Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [26]
Each hour, Picard called down the same question: “And how does the excavation go now?” And always Captain Dalen gave the same reply: “Delicious. Delicious.”
Picard was anxious to stand by the Horta’s side. He felt as if he were being held captive aboard the Darwin, confined to looking out on the universe of Dyson only through large bridge screens or the ready room’s desk screens, while discussing emerging logistics problems with Data.
According to the android, Dyson’s peculiar motion and the relativistic gunshot were probably the birth cries of open warfare. Warfare between titans. Data believed that the two starships might soon get caught in the crossfire and be forced at a moment’s notice to ride the shockwave.
Yet because of the great distances involved, it was a shockwave that moved, from a human perspective, in slow motion. The neutron star fell toward Dyson like the minute hand of an enormous clock, though it, covered more than seven Earth diameters every second. There was actually time to sightsee. Or so it seemed. Or so Picard hoped.
“We’ll stay as long as we can,” he said, finally. ‘Im going down to the surface.”
“That may not be wise,” Data said from the Enterprise. “We may have to leave quickly, now that Dyson has become unpredictable.”
“Dyson has always been unpredictable,” said Pi-card, “by sheer definition.”
“But never so unpredictable as right now.”
Data was correct, Picard had to admit. Under more ordinary conditions, he would have been willing to exercise more caution. Now, however—”The clock is ticking, Data, and knowledge has to be collected quickly, or not at all.”
Putting either a real trace of anxiety in his voice, or a very good imitation of it, Data now said, “I have studied your map scans of the buried city, Captain, and find that we can resolve objects as small as coins scattered on the floor of a still-unexcavated meat market.”
On Picard’s screen, an aerial view of the Cousteau and the Engford appeared, parked beside what appeared to be an open pit mine. “Captain Dalen’s away team has exposed a town square,” Data continued, “and a number of the streets are accessible as tunnels, and are quite safe. Of course, I think the Hortas and our scans will give us all we need to know…”
“We want to see it for ourselves,” Picard replied before Data could renew his recommendation against a physical visit.
Troi glanced at her captain, and Picard knew what she was thinking: You want to see it with your own eyes, feel the ancient dust with your own two hands, incorrigible amateur archaeologist that you are. Troi did not have to say it. They both knew that she was right. The amateur’s love was too often absent from the professional mind, and the hope of discovery that Picard knew within himself was one of the great pleasures of his life, to be neglected only at great peril to his mental health.
“Would you like to see this, Mr. Data?” Picard asked.
“Unnecessary, Captain. I have already gained all that I can from the scans. My interest is as great as yours, but without the feelings. I will study the scans for hidden relationships in the information.” Troi said, “We should plan for a limited visit.” “Quite right, Counselor. Say—two hours?”
“I think we can stretch it to four, Captain.” Picard frowned, thinking of the Dooglasse, and how he and his crew and the Hortas might be the only ones to remember them and to record what they could of their civilization. “But where there is life …” he told himself.
As the dead city faded into view around him, Picard saw that he was materializing in a large square that had been swept, or devoured clean, of volcanic ash. Troi and La Forge stood near him, already surveying the alien site.
The Minoan-style houses stood like squat sentries, at the bottom of a freshly hewn crater. The Horta were efficient miners; and according to Captain Dalen’s theory, her people had been built that way. On every side, tunnels plunged into the walls of the pit, and on the land above, smoke from a dozen chimneys stained