The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [54]
Instead, as the airship floated past him, a Narsosian reached out with a hooked rod and snagged his safety line, pulling him into the rigging. A group of them grabbed him. They fumbled around with his safety line until they succeeded in deactivating and retracting it, and he was carried along a series of platforms, his feet dragging behind him. He was pulled up an angled platform that led to a dead end, the skin of the airship. The Narsosians pushed him against the creature. Its body yielded a bit, like an inflated cushion.
“What are you doing?” La Forge gasped, though he doubted they could hear him. He felt that inhaling to ask his question had finally exhausted his air supply to the last molecule.
Then the creature’s skin suddenly parted like a mouth and he was sucked inside.
The first six hours of the descent went smoothly, once La Forge and Troi got used to plummeting toward a giant planet at a couple hundred kilometers per hour on an open platform while listening to the plot of a Klingon opera. They sank through the thermo-sphere, mesosphere, and stratosphere. At the beginning of the transition from stratosphere to troposphere, La Forge slowed the elevator.
“Time to place a comm relay,” he explained as he brought the platform to a complete stop.
“Good, I could use a break,” said Troi.
Worf scowled as he paused in his recitation. “From what?”
Troi looked from Worf to La Forge, blinking her dark eyes innocently. “From the rapid descent, of course.”
“We’re still under less than one atmosphere of pressure,” La Forge said, smiling. “Besides, your suit’s compensating for the pressure increase.”
“Thanks for clearing that up for me, Geordi.” She squinted at him. “I’m sensing someone owes me a chocolate sundae.”
With a chuckle, La Forge got out of his seat and reached to disconnect his safety line.
“What are you doing?” Troi said.
“I have to take my line with me.” He moved over to the drive unit, reached as high as he could, and reattached his safety. “If I keep it above me, it can break my fall. If I fall. And it’s less likely to get tangled with you two.”
Worf got out of his seat to give La Forge a boost as the engineer clambered up the drive mechanism. Once La Forge was high enough to reach above the rollers, he dug into the supply pouch on his right leg for another relay, placed it on the tether, and activated it.
“La Forge to Enterprise.”
“Riker here. I win.”
“What’s that, Commander?”
“I’ve already found ‘my’ Narsosians. There are a couple thousand survivors. And I brought back a pair of negotiators to the ship.”
La Forge’s brow furrowed as he climbed back down. “I don’t understand. What is there to negotiate?”
“Well, they’re very…independent.” Riker’s smile came through his voice. “They’re negotiating the terms of their rescue.”
“Terms of rescue?” As La Forge got back down to the passenger platform, he deactivated the adhesion plate of his safety line and took in some slack before reattaching the line beside his seat. “That’s just crazy.”
“Not necessarily,” said Troi. “Most people don’t really like having to ask for help.”
“And they have survived all this time without anyone’s help,” said Worf.
“Okay,” La Forge said. “So I guess we know not to expect an enthusiastic welcome.”
“That’s not all. The delegation is quite concerned about the ‘clouders,’ as they call the people you’re looking for. When the Narsosians first got here and found just one moon they could colonize, they were forced to choose the few who would settle the moon, leaving the rest to make a go of it in orbit.”
Troi said, “The same nightmare they’d gone through when deciding who would leave the homeworld.”
“Exactly. They avoided violence this time, but it was a terrible situation. They were able to stay in contact at first, while the clouders still lived in the scramjets. But as the clouders devised ways to enter, and then live in, the atmosphere, they became more withdrawn and resentful. Even though they could still make contact from the scramjets, they stopped doing so. There’s been no contact between the two groups