cockpit area,” the security officer ordered. “The jellyfish are attempting to plant thoughts and actions into our minds.”

“And you’re aware of that?”“It would appear so.”“I don’t like this,” the engineer said, as he finally made his way back to the

forward section of the shuttle. “Those jellyfish are interfering with electrical systems. We don’t have sensors and communications, and the transporter is unreliable. The computer is being interfered with.”

“The jellyfish are telepathically influencing that too?” Wekha asked.“No, it’s the electrical interference. They’re somehow working with the electrolytes

in the water to create these highly effective fields. They’re disrupting flow patterns through the processor grids, and so the computer has only minimal control of the various systems. Life support is failing.”

“And I don’t think we have propulsion either,” the science officer added.“No.”Wekha seemed to raise his voice slightly. “Well, then perhaps we should show

those jellyfish something. We should fire a burst from the phasers, and see how they like that.”

DeWillis replied, “Phasers are not effective underwater, because too much of their energy goes into evaporating water as the beam passes through.”

“Besides,” Hann added, “we shouldn’t be so willing to destroy.”Wekha retorted, “But they’re trying to destroy us.”“And that’s the problem. We don’t know why. We’ve done nothing to them but

simply show up. If this is their way of telling us that they don’t want us here, well, maybe we should listen. But first we should attempt to communicate with them and get Damiko and T’Kor back.”

“Communicate with jellyfish?”“We can at least attempt it.”Wekha looked at the man, and had an understanding on how Hann was going to

attempt to do just that. He did not like it at all, and was more convinced that in this situation, a demonstration of strength would be most appropriate. He was also worried that he might be influenced to do the bidding of the jellyfish at some point, and he would not even be aware that he was doing what they wanted until it was too late. So far, those strange actions had just afflicted DeWillis, but Wekha could not be sure he would remain unaffected by them. And Hann could be the most dangerous of them all…

Matsubara was totally amazed. T’Kor, without consulting the tricorder even once, was able to lead the two of them back through the seeming maze of tunnels and ways around obstructions to the location where they had beamed in. Once they got to the tunnel that they had entered, their omnidirectional lanterns had picked up the transporter pattern enhancers and the communications relay equipment right where they left them—

although nothing appeared to be functional. T’Kor stopped some distance from the equipment, and pulled out her tricorder. A furrow crossed her brow as she worked and reworked the tricorder. A human might have gotten frustrated and a little angry, but T’Kor merely reported, “There is interference here. I’m not getting a clear read on why the pattern enhancers are no longer working.”

“That energy field we detected at the control centre could have interfered.”“That’s possible. Perhaps if we return to the point where we beamed down, it

might be possible to communicate with the shuttle. It should be right above. We might be able to scan it at closer range.”

“Okay.”The two started to walk down the corridor. About halfway down the length, T’Kor

lantern started to fail. The lights flickered, dimmed, and then shut off. Seconds later, Matsubara’s lantern did the same thing. That left the two of them standing in total darkness, and despite standing less than a metre apart, they could not see each other.

“Quick, move back,” T’Kor said.“What?”“If the lanterns and the pattern enhancers have failed, so will the rebreathers.”By this time, Matsubara could start to feel the lack of oxygen. She was still

breathing in air, but none of it contained oxygen. In no time at all, she would start to feel dizzy, and her lungs would compensate by working harder and taking in more air. She understood the danger that she was in, and began to move back. It did not take long for her muscles to start to ache, and even cramp a little. They moved back to the place where they had scanned the pattern enhancers, and at that point, Matsubara was able to breathe in some air that her body could actually use. She calmed down, knowing that the rebreather could not handle heavy demands for oxygen. T’Kor had joined her, and she switched on the lantern again. It worked once more. Matsubara turned hers on as well.

“Are you alright, lieutenant commander?” the Vulcan woman asked. She was breathing normally, which Matsubara did not find surprising. Vulcans could function for many minutes without air.

“I should be.” She looked down the darkened corridor and at the inert equipment at the end. “Now what?”

“We’ll have to find another way to communicate with the shuttle, or perhaps the ship. We might also endeavor to find another way out of this complex. Logic suggests that the builders would not have relied on transporters alone.”

