The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [50]
La Forge moved back to the engineering station. “I’ll route extra power to the sensor grid. Data, with that boost you might be able to tweak the scanning frequencies and punch through that field.”
“That is a reasonable possibility,” Data said. “Shall we proceed, Captain?”
“Make it so.” While his crew wrestled with their technology, Picard turned toward Troi. “Are you sensing anything, Counselor?”
Troi closed her eyes for a moment to focus. “No, Captain.” She opened her eyes, staring at the screen. “Not exactly. But…all I can say is that while I’m not directly feeling any consciousness out there, I’m also not getting the void in my empathic sense like I did at Narsosia.”
As La Forge worked on the sensors, he realized he was smiling. There must be Narsosians still alive down there somewhere, he thought.
“With Geordi’s assistance, I have partially compensated for the EM field,” Data said. “I am getting more detailed scans of the orbiting scramjets. Some of them contain sophisticated manufacturing facilities, which appear to be in working order. Others have living quarters but no life signs. There are strong signs of plant growth on some ships, apparently viable gardens. There are no shuttlecraft. Outside of spacewalks, the only means of leaving the scramjets would appear to be the orbital elevators. I have detected sixty-seven more tethers among the other scramjets.”
“Captain,” Worf said loudly, “I am detecting life signs on the largest moon.”
“I thought there was nothing down there,” said Riker.
“The moon orbits within the planet’s EM field,” Worf explained. “So I rescanned it with the boosted sensor frequencies. There are at least eight scramjets on the surface. Two appear to have crashed, but the rest were soft landed.”
“Confirmed,” added Data as he personally scanned the moon again. He looked back at Picard. “And to clarify, the life signs are emanating from underground. I believe they have built a pressurized environment within natural caverns.”
“This is remarkable,” Picard said. He glanced back at La Forge. “I guess your optimism has won the day, Geordi.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“They may be prewarp, but they sent an interstellar distress call and successfully settled another world in their system,” said Picard. “I don’t see any significant Prime Directive issues here. Worf, can we hail them?”
“Possibly, sir. But I’m not detecting broadcast signals of any kind from the moon.”
La Forge said, “Maybe they don’t have the technology anymore. Or what they do have doesn’t have the strength to make it through the rock and the EM field.”
“If there’s a chance they wouldn’t be able to signal back,” said Troi, “I recommend not trying to signal them. A voice out of nowhere that can’t hear them could be quite disturbing to a race without any alien contact experience.”
Picard nodded, then turned to Riker. “Take an away team to the moon.”
“Aye, sir.” Riker stood up.
“But remember,” Picard added, “as Deanna pointed out, this is also a first contact mission. Take a shuttlecraft down but approach on foot—no beaming in. I’m sure the Askarians gave up on anyone coming to their aid centuries ago. We don’t want to overwhelm them.”
“Of course, sir. Any chance to wear an EV suit.” He glanced around the bridge. “Same as before, Data, La Forge, and Worf, you’re with me.” He smiled down at Troi. “And, Counselor, perhaps you’d like to lend your expertise to a first contact?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” she said as she stood.
“But, Captain,” La Forge said, “what about Askaria?”
Picard stood up to make better eye contact with the away team. “Right now the life signs on the moon are our priority.”
“I understand that, sir, but…” La Forge hesitated. Somehow this whole mission had become quite personal, and he wasn’t sure why. But he did know that if he didn’t continue pursuing it, he’d regret it later. “Captain, I’d like to take an away team into the Askarian atmosphere. All the people from the orbiting scramjets must be down there.”
“I appreciate