The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [71]
Then a bug crawled onto his face.
A holographic wood louse, at least a centimeter long, skittered down his forehead toward his right eye, which he shut just in time. Seven pairs of scratchy little feet danced across his eyelid as he tried heroically not to squirm or brush it away. Don’t move, he thought. Don’t even flinch. Finally, after what felt like forever, the louse crawled off his eye and down the side of his nose. It’s not real, he reminded himself. It’s only a miniature force-field construct.
But that didn’t stop the bug from tickling his nose. An overwhelming urge to sneeze came over him as the louse slowly ambled below his nostrils. He sniffed quietly, holding back the sneeze, until the disgusting insect scuttled onto his lips. A sudden solution to his predicament came to mind, but he wasn’t sure he could go through with it.
It’s not real…
He opened his mouth and gobbled up the bug. He didn’t dare crunch down on its brittle shell, for fear of being heard, so he had to swallow it whole. His gorge rose as he felt the wriggling insect slide down his throat. He clamped his jaws shut to keep from vomiting.
Just pretend you’re Worf, he thought. The louse was so disgusting that it just had to be some sort of Klingon delicacy. Or maybe a Ferengi one.
“At least it feels like home,” Povz muttered, shifting his weight atop Barclay’s back. Was the treacherous amphibian planning to sit here all night? “Once we have the ambassador, we must force the Betazoids to tell us how they managed to create such a magnificent environment aboard a starship. By the Toadstone, I swear this swamp seems larger than the ambassador’s yacht can possibly contain!”
“Perhaps some sort of tesseract technology?” another Tadigean speculated. “Extending the ship’s interior into subspace?”
“It’s all witchcraft to me,” Povz groused, shifting his weight. Barclay’s back strained beneath the burden. His cramped arms and legs felt numb. Barclay suppressed a sigh of relief as Povz lurched to his feet at last. “Spawn it all!” he swore. “Do I have to capture those mammals myself? Let’s see what’s keeping those lekking idiots.”
Webbed footsteps receded into the distance, taking the ominous sapphire glow with them. Barclay found himself back in the dark. He cautiously rearranged his limbs inside the log.
“Did you hear them?” Lwaxana muttered, deeper inside the rotted-out hollow. ” ‘Pompous female,’ indeed! Some people have no sense of occasion or proper decorum.” Indignation echoed in her voice. “I should have known that wasn’t the real ambassador!”
“Sssh!” Barclay hushed her. He counted slowly to one hundred, then counted again. He strained his ears but could not hear any frogs hopping close by. “All r-right,” he whispered to Lwaxana. “Stay where you are while I make sure it’s safe.”
He backed out of the log, then cautiously stood up and looked around. He shook his arms to restore the circulation to his fingers. His legs throbbed as the blood rushed back into them. His eyes anxiously scanned the moonlit swamp.
“It looks clear,” he reported. “Let’s g-go.”
Lwaxana crawled out of the log. “About time,” she said. “I haven’t endured such tight accommodations since that First Federation reception.” Crushed insect carcasses and bits of bark clung to her hair, skin, and slime-caked shift. She cradled the Sacred Chalice against her bosom. “I’ll never complain about the size of the staterooms on the Enterprise again!”
Barclay made a doomed attempt to brush the moldy detritus from his own uniform but quickly abandoned the effort. If we get out of this alive, he thought, I’m going to need history’s longest sonic shower. He could still taste the wood louse on his tongue. Plus a couple gallons of quantum-level mouthwash.
But first he had to find that control panel. Unhitching his tricorder from his waist, he double-checked the readings on the display panel. According to the sensors, the controls were only twenty meters away, although how that translated to distances within