Gateways 07_ What Lay Beyond - Diane Carey [119]
Picard scanned the night sky and tried to connect random stars to complete the picture but finally shook his head. “I’m not sure.”
“So it’s not your home? I thought Young Gods came from the sky.”
“Just a story,” Picard said, wary of any answer. “People make up stories when they’re not sure of the truth. Sometimes it gives them comfort.”
“Like my sky pictures?”
“Exactly. You should try to sleep now. I need to push on early tomorrow.”
Once again, he had an uneasy night’s sleep, worried about time lost, worried about natural predators, worried about the world Chanik would grow up in.
Dawn’s light woke Picard and he marveled at the beauty of unfettered nature replacing what had been a superior technology. He felt rested although his mind immediately turned to the problem at hand. He had to find the Master Resonator today and return home.
Chanik was still asleep and their fire had died out, but there was little chill in the air.
Picard took a sip from a water skin and noted the intricate swirling pattern that had been etched onto one side. Staring at it, he let his mind wander for a moment, and he thought about the odd-pointed end of the device nearly used on the accused woman the day before. Its oval nature was similar to the pattern on the skin and it occurred to Picard that the domed structure on the new Iconian world was more oval than circular. Could the oval shape be significant?
If so, then what?
Picard concentrated on the shape of architecture on Iccobar and Dewan, two of the other worlds that traced their lineage to the Iconians. Sure enough, ovals played a part of the overall design, but how could he use the knowledge to find the device?
He once more turned on the tricorder and studied the interior design of the Iconian building where he first encountered a gateway. The room was more rectangular than oval so that did not help, but he read over the description of the control pattern of the machinery itself that Data had provided. He wished he had an actual image of the room, but Picard himself had ordered the tricorder that had recorded the room destroyed both to avoid the sabotage of the Iconians’ invasive computer probe and to keep the information out of Romulan hands.
The layout of the controls offered no clue but he read over the description again. There was something he was missing and it nagged at him.
He switched the controls to the exterior of the domed home to the Iconians. There, the captain studied the colors and shapes, but merely glanced at the filigree work. That is, until his mind wandered for a second and his eyes lost their sharp focus and suddenly, all he saw were the spikes at different points to the design. Picard hastily reran the analysis and quickly grabbed a stick and sketched on the ground. He copied the points only of the oval sphere’s profile. With a smile, he noted that it was an exact match on the reverse profile.
He drew grid lines in the dirt, seeing how the points matched and there was the missing pattern. Quickly, Picard sketched further, completing the oval from a bird’s-eye view, repeating the grid lines and spikes. A picture emerged, the points leading the eye to a specific section of the grid, which could be the location of the City’s gateway. From memory, Picard estimated where he and Chanik entered the City and their approximate location. With a silent curse, he realized they were far from the building but at least had an idea of direction. Using the tricorder, he scanned the image and would use it as a crude map.
While he wanted to let the boy sleep more, he felt an urgent need to get moving. Gently, he woke Chanik and gave him fruit for breakfast. Within twenty minutes, they were moving again, this time in a direction that Picard hoped would bring a resolution to the problem.
“There were multiple moves between Petraw ships,” Taleen reported to Riker. “Just as Doral moved among many ships to elude you, a single transport crossed a dozen ships before stopping at the Deltan vessel. And from there, crossed seven more ships to return.”
“Which