Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [29]
“It might just be that they prefer to lie quiet and wait for what information their spy sends home,” Picard said. “I wonder if it would have been wise to let him go on thinking himself undetected: it might have bought us time.”
“It might have been the end of us,” Riker said sharply, “depending on what he did manage to send. If I put a spy on another ship, it would be to find out about weapons and defense capabilities.”
“That seems to have been what he was after, all right,” Geordi said, “but he didn’t get much, as far as I can tell—mostly information on the phaser and photon torpedo installations.”
“That’s too much as it is,” said Picard, “but I suppose we should be grateful. Meanwhile” —he looked at Data and Geordi—”for our own sakes, we must continue to postulate worst case—that we won’t be able to get the information we need from that other ship. What can you work out about how this interuniversal “transport” was produced?”
Data and Geordi looked at each other helplessly. “Captain,” Geordi said, “I can describe the possibilities to you in general terms—but generalities aren’t theory, let alone the concrete equipment needed to produce the effect. And there are five or six different scholia of thought to consider—and growing out of each of those, literally hundreds of theoretical avenues to explore—any one of which might be right, or wrong: there’s no way to tell without direct experiment. We don’t dare waste the time trying to figure out which experimental pathways are blind. And even if my fairy godmother came down and handed me the theoretical details on a plate, I don’t know that I have the material to build the equipment to make it happen. It may have taken them a good while, too—maybe the whole hundred-odd years since these people were last heard of.”
“Possibly even longer,” Data said. “Ship designs aside, there is no guarantee that time is running at the same speed in that universe as in this one, though odds are for it—the congruencies are otherwise generally very close. But in either case, Geordi and I concur. The information is going to have to be obtained from that other ship, one way or another.”
“You think you can get at their communications?” Picard said. “Do you think you can get at their computer remotely?”
“Not a chance, Captain,” Geordi said. “Someone is going to have to go over there.”
Picard saw the set expression on Geordi’s face and was sure he was thinking, Almost certainly me.
“Our situations are near-mirrors of each other, too,” Geordi said. “They want us for something. We can’t say what, now … but there’s a chance that, when we get at their computers, we can find out what they want as well as finding out how to get ourselves home. It’s a risk … but one we can’t afford not to take.”
Picard sat quiet a moment. “I must agree,” he said at last. “We will have to devise a way to put an away team aboard that ship.”
Riker nodded. “Not a large one. Two, maximum. I would think one of them would have to be Mr. La Forge, since the work mostly involves the computer, and that’s chiefly his area of expertise.”
“I concur,” said Picard. “And the other?”
Riker looked reluctant. His eyes slid to Troi. She pursed her lips and nodded.
“We certainly know that I’m there,” she said to Picard, “and that apparently I’m someone to be reckoned with. My empathic sense will certainly be useful as a warning device. For both reasons, it makes sense.”
“Any further choices should probably wait for our first intelligence run,” Data said. “Captain Kirk reported that he ran the crew roster and found differences. Crewmen who were aboard his own Enterprise were missing or had physical differences—others were present who did not exist aboard his own ship. And there were some whom he had simply not met, whom he met there for the first time. We will have to do some analysis of visuals, and ship’s roster if we can get it, to see who is there first.”
Troi looked up. “I could ask