“You mean, we should go through some kind of airlock and go into the water? The rebreathers work in water?”

“They do. In fact, that is their most common use, although the design would be slightly different. It would be possible to swim to the surface wearing the rebreathers, but because we are thirty-five metres under the surface, we would have to ascend relatively slowly to prevent a case of the bends.”

“We could swim to the shuttle too.”“Assuming it is still there. However getting to the surface would allow us to

contact the Athena, since all the interference is underwater.”Matsubara was still not sold on the idea, saying as she did, “I’m not sure. The

temperature of the water could quickly give us hypothermia since we don’t have wet

suits on, and those jellyfish we saw earlier might be like the ones on Earth. They could sting.”

“Of course, but the only alternative is to stay here and wait for somebody to come to rescue us.”

Just as T’Kor spoke those words, the lanterns went out again. Matsubara could not quite feel the sensation that her lungs were no longer taking in oxygen, but knew that it was coming. “Now what?” she managed to say.

“The zone of dampened energy seems to be spreading. We’d better move farther away.”

Once more, the two had to get up, and waste valuable seconds trying to locate the omnidirectional lanterns on their tripod bases. They could see nothing, but relied on other senses, mostly touch, to guide them along the corridor walls until the once more could feel the sensation of oxygen in their lungs. This time, Matsubara felt much more cramped than the last time the air had no oxygen in it.

T’Kor, who acted seemingly unaffected, said, “It would be wise to keep on moving, and not let the expanding front of dampened effects keep moving over us. We should attempt to find this other way out.”

“Okay…”

ACT FIVE

“This time, it’s not my fault,” DeWillis said, as he tried to find his way to a seat. The interior of the aquashuttle was dark, with life support having shut off, including the interior lights. The occasional console light flashed, but by now, it was meaningless. “The interference from the jellyfish had finally overloaded the system.”

“How long until the oxygen runs out?” Hann asked.“We should have a couple of hours worth. The water temperature is only six

degrees, so it could start to get cold too pretty soon.”Wekha looked at the windows. The jellyfish, their translucent bodies highly

reflective when the arc lights were on, now were invisible. With the machinery shut down, the interior of the shuttle was also eerily quiet. Out there, the jellyfish continued their antics. The man had a tricorder nearby, but the interference had rendered that instrument unreliable as well. “So how do we get out of this?” he asked.

“I’m open to ideas,” DeWillis remarked. Turning towards the pilot’s seat, where he had last seen Hann, the he continued, “Kel, any chance that that telepathic ability you have can send a message to the ship?”

“The most adept telepath we have on board is T’Kor, and I can’t sense her either. The noise from the jellyfish is drowning that out. I have to… try.”

“Okay, try.”“One good shot from the Athena would disperse those jellyfish and end this,”

Wekha offered, his voice still sounding a little angry. He was beginning to wonder how he got himself into this. Sitting here in the dark, thinking that the temperature could only go down and the air go bad, Wekha could only think of where it all went wrong. Perhaps he should have told Captain Quinn and the chief engineer that their tampering of the warp core was not the wisest thing to do. What was worse was that they were simply showing off for the Athena officers that were on board. They were careless and a little stupid, and it cost them the ship and their lives. It had cost Wekha the position on a

starship he thought he would never get back. On the Athena, he would never get the position that he had on the Kursk. Now, of course, he had not much of a future at all. Despite all the precautions, space was still a dangerous place, as he was now finding out. He wondered if the jellyfish would at least allow the starship to recover the bodies.

Hann sat back in the pilot’s chair. Around him was darkness. He could see nothing inside the cabin of the aquashuttle. It was a darkness that was thorough, and the kind of darkness that would have been frightening. Hann, in fact, remembered the time when he was a child and was on a class excursion to the Mayan ruins found in the nation where he was born, Belize. He fell into an unseen opening, and was surrounded by total darkness. He could almost sense the presence of something… of rats and snakes.

He sensed a presence now. He really did not know how to handle the telepathic abilities he had been given. He was scared of them, and what they might allow him to do. Right now, though, he wondered if they could help. His thoughts reached out to the jellyfish. He wanted to know why they had crippled the aquashuttle and trapped them here on this ruin. It was odd, but Hann’s thoughts of those Mayan ruins might have triggered something in the jellyfish. They could almost comprehend the concept of things that had been built and then abandoned.

