The Garden - Melissa Scott [32]
"What do you mean?"
"The proportions-at least I think that's what it is. The way it's put together, I think it's deliberately trying to look intimidating, at least from this angle."
Kim squinted up at the citadel, its towers very dark now against the bright afternoon sky. The buildings did have an oddly organic look, each structure budding from the others like the lobed melons his family had grown in the recreational gardens. The towers clustered around the central spire with its glassy disk, looking a bit like pistils around a stamen, their spiked tips tilted outward defensively. The whole construction did look like a single, hostile entity, a monstrous hybrid of plant and animal crouching across their path. He shook his head then, trying to put the image out of his mind. "It doesn't have to be," he said. "The builders are aliens, who knows what their ideas of architecture are like?"
Paris jerked his head toward the fields. "Those things are mostly humanoid. I think the builders know exactly what they're doing."
"I hope you're wrong, Mr. Paris," Janeway said. "Otherwise we may find it a little difficult to trade with them. Now, if you could put your architectural studies on hold for a moment, we'd like to continue."
"Sorry, Captain." Paris sounded only mildly abashed, and Kim shot him a look of envy, knowing his own cheeks were red.
"He's got a point, though," Torres said. "This does look, well, unfriendly."
"From what Neelix said, the Kirse have been suffering raids from the Andirrim for quite some time," Janeway answered, and shook her head. "But if this is a fortress, where are the gates?"
It was a good question. Kim scanned the dark-green walls, but could seen no sign of barriers, nothing but a single arched opening at the base of a mushroom-topped tower. He leveled his tricorder at it, scanning for forcefields, for any hidden defense or weapon, but found nothing. In the same instant, Renehan said, "All clear. I'm reading very low-level power use inside, but not enough even to power a phaser."
"The light's on, though," Paris said.
It was true, Kim saw. The arch wasn't dark at all. Instead, the opening was exactly as bright as the shadowed ground at the base of the walls, as though the local sun's light somehow seeped through the waxy stone.
"How does that light compare with the power reading?" Janeway asked.
It was Torres who answered, frowning over her tricorder. "A little more than it should take to create that light, but not much more. And for what it's worth, the power source is a long way in."
Janeway nodded, contemplating the opening, and touched her communicator. "Voyager, this is Jane-way. We're entering the citadel."
"We have you on our sensors," Chakotay answered promptly.
"Keep us there. Janeway out." The captain smiled back at the away team. "Let's consider it an invitation." She started for the door.
Kim touched his phaser again-making sure it was loose and ready, he told himself, though he suspected
it was more for reassurance. He saw Paris take a deep breath, and Renehan's hand was very close to her own phaser. Torres was looking more Klingon than usual, her lips curled back in the first stages of a snarl. Even as he thought that, the engineer seemed to realize what she was doing, and smoothed her expression.
The arched door was less a door than a tunnel through the thickness of the outer wall. Kim swung his tricorder at it, curious, and saw Torres doing the same thing. "I make it nine-point-seven meters," he said, and Torres nodded.
"The same on this side. And it's solid to the sensors. If there is conduit or anything like that in it, I can't read them."
Nine, almost ten meters of solid-what? Kim thought. The tricorder was inconclusive, didn't recognize and couldn't categorize the molecular structure. From the