Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [48]
“Now then,” Geordi said, pulling in a long breath and letting it out as he thought. “I can’t think of any other way around this; we’re going to have to risk it. Computer, read program file “Run1” from hard data reader.”
It cheeped. “Run program “Run1.”” It cheeped again. There was a second silence. Geordi looked at Troi, a grin beginning to spread across his face. And then the computer said, “Specified program affects security-sensitive areas. Security officer’s or captain’s authorization required.”
“Authorized,” Deanna said.
“Security officer’s authorization code required,” said the computer.
Troi stared at Geordi. He made a quick cut-his-throat gesture, and Troi said, “Abort run.”
“Aborted,” said the computer.
The smile was gone as if it had never been there. Geordi looked at her thoughtfully. “Do you have a password that you routinely use on your voice-locked files? Most people do—they tend to repeat two or three of them.”
Deanna blinked. “I have four or five. I rotate through them.”
Geordi shook his head. “Too many to chance it. If you try giving this thing a wrong password, it’ll set off alarms all through the system, from the looks of it. At least it does in ours. What it’s going to do in this place—they’re too paranoid here for words.” He made a face. “I don’t see how we can risk it. No. There must be some other way to get into the core.”
The console chirped and a voice said, “Security to Kowalski. Hourly check.”
Troi and Geordi stared at each other. Then Geordi leaned over sideways in his chair, reached underneath the control panel, and swiftly removed a facing: the panel went dead.
“What did you do?” Troi said.
“Killed the main power coupling. Now …” He looked around the tiny room, then back at Troi. “We have to decide how we want to leave this place.”
“You don’t mean beam back—”
“No,” he said, but he glanced over at the crewman whom they had incapacitated. “It had better look like his board failed, and he went to get help.”
Troi swallowed and nodded. “What about us?”
“My guess is that they’re going to have somebody up here in about a minute, maybe a minute and a half,” Geordi said, getting up and heading toward one of the wall panels. He touched it in a couple of places; it obediently fell away, revealing another panel behind it with much incomprehensible engineerese imprinted on it. This, too, he touched, in what looked to Troi like a coded sequence, and it fell away as well. “In,” he said. “Hurry up. Two meters back, the access tunnel bends to the right. A meter and a half past the first bend there’s a long drop, a vertical tunnel with ladder rungs set either side of the access. Go down one. There’s a big red line drawn right around the vertical tunnel, a meter and a half where it meets the access tunnel. When you go down the ladder, make sure your body is below that line, but whatever you do, don’t get your head below it.”
Troi gulped, feeling his fear, and at the same time an odd exhilaration that she didn’t fully understand. She went straight in, headfirst; the access tunnel was small enough that crawling was easier than crouching. Immediately she found the right-hand bend and went on around it; then she came to the drop. There was no more gulping in her when she saw it; her mouth went dry. Heights had never been one of her strong points … and this, this was a height and a half. Down below her yawned a cylindrical pit, smooth-walled, dimly lit with engineering telltales in its walls—at least two hundred feet deep, maybe more. She saw the two sets of projecting ladder rungs, set one on each side of the cylindrical tunnel, leading downward. She saw the red line and wondered what it was about, at the same time feeling a faint buzzing hum that lingered on her skin, like an itch that hadn’t quite started to be an itch yet.
Behind her she could hear soft scrabbling sounds up in the access tunnel: the click of paneling, another set of clicks, then the soft sound of Geordi making his way down to join her. His head peered over the edge to see which set of rungs she was on, and he quickly scrambled