Gateways 07_ What Lay Beyond - Diane Carey [2]
Several of the Petraw crowded close to him, trying to push him inside. Their baggy coveralls rustled as he resisted.
“What’s the rush?” Kirk tried to regain his footing on the mushy floor.
They still nudged him forward, pressing down on his shoulders. He realized he was being given no choice and he began to fight back.
Without hesitation, the Petraw seized his legs and arms, subduing him by sheer numbers. Before he knew it, they were tossing him into the hexagon.
They slapped something on the end. Kirk scrabbled at it with his fingers. The covering was hard and peach-colored, almost opaque. He could see the shadows of the Petraw outside, but even when he kicked hard against it with both feet, he couldn’t budge the seal on the end.
After a while Kirk couldn’t see any more shadows. It was pitch dark inside. He kept kicking against the plug, but it held firm. He crawled to the other end, checking it for openings, but it was sealed tight as well. He was trapped,
It didn’t take long to search the place. Kirk could sit up inside the cell if he hunched over, his hair brushing the ceiling. He could also lie down and stretch out to his full length, but both ends touched his feet and outstretched arms. It was a tiny, claustrophobic place. A sarcophagus buried in the rock.
He wasn’t sure where the fresh air was coming from. Feeling around, he found nothing but smooth, slightly damp walls that were cool to the touch. Too bad his phaser was gone. But they hadn’t taken his communicator.
Operating the communicator by touch, Kirk checked each frequency, listening for activity. There might be a Starfleet vessel in the area, or an allied planet that had diplomatic ties to the Federation. “This is Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. Can anyone read me? I’m being held prisoner….”
He repeated his distress call on every frequency. If the Petraw didn’t like it, they could come stop him.
But there was no response. The static was extremely high, crackling on the lower frequencies, leading him to believe that a shield could be interfering with the subspace channel.
Kirk grimly kept trying.
His voice was raw from speaking into the communicator when he finally gave up. No one could hear his calls.
A different course of action was required. Kirk flipped the cover up and felt the screen mesh. No sharp edges on it or on the smooth black body of the unit. He tried wrenching the cover from the communicator, straining with both hands to twist it out of its hinge.
The mesh cracked at one corner, breaking free and leaving a jagged edge. He winced when it cut his probing finger. The other corner slid out of the hinge.
Kirk dug the broken cover into the seal on the end of the cell. It reacted like some kind of polymer. The jagged edge left a small slice in the flexible stuff.
He hacked away at the seal. The polymer wouldn’t tear, but successive jabs cut deeper into it.
Satisfied that he was finally making some progress, he worked faster.
It took a while for Kirk to break through. At first only one hand could push out of the cell. He continued to dig at the polymer to enlarge the slash.
Getting his shoulders through was the hardest. He struggled with the polymer as if the cell were alive and determined to keep him inside. When he finally slid through, dragging his legs after him, he rolled onto the soft ground.
Only to find himself trapped again. The tunnel was exactly the same as before, nearly dark with no way to get out. But the Petraw were gone.
Kirk carefully retraced their steps, and found the tunnel once more clogged at the end with a dense mass of tan polymer. But now he knew that it could be opened. He plunged his hands into the center, feeling them sink deeper and deeper. It was powdery dry. The stretchy texture reminded him of the thick rubber bands he had used as a kid for makeshift slingshots. He pushed harder on it.
The walls slowly started drawing back, opening up to reveal the platform where the gateway had deposited him. It was darker outside now, and Kirk went forward to see the blood orange sky looming