Relics - Michael Jan Friedman [30]
In the silence that followed, Kane just stood there. Then he pounded his fist on the top of his dresser-so hard that the synthetic material shivered. The nightmare wasn’t over, he thought. It was just beginning.
Scott knew he was supposed to rest, but he couldn’t have stayed in his suite much longer without losing his mind. He felt the need to get out… to see a bit more of this gargantuan ship and what she had to offer. And while the holodeck sounded interesting, that wasn’t the kind of thing he needed. Not right now, anyway.
The same for Ten-Forward-whatever that was-and the gymnasium. He hadn’t exercised for seventy-five years; it wouldn’t kill him to put it off a little longer.
What he really wanted to see were some machines. Machines that harnessed energy and machines that used it… machines that made things go and made things stop … machines without which this wonder of a starship couldn’t have hoped to function. That’s what he yearned for. That’s what made his pulse rush, and always had.
On the other hand, he knew he wasn’t authorized to see such things. He was supposed to be resting, not fiddling. Apparently, they didn’t know him very well. Telling Montgomery Scott not to do something was tantamount to an open invitation.
On the other hand, he wanted to remain close to home-close to his quarters on Deck Seven. That way, if he was apprehended somewhere he shouldn’t be, he could always claim he’d just gotten a little lost.
Of course, his first choice of a destination would have been the engine room. But there would be too many people there now, what with everyone engaged in analyzing the Dyson Sphere. Better to choose a less populated place, where he could lose himself for a while.
A place like Shuttlebay One. If he couldn’t get his hands on the engines that drove the Enterprise-not yet, anyway-poring over a shuttle would be the next best thing.
As he left his quarters, Scott walked down the corridor as if there were no reason for him not to. People glanced at his sling, but if they recognized him by it, they didn’t let on. When he reached the turbolift station, the doors opened for him and he got on.
So far so good, he told himself. “Shuttlebay One,” he told the computer, just the way he’d seen Commander La Forge do it on their way down to sickbay.
He’d barely completed the command, it seemed, before the doors opened again at his destination. He nodded his head in admiration. The lifts on his Enterprise had never been that quick or that smooth.
Emerging into the corridor, he looked both ways … and found Shuttlebay One just a few meters to his left. Again, he made his way in that direction as if he were just another cog in the great, twenty-fourth-century machine. And again, no one stopped him to say otherwise.
The shuttlebay entrance was just as accommodating. It yawned wide at his approach, unveiling a veritable feast for his engineer’s eyes a space as big as an entire deck on the Jenolen, stocked with nearly two dozen shuttlecraft-some large and some small, gleaming in the overhead illumination like a herd of heavenly beasts.
“Damn,” he said. He couldn’t help but grin at the sight of them.
Crossing the large, open space in the center of the facility, he put his hand out and caressed the metal skin of the nearest vehicle. It was unexpectedly warm to the touch.
What’s more, it was a lot more streamlined than the shuttles of Scott’s day, with their sharp corners and boxy designs. The machine before him was so sleek, its lines so clean and pleasing to the eye, that it seemed almost unnatural for it to be standing still. It should have been gliding through space, plummeting through the upper atmosphere of some planet the way a rare pearl falls through still water.
Scott read the name on its flank, rendered in a graceful,