Star Trek: TNG Indstinguishable From Magic (13 page)

The medical forensics team that Ogawa had assembled, though wearing EV suits with helmet lights, were grateful that the engineers had set up chains of lights in the main areas of the ship. The doctor knew that the
Thames
was docked at the port lock, and would remain there as a base of operations.

The lights were stuck high on the walls of the bridge, engineering, mess hall, and sickbay, and evenly spaced along the main corridor of each deck. The lights were impersonal and cold blue-white, and reminded Alyssa of the coldness of space.

Individual cabins, preserved with a sterility beyond that of ancient desert tombs, still needed to be searched, but the public areas of the ship had the most amount of biomatter coating the surfaces, and therefore the forensic team would handle them first.

“Let’s get this done,” Ogawa said to her people. “It should be quick, if we use the mass-attractors.” She had issued her team tools that generated a local gravity field over a few inches of space, in effect working as vacuum cleaners would if there was air in the ship.

Someone said, “The hard part comes later.”

Ogawa took a calming breath. “Let’s bring these people home.”

Aboard
Challenger
the next morning, La Forge grinned and gestured toward the main viewer. “We’ve got a good seal between the runabout
Thames
and the
Intrepid
’s port lock. We’ll be able to pressurize
Intrepid
from there.”

Scotty nodded. “No need to extend our shields or atmosphere shield around
Intrepid
?”

“None. We’ve scanned her down to the molecular level both inside and out. All breaches have been sealed.”

A broad smile spread below Scotty’s moustache. “Well, then. We only need Doctor Ogawa’s say-so.”

“The forensic recovery should be complete pretty soon.”

Leah Brahms ran a diagnostic on a near-fossilized circuit junction that had been brought back from
Intrepid.
Even though it had been sitting in
Challenger
’s calming warmth for several hours, it still felt icy cold to the touch, and Leah was beginning to think that it always would. The holographic master systems display in engineering sprang to life. Wisps of energy swirled and flowed, but always came up against barriers.

“It’s not our equipment,” she said to herself.

“You did say
Intrepid
was primitive,” Vol pointed out.

“The energy is entering the system, so the backwards compatibility isn’t in question. Something’s blocking the flow of energy within
Intrepid
’s systems.”

Vol’s eye peered at the display. “Looks like corrosion to me. It’s all bunged up. Happens a lot with the classics.”

“Well, let’s figure out how we’re going to un-bung it. Geordi, let’s—” She broke off, remembering that La Forge was on the bridge. She sighed. “Even on the bridge . . .”

“What’s up?”

“Nothing, Vol. I was just . . . Nothing. Let’s keep working on this. Maybe Rasmussen can help.”

“Or the captain.”

“If nothing else, he’d love the excuse to come down here.” She thought about it for a moment. “All right, I’ll go across to the
Intrepid
and find some more pieces of circuit to
bring back for testing. You get Scotty and Rasmussen down here, and see what they come up with.”

“Okey-dokey, Doc.”

The stasis unit that Alyssa Ogawa had chosen to contain the organic remains recovered from the
Intrepid
was a squat cylindrical tower with several access drawers, built into the corner of the
Challenger
’s sickbay. She watched as a pair of med-techs slid the last canister into one of the drawers. She stepped up to watch through a transparent panel as a servo arm slotted the canister into a free space like a bottle into a wine rack.

“Thanks,” she said to the techs, and then she tapped her combadge. “Doctor Ogawa to Captain Scott.”

“Scott here.”

“The last of the biomatter is safely in stasis. You can pressurize the
Intrepid
now.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“Ogawa out.” The doctor returned to the viewport to look at the silver canisters that were all frozen in the timelessness of the stasis chamber. No bacteria would be able to grow, if any contamination had occurred during their transport from the
Intrepid,
nor would the cells be able to decay any further.

The remains were still a homogenous jumble, and would need to be sorted into their respective individuals. That would be her grim task for the next few days, while the engineers enjoyed themselves playing with the antique ship.

Brahms arrived in the transporter room, where La Forge and Barclay were already waiting. As they materialized on the
Thames,
La Forge told them, “We’ve got the go-ahead to re-pressurize the
Intrepid.”