With nothing for the eyes to see or the ears to hear, his mind turned to the other sense he had. In his mind’s eye, he was starting to see things, indistinct and fuzzy at first, but he concentrated on them, almost begging the jellyfish to show him more, to make clear what they were trying to show him. Slowly, they seemed to come into focus. Softly, Hann spoke, “I’m starting to see things. The jellyfish, they’re sending me images.”

“Kel,” DeWillis said, moving a bit closer, and keeping his voice down. Wekha did not like what was going on here. He kept his distance. “What is it?”

The resolution was grainy. He was not exactly sure what to make of it. The jellyfish seemed to be combining their efforts to transmit the images, and they were overlapping and not in synchronization. Just like when he was in a group of people with conversations all around and would focus on one person, Hann had to focus on one jellyfish. Slowly, an image started to come more clearly into his mind. “I see ships, huge ships.” It was as if Hann was on the surface of this world, with water all around, and he was looking up. He could see the ships, large, dark vessels, apparently flat. At first, he thought they were Borg cubes seem from the underside, but they were not. They were more like triangles, with smaller, triangular extensions on each side. The underside had some extensions, and he swore he could see flashes of light from those extensions. “Huge ships… no idea of the scale, but large, many of them, entering the atmosphere of this world.”

“For what purpose?” DeWillis asked. “Unless they’re water breathers, this world would be useless to them.”

“The purpose, to build this place.”

“It appears to be moving at a rate of almost fifteen metres per minute,” T’Kor said, referring to the spreading of the zone where power was interfered with and their lights and rebreathers no longer worked. The way that they had first travelled to the control centre had been cut off by the expending sphere of interference, forcing the two into an unexplored corridor. They saw more of the cells, open and dank and dark for millennia.

“I don’t think that this direction is very promising,” Matsubara remarked. “I doubt that they had the airlock in the prisoner side of the structure.”

“You are correct,” T’Kor remarked. “Our problem is that this is approaching the end of the facility. We might have to go back and pick that utility corridor that we passed earlier.”

“Can we make it?”“By my estimate, we have fifteen seconds to get into it before the interference

sphere reaches that location.”“What if it is a dead end?”T’Kor looked ahead, and said, “Unfortunately, this is a dead end.”Matsubara did not hesitate. She turned around and followed the Vulcan back

along the row of cells to what appeared to be a security bulkhead that was now open. A narrow corridor branched off in both directions, but one led right into the interference. The second just bypassed it. The two took about ten steps down that corridor before their lanterns shut off again. “Damn,” the science officer muttered.

“Keep moving. You have oxygen for a few steps.” T’Kor, as usual, sounded calm and collected, and that just unnerved Matsubara some more. As she moved briskly, walking fast without breaking into a run, she kept trying the switch on the light, waiting for the moment when it would turn on again. Finally, thirty seconds after they passed into the field, the light came back on again. Matsubara almost stumbled over the line where the rebreather came back on and resumed supplying oxygen.

“Damn,” she said, breathing hard and fast to help her body replenish the oxygen that it had lost.

“We cannot stop. The interference sphere appears to be spreading at a more rapid rate than anticipated. It is up to eighteen metres per minute.”

“Great.”T’Kor moved on, and Matsubara had no choice but to struggle back to her feet

and keep on moving. At least this corridor was more or less perpendicular to the sphere of interference, and it looked like it led to some kind of storage or power facility, which was a more likely location for the airlock that they were looking for. About a hundred metres down the corridor, they came to another heavy door. This one had been jammed open with debris, but it was barely enough for Matsubara to squeeze through. T’Kor could not fit that easily, and she had to use her strength, which, despite her own admission, was starting to decline.

