The Last Stand - Brad Ferguson [43]
“Is that thing a weapon of some sort?” Hek asked pleasantly as the other Krann suddenly grew wary.
“No, Presider,” Worf said. The Klingon looked at Picard, who nodded briefly. Worf handed the tricorder to Hek. “This is a tool we use for environmental analysis,” he said.
The Presider turned the tricorder over and over in his hands. “Would you really feel better if you used it, Lieutenant?” he asked condescendingly.
“Yes,” Worf replied, ignoring the Presider’s tone.
“Then go right on ahead,” Hek said, handing it back to him.
“Thank you,” said Worf, and he did. He was quite thorough about it.
“I don’t see a pilot anywhere,” Troi said, looking around. She saw that the old man was still winking and smiling vapidly at her, and she tried to keep her expression blank.
“The car drives itself, Commander,” Hek said. “We’ll be traveling through a series of tubes to our destination.”
“Like the old Paris Metro or the London Underground,” Picard said, understanding. “I mean to say, this is a ‘rapid transit’ system of sorts.”
The access door of the car closed and, after a moment, the vehicle began to move forward. Since there was nothing to look at, and no one was willing to risk starting what might prove to be an undiplomatic conversation, everyone aboard quickly settled into that special state of vaguely aware somnolence found among mass transit riders far and wide. Even Troi’s superannuated admirer seemed to have surrendered love for sleep.
The acceleration was gentle enough to make Picard think for a moment that he had erred and that the Krann were technologically advanced enough after all to possess inertial dampeners. Then he felt the increasing vibration of their passage through the soles of his shoes, and he knew better. They were gaining speed slowly, and it was perceptible. From the clues his body was giving him, Picard guessed that the car was accelerating at about a twentieth of a gee. That was a minor amount, not enough to trouble those riding inside, but it was more than sufficient to build up an appreciable amount of speed in a relatively short time.
Picard spent a happy thirty seconds doing the math in his head. The car would be traveling at more than one hundred kilometers per hour just one minute after departure. No trip would last very long, since the length of the flagship was just a bit over four kilometers, stem to stern. Thus, the longest possible trip in this car should take about five minutes at a top speed of something like two hundred fifty kilometers per hour. Given the level of technology available to the Krann, Picard found those numbers quite impressive.
“Magnetic, is it?” Picard suddenly asked into the silence, and everyone’s head spun around.
“What’s that, Captain?” Hek asked.
“I was wondering if this car was magnetically propelled,” he said, ignoring Worf’s nod. “It gives a smooth and quite agreeable ride, and it certainly runs very quietly.”
Hek nodded. “You’re right, Captain,” he said. “The car is driven by a series of electromagnetic rings set into the tube. The rings are turned off and on in series to draw the car forward, shunt it into a branching tube, or slow it down—which we should be doing about now, come to think of it.” He paused for just a second. “I worked on building this portion of the system when I was a boy,” he said, again with a quiet pride. “My first apprenticeship was on the ring joiner crew.”
“You remember those days quite fondly,” Troi remarked.
“Yes, Commander. Yes, I do.”
The car came to a gentle halt and the door opened onto the platform of a small, unremarkable terminal nearly bare of ornamentation. There was a scattering of directional signs and nothing more. A few Krann, dressed in the same kind of dark clothing as Hek and the others, were standing around, idly waiting for a car to arrive so that they might begin their own journeys. They seemed curious when the national chiefs stepped out of the car, and they were startled by the presence of Picard and the other strangers from the Enterprise, but their reaction was altogether different when Presider Hek exited