Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [146]
The artifact’s skin-what their admittedly inconclusive scans had approximated as a millennia-old coating of interstellar dust and detritus-was only two meters thick.
Harry Kim’s scans, though unable to ferret any of the artifact’s deeper secrets, had managed to target several thin spots in its crust.
Tuvok surmised that, should the thing prove to be a construct of some kind, these areas might be points of potential access.
Phasers were ruled out for clearing the material away, lest they accidentally damage the structure within.
“Choose a spot and dig,” she told them.
“This stuff is like concrete,” said Ensign Black.
A movement on B’Elanna’s periphery drew her gaze to one side, where she saw the Doctor running a naked palm over the artifact’s crust. A figure she took to be that of Noah Lessing stood quietly by.
“It feels more like sandstone to me,” said the Doctor. Then, noticing that he had B’Elanna’s attention, he smiled. Of course he did. Who wouldn’t? Voyager, despite its current predicament, was built to explore, and the Emergency Medical Hologram was part of Voyager.
On the other hand, maybe his happiness came from the fact that, as a hologram, he was the only member of the team not obliged to wear an EVA suit. The Doctor was at home in the vacuum as he was lolling around Voyager’s sickbay.
He might look like a human being, even behave like one, but it was just an illusion. The Doctor didn’t eat or age or sweat or sleep. He had no heart pumping synthetic blood through holographic veins or prosthetic lungs processing the mix of oxygen and nitrogen enjoyed by the rest of the crew.
He didn’t even have to use vocal cords to speak. She listened as he nattered away at Lessing over the comm, moving his lips as if he really needed them to speak.
It was disconcerting to say the least. B’Elanna made a mental note to add standard EVA gear to his holomatrix should a similar mission present itself in the future.
“Lieutenant Torres,” said Seven of Nine’s voice, snapping her back to business. “I require your assistance.”
Looking down at it, B’Elanna had to admit she was impressed. Seven of Nine’s pit was about two meters deep, wide enough for two good-sized humanoids to stand abreast. Dominating the bottom of her little trench was something that could very easily have been a torpedo hatch or even an airlock door.
She trained her tricorder on it, but the readings she got back were an even more contradictory jumble than those presented by the skin.
She bent to get a better look at what she took to be the locking mechanism of what was, apparently, a hatch.
Unlike the rest of the hatch’s fairly pristine surface-the lock bore signs of scoring of the kind a pickax or digger might produce.
B’Elanna smiled.
“Knocked already, huh?” she said, running her glove along the surface. What is this stuff? She thought.
It looked vaguely crystalline, but the closest thing her tricorder’s analysis would settle on was something it called a “ceramic polymer hybrid.” Not the most specific description.
“I have circumvented the latching mechanism,” said Seven. “But I am unable to apply sufficient force to move this impediment without assistance.”
B’Elanna got into a crouch, her gloved hands taking hold of the hatch’s edge. Mirroring her on the other side, Seven did the same.
It moved a little more easily than either of them expected and, before they could get the hatch up to shoulder height, a great gust of wind blew out from the new aperture, nearly ripping it from their hands.
B’Elanna had expected there might be some outgassing. If all the seals on this thing were intact, it might very well have kept its atmosphere bottled indefinitely. What she didn’t anticipate was the intrusion of ambient sound that came with the little hurricane.
For a few moments she could actually hear the wind rushing by, even whistling through the small ring couplings on either side of her helmet.
Her faceplate vibrated slightly against the gale, creating a nearly imperceptible rattle in the seams. Those noises were startling enough,