Relics - Michael Jan Friedman [22]
So when Geordi saw the familiar sight of Miles O’Brien behind the control console, he just naturally headed for the exit. It wasn’t until he was halfway across the room that he realized they’d left their friend Captain Scott behind.
The man looked for all his advanced years like a kid in a new and unimagined candy shop, fascinated by everything he saw around him. After a moment or two, his gaze fastened itself on the overhead transporter elements.
Riker and Worf hadn’t noticed that Scott wasn’t with them. They were halfway to the door, and Riker was saying “We should probably get you to sickbay. Dr. Crusher will be able to …”
Abruptly, he stopped and turned around. Scott was pointing up at something. He seemed to be counting. Riker’s eyes met Geordi’s; Geordi shrugged.
“Ye’ve changed the resonator array,” said Scott in a barely audible voice. He wasn’t addressing anyone, just thinking out loud. “Only three phase inverters.”
Geordi saw the first officer turn to him. Riker was smiling. “Mr. La Forge, I think our guest is going to have a lot of engineering questions.”
Geordi nodded in agreement. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take care of him, sir.”
Glancing at Scott one last time, Riker gestured for Worf to accompany him. Together, the two officers exited the transporter room. Meanwhile, Scott had moved off and was scrutinizing the bank of optical data chips set into the wall.
“Captain Scott… ?” Geordi ventured.
Suddenly, the older man’s eyes-still focused on the machinery above him-took on an almost horrified cast. “Of all the … what have ye done to the duotronic enhancers?”
“Those were replaced with isolinear chips about forty years ago,” Geordi explained, as inoffensively as he could.
Scott looked at him. “Isolinear chips?”
The younger man nodded.
“Forty years ago, ye say?”
He nodded again. “That’s right. It’s a lot more efficient now.”
Scott whistled. “Aye. I’m sure o’ that.”
Gesturing to the exit, Geordi said “Shall we?”
Still a little dazed, Scott replied “Sure. Why not?”
As they passed the transporter console, O’Brien jerked a thumb in the newcomer’s direction and raised his eyebrows in a question. But Geordi just smiled.
There was no explaining Scott’s situation in a word or two. Maybe later, after the Jenolen’s sole survivor had been tended to and made comfortable.
A moment later, they were in the corridor outside, headed in the direction of the nearest turbolift. Here too, Scott’s eyes scanned everything in sight. He was consumed by curiosity-pretty much as Geordi would have been if he’d suddenly turned up on a twenty-fifth-century version of the Enterprise.
“You were saying,” the younger man interjected, “that you were on your way to the Norpin Five colony when you had a warp engine failure.”
“That’s right,” Scott confirmed. “We had an overload in one of the plasma transfer conduits. The captain brought us out of warp… we hit some gravimetric interference and then there it was, as big as life …” Pointing to a raised portion of the bulkhead, he asked “Is that a conduit interface?”
Geordi nodded. “Yup. Uh, there it was… the Dyson Sphere, right?”
“Aye. It was amazing … an actual Dyson Sphere. Can ye imagine the engineering skills needed to even design such a structure?”
But his attention wasn’t on his recollections of the sphere. It was on a wall panel a couple of meters up ahead. Suddenly, he moved up to it and pulled the panel off its place in the bulkhead.
Geordi was a little concerned-uncertain that Scott knew what he was doing. But out of courtesy, he didn’t make a move to stop him.
“Liquid state energy transfer,” observed the older man. “No power lines at all. This looks like an optical data conduit.”
“Uh, be careful there,” warned Geordi. “That’s no data conduit. It’s an EPS power tap.”
Gently wresting the panel from Scott, he replaced it on the wall. “Tell me more about the Dyson Sphere. What happened when you first approached it?”
Scott shrugged. Up ahead, the turbolift was coming into view.
“We began a standard