“Right away, Commander.” Barclay sounded as delighted as Geordi was at the idea of being able to go aboard without the cumbersome EV suits. Of course it would still be cold on
Intrepid,
even though the air that he was about to begin circulating would warm the ship. But a nice warm field jacket was a lot easier to live with than a claustrophobic EV suit that magnified every sound and smell the body could make. Barclay squeezed in behind a bulky console that had been set up in place of the
Thames
’s conference table, and began operating it. A deep howling whoosh began to sound.

“Why am I here?” Brahms asked.

“I thought you might like to be the first person to board
Intrepid
without an EV suit.”

“You know all the romantic things to say, don’t you?”

La Forge chuckled, but knew she would want to leave
that
subject quickly. “I wasn’t thinking romantic, just efficient. It’s going to be a lot easier to work in there without the EV suits.” Magnetic boots would still be needed, of course, until gravity was restored.

“There’s enough pressure for you to go in,” Barclay said.

“Shall we?” La Forge moved to the
Thames’
s airlock and opened it. He gestured for Brahms to go through.

The
Intrepid
’s corridors were restored to their original colors, browns and grays, though the surfaces were matte and dull, with bumps and dents everywhere. A warm breeze was easing gently through the ship. “That feels nice,” Brahms said. The air smelled fresh.

“Yeah, it’s like being on a beach.”

“Once we get power back on line and
Intrepid
’s environmental support takes over, there’ll be no need for air to be circulated from the
Clyde
.”

“And then she’ll truly come alive.”

Scotty walked into engineering with Rasmussen, trying to tune out the man’s constant yapping. He hadn’t shut up about the wonders of the twenty-second century since Scotty had called for him, and it was beginning to get annoying.

“Vol,” Scotty said with relief, “what’s the problem?”

“The circuitry we brought over from the
Intrepid
to test is stone-cold dead.”

“Corrosion?”

“That’s what Leah thinks.”

“And what do you think?” Scotty doubted Brahms was wrong, but it always paid to get as many opinions as possible.

“I think she’s probably right.” Vol wrapped a tentacle around the circuit junction that had been brought across, and held it up. “Just look at it, frozen solid for a couple of thousand years.”

“I thought,” Rasmussen said carefully, “that corrosion required oxygen, or at least some compound to react against.”

“Radiation,” Scotty said. “It’s probably been subjected to enough to spark a growth of material inside the connectors.”

“Aw, no,” Vol exclaimed. “You bloody know what that means! We’ll have to re-fabricate every bloody circuit on the ship!”

“Aye,” Scotty said sadly.

“And how long will that take,” Rasmussen asked, “just out of interest?”

“With replicator technology, not long at all.”

“It’s the all-the-king’s-horses-and-all-the-king’s-men bit that gives me the willies, mate,” Vol grumbled.

“Maybe we’d better take a look for ourselves,” Scotty mused. He turned to Rasmussen. “In as few words as possible, laddie, are ye up for steppin’ back into your past with Vol and I?”

Rasmussen blanched, then cleared his throat. “I suppose so. That’s what you wanted me for, after all.”

Ten minutes, and a ride in the
Clyde,
later, Scotty stepped aboard
Intrepid
for the first time. It was different from his old
Enterprise.
Smaller, more cramped, with duller décor. He bumped his magnetically booted foot on the lower edge of a door lintel, and cursed. When had starships stopped having bulkhead edges around the doors? He found that he didn’t know, and felt a moment’s guilt. He had never thought about the matter before, but now it would be stuck in his mind every time he went through a door.

In engineering, he, Vol, and Rasmussen found La Forge and Brahms poring over the warp engine control board, and Barclay leaning into an open access panel in the side of the hulking warp core, his head and shoulders fully inside it.
The man was as daft as a brush,
he thought, wishing he could have done it first. “Some kind of crystalline growth in the connectors,” Brahms was saying. “It must be the material they used back then.”

“Yeah,” La Forge agreed, “it looks like monofilament keramide. Once the hull polarization was down, long-term exposure to solar radiation could have started crystal growth inside.”

