The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [44]
Captain Picard exchanged a surprised look with Commander Riker, who scratched thoughtfully at his beard. Picard said, “Mister Crusher, take us out of warp. Get the heading from Lieutenant Worf.”
“Aye, sir.” Crusher dropped the Enterprise to sublight and came about. He transferred the coordinates Worf had sent him into the helm. “We should be able to pick it up soon. I’ll plot a triangulation course.”
La Forge turned back to his panel and started tapping in commands. “Captain, I’m maximizing the sensors for the radio frequency spectrum.”
“Good.” Picard leaned forward. “Let’s see if we can help.”
Lieutenant Commander Data looked over his shoulder from the ops station. “Captain, it is likely we are too late to answer a light speed distress call. And, as I learned with Sarjenka, even an RF broadcast brings the Prime Directive into play.”
“Quite right,” Picard said.
Ostensibly, Data didn’t have emotions, but La Forge still thought he could see a hint of sadness on his friend’s pale face. La Forge gave Data a sympathetic look. The engineer had no regrets about his part in violating the letter of the noninterference policy to save the Dreman civilization by tectonically stabilizing their planet. After hearing the little girl whom Data had been communicating with via low-level RF signals, Picard had chosen a course of action La Forge felt was true to the spirit of the law. But that had also required erasing Sarjenka’s memories of Data, almost as if the Sarjenka Data had befriended had died anyway.
“But we were able to save the Dremans nevertheless,” Picard added. “Let’s reserve judgment until we have more information.”
As Data nodded hopefully and turned back to his station, Worf spoke up. “I’ve picked up the signal, Captain. It’s a recorded loop. The translation is coming up.”
“Let’s hear it.” Because there was no video component, Picard glanced upward at the speakers in the ceiling.
“We come from Narsosia, the second planet of seven around a white-yellow star.” The computer rendered the voice as forceful, but La Forge thought it sounded sad as well. “Our clouds, infused with centuries of pollution, are opaque to infrared, causing global temperatures to soar. All of Narsosia is dying. A handful of our population is traveling to the fifth planet, Askaria, a gas giant with several moons that we hope are habitable. While many of us believe in the possibility of sentient alien life, we have no evidence of it. Still, in our desperation, we have invested our failing resources in constructing this distress beacon. Please help us if you can.”
After the playback stopped, there was a moment of quiet on the bridge. Troi looked stricken but didn’t indicate she had sensed anything with her empathic abilities. La Forge shook his head. As Data had explained, this catastrophe had probably already happened, and they were hearing the voice of someone long dead, like a ghost. But La Forge didn’t want to believe that.
Softly, Riker broke the silence. “Have we located the source yet?”
“I believe I have, sir,” Data said with a glance at Worf. Worf gave a respectful nod as the ever-polite Data continued. “I have cross-referenced the points of triangulation with scans of nearby space. There is an uncharted system within the possible broadcast cone that matches the description in the message.” Data turned to face the screen as he brought up a tactical schematic of the region. “The system is only four days away at warp.” He turned back to face Picard. “Unfortunately, that indicates an RF travel time of nearly fifty years for the distress call.”
“Captain,” La Forge said. “Environmental disasters like this can take hundreds of years to develop. Terraforming technology, like we used at Browder IV, could reverse the effects of even an advanced greenhouse effect.”
Picard turned to look up at his chief engineer. “That may be, but fifty years is only a minimum age for the message. We have no way of knowing how long it’s been broadcasting.”
Troi