Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [34]
“No, sir,” Riker admitted, “but if it zeroes in on energy outlay, we might be able to hide from it.”
Picard looked impressed. “My thoughts exactly.”
“Sir?”
The captain craned his neck around. “Now what, Yar?”
She braced herself, but plunged on with her report, because it was too bizarre to keep to herself. She bent over her readout screen and tried to disbelieve what she saw. “Sir, I think our passive sensors might not be working properly. Or I’m not very good at reading them … “
“Report. Now.”
She tilted her head and frowned. “The thing’s energy level appears to be slowly dropping. Definitely going down.”
“In the thing itself?”
“Yes, in the thing.”
“What’s the matter with that?”
“Well, its mass isn’t-Worf, can you corroborate this?”
“Checking,” Worf rumbled.
“Lieutenant!”
“Yes, sir. The mass isn’t changing. And there’s no change in the antimatter, and it’s not emanating enough energy to account for the drop.”
“That’s not possible,” Picard said. “The energy can’t go nowhere. That’s a fundamental law of the universe. It has to go somewhere.”
“I wish it would,” she muttered. “Aye, sir, that’s the strange part. It tends to phase as we’re reading it. Its mass, its total energy-there’s almost nothing about it that’s constant.”
“That’s the clue, then. What’s the conclusion? Hypotheses, anyone,” he called sharply, doubling the pressure of the moment by putting the whole bridge on the hot seat for answers.
“Inter … inter … “
“Yes, Data? You have an idea? Data, you all there?”
“Inter … dimen … sionality … ” The android leaned against Geordi unashamedly, but his expression was one of fierce concentration rather than the alarm of a moment ago.
“Keep trying, Data,” Picard prodded, stepping closer to him but resisting the urge to help him straighten up.
“The only possibility,” Data said, “is that it must exist … between dimensions if the energy … is dissipating without … emanation … sir.” He steadied himself with a distinct effort, glanced in gratitude toward Geordi, and stood on his own. “That must be where the energy is going. It is the only way to account for the enormous energy drawn from our shields without our being able to detect it now.”
Picard scowled, but the idea did make sense. It had better, since Data said it twice without realizing he was repeating himself.
On the upper deck, Yar shook her head. “Too weird for me,” she grumbled.
“It is outlandish,” Picard mused.
“But it’s the only conclusion that makes sense,” Riker said. “Hell, it makes our idea of ghosts seem sane.”
“It does that,” the captain agreed ruefully, “and it also means that anything we do from this moment on is pure guesswork. For all we know that thing could extend through a hundred solar systems on a hundred levels of existence.”
Riker looked at the screen, at the image of the entity sizzling in the upper left of the starscape, two light-years off their port bow. “And any energy we use to defend ourselves is just its next meal. Maybe we should put some distance between us.”
Picard bobbed his brows as though he’d very much like that idea. “We can’t,” he said. “At least not yet. That entity put on a burst of warp nearly warp fifteen. It’d be all over us in an instant. We’ve blinded it by shutting down our power. As we hang here, we’re hidden. For the moment.”
“How are you doing?” Riker asked privately, trying to make his approach to Wesley’s side an inobvious one.
Wesley flinched. He hadn’t thought anyone was paying attention to him, considering events. “Okay, sir. It’s really a bother to just hang here in space, though.”
Riker eyed the screen, and the distant false-color pattern that sought them. “It’s all we can do until we get systems back on line and figure out a way to leave the area without attracting attention.”
“Maybe a solar sail, sir? We could coast on the waves from the sun in that little solar system-“
“Too slow. It’ll find us long before then. Look at it. It’s working a search pattern that we can’t escape