Q & A - Keith R. A. DeCandido [46]
La Forge continued to ignore Q. “What about the force field you guys came across? Any sign of where that came from?”
“No sign,” Kadohata said, “and there’s no EM energy down there whatsoever. We even did a psilosynine scan. It confirmed the medical scans. If whatever’s down there is telepathic, it isn’t of a kind we’re familiar with.”
Q said, “Oh, I just can’t stand this anymore.” He snapped his fingers and disappeared.
As soon as he did, La Forge smiled. “Y’know, I think that’s the fastest we ever got rid of him.”
“Wasn’t fast enough, if you ask me,” Kadohata muttered.
“I have the results of the icospectrogram, sir.” Taurik handed Kadohata the padd.
Which wouldn’t have been a problem, except La Forge also reached for it. At first, La Forge instinctively started to point out that Taurik worked for him, not her, but strictly speaking, that wasn’t true. She was second officer. Aside from Worf and the captain, everyone on the ship worked for her.
“I’m sorry,” La Forge said weakly.
“You’re dismissed, Ensign.” Commander Kadohata then turned and faced La Forge. He was amazed. If a subordinate officer had done that to him, he would not have been so calm.
“It’s all right.”
It didn’t sound all right, based on the tone in Kadohata’s voice, but La Forge figured he’d take it.
“The icogram shows exactly what we picked up on the surface.” She handed him the padd. Kadohata added, “Look, Geordi, it really is all right. It always takes time to adjust to a new person in the double-play combination.”
“The what?” La Forge asked with a frown.
“It’s a baseball reference. The fielders who play the positions of second base and shortstop are generally referred to as the ‘double-play combination,’ as those two positions are the key component in the so-called double-play…” Miranda stopped herself. “But that’s neither here nor there—we just need to adjust to each other, yeah?”
Smiling, La Forge said, “Yeah. And we can start with Gorsach IX.”
“Well, I’m at a loss, to be honest. We’ve tried every scan, we’ve combined scans, we’ve done so many I’ve lost track of what we’ve done. We’ve so overcomplicated thi—” She cut herself off.
After Kadohata stood silent for a full five seconds, La Forge finally asked, “Uh, Miranda? You okay?”
She turned to La Forge. “You’re going to think I’ve gone barmy.”
“Miranda, we just found a perfect planet with a force field we can’t detect. Extinct Berengarian animals that we also can’t detect are keeping us out of one of the perfectly symmetrical caverns in the circular canyon, and we have Q showing up. We passed ‘barmy’ a while ago.”
Kadohata took a breath. “There are three scans we’ve not yet attempted.”
“There’s no standard scan that we haven’t performed,” La Forge pointed out. “Hell, we’ve even done several nonstandard ones.”
“Oh, these are quite nonstandard, Geordi. We’re going to hit Gorsach IX with radio waves, magnetic resonance imaging, and X-rays.”
La Forge couldn’t help it. He laughed. It was the equivalent of asking Doctor Crusher to operate with catgut and scalpels, Leybenzon to use chemical explosives.
“Well, it’s no crazier than the icogram. And the worst thing that’ll happen is we improperly calibrate the emitters, the X-rays give us all radiation poisoning, and we die.”
Kadohata grinned. “That’s all?”
Chuckling, La Forge said, “Let’s get to work.”
Jean-Luc Picard picked up the wineglass and started twirling it, watching as the red wine sloshed up the sides of the crystal, the residue trailing down in straight lines. Good legs, he thought, then brought the glass to his nose. He got a whiff of berry with a bit of spice thrown in. The nose wasn’t especially strong, but there was a variety there, at least. And all things considered, that’s better than could be expected.
Across the table, Beverly Crusher was examining the label of the bottle. They had finished their dinner, their plates containing only the remnants of the filet mignon and the sknort casserole they’d shared. After they’d eaten, Picard