Gauntlet - Michael Jan Friedman [49]
“Because all they did was reshape their shields to minimize the friction,” Ben Zoma offered.
“That’s correct,” Picard said. “Unfortunately, this approach placed a great deal of stress on their shield generators and gradually wore out their energy reserves.”
Wu spelled it out for them. “Which in turn reduced their chances of continuing their efforts.”
The captain nodded. “What we need is a different approach—one that allows us to penetrate the debris field without depleting our energy reserves.” He looked around the table. “Ideas?”
For a moment, no one spoke. Then Simenon shrugged and took a stab at the problem.
“We could use our phasers to blast a path for ourselves,” he offered. But the words were barely out of his mouth before he shook his head vigorously from side to side. “No, that won’t work.”
“Too large an energy expenditure,” Ben Zoma observed.
“Yes,” said Simenon. “And it would take a ridiculous amount of time to clear enough debris.”
“What about a tractor beam?” asked Wu. “We could move the debris out of our way as we proceed. And it would require considerably less energy than a sustained phaser blast.”
“True,” said Ben Zoma. “But it would also limit our rate of speed.” He turned to the chief engineer. “How fast can a tractor clear a path through that stuff?”
Simenon snorted. “Not very.” His eyes slitting, he made some rough calculations in his head. “We could proceed at fifty kilometers an hour, maybe a little better than that.”
“So, if the shell is a thousand kilometers deep,” said Gerda, “and our data tells us that it’s at least that, we’re talking about as much as twenty hours.”
“And during that time,” Picard noted, “our sensors will be completely blind. So if the White Wolf were to exit the system, we would have no way of knowing it. He might be eighteen hours gone by the time we get through the debris field.”
“Assuming,” said Valderrama, “that he has a way of getting through it in better shape than those who have hunted him.”
“An assumption we have to make,” Idun remarked. “Otherwise, he would not have concealed himself here so often.”
“So we have ruled out phasers and tractors,” said the captain. “What other options do we have at our disposal?”
Again, there was silence around the table. And this time, no one spoke up to relieve it.
Picard frowned. “It’s late. Perhaps if we sleep on the problem and get a jump on it in the—”
He never completed his sentence. The word jump had sparked a notion in his brain—one that he was even now turning over and over, inspecting it from all angles.
And the more he inspected it, the better he liked it.
“Sir?” said Wu.
“I believe I have a solution,” Picard told her. “But it’s not without a certain amount of risk.”
“How much risk?” asked Simenon.
Picard planted a hand on the briefing room table, leaned toward the hologram of the solar system and pointed to a spot within its gray outer ring. “What I’m proposing is that we execute a very quick, very short subspace jump—which will, if it is successful, place us well beyond the debris field.”
Glances were exchanged, some of them understandably skeptical. In fact, had someone else come up with the idea, the captain might have been skeptical as well.
“It’s risky, all right,” said Simenon.
“If we miscalculate,” Wu told him, “we could find ourselves in the star itself.”
“Yes,” said the Gnalish. “Or some other inconvenient place.”
Picard turned to Gerda. “How dependable is our data on the dimensions of the debris field?”
She considered the question. “Our predecessors’ logs seem to differ somewhat. But they entered the system at different points, and the field may be thicker in some places than in others.”
“Only a few of them ever reached the inner limits of the field,” Wu chimed in, “much less explored beyond that point. For all we know, there’s another debris field only a bit further in.”
“If that’s so,” said Valderrama, “it would cut down our margin for error considerably.”
“Yes,” Simenon agreed. “And there’s also the system’s gravity well to take into account.