La Forge took a deep breath, knowing it might be his last. He looked around the sky as best he could, hoping to see a shuttle appear. Nothing.
And then movement. A shape appeared from the clouds, rushing toward him. His spirits soared, and he felt as though he"d gotten a shot of tri-ox.
"Over here!" he yelled, then laughed at himself. Yelling wouldn"t help over a comm signal, and he was the only thing here, easy to spot hanging from the inflated shelter. Besides, odds were they"d picked him up with sensors, not just stumbled upon him in this vast atmosphere. He looked forward to the teasing Riker would give him when he heard about it. Maybe it was Riker himself piloting the shuttle.
But then the shape dissolved into several shapes. Dozens of shapes. There was no shuttle.
A group of flying creatures banked away from him, then swerved back again. They looked like manta rays, broad and flat, their wings at least three meters wide. They were tan on the underside and blue on the top, camouflaged to blend with the clouds. The mantas dove beneath him and raced away as more animals burst from the same cloud bank, clearly in pursuit.
These creatures were long and slender, squidlike, with more than half of their eight-meter length made up of tentacles streaming behind them. They were pinkish in color, indicating they probably spent more time higher up in the reddish clouds. There was a dark hump on their back by the tentacles. Along the tops and sides of their bodies were cl.u.s.ters of small appendages, grouped around a central protrusion; on every squid several of these protrusions extruded a yellowish, ropelike substance into the air.
Confused, La Forge kicked his legs, burning precious oxygen to get a better look at the squids-six of them had appeared from the cloud-as they pursued the mantas. His eyes followed the ropes upward. High above he saw the ropes attached to what looked like large billowing parachutes made of the same substance as the ropes. As he stared at the parachutes, one of them tilted, seemed to hang in the sky. Following its ropes downward, he saw that one of the squids had fanned out its tentacles, forcing itself into a wide, high arc as the small appendages on one side of its body reeled in rope to the protrusion, which now looked more like a mouth devouring the yellowish substance.
Finally he understood that the squids were actually flying on silken sails that they wove and controlled, directing them to different atmospheric layers and winds as needed. The squid that now pirouetted toward him was apparently coming for a closer look, maybe to see if he"d be tastier than a manta.
Shifting his weight to his left arm and the safety line, La Forge lowered his stiff right arm to reach for his phaser. His feet swung to his left, and he started spinning around. In his oxygen-deprived state he felt dizzy already, and now as he spun he felt helpless. He forgot about the phaser and stretched back up to grab on again with his right hand to stabilize himself. But he found that he couldn"t raise his arm high enough; he was just too sore and tired.
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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.ton 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 pa.s.senger compartment; here, except for the tether running through another structural anchor at the center of the compartment, the entire s.p.a.ce was devoted to a hydroponic garden. Full-spectrum lights illuminated the s.p.a.ce like high noon on a planet. Instead of a peaceful atmosphere, however, the garden had the feel of a natural disaster. Racks of hydroponic containers were lying on their sides, their nutrient solutions spilled and evaporated, leaving dried remains of various roots. Other plants survived, but as La Forge inspected them he could see that the fruits or vegetables had been carelessly torn away, perhaps leaving the plants unable to produce in the future.
"It looks like a raid," Worf said. "The rightful owners would not have done this."
"It could have been some sort of emergency during the harvest," said La Forge. "A fluctuation in the scramjet"s...o...b..t, maybe."
Worf said nothing, but his expression was skeptical. He continued taking tricorder scans as he walked down the rows of hydroponic racks.
Troi stepped closer to La Forge. "I agree with Worf." She looked around the room again. "Something"s not right here."
La Forge sighed. "Maybe the start of the same kind of unrest they had on their homeworld."
"I recommend we take additional security personnel with us," Worf piped up from across the compartment.
"We can"t show up like an invasion force," La Forge said. "Look, there"s nothing here that couldn"t have been an accident or even an adolescent prank."
Worf grudgingly acknowledged that, which caused La Forge to wonder what sort of mayhem teenage Klingons caused. Probably a lot worse than this. They continued exploring the scramjet but found no conclusive evidence. Finally La Forge said, "It"s almost time. Let"s get our helmets on and run through a suit check."
They headed down the gangway to where they"d left their helmets. Just as they finished the safety protocols, the elevator control console emitted a loud tone and a light came on inside the airlock.
"Well," said La Forge with a smile, "I guess our ride is here." Troi rolled her eyes as Worf grimaced. "What? That was exactly like something Commander Riker would have said."
"But he would have made it work," said Worf. Troi laughed, tried to cover her mouth, but only hit her faceplate with her gloved hand.
La Forge shook his head as he opened the airlock, leading them inside. A red-striped hatch on the floor was clearly off limits, so they stood back from it. The entrance hatch sealed behind them and, after a quick cycling of air, the red-striped floor hatch opened, revealing a ladder. Leaning forward, La Forge peeked down the ladder to an oval platform with a short railing around it and seats with lap belts.
"Guys, the elevator is a bit...minimalist," La Forge said.
La Forge stared at the cloud where the squid had vanished, his oxygen-starved brain still trying to process the image of the humanoid. That was a Narsosian riding one of those flying squids, he thought. They were hunting the mantas. He didn"t know what he had expected if he found the Narsosians, but he hadn"t let his imagination run this far.
Then a movement in the cloud focused his fading attention. But it was no squid. A bulbous shape appeared out of the mist. a darkness behind it hinting of a larger shape still hidden. What is that? The shape continued to expand. It reminded La Forge of an ancient dirigible, an airship, but he knew it was another Askarian life-form. Its skin was mottled tan with streaks of bioluminescence. Cl.u.s.ters of bright red stalks sprouted from it in random spots. Sensory organs, maybe, La Forge thought. And still it emerged, its shape continuing to expand. It looked a couple hundred meters long and fifty meters across. Dangling below it was a patchwork of nets and ropes, suspending an array of platforms and shelters. Dozens of Narsosians in EV suits moved about on the platforms and in the rigging.
As La Forge watched, a group of them walked to one side of the airship and pulled some ropes, adjusting rudders that hung below the platforms. Slowly, the airship turned toward him, its body undulating strangely as the creature followed its riders" wishes, guided by the rudders. As it drew closer, several of the stalk cl.u.s.ters vibrated and angled toward him.
Okay, so now I"m