“That’s what we thought as well,” Scotty said. La Forge and Brahms straightened, while Barclay scrambled out of the inspection hatch. “There’s no two ways about it, we’re gonna have to replace the lot.”

“That’s impossible,” Brahms protested. “We’d have to dismantle the whole ship to do that.”

“It depends on how much of the system is affected.”

Vol took Barclay’s place, and somehow squeezed half his bulk into the hatch. “The whole kit and caboodle,” his muffled voice said. “The whole connector system’s about as much use as a dead rat in—”

“I get the idea.”

Vol levered himself back out of the hatch. “It’s totally bollixed up in there. He started pulling tools from the belts around his tentacles. “But if it’s dismantling you want, then . . . no time like the present.” He couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice.

“Just a minute,” La Forge interrupted. “We need to replicate a new connector web, right?”

“Aye.” Scotty could hear something in La Forge’s tone; the man was about to spring an idea on him. “Go on.”

“The replicator uses a transporter matter-synthesis system, right? So couldn’t we modify, say, one of the cargo transporters, to feed the replicator’s output directly through into a transporter beam, directed here?”

Scotty saw instantly that they could. It was a simple enough solution. “We’ll need to use pattern enhancers to be sure that everything lines up to within a micron. I’m sure Carolan will do us proud.”

“I’ll need to use the holodeck,” Carolan said, as she looked at a padd with the schematics of
Intrepid
’s power distribution nodes. She and Hunt were in transporter room one, trying to determine how best to beam the new connector material to
Intrepid.

“How come?” Hunt asked.

“It’ll need the transporter to be running on a continuous
cycle,” she explained, “beaming the old connector material out and the new material in. It’ll be easier to do it from a scaled-up schematic, using contact with the lines as the energizing control.”

“Where will you be beaming the old material to?”

“I’ll have the pattern buffer divert it to replication storage. Basically it’ll recycle the old connector material as it goes along.”

“Sounds good,” Hunt said with a nod. “Let’s set up a holodeck.”

Five minutes later, Carolan was standing in holodeck two, at the heart of an oversized-schematic of the
Intrepid
’s connector network. She raised a hand, and touched it to one of the lines, which tingled and buzzed slightly. She had set it to do that just enough to let her know when she was in contact with it.

Slowly, Carolan began walking the length of the room, keeping her hand on the line. As she did, the holodeck read her hand position and transferred it to the transporter’s targeting scanners.

“What’s she doing?” Guinan asked Hunt. She had hoped to make use of the holodeck, but found it occupied.

“Repairing a starship by touch,” Hunt told her.

La Forge could hear a faint sparkling whine, but it took him a while to work out where it was coming from. He slid down the metal steps to the floor of the
Intrepid
’s engine room in search of the source, and tracked it down to a deck panel. His cybernetic eyes could make out a flare of familiar energy through the floor plate.

“What is it, Geordi?” Scotty asked.

La Forge knelt and levered up the floor plate. A silver rain of transporter energy was moving along a power conduit,
consuming the dull and near-fossilized material, and leaving gleaming new connections behind. “You’re right. Carolan is a magician with a transporter.” Everyone in the room grinned enthusiastically, and even Vol flushed a pale gold.

By evening Vol was a thundery gray, and was using two tentacles to hold the inspection hatch apart, while a smaller pair tested the fit of some parts inside. “Well, this is a right pickle, innit Guv?”

Scotty tried to peer past him. “That it is, but I’m sure Mister Rasmussen here will be able to advise and assist.”

“Anything I can do to help,” Rasmussen said brightly.

“Can you tell us anything about this dilithium chamber?”

“I already said I was only a civilian. This sort of thing was classified.” He paused. “Now that the connector web has been replaced I don’t see any reason why you can’t switch it on.” He hesitated. “Oh, maybe one reason. They used dilithium, even back then.”

“Tell me another,” Vol grumbled.

“Actually that
is
the reason. Your—I mean our—twenty-fourth-century dilithium is much purer and better refined. It may be allowing the system to overload.”

That sounded sensible enough to Scotty. It would be like trying to drink pure ethanol instead of neat—but diluted at the distillery—Scotch. “He could have a point, Vol. If you put rocket fuel in an ancient internal combustion engine, what would happen?”