Star Trek_ A Choice of Catastrophes - Michael Schuster [45]
“What are you doing?” she asks, turning around. She acts exasperated, but there is a twinkle in her eye.
“Since you seem so interested in extraterrestrial philosophy, I figured I’d see if some of that could rub off on me.” Leonard hopes he’s right about her. Meeting someone in class seems to be his best bet, given how little time he has for socializing these days. He hasn’t been on a date since his freshman year.
“Good luck with that,” she says. “It’s plain you’re not interested in hard work.”
“I work hard every night,” he replies. “On things that are actually important and interesting. It’s not my fault that zh’Mai and Shran of Andor are so blasted dull.”
“And what do you find interesting?” she asks. “Crabbing and Whining 101?”
“You, my dear,” he says with a wink.
She rolls her eyes and turns to face forward with a sigh, but Leonard continues to sit there every class. In two weeks, they’re “study buddies”—in another two, they’re dating.
Her name is Jocelyn Darnell.
Stardate 4757.7 (1604 hours)
Kirk watched the smooth walls of the elevator shaft move past them, slowly picking up speed as the open cage made its descent. “How long until we enter the cavern?” he asked Chekov.
The ensign was studiously peering at his tricorder. “Thirty seconds, sir.”
The captain nodded and checked the setting on his phaser. With the level of interference they were getting, there could be anything down there. He knew Giotto thought Yüksel was dead, but Kirk was not going to leave this planet until they found him. With the Enterprise delayed by unknown forces, they were on their own.
The mottled gray rock of the shaft edge suddenly vanished, and Kirk found himself looking into a vast cavern from above. Thanks to a soft blue glow that seemed to come from everywhere, he could see thousands—tens of thousands—of cylindrical objects, roughly three meters high and one meter wide. They dotted the floor in the same confusing spiral patterns as the city streets above. The platform continued its rapid descent, and the capsules had already grown bigger, enough that he could make out details.
Chekov’s tricorder was beeping busily. “They are all powered, sir,” he said, reading the scan results. “And I believe I am picking up… life signs.” He looked up, a smile forming. “Something is alive down here!”
Kirk nodded. “Careful, Mister Chekov.”
They had nearly reached the floor of the cavern, and Kirk could finally see the capsules up close. They were silver, a blue light emanating from their insides through transparent paneling all around their circumference.
Inside each one was a tall octopus-like creature, resembling something out of a particularly imaginative child’s nightmare. Each sleeping alien had a fat body with protrusions on top, limp tentacle-like appendages serving as legs, and possibly as arms, too. Difficult to say more, since they didn’t move, calmly standing in the blue light, immersed in a transparent liquid—maybe water.
With a loud clang the platform hit the ground of the cavern and stopped. “Are those things cryopods, Mister Chekov?”
“Yes, sir,” said the ensign. “The creatures’ life signs are slowed down. They are in suspended animation.”
Kirk put his hand on the gate of the cage. “We’re going out there,” he said. “Behind me, phaser and tricorder out. Send the elevator back up. I’m calling the rest of the landing party down here.”
The Hofstadter shook and rattled, the wind from above buffeting it time and again. Scotty sat in the navigator’s seat and sent course corrections to Spock as they attempted to continue their journey south, toward the hub of the reactor network. Scotty’s scans were frustrated by the ever-worsening interference.
“Commander,” Jaeger’s voice came from the back, “my projections show there’s a high danger of lightning up ahead.”
“Thank you, Mister Jaeger,”