Intellivore - Diane Duane [19]
The screen obediently showed a closer view of the pitted hull. Picard looked down into the most conveniently placed of the pockmarks and saw grapples, and something that looked like an access tube. “Life-pod arrays,” he said to Riker.
“Yes, sir. And they’re all empty,” Riker said.
“So it would seem… . Is the away team ready?”
“The security contingent is just making its way to the transporter room, Captain. Dr. Crusher’s on her way as well.”
“Good; that one life sign is of great interest to me. Keep in touch, Number One. And I want images.”
“Yes, sir,” Riker said, heading for the turbolift.
When the transporter let him go, Riker found himself looking down a long, dimly lit hallway—low-ceilinged, narrow. Captain Maisel and her team—her science officer and six others, all heavily armed—stood halfway down that hall, watching as Riker drew his phaser and pushed ahead of the crewman carrying the imaging equipment.
“Anything interesting so far, Captain?” Riker asked.
Maisel and her science officer had their tricorders out and were scanning around them. The rest of the away team, armed, stood by. “That life sign is up a deck or so from us, I’d say.”
Riker thought with mild unease of what his instructors had always said about attacking uphill; you were always at a disadvantage. No choice, though … “Let’s see if we can find an access. Thorsson,” Riker said to one of his team, “get down to engineering, or what passes for it in here, and see what you can do about these lights. Also, see if there was any engine damage to cause this low-power state, or whether this is just a shutdown.”
“Aye, sir—”
Dr. Crusher came up beside Riker, walking by him and looking thoughtfully at her tricorder. “Life readings?” Riker said, glancing over her shoulder at the device.
“Only that one,” she said, making some adjustments to the tricorder.
That, more than anything else, had him wondering. Hope these people haven’t come up with some exciting new way to fool our sensors. This would be a great place to test it. No witnesses, way out here in the dark … “How is it?”
Crusher shook her head. “Hard to tell until I see what’s producing it. If the source of the reading is a humanoid, the reading’s iffy. There’s certainly an injury of some kind.”
Riker nodded, glancing around him. “Keep sharp, people,” he called to the group ahead of him. “We may have someone waiting in ambush.”
The doorways were no more than a meter and a half high, and all were stuck shut; they had to be laboriously levered apart and slid open. Riker’s heart started to pound as the door began to come open. He took a long breath, ready. The door opened. One of Maisel’s armed people peered in first, then waved her captain forward. Maisel stepped into the doorway, glanced in. “Look at this, Mr. Riker—”
He did. The room was apparently someone’s living quarters—a humanoid’s, to judge by the furniture. Several drawers and a cupboard were open; items of clothing in some soft, shimmering material lay on the bed, as if casually tossed there.
“Not looted or rifled, I think,” Maisel said. “Otherwise a lot more of these would be open.”
Riker looked the place over. “Someone packing in a hurry—”
They went on. Riker headed after Crusher, who was making her way down the hall on the trail of the active life sign. The two parties came to the end of the hall and had to go on more slowly, since there were neither lifts nor stairs, only a narrow Jeffries tube to be climbed to the next level. Riker stood at the bottom of the tube as the first couple of security people put their heads up into the next level and looked warily