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By Root 461 0

he realized that it was responding to power leakage from the containment field still waiting some undetermined distance up every one of these tunnels. The thought of still having to deal with that once they located the Maquis and Harry made him grit his teeth in silent frustration. He kept wishing he were the one with some idea where they were going, so that he could lead and let his own long legs set the pace. Just like the old banjo man had bemoaned, there didn't seem to be enough time anymore, and Paris was afraid to find out who would pay that cost.

Kes and Neelix hurried past another open shaft, one of hundreds leading almost straight upward from where it formed a smooth oval near the floor. As had become his habit, Paris slowed long enough to thrust the tricorder through the opening, note its dispassionate blip in response to the containment field, then hurry to catch up with the other two before they'd gone very far down the main passageway.

He only made two steps before something in him registered, It made a different sound that time. He bolted back for the tunnel entrance with a little cry.

Upon passing under the cool, damp shaft, the whole face of the tricorder screen switched to a biological configuration, with a steadily pulsing light spelling out someone's heartbeat in the upper right corner. Below that, in block letters, it stated simply: HUMAN.

"They're in this one!" Dropping to his knees, Paris pulled himself uncomfortably inside the narrow chamber and craned his neck to try and see something--anything--in the dark. "Harry!"

His voice clapped in lifeless echo against the walls for what seemed a long time before finally tattering itself into silence.

He heard Kes and Neelix come running to rejoin him, but didn't try to back out of the tunnel to greet them as he activated his comm badge.

"Paris to Janeway!"

She came back almost instantly. "Go ahead."

"They're in one of the shafts, Captain. I can't see them..."

He looked at the tricorder again to verify the welcome bouquet of readings. "But they're up there. We're going after them."

"Call for transport when you have them, Paris," Janeway told him. She sounded as relieved and excited as he ever expected to hear her.

"We'll meet you on the ship."

He was already too busy clambering on hands and knees up the lightless etal stairs to acknowledge her sign-off.

* "Janeway to Voyager. Three to beam up."

They were wonderful words to be speaking. As unbalanced and stress-filled as things had been ever since being dragged to this quarter of the galaxy, it was queerly comforting to know she would soon have what was left of her crew back together and they could get back to the business of sending themselves home. She exchanged a confident thumbs-up with Chakotay--who raised his eyebrows in surprise, but returned the gesture--and set herself for the transporter's embrace, already leaping ahead to what she'd need to set in motion as soon they were back on their respective crafts.

Then Rollins said tensely, "Stand by..." and Janeway cursed herself for having expected anything with this mission to be so easy.

"Captain," the conn officer said after a moment, "I can't get a lock on you. The weapon fire from the Array has irradiated the planet's crust--the transport sensors can't find the breaches in the security barrier."

Damn. She turned a sigh on Tuvok and Chakotay. "Come on--there's only one other way out of here." Both men nodded, and Janeway let Tuvok choose their direction with his tricorder as she clapped at her comm badge. "Janeway to Paris."

"Go ahead." He sounded breathless, his voice ringing more than once over the channel as though a dozen of him surrounded a single comm badge. Echoes, Janeway realized belatedly. From the access shaft.

"The transporters aren't working," she told him, hurrying after Tuvok when the Vulcan picked a route and started off at a jog.

"You're going to have to find a breach in the security barrier when you get to the top."

It was hard