The Eyes of the Beholders - A. C. Crispin [38]
When the team reached the transporter coordinates on the cargo deck, they found Worf, phaser drawn, staring suspiciously at Doctor Gavar, who was sitting atop the unconscious body of Yeoman Montez.
“What happened?” Selar demanded, wondering whether Gavar, too, had been affected by whatever it was that had affected Itoh and the Marco Polo’s crew. But the Tellarite physician’s small, weak eyes beneath her bushy brows were sane.
“He began saying that the shadows of the dead were coming to life and gathering around us,” the doctor replied, her voice filled with unconscious drama. “Then he drew his phaser and fired at one of them.” She waved at a stack of seed-grain sacks with a blackened area. “By that time I knew he was, as my people would put it, paddling a boat with a sieve instead of an oar. I agreed to help him kill the shadows and managed to get close enough to him to shoot him full of chlorpromazine. Then, to make sure he didn’t go anywhere, I sat on him.” A thought occurred to her, and she added, “The other teams have already gone back.”
“On my order,” Worf added.
Selar nodded wearily and beckoned to the Tellarite to get up. She did so, and the Klingon officer stepped forward and hoisted up the drugged human, slinging him easily over his shoulder.
“Good work, Doctor Gavar,” the Vulcan said, and the Tellarite flushed with pride. Selar tapped her communicator. “Chief O’Brien?”
“O’Brien here,” came the immediate response.
“Beam the remainder of the landing party—plus the last survivor of the Marco Polo—back, please.”
She felt the familiar sensation seize her, saw the walls of the dead freighter fade, only to be replaced by the clean, bright bulkheads of the Enterprise.
“Selar?” The voice of Beverly Crusher reached her from the communicator. “Are you all right? Doctor Logan reported trouble with Nurse Itoh.”
“We have returned to the Enterprise,” Selar reported. “I am undamaged, and Nurse Itoh is unharmed physically, though I had to render her unconscious. Apparently whatever affected the crew of the Marco Polo also affected Nurse Itoh and Yeoman Montez.”
“They aren’t the only ones.” The chief medical officer’s voice sounded as though she were holding herself together with a bare effort. “It started as soon as we dropped the shields to allow your party to beam over. We’ve had two attempted suicides and an attempted murder over here. Whatever got to the Marco Polo’s crew is now spreading to the Enterprise.”
Chapter Six
THALA STUMBLED THROUGH the rubble of the deck, hands out before her, blind and despairing. Her sensory net was useless, its functions shorted out by the explosion on Deck 18, when the Borg weapon had penetrated the starship’s shields. She smelled fire, heard the air hissing away into space.
Catching her toe in something wet and slimy, she fell headlong, landing on something yielding. Stunned by the impact, she felt around blindly, trying to determine where she was, what had tripped her. A body, broken, eviscerated, lay beneath her. Her hands sank into cold wetness, and she felt the bulgy shapes of organs. A loop of entrails was wound around her foot, serpentlike.
Gagging with disgust, she pushed herself up and felt the body, irrationally trying to find a pulse, even though she knew the person was dead. As she tried vainly to locate the throat or the side of the face, Thala felt her questing fingers sink into something quiveringly soft, then jar against hardness. Sickness clutched her stomach as she realized that she had just sunk her fingers knuckle-deep in the corpse’s eye sockets …
Retching, whimpering, Thala snatched her