Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [73]
“Yes, yes,” Crusher told her. “You know I do. Let’s just go out to the bridge.” She steered the other woman toward the door, and cast a scolding look back at Riker and Picard. “We’ll just be a few minutes.” Her words said one thing; her look said another.
Picard watched them leave without uttering a sound. When he and Riker were finally alone, he turned to the viewport and stared out into open space.
Before him was the panorama of distant stars and solar systems, the gas giant that had recently been their biggest problem and suddenly looked puny and insignificant as it whirled in bright green innocence at the very edge of his view. Two deep lines bracketed his mouth. He was a man with too many choices.
“That infernal thing is hiding out there, waiting for us to make a mistake,” he said. His voice dropped to a near whisper. “How many more of this kind of thing are out there, Riker? How many more decisions like this? What do we do when we have no doubt about a person’s-a community’srational, reasonable desire to die?”
Standing beside him, Riker could offer no real solution-but he had his own personal answer. One as first officer-not captain-he could afford.
Without moving, he quietly asked, “Do we have that, sir?”
Picard continued to stare out the viewport, but a furrow appeared in his brow and his eyes drew tight. “I have to know, as closely as I can know, if this thing is a floating utopia,” he mused, “or an interstellar hell.”
Chapter Ten
“I DON’T LIKE THIS at all, Jean-Luc. I’m putting it on record that this is happening under my protest.”
“That should make a lively record, doctor, if it ever reaches Starfleet.”
Sickbay’s isolation unit was buzzing, preparing itself for total zero-grav and the captain’s exact body temperature. Picard watched with a guarded expression as Dr. Crusher prepared a hypo that would do for him what no sane person should allow. Perhaps it took a touch of insanity to drive a man to such measures, or perhaps it only took desperation. All dangers, all risks, all rationality must yield to the single-minded quest of him upon whom the decision fell. And that was Picard.
Beside him, Troi was showing signs of wear. The fine dark hairs around her forehead were moist and curling, her eyes were tense, and her posture slack. Everything that had always seemed so easy for her suddenly appeared an effort. In spite of her desire for him to know what her empathic contacts were experiencing, she found the presence of mind to say, “I must agree with the doctor, sir. I’ve never considered sensory deprivation a valid technique.”
“It’s out of a horror chamber, if you ask me,” Crusher said, bobbing her head once with finality.
“All right,” the captain told them, “then you two can conjure up a better way for me to know what it’s like for those people and do so now, because I’m out to eliminate as many doubts as possible while we have the time.”
The two women shared a long look, each hoping the other would conjure up an alternative.
Picard gave them the courtesy of waiting, which of course was its own form of pressure. “What can I expect?”
Crusher held up her hypo. “Well, the first effect will be-“
“Sir,” Troi interrupted, “they didn’t know what to expect when this happened to them.”
Picard stared at her for a blank moment. For the first time, the prospect of what he was about to do frightened him. His gratitude that she would look after the accuracy of his experiment was tangled with annoyance that she had to do it quite so well. “Mmmm,” he uttered, frowning. “I suppose. All right, let’s get it going.”
He stood stiffly as the doctor pressed the hypo to his carotid artery and it hissed against his skin.
“I’m limiting the time,” Crusher called as the captain stepped into the isolation cubicle.
“Don’t tell me how long,” he said.
“Would I do that? You understand it’s not like sleeping, don’t you?”
“Actually, I know very little about this,” the captain admitted, and he sounded proud of himself.
“Ready when you are, Captain.