The Eyes of the Beholders - A. C. Crispin [47]
“Hey, I think you’re really on to something here, Wes,” La Forge said, studying the patterns, taking in the similarities. His VISOR could correlate and compare the two wavelengths even better than normal human vision. “It’s not an exact match, but it’s close. That portion of the energy must be what’s affecting people as they sleep.”
“Is there any way to insulate against it?” Data asked practically.
“Our shields are absorbing some of it, but not all,” Geordi said. “And we’ve got the shields on full power. It’s a damned good thing we’re not moving, or we wouldn’t have enough power to keep them up for this length of time.”
Wesley gave him a sour look. “It’s a bad thing we’re not moving,” he corrected, “as in ‘moving away from here.’ The artifact is really messing up people, don’t forget.”
“I know,” Geordi said with a sigh. “I went down to sickbay this morning to see Thala, and the poor little kid looked like she’d been through one of Worf’s Klingon Rites of Ascension.”
“My mom told me she came screaming into sickbay like she’d seen a ghost,” Wesley said absently, studying the readouts with narrowed eyes.
“She did,” Geordi said heavily. “I was there when she described the dream the damned artifact so kindly sent her, and before she was done I lost my appetite for lunch. Eviscerated corpses and punctured eyesockets …” He shuddered. “I’ve been scared to close my eyes ever since.”
“You’ve got to sleep sometime,” Wesley said.
“I know,” Geordi agreed grimly. “Which is why I’d rather put about a hundred light-years between me and that thing”—he jerked his head in the approximate direction of the artifact as it lay off their starboard bow—”before I hit the sack again.”
“Wesley,” Data said, “perhaps you should tie in to the medical computer and ask it to search for more correlations among brain waves.”
“Good idea,” the teenager said, and did so.
Moments later, they had their response, which was that several of the waves the energy field was generating did correlate marginally with wave patterns in the brains of humans, Betazoids, Andorians, Klingons, and Vulcans. Oddly enough, there were no waves that correlated with the brain patterns of Tellarites, which possibly explained Nurse Gavar’s immunity to the psychosis that had struck Montez, the security guard.
Wesley then instructed the library computer to search for correlations within the brain patterns of all known sentient races. “Working,” replied the computer, and the officers turned their attention back to the structure of the artifact itself, knowing that the search would, in all probability, take several minutes. The Enterprise’s computer was a marvel of state-of-the-art cybernetic engineering, but there were a plethora of known sentient races …
“Hey,” said Wesley a minute later, “this is interesting. I’ve been scanning the actual structure of the artifact on all wavelengths, all spectra, sonic probes, everything—even X-ray scans, since we don’t think there’s anything alive over there that could be hurt by them …” He paused and made an adjustment. “And guess what?”
“The suspense is killing me,” said Geordi dryly.
“It has chambers inside it, as strangely shaped as the pods we can see on its outside. There are hundreds …” He touched a control. “Correction, one thousand and ninety-two chambers and pods over there.”
“That’s weird,” Geordi said, unintentionally borrowing Wesley’s favorite expression; the youth gave him a feeble grin, making him realize what he’d just said. “What do you suppose the chambers are for?”
The young officer shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“They vary in shape and size,” Data said, scanning the X-ray image. “And presumably in function, or why would they be constructed so differently?”
“There could be a number of reasons, Data,” Geordi said. “Religious edicts, tradition, personal preference of the architect who designed the thing