“We’re running out of time,” Matsubara remarked.“You should proceed without me, Damiko.”“Hell, no, I can’t do this on my own. I can’t leave anybody behind.”“But you might not have any choice.”T’Kor’s lantern went out again, and she could feel that rebreather stop working as

well. The emotions were bubbling within her, the sense of anger and frustration that she was feeling was becoming more intense. However, emotions had to be kept in check. It was a weakness to give into them. Like all Vulcans, T’Kor had been taught not to show emotions, and when emotions became unavoidable, to channel them into a more useful endeavour. She could think of none more useful than getting a few more centimetres of clearance in that door. Finally, with her strength and a contribution from Matsubara, she managed to get the door opened enough that she could just squeeze through. The two ended up stumbling down the even narrower corridor, trying to catch their breaths again.

Their muscles especially but their lungs as well was screaming out for the lack of oxygen. Matsubara continued to feel the muscle cramps, and more than once she crashed into the rock walls. The corridor was so narrow that they had to move in single file, and occasionally had to duck because of the low overhangs.

“I do not believe that this corridor was meant to be normally accessed,” T’Kor remarked. “It appears to the equivalent of the crawlways on the Athena, and the overhangs were mounting brackets for pipes and conduits.”

“Great,” Matsubara replied. “I never anticipated that my career in Starfleet would see me moving through abandoned corridors on some water-clogged world a thousand and a half light years from home.”

“There have been worse situations.”“Not now, T’Kor.”About two hundred metres further down the narrow corridor, with Matsubara

suddenly struggling to fight off the feeling of claustrophobia, they came to another bulkhead. This one was made of metal, and it was closed. Matsubara aimed her lantern on the door, and tried to find something that could be used to open it. However, she saw nothing that would open it, and she also saw that the seams were too fine to allow her to get a finger grip into it. “Oh great.”

“Our problem is much more serious than that,” T’Kor said, as she shut off the tricorder. “Beyond this point, the corridor is flooded, and the water has caused the ceiling beyond to collapse. Rock and water obscure our path ahead.”

“We’re trapped.”“That would appear to be the obvious conclusion,” T’Kor admitted. Even now,

even as they realized that they were in a predicament that they could not escape, T’Kor’s demeanor remained unchanged.

“How long?”“I would estimate that we have about eight minutes before the interference

sphere reaches this location.”Matsubara knew that it was useless, but she still tried. She tapped her

commbadge, and said, “Matsubara to the aquashuttle, come in. Matsubara to the shuttle, respond.” She tapped the badge again, and said, “General hail. Matsubara to the Athena. Can you respond? Do you respond?” But in the tunnel, she could hear only silence. What was worse was that she could not even see the interference sphere approaching. As soon as the lanterns went out again…

More images were coming. The sounds that accompanied them were eerie, and not something that Hann could even begin to understand, and if he let his mind open too much to the jellyfish, the sense of vibration that came over him was extremely disorienting. His body interpreted it as an itching sensation that extended from head to toe. At least the images were understandable. He saw the interior of the alien ship—perhaps some of the jellyfish had been collected as specimens and one had lived to pass on the memories—and saw as the occupants herded the hapless victims to their new prison world.

“It is… a prison,” Hann said. In the silence of the darkened aquashuttle, his words carried easily, even though he was speaking softly. “They built a prison here.”

“Who?” the engineer asked. Wekha found himself trying to listen in. That sense of curiosity was rising in him.

“I don’t know.” An image resolved itself in his mind. “Oh man,” he remarked.“What?”“Borg.” The image clarified. “No, not Borg.” The beings were humanoid, and

wore black, heavy clothing. They wore helmets that covered their heads, and the faceplate was darkened enough that Hann could not see inside—or else the jellyfish had not remembered what was inside. Some cables and tubes extended from the helmets to equipment that the aliens wore, but it really did not look like Borg technology. “I’m not sure. The sensations.”

“What?”“They are quite uncomfortable.” Hann was getting more strange sensations, as if

he body was being controlled by the aliens. It felt like it was actually happening to him now, and it was a most uncomfortable sensation. “The aliens are telepaths.”

