The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [52]
Maybe it’s time to give up, he thought. And be eaten by a bunch of flying squid. All the times I thought I might die in Starfleet, it was never anything as ridiculous as that.
La Forge watched the squid as it circled him, and it watched back with a dark blue eye the size of a large melon. The hump on its back near the base of the tentacles was moving. Is that its mouth? La Forge wondered. Is that a flying squid licking its lips before a nice snack?
The squid zipped by and headed back in the direction it had come from, apparently having caught a different wind. It was only as the squid faded back into the clouds that La Forge, no longer focused on the idea of being eaten, realized that the hump on the squid’s back was actually a humanoid in an environmental suit, its body below the waist grasped firmly within the tentacles.
“How long will this elevator ride take?” said Troi.
They had beamed into the lower level of the closest pressurized scramjet with an orbital elevator. The away team, carrying their helmets, looked around what La Forge thought of as the “lobby.” The lobby was empty except for the tether’s anchoring structure in the middle of the room, an airlock near the anchor, and a control console at the bottom of the gangway. Thanks to Data’s earlier work, he could translate the Narsosian labels on the controls. He had already figured out the elevator wasn’t pressurized.
“The elevator’s at the bottom, but there’s a high-speed setting for when it’s unoccupied. It’ll zip up here in about an hour. The ride down, however…” La Forge shrugged. “That’ll take several hours.”
Troi frowned. “I should have brought something to read.”
Worf bared his teeth as he continued to take tricorder scans. “There will be enough time to tell the story of Aktuh and Melota.”
“Klingon opera?” Troi said. “You’re not going to sing, are you?”
“No. Not alone.”
La Forge held up his hands. “Don’t look at me. Just listening to Klingon makes my throat hurt.” Leaving Troi and Worf to sort out the entertainment for the ride down, La Forge walked across the compartment to the anchor. The tether actually passed through the anchor and on up through the scramjet; it continued to stretch outward from the planet to counterbalance the elevator. Reaching into a supply pouch on his right leg, he pulled out a communications relay, stretched up to affix it to the tether, and activated it.
He tapped the test button on the side. “La Forge to Enterprise.”
“Enterprise, Picard here.”
“Captain, I’m just testing the comm relay.” By placing the comm relays as they descended, the away team would be able to conduct a signal up the tether itself and out of the ionized Askarian atmosphere, maintaining contact with the ship. They would have to stop and remove the relays on the way back up. “Any word from Commander Riker?”
“Their shuttle’s nearing the moon. Close-range scans show the grounded scramjets are the entrances to the caverns below. They’re still figuring out which is the easiest to approach on foot.”
“Thanks, Captain. We’ll check in at the next relay.”
“Very well. Picard out.”
La Forge turned to face Worf and Troi. “We’ve got some time to kill. Let’s check out the upper level.”
With a nod, Worf led the way. As they got to the top of the gangway, Troi said, “What happened here?”
They glanced around the large main compartment. On the other scramjet, this had been the passenger compartment; here, except for the tether running through another structural anchor at the center of the compartment, the entire space was devoted to a hydroponic garden. Full-spectrum lights illuminated the space like high noon on a