Planet X - Michael Jan Friedman [94]
La Forge turned to Nightcrawler. “It was Kurt, here.”
“See that, elf?” Wolverine grunted. “Ain’t I always said yer more trouble than yer worth?”
“Stick it in your two giant ears, mein freund,” said the teleporter with a smile.
Storm ignored her teammates’ good-natured banter. “In what way was Kurt the cause of our problem?” she asked.
“Good question,” said La Forge. “You see, when Nightcrawler teleports, he picks up traces of something called verteron particles—which we’ve come to associate with subspace travel.”
“Ye learned that in yer examination of ‘im?” Banshee wondered.
“That’s right,” the engineer replied. “And once I knew that, I suspected it was a contributing factor to your inability to get home. But I didn’t know how verterons alone could be responsible—and I couldn’t find out the easy way, because I didn’t have access to the timehook Nightcrawler had used.”
“So what did you do?” asked Archangel, looking genuinely intrigued.
“Well,” said La Forge, “I thought about the fact that you could have shown up at any point at all in timespace—but you showed up in my particular universe, not too long after we’d seen you last. I decided that couldn’t be just a coincidence. There had to be something drawing you to those coordinates.”
“And what was it?” Shadowcat prodded.
“That’s what I wanted to know,” the engineer told her. “Since you turned up originally at Starbase 88, I figured I’d make that my next research stop—figuratively speaking, of course. Contacting Admiral Kashiwada’s people, I asked for their security logs for the month preceding your appearance. And that’s where I found the lead I was looking for.
“Remember the other timehook—that one that brought us home? As Captain Picard told Storm, it was misplaced in the course of its return to us. But when I went over the starbase’s cargo logs, I found a reference to something that sounded a lot like it.”
“On Starbase 88?” asked Colossus.
“On Starbase 88. So I asked them to analyze it for me. And guess what? It was lousy with verteron particles.”
“Ah hah,” said Nightcrawler. “The plot thickens.”
“Wait a second,” Shadowcat declared. “I think I get it. There’s some kind of connection between the timehooks—some method of communication Kang built in, that may not be obvious to us.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” La Forge said. “Maybe to keep the timehooks from trying to jump to the exact same coordinates.”
“Okay,” the girl replied, “that works. Anyway, at some point, the starbase is exposed to verteron particles, and so is the timehook in its cargo bay. And the one Kurt’s using has already been contaminated with verterons. So when we try to use all our hooks at the same time, to get home …”
“The nature of the link changes,” said the engineer, impressed by Shadowcat’s grasp of the situation. “It becomes like an elastic band. And having been stretched, it snaps back again—until it drags you back to the other timehook, which happens to be in a cargo bay at Starbase 88.”
Banshee whistled. “And ‘twas brought to this point in time because, before then, th’ other timehook had nae been exposed … and th’ altered link had nae existed.” He smiled. “Pretty heady stuff, ‘tis.”
“Now what?” asked Nightcrawler. “Am I to be drawn and quartered for my role in this?”
La Forge chuckled. “That part’s out of my hands, I’m afraid. But you’ll be glad to know the last timehook is on its way to us even as we speak. After we cleanse it of verteron particles, you should be able to use it to get home once and for all.”
“Here, here,” said Banshee.
Archangel nodded approvingly. “Nice work, Commander.”
“I try,” said the engineer.
Picard turned to Dr. Crusher. “Your turn, Beverly.”
She leaned forward. “What I have to say isn’t all that complicated.”
“If I had a nickel for every time I heard that,” Wolverine muttered.
Storm shot him a look.
“As you know,” Crusher continued, “I programmed a replica of Professor Xavier in the holodeck. Working together, we were able to devise a process for reversing the work of the Draa’kon genome—in other words, turning the transformed