Metamorphosis - Jean Lorrah [74]
Poot! Ping! Thud! told him even before the computer confirmed it that his shots were all over it with no consistent pattern. Holding the bursts too long, in order to drag them onto target, he finally exhausted the charge. “Damn,” he said, transferring the phaser to his left hand and wiping his cramped and sweating right hand on his uniform. If he had gripped the weapon that hard with android strength, he would have crushed it. Dare stood back, watching him, saying nothing, For some reason it seemed like heavy criticism to Data, and in frustrated anger he threw the phaser at Dare, demanding, “You’re the expert. Show me!”
It was the small, light hand phaser, although it hit Dare dead center in the chest, it would not even cause a bruise. The mercenary caught it as it bounced off him, stared down at it for a moment, then at Data-and burst out laughing.
“It’s not funny!” Data exploded. “My career in Starfleet is at stake.” “No-no,” Dare gasped. “I’m laughing at my own stupidity, Data. I watched you eating last night and should have realized it then, but I didn’t see it until you chucked that weapon at me. I put the phaser in 205 your right hand when we started. I should have realized: you’re left-handed!”
Data had been aware that humans favored one hand over the other, the majority of them the right, but as an android he had of course been ambidextrous.
He looked down at his hands, recalled eating, shaving, brushing his hair, cleaning his teeth …
Dare was correct. He instinctively used implements with his left hand. “Let me try again,” he said, reaching for the phaser with his left hand this time.
As Data put the exhausted phaser back in its charger and took a fresh one, Dare said, “Wait a minute, Data. I want you to try something.” “What?”
“Pretend that fiasco didn’t happen. It was my fault, not yours. Relax for a moment, take some deep breaths. Let the tension drain away.”
Data tried to do as he’d been instructed, relaxing his muscles. “Good,” Dare said. “Now, forget that you’re human.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing has happened to change your shooting skill. You’ve always been dead-on with any weapon, the way you hit me dead-on when you threw without thinking just now. So don’t think. Use the same instincts you’ve used all your life. Goo” Data fired, not consciously aiming. Ping! Ping!
Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Burst after burst hit dead center of the target. He stopped shooting, stared, looked over at the computer results. They confirmed it.
He tried aiming as he had earlier, and although he
did better than he had with his right hand, he scattered shots over much of the target.
“Data-was Dare began.
“An experiment,” he replied. “That is what happens when I try to aim. But if I let my automatics function-was He resumed firing-and again scored a perfect round.
Dare increased the distance, and said, “Do it again.”
Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!
Dare clapped him on the back. “I think you’ve got it!” Data wondered, “How could that possibly carry over? I don’t have automatics anymore.”
“Of course you do: they’re called reflexes.
Don’t question it,” Dare warned him. “Just use it.
Let’s try moving targets.”
As with the fixed target, Data proved as good as ever, as long as he simply forgot that anything was different from the last time he had used a phaser.
Dare drew one also, and they practiced back-to-back security maneuvers, letting the computer keep score. Together, they drove it straight up to the limit of human reaction time, never missing a target they aimed at and only beginning to miss tracking some when the machine went into lightning barrage, sending targets at a rate even the fastest human reflexes could not match.
When they were forced to give up and end the program, Data called up their score-and found they had surpassed the Enterprise record. Dare looked up from the screen with a wolfish grin.
“Data, can you delete that record?”
“I can, “Data replied, “but I will not. It is part of the ship’s log.” “Of course,” Dare said.
“Well, then, we’ll have to move quickly, before Lieutenant