Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [10]
“Sorry, sir,” he rumbled. “It was there during our last phaser burst, then it was gone.” He placed his big hands on the tactical board and burned a glare through the forward screen. “I don’t like it. It’s like being watched.”
Picard stood back on his heels for a contemplative moment, his handsome eyes wedging. “Could be another vessel. Let’s make sure they don’t miss us. Saying hello is part of our job. Put sensors on wide scan. Lieutenant Data, you handle broadcast of standard hailing frequency with greetings in all interstellar languages and codes as well as automatic universal translation.”
“I’m hopping to it.”
“Lieutenant LaForge, take us out of orbit. Disband further testing of the gas giant until we ascertain the trim of the solar system.”
“Aye, sir. Disengaging orbital condition.” LaForge pressed his fingers to the signal controls on the beautiful board at wrist level and just that easily drew the massive starship out of the gas giant’s gravitational envelope. During that maneuver, while the ship was safely under control of the navigational computer, he took a moment to glance left to Data.
When he looked at the other crew members, he saw the layerings of infrared that he could intensify as needed, he saw blood running through arteries, arterioles, capillaries, and so on, but he saw them better than a computer would because his brain acted as interpreter and he was more intuitive than any computer. Over that infrared image, like a nylon stocking drawn over a mannequin, he saw skin and a hazy shine of fine skin hairs. The mannequin appeared to be lighted from within, and had a slight glow.
But Data-Data was a work of art. Geordi alone could see the exotic materials, brilliantly blended, the different levels of heat and coolness, the different densities where metal met synthetic, where synthetic met organism, and where all meshed. He saw the density of Data’s body, and all the million tiny electrical impulses that kept him working and ran like swarms of insects through his body when he worked a little harder or concentrated a little more or called up more strength. But it wasn’t like looking at the computer stations before them or the mechanism behind the wall at the coffee/food dispenser. Not at all. Those were machines.
LaForge sometimes got the feeling that people forgot he could hear too. He had listened to Riker’s tone just before the first officer left the bridge. He had heard the flutter in Data’s voice when he mentioned that Riker wasn’t too pleased with him. Data was mechanical, but to Geordi LaForge he was no machine.
Geordi allowed himself an indulgent gaze at Data’s face as the android glowed with concentration. He saw the structure of synthetic facial bone, tiny blood-fed fibrous ligaments attached to impulse interpreters, stockinged by the cool involucrum that was his skin. Geordi saw a handsome face, unafraid of its own features, a face that could show many feelings, from courage to calculation, confusion to compassion, to those sensitive enough to see its minute changes. And Data’s eyes, no matter their brimstone cast, were unfailingly gentle.
Geordi shook his head and uttered, “Machine, my ass.”
Picard looked up. “Lieutenant?”
“Secure distance, sir.”
“Speak up, then.”
“Yes, sir.”
The door’s buzzer sounded clearly, but Troi didn’t respond to it. Once again lights played across her face, but not the lights of yellow alert. She sat at her private desk, watching a holograph simulate the motion of a patch of blue ocean water. At the ends of the foot-wide holograph, the ocean faded and became table. Dead center on the patch of churning water was a three-dimensional image of an old military vessel. It was wedge-shaped, piled high with steel-gray metal mountings that made no sense to her. On the screen at her wrist came the simple description: First iron screw steamship, S.S. Great Britain.
She frowned and tapped the continue button. The 3-D image sucked in on itself as though imploded, twisted around a little, and reanimated into something utterly different, something