Intellivore - Diane Duane [3]
“Shields holding?” Picard said softly.
“Yes, Captain,” said Data, regarding the readouts on his station. “One-gigahertz flux density is holding steady at nineteen; no sign of variation from the pulsar.”
“Good,” Picard said. The pulsar at the center of the fragment was a “billisecond” pulsar—revolving so fast, and pulsing so swiftly, that it hardly deserved the name. Radio emissions and X rays did not propagate from it in the usual rotary pulses, but instead seemed to come blasting out in an unbroken stream, like water from a fire hose. Objects that so strenuously “pushed the envelope” of their basic definition tended to make Picard a little nervous: you never knew when they might take it on themselves to become something new and different, very abruptly, and with disastrous consequences.
“Visual on Marignano, Captain,” Worf said.
Picard sat down. “Let’s have a look.”
The screen flicked to another view, fuller of blue filaments than of golden. A little gilt shape swam closer against the azure fire, decelerating from a sensible half impulse … for no one used warp technology while close to a supernova remnant. Until the mechanisms that had produced the remnant in the first place were better understood, stepping softly seemed wisest.
Marignano was maybe half the size of Enterprise, her primary hull narrower but her secondary hull as big as Enterprise’s and her nacelles as long. Picard remembered that the Marignano, like the other “longrange” science vessels, was “overengined,” designed for long runs in space where there would be no repair or refit facilities except what she carried herself.
“She is hailing us, Captain,” Worf said.
Picard smiled slightly. “Put her on.”
The viewscreen flicked to a bridge view. Though stations were manned, the center seat was empty. The usual murmur of operations being handled could be heard, but over it all, a lively, slightly raspy voice was saying, “—on, I want that report. It should have been here five minutes ago.”
The voice’s owner leaned into pickup for the viewscreen. “Hello, Jean-Luc!”
Picard smiled. It was always that way with her: you might not have seen Ileen Maisel for five years, or ten, but she would infallibly pick up the conversation in a tone of voice that suggested you had last spoken about a day ago.
“Hello, Ileen,” he said, wondering, as he looked at her, whether those roving tendencies of hers, and the matching tendencies of mind, were what kept her looking so young. She looked much as she had when their paths last crossed, five years ago, a woman of medium height, slender but with a sturdy look about her. Tightly curled, shortish salt-and-pepper hair, heavier on the pepper than the salt. Vivid blue-gray eyes and a big cheerful grin, a mobile, expressive face. That was Ileen—that, and a powerfully projected sense of purpose and speed: she had things to do, and was not going to let the universe hold her up.
“You’re late,” she said, plopping herself down in her center chair and stealing a peek at the padd she was holding. “I thought you were going to be here seventeen standard hours ago.”
Picard cleared his throat and shot a somewhat concealed look of amusement at Riker, who simply blinked, refusing to rise to the bait. The rendezvous, as was usual procedure when such huge distances were involved, had not been set for a specific time, but for a “rendezvous envelope” between a given stardate and another. “That was the earliest we could have made it,” Picard said. “And doubtless you were here early, the way you go charging around the place. Have you heard anything from Oraidhe?”
“Not a squeak since day before yesterday, but we’ve still got a day’s