Intellivore - Diane Duane [29]
“Nice-looking place,” said Clif.
Picard nodded. “Typical M-type. A dead-on zero, I’d say.”
“And here,” Data said, “is the visual data from a second probe I sent for confirmation.”
There was the primary again, with its characteristic golden-green gleam; it was a hard star to miss, once you were used to the slightly unusual hue. But the secondary spark was missing. The screen leaped in close, and closer, as the earlier view had, but there was no sign of a planet where there should have been one.
Picard looked at the screen and shook his head. “A malfunction?” he said. “Some orbital anomaly, perhaps?”
“No, Captain.”
The two captains stood looking at the empty space and glanced at each other. “I have had difficulty establishing which information is correct. Both probes’ own diagnostics check out to the last checksum digit. Each probe is certain it ‘saw’ the result you have seen,” Data said.
“No chance of any kind of planetary collision, I suppose,” Clif said. “The system would still be cluttered with the debris.”
“Correct, sir.”
“You’re quite sure the star is the same?” Picard said.
“The spectrography matches exactly, Captain,” Data said. “There is no chance of error.”
Picard folded his arms and gave Clif a thoughtful look. “Well,” he said, “this raises a new set of problems. There’s no way to tell which of these data sets is accurate. Certainly one would prefer it was the one that shows a planet. But if that planet is not there—” He shook his head. “Colonization ships rarely carry much more food and other raw materials than they need for the actual journey to their destination. If the Boreal’s colonists arrive at this star and find there’s no planet there, they’re going to need help. At least when it comes to provisions, even if they won’t let us take their personnel on board.”
“I concur, Captain. I’m sure Ileen will as well.”
“Mr. Data,” Picard said, “how long will it take us, at optimum warp, to catch up with Boreal?”
He glanced at his panel for a moment. “Eight hours, forty minutes, Captain.”
“Lay in the course, then, and make it so.”
Not quite eight hours later, Picard was back on the bridge. Data looked up from his panel as the captain came in.
“Report,” Picard said.
“On one matter at least,” said Data, “we now have certainty. The Vulcans will need to look into the way their scan data are protected. We will reach the primary within forty minutes. However, longrange scan indicates no planet in orbit around it.”
Riker came onto the bridge at that point, looked around, saw Picard, and came down to him with an alert look in his eye. “No planets,” he said.
“So I hear, Number One.”
“Someone,” said Riker, “went to some trouble over all this. Not just faking one planet, but faking the presence of all the others. They even put the target planet in the correct Bodean relationship to the others.”
Picard nodded. “Not all species use Bode’s Law,” he said, “or recognize it as a law as such. But many humanoid species do use it to a greater or lesser extent, probably a majority. Mr. Data?”
“I would concur, Captain. Approximately seventy percent of humanoid species find that particular set of ratios useful or attractive in terms of their native forms of mathematics.”
“So,” said Ileen Maisel’s voice suddenly—apparently she had been eavesdropping. “This subterfuge, if it is one, might be directed at humanoids specifically?”
“That is more than we could say from the present information, Captain … but a possibility nonetheless.”
“Ileen, do your sensors show you anything more than ours do?” Picard asked.
“A lot of empty space right now, Jean-Luc. Also, my science officer suggests to me that there’s something funny going on with the Boreal’s ion trail.”
“Mr. Data, have