Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [90]
Memories of the beast flooded through Soong as he charged up the icy slope to just inside the tunnel mouth where Graves and Vaslovik waited for him, both panting heavily. As soon as they saw him, they pressed on. Minutes later, Soong felt the welcome embrace of the transporter beam. Just as his vision was obscured by the sparkling silver sheath, he imagined that he saw bobbing, elongated shadows trudging up the path toward him and though Data could not know this, that image joined with the memories of the monster dog and haunted Noonien Soong’s dreams until the day he died.
Back aboard Vaslovik’s yacht, Graves and Soong stumbled off their transporter pads and almost became wedged in the narrow hatch in their haste to be the first to reach the pilot’s seat. Graves won, but as soon as Soong recovered his balance, he settled down in the copilot’s chair and watched Graves’s hands fly across the control panels, anxious to be ready in case Graves made any mistakes. He didn’t. The impulse engines were online in under thirty seconds and the warp drive was available five minutes after that. Only after the stars shifted from white pinpoints to red-purple streaks did Soong relax and begin to relish the sensation of warmth and comfort.
It was ten minutes into their flight before either of them thought about Vaslovik. Soong rose and returned to the tiny central cabin where he found Vaslovik preparing a cup of tea. Somehow, over the past ten minutes, Vaslovik had managed to wash his hands, change into clean clothes, and found a way to revert back to the kindly mentor again. Soong carefully watched him dip his tea bag into the small pot, looking for some sign of the other figure he had seen less than half an hour before, but there was no trace. He almost began to doubt his memories. Almost.
Soong took off his gloves and rubbed his fingers. Strangely, he no longer felt any shyness around the great man. It was hard, he reflected, to feel shy around anyone that you just hauled up a cliff like a sack of wet laundry. “So,” he said. “What now?” He didn’t feel the need to elucidate.
“Now?” Vaslovik said. “We make tea. We take our android back to the lab and we study it. Carefully. When no one is watching.”
“And we don’t come back here.” It was a statement, not a question. Soong thought about saying it again and emphasizing the word “We,” but he figured Vaslovik understood.
“No,” Vaslovik said. “I think not. It’s possible that if we just awoke something, it will go back to sleep if left undisturbed.”
“If we woke something?” Soong asked incredulously.
“Did you see anything?” Vaslovik asked.
Soong pondered the question, then finally shook his head no.
“Any sensor readings?”
“There was a dampening field … of some kind,” Soong said. “I think.”
“Or, in other words, no,” Vaslovik said.
Soong shrugged. There was no point in arguing. He would never be able to charter a ship back to this remote world and, even if he could, it was unlikely that any other small craft would be able to elude detection. There was something peculiar about this ship, Soong had decided. There was more to her than met the eye. Just like her master.
“So, that’s it, then?”
Vaslovik sighed and sipped his tea. “If you’re lucky, Noonien,” he said. “Then, yes.”
Soong shrugged out of his coat and draped it over the back of a chair. “You want to know something, Professor?” he asked. “I’ve never been lucky. Not in that way.”
“Hmph,” Vaslovik said, almost smiling. “You’re probably a better person for it.”
Soong searched the