“So they communicated with the jellyfish?”“No… they controlled them.” Another image formed. The aliens were being

marched to their cells. The aliens came from a variety of worlds, with one having what looked like ekoskeletal elements that were a bright orange, and another had what could only be described as an elephant-like trunk hanging off of the face. Another alien was vaguely catlike, while yet another was almost human, except for one backwards-sweeping insect-like antenna coming off the top of the head. One alien in particular caught his attention. This alien was small, and covered mostly in fur. Another alien, an ugly reptile-like thing with horns above the eyes and a dark, scaly skin, was behind him. Hann heard more of the strange sounds that might have been speech, and that caused the procession to stop. The furry alien—Hann had this feeling that it was female—walked in jerky motions, like a zombie, he thought, to a nearby wall and removed from a holder a long dagger. She walked back to the reptile-like alien, and with her eyes seeming locked open and her facial expression blank, started to stab the alien repeatedly. Orange-yellow blood flowed from multiple wounds, and though the agony on the face of the alien was intense, the controlling aliens would not let him release that agony. “It’s… awful.”

“What?”“The telepathic race. They’re sadistic telepaths. It’s almost as if the jellyfish

agree. This race… conquered many others, but they controlled them mentally. They made them do sadistic things, cruel, violent things, for amusement. They made the prisoners… eat the jellyfish. The aliens must’ve moved across this region of space, conquering and decimating the populations. And the jellyfish… the aliens tried to teach them to provide the security, to interfere like they had been taught.”

“They learned this?”“Apparently,” Hann continued. More images came to mind. He saw images of

the telepathic aliens struggling, panicking, looking like they were cut off and alone. “But the jellyfish rebelled. They found a way to hurt the telepaths. They wanted to drive them from this world. As the telepaths learned to control others, the jellyfish learned this ability from the telepaths, and turned it against them.”

“Well,” Wekha remarked, “I can’t say I’m disappointed to hear that, but how does it help our current situation?”

DeWillis explained, “It’s simple. They might think that we’re the return of the telepaths or something similar.”

“We must convince them otherwise.”

“Easier said than done,” Hann remarked. “I know I can sense the thoughts of others, but I’m not so sure that I can transmit my own thoughts.”

Looking around in the dark, and imagining that it was already getting cold, DeWillis said, “Well, now would be the best time to find out that you can. I don’t see many other alternatives.”

Hann closed his eyes as he leaned back in the pilot’s chair. The closing of the eyes was not really necessary since he was surrounded by total darkness anyway, but it was for the physical effect. He continued to receive the messages from the jellyfish, and in those jumbles of images and thoughts, he got the sense that the facility here did not last too long. It was a brutal prison and the unknown overseers expended a lot of resources to build it, but they did not occupy it for long. Once more, Hann could see the huge ships moving over the oceans. The telepathic aliens had been driven off, but they decided to get their revenge. Bright beams of energy erupted from the starships, and when they touched water, an explosion blasted large quantities of water and pieces of jellyfish into the air. Hann could almost sense the terror and the apprehension that the jellyfish felt, but he also could sense the elation when, combined, the jellyfish found a way to bring one of the big ships down. The vessel suddenly lost all of its lights and other signs of power, and started to drop towards the water. Small dots erupted form the sides of the vessel—undoubtedly escape pods—but they simply arcked towards the water. The jellyfish did not provide any images of what happened to those escape pods, but the ship touched the water, and at the same time, the antimatter containment fields were disrupted. The ship disintegrated in a massive fireball, and that was enough to convince the aliens to depart and never return.

Hann had to figure out how to best communicate with these aliens. He could establish mental pictures, but what pictures could he choose? He had to convince the jellyfish that he and the other officers were not a threat. They were not the return of the enslaving race. They just wished to leave. Hann tried the mental image of the Athena approaching the planet. He tried to convey a sense of curiosity, what it is like to want to know something, to seek out new knowledge. On the other hand, he had to also convey what it is like to meet a new race and then respect its wishes to be left alone. How could Hann do that? He had images of the Athena crew, with other races on board and working together. He tried to show what the Federation was, a gathering of diverse races working in peace towards the common good. It was just so difficult to explain these things with images and thoughts, when words would work so much better.

