Star Trek_ A Choice of Catastrophes - Michael Schuster [6]
It made human endeavors seem pointless. The structures had outlasted the needs they were designed to fill. He doubted the inhabitants of Mu Arigulon V had designed this complex array of metal frameworks and roadbeds to support a diverse panoply of plant life.
“What do you think this is, sir?” asked Fatih Yüksel. The Turkish exobotanist was older than Chekov by several years. Chekov felt uncomfortable giving orders to someone who’d already been in Starfleet when he was still in elementary school.
“It looks like a support structure for a launch facility,” said Chekov. He gestured back behind them as they pushed their way through the bushes. “It reminds me of the old Plesetsk Cosmodrome. I am picking up tanks that must have once held some kind of fuel or reactant.”
“No spaceships.” Yüksel was scanning the area with his tricorder. When the Columbus landing party had split up, he had requested this part of the city, pointing out that it had the highest concentration of plant life. Chekov had been assigned to go with him.
“But was there ever a spaceship?” Chekov knew that for every planet that made it into space and made contact with the interstellar community, there was another whose space program had collapsed, preventing the inhabitants from discovering warp drive. “I want to get a closer look at the launch pad. Maybe the locals left the planet.”
“Well,” Yüksel said, “what I really want to get a look at is the flora ahead.” He pointed to where the bushes gave way to thick vines descending from the gantries above.
Chekov checked his tricorder. They were supposed to stay together, but the two locations were within a kilometer of one another. If anything happened, each would be able to come to the other’s aid. “Okay,” he said. “We will split up.” As the senior officer, it was his call to make.
The botanist smiled. “Good move, sir,” he said. “We’ll have this planet surveyed in no time.”
“Good luck, Mister Yüksel.” Chekov pushed off into the bushes. When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw the petty officer vanishing into the green draping vines. Shortly, the only sign of him was the rustling noise that was slowly fading away as they parted from one another.
Petty Officer Fatih Yüksel continued to push his way through the dull green flora. Bits of machinery he couldn’t identify lay unused and rusting, covered in what seemed like a moss. Let Chekov and the others try to figure out what had happened to the inhabitants; he was interested in what had taken their place. The plants in this area would have adapted to an urban environment over the past century, and would make a remarkable study.
The complex had been open once, but was now a tangled mass of plants. Yüksel was trying to reach its center, where his tricorder indicated a tree—the largest one in this area. He wanted to take a core sample that could be analyzed, revealing past climates and possibly indicating what had caused this planet to be abandoned.
He pushed his way through an overhanging set of vines and came upon a small building in the middle of the complex, about ten meters tall and four meters wide. This structure, like all the ones they’d seen from the Columbus, possessed no flat surfaces. With its irregular but continuous walls, it looked like something that had been grown. There were no obvious windows, and no door that he could recognize. But it was inside the building that his tricorder was picking up the tree’s signature, so he began to circle it. As he reached the other side, he discovered that a wall had crumbled in.
Or rather, had crumbled out. Within the building grew an enormous tree, similar to a Terran one but a dull green. It had no leaves, but sported fat, bulging buds all over its branches. One of its branches had extended