Relics - Michael Jan Friedman [6]
“Captain?”
It took Franklin a moment to realize that it was he who had spoken up, interrupting the captain’s soliloquy and drawing everyone’s attention. He swallowed uncomfortably, his mouth drier than ever.
“Yes, Ensign?” asked Armstrong.
“Sir,” Franklin went on, “I’ve found something that looks like a communications antenna.”
Scott was by his side in an instant. “Aye,” he confirmed. “So it does, lad.” He made some adjustments in the scope of the scan. “And look-here’s another. And a third. No-four. Four o’ them.” Turning to the captain, he said “They look intact, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were in working order.”
A smile spread over Armstrong’s face, making him look like a man who’d just gotten his heart’s desire. He nodded.
“Then by all means,” he said, “let’s open hailing frequencies.”
At one of the other engineering consoles, Communications Officer Kinski followed the captain’s orders. “Hailing frequencies opened,” he confirmed.
They waited. No response.
Looks were exchanged between crew members… between Captain Armstrong and Mr. Sachs… between Franklin himself and Captain Scott. The sense of expectation was almost suffocating.
And still no reply from the Dyson Sphere.
“Try again,” said Armstrong, his voice a little more subdued.
“Trying,” reported Kinksi.
Again, there was that expectant silence. It stretched on for too long. Franklin shook his head, disappointed.
“Damn,” said the captain.
“Ye can say that again,” Scott sympathized. “Fer a moment there, I really thought we might be able to raise them.”
“Maybe we’re giving up too soon,” Sachs offered.
“The fact that they’re not answering doesn’t mean that they can’t-or that they won’t. Maybe they’re just being cautious.”
Scott sighed. “I dinnae think so, Lieutenant. Call it a sixth sense if ye will, but I’ll bet ye a bottle o’ scotch that if ye hailed from now till doomsday, ye’d have no more luck than ye’re havin’ now. Plain and simple, there’s nobody in there.”
“He’s right,” Armstrong joined in. “Anybody who’s got the technology to build a Dyson Sphere has nothing to fear from us. If there were sentient beings inside that sphere, we’d have heard from them by now.”
How could they be so sure? Franklin looked from Scott to Armstrong and back to Scott. How could they know beyond a doubt?
The ensign had barely finished the thought when the deck lurched beneath him and he went sprawling across it. He felt someone lifting him up as someone else spat out a question.
A second later, still a third person cried out the answer “The power coils, sir! They’ve blown!”
Fortunately, Scott had been in a position to get a good grip on the engineering console when the explosion rocked them, or he’d have gone tumbling across the Ops center like Sachs and Franklin. Hanging on tight against the prospect of a second blast, he worked at his keyboard until he’d confirmed Sachs’s conclusion.
The aft coils had blown all right. But how? There were half a dozen fail-safe systems to prevent something like that. And even if none of them had been working, they should have had plenty of warning from the diagnostics.
“Damage report,” Armstrong called out, hanging on grimly to his command chair. And then, almost as an afterthought “Any casualties?”
“No deaths, sir,” returned Kinski, consulting his monitors. “But widespread injuries, especially in the passenger quarters.”
“Extensive damage to the power conduits,” announced Sachs. The man looked shaken, white as a ghost. But then, things like this didn’t usually happen to transport ships. “Attempting to compensate by diverting power to the ventral relays. Give me a hand, Mr. Franklin.”
That was just what Scott would have done. As young Franklin took up a position at the next console, he followed their efforts on the computer screen.
Come on, he cheered inwardly. Carry the load, ye bloody beasties.
But it only took a minute or two for Scott to see that