Hann tried another approach. He visualized the aquashuttle rising from the surface and returning to the Athena. He tried to visualize the debriefing that would follow, and how he would have to convince the captain that Aquaworld should be left alone. He imagined the ship leaving the planet, and he tried to convey the idea that such a departure was a good thing. With those images and illusions out of the way, he tried to convey what might happen if the aquashuttle would not return to the Athena. He visualized another shuttle leaving the ship and coming to this location. He showed the weapons that could be fired, and the damage that could be done, once the other shuttle learned of what happened to the aquashuttle and the people on board. This attack was not guided by revenge, Hann suggested mentally, but because of the fear that the jellyfish had killed and could kill again. The reasoning for the jellyfish killing, the rationale for what they were doing, would never be discovered. It was not what he wanted, and clearly, it was not what the jellyfish wanted either.

It had been silent in the cockpit too long. DeWillis spoke up, saying, “What’s going on?”

“I’m trying to convince the jellyfish that if we remain trapped here, it could lead to an incident that the natives of Aquaworld might not find very desirable.” Another image came to the man. It showed another aquashuttle, moving through the sky and then suddenly dropping to the ocean, its electrical systems interfered with. Then Hann returned with another image, showing the aquashuttle shielded, which he strongly believed would be effective protection against the energy-dampening fields emitted by the jellyfish. The shuttle would fly on. However, the natives had one more approach. They would learn how to mentally manipulate those on the shuttle to cause it to crash or come to some other unfortunate end. But once more, Hann responded by putting Dewuchun at the controls. In order to get the message across that Odonans were immune to any attempt to tamper with their minds or mentally control them, he put Dewuchun into that moving mass of alien prisoners. This time, when the overseers stopped two of them, one was Dewuchun. He was given a knife to stab the doomed alien, but instead, Dewuchun moved over and drove the knife into the nearest overseer. The message had to get across.

“Is it working?”“Slowly,” the security officer remarked.“We don’t have forever.”“I know.”

Matsubara sat down against the sealed bulkhead, while T’Kor stood about two metres away. The Vulcan was scanning down the corridor, attempting to determine how close the interference sphere was. Matsubara was pretty sure that they had only a couple of minutes left before the interference would reach them. Then she would have a couple of additional minutes of breathing nitrogen and carbon dioxide, while her body and especially her brain cried out for oxygen. It was not the way that she ever thought she would go.

“Maybe you should just sit down and let the inevitable occur,” Matsubara remarked.

“You do seem to be talking this calmly,” T’Kor finally said. She did not sit down and did not shut off the tricorder.

“What can we do? Some people will claw and struggle and do everything they can to stay alive, to earn that extra minute, while some others were more accepting, that this was the time and place it was destined to happen and that it was useless to oppose. Until now, I never knew that I was in the latter group.”

“We should not give up.”“No, maybe we shouldn’t give up hope, but it’s out of our hands now. If the

shuttle, or the Athena itself, can solve our problem, it’ll be without anything from us. We have done all that we can. We can do nothing more.”

“I have come to the same conclusion.”After a brief moment of silence, Matsubara asked, “How long do you think we

have left?”“Between a minute and a half and two minutes before the field reaches us and

the rebreathers no longer work.”“And the aquashuttle?”

“It is impossible to ascertain its status.”Matsubara, sitting with her legs spread and bent at the knee, her elbows resting

on those knees, looked down at the cold, smooth-rock floor that she was sitting on. “You know what the most disappointing thing is about this?” T’Kor did not respond to the rhetorical question, so Matsubara finally did. “The most disappointing aspect of this is that my parents and my friends back on Earth were relieved that the Dominion War was over, and that the level of danger involved in serving on a starship had diminished. It was almost safe again. Now look at what had happened to us. I wonder if they will retrieve the bodies.”

“That might be impossible,” T’Kor admitted.Matsubara looked down the corridor. Somewhere down there, getting closer by

the second, was the interference field. If only she could see it…

“Now?” DeWillis asked.Hann was trying to comment, and trying to think. “I am.. attempting to convey to

the jellyfish that what the overseers did was wrong and brutal, and that we would never do that.” Hann transmitted images of the human population standing up to the overseers, disobeying them and encouraging others to throw off their yokes as well. He showed them images of the Athena and other ships defending Aquaworld from a return of the telepathic enslavers, of letting the jellyfish remain on their world.

Wekha suggested, “Maybe you should suggest to them that we are merely explorers, travelling from star to star to see what is there, with no desire to exploit or destroy.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve done that.” Another idea did come to mind, though. He imagined the Athena without the five officers, and he tried to convey the sense of sadness, the loss, that would be felt by the rest of the crew that continued their journeys. He suggested to them the kind of sadness that was felt when others on board had died in the line of duty, and he focused on Ensign Denise Gebuni, the woman he had met on Deep Space Thirteen prior to their departure on the Kursk. He briefly conveyed a sense of happiness if they were allowed to stay together, including the children and the implication of reproduction—and he had to wonder if any children he had with Gebuni would look like that? Then he switched that to sadness, showing Gebuni in an empty room, alone and isolated, her companion gone. It was wrong. It was not right to condemn the curious. He and the others were not cruel and dangerous. They just wanted knowledge, to learn more. They did not want violence. They wanted peace. They did not want blood on their hands, or the memories of the tortures and the degradations on their mind. It was not them, not them at all.

A confusion of images came to Hann, but they seemed to resolve into one particular thing. He could see the aquashuttle rising through the water and breaking into the late-day air. “I think that we might be onto something.”

“Are they leaving?” DeWillis asked.Wekha answered, “I can’t see one way or another.”“Mark, see if you can bring up the systems again.”“I’ll try,” the man replied. He groped his way to the engineering console, and felt

around the panel for the fixed buttons that would allow a cold restart of the systems. He pushed those buttons, and saw more icons and panels come alive, allowing him to more thoroughly restart the systems on the aquashuttle. Within seconds, the lights were on

and they could hear the humming of the life support system kick in. “It looks like we have power back.”

Matsubara looked up. The omnidirectional lantern was still on, and T’Kor was still standing there. “I guess it’s true, then.”

“What?” asked the Vulcan.“The last minute is the longest minute of them all.”“What do you mean?”“Much more than a minute has passed.”“Perhaps my estimates were in error.”“Or else,” Matsubara remarked, as she stood up, “perhaps the interference field

can’t come out this far.”T’Kor activated her lantern, and started to walk down the corridor, the way they

had come. She moved carefully, ready to retreat should the light go out again, but she continued to walk. Her rebreather continued to function and her lantern stayed lit. She made it all the way down the two hundred metres to the last partly-open bulkhead they had squeezed through. “I believe,” the woman remarked, “that there has been a change in the situation.”

“That’s an understatement.” Matsubara, feeling suddenly much more exuberant, tapped her commbadge and said, “Matsubara to the aquashuttle, come in.”

“This is Lieutenant Hann…”

The aquashuttle broke through the waves and lifted higher into the deepening gloom of the approaching night. The wind was less intense and the rain had ended, although conditions remained overcast. Already, Hann had informed the two women what had happened, and a message had already been sent back to the Athena. The captain realized that Aquaworld should have full Prime Directive protection and should be off-limits to visitors. Perhaps in the future, a proper first-contact team could be sent there, but for now, the jellyfish would be left alone.

Hann piloted the shuttle, and T’Kor sat beside him in the co-pilot’s seat. “You realize,” the woman started, “that without the telepathic abilities you now possess, we might never have escaped this mission. Other ships perhaps had been doomed by the abilities of the jellyfish.”

“I know that,” Hann replied. “I knew that this ability would have uses, would have benefits, but it is still raw, and still takes a lot of training and effort. It’s more of a nuisance to me, but communicating with the jellyfish took a lot from me. I believe I gained something too. I did learn something about concentration, about being able to focus through the noise and pick out what is relevant. Maybe that will truly help.”

“I think it will. The means to control and use wisely this ability does not come easily or automatically, but takes work. You experienced something that none of the rest of us could.”

“I know. I’ll have to think about this some more. Even so, I did get one overwhelming sense, a sense of regret, from the jellyfish.”

“What?” asked T’Kor. The aquashuttle broke through the top cloud decks, and above them were only stars. It was something that Hann had actually thought he would never see again.

“The jellyfish learned of the existence of us, air-breathing beings who could build machinery and develop ways to explore beyond the realm that they originated in. They can’t do that. They have this dream of fire, and the technology that it promises, and they know they can never achieve that. Part of their anger comes from that, from something that we have and something they could never have. We should use that something we have wisely, and never exploit those who could never have that.”

“Indeed…”