• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 288 0

look of the surface, the walls could be made of anything from polished stone to heavy plastic, and he reached out to trail his fingers over the surface. It wasn't as smooth as it looked, had instead an almost metallic texture, but weathered metal, metal that had been out in the elements for some time. Kim frowned at that, wondering if it could be made of metal, but rejected the thought almost at once. Neelix had said that the Kirse were metal-poor, that they had to trade for most of what they needed-and was this why they were metal-poor? he wondered suddenly. If the citadel was made of metal, some light, alien alloy that the tricorders couldn't analyze, it would have taken an enormous amount of it to create a structure this size, maybe even all the planet's accessible resources.

The tunnel opened into a rectangular hall, where the ceiling soared nine meters to a barrel-vault. The same apparent sunlight filtered down from an invisible source, and the walls and ceiling and the ribs of

the vault glowed in its diffuse light. They were all obviously metal, but the range of color was astonishing, from the green-brown of bronze to the rose-tinged gold of the vault's ribbing to blued steel. In contrast, the floor was almost black, and dull-surfaced. Kim crouched, curious, and felt the same pitted texture he had found in the tunnel walls.

"It's all metal," Torres reported. "Still a lot of strange alloys, though. I can pick out some of the components, but not many."

"It's-pretty," Renehan said, and sounded almost surprised.

"Can you get a fix on the power source, Lieutenant Torres?" Janeway asked, and the engineer shook her head.

"Not a good one. It's ahead of us, maybe a hundred meters, but the reading is very diffuse. This- metal-seems to interrupt the signal."

"Ahead of us," Janeway repeated. "This way?"

"Yes, Captain."

There was another doorway in that direction, still without a door to block it, and Kim looked closely at the frame as he passed through its arch. There were no visible openings, no slots or guides where a barrier could be inserted, and he shook his head. "You'd think there'd be doors or something, after what Neelix said."

"You mean because of the Andirrim?" Janeway asked.

He hadn't meant to speak that loudly, but nodded. "I would expect more security."

"I agree," Paris said.

Torres tapped her tricorder lightly, the gesture holding a controlled violence that made Kim flinch. "For all the data I'm getting from this, there could well be security hidden in these walls-there could be

a whole fleet of war machines, and I wouldn't be able to tell them from the wall."

"We'll go carefully," Janeway said. She touched her communicator again. "Janeway to Voyager. We're getting some interference with our tricorders, Chako-tay. Are you still able to maintain your fix on us?"

There was a moment's silence before the ship answered, and when at last he spoke, Chakotay's voice was thin and faintly glazed with static. "Voyager here. Your signal is weakening, Captain, but we still have you. Indications are that the interference will increase as you go farther in, so I suggest you check in more frequently. We'll alert you if the passive signal drops too close to the edge."

"Do that," Janeway said. "Janeway out."

In the sudden silence, Kim caught a distant rushing sound-like water, he thought, or blowing air, but too steady for either. He tipped his head to the side, frowning, and Paris said, "I think I hear something."

Torres waved him to silence, adjusting her tri-corder. "Captain, I'm showing an increase in power use, through that doorway."

"Let's go." Janeway turned to the open door.

Kim followed with the rest of the away team, trying to divide his attention between his tricorder and the rushing noise. It still didn't seem right that there should be so many open doors, without any sign of any barriers against the Andirrim. But then, maybe Neelix had gotten it wrong, he thought. Neelix had been wrong before, and this was at best a secondhand story. He glanced at his tricorder