Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [34]
“Otherwise, it should be safe,” the Horta captain announced, “so long as we do not get brushed by the whiskers themselves.”
“Then we’ll stay. Nothing is more important, at least for the next day, than the possibility that we can adjust the inertial controls and prevent the sun from crashing through the Sphere wall.”
“Kar!” Captain Dalen called. “La Forge! Are we positioned for gamma ray CAT scan?”
Lieutenant Kar shifted her body in her saddle. “I’ve already begun, Captain,” the Horta engineer said.
“The subject is passing directly between us and the sun,” Geordi added. “Sorry, Captain. It isn’t working. The sun’s rays just aren’t strong enough for even a few of them to get through the shell. The station is either absorbing them—all of them—or deflecting them. Impossible to tell. It’s all just one big data drop-out.”
Picard turned and looked at Troi, who had just come onto the bridge and was now seated on the Horta captain’s right.
“I had hoped we could probe it passively,” Picard said, “without it detecting that it was being probed.”
Troi nodded her agreement with his first plan, although it seemed to him that she might have wanted to suggest that they refrain from plans to beam Geordi’s so-called “walnuts,” or anything else onto or worse yet, beneath the transmitter’s shell.
The Horta captain let out what seemed a deep growl. “Whiskers coming at us. All shields up full!” she shouted.
At his helmsman’s position, Picard focused on the screen—gone to maximum, now, at the first sign of something approaching from outside. He plunged Darwin’s prow straight down; but as the whiskers on starboard and port closed above, three more whipped up from below, brushing gently past the vessel’s stern, missing the hull by mere centimeters—perhaps as much for their own protection as for ours, Picard thought.
He had just been scanned, thoroughly scanned; he was convinced of it. This ship, and his whole body.
He knew it.
He felt it in the skip of his artificial heart.
The alien station continued its traversal of the solar face.
It suddenly went black, then flashed out blindingly white—blinding even against the brilliance of the sun. For three unendurably long seconds the Darwin shook from stem to stern, shook so violently that her subspace gravitic fields could not completely overcome inertia. Picard managed to look aft and saw that even Dalen was finding it impossible to steady herself in the saddle.
He saw the screen readings drop below ten percent power as a solar flare, pointing at him like a giant accusing finger, struck the Darwin with planet-cracking force.
That was deliberate, Picard told himself. No doubt of it: Dyson’s off-center star was the center of its immune system, and it was responding to an irritant.
“All decks!” Captain Dalen called out. “Damage reports.”
Picard listened to the answers. Damage was minimal, but the impulse engines were laboring, and seemingly ineffectively. That accusing finger had flicked the Darwin out of solar orbit as if it were a gnat… or a microbe … All controls seemed locked, unable to slow or maneuver.
Picard brought up the view-forward. It showed the inner surface, more than sixty million kilometers ahead, and he realized that if the Darwin failed to slow, it would strike what now seemed only a distant lake, but was in reality a vast ocean some one hundred million kilometers across from shore to shore, and now only light minutes away.
Picard knew only too well that without full impulse power, the Darwin would reach that ocean in less than five hours.
“Can we slow?” Picard asked.
“We took a heavy blow, with thwarted force screens,” Captain Dalen replied. “Repairs are proceeding, but our direction and velocity seem locked. It may be beyond repair in the time we have.” Picard heard no emotion in the Horta’s voice.
“Riker—Data!” Picard called out. “Did you get that?”
“Yes, Captain,” Riker said.
“Data?”
“Downrange distance thirteen light seconds,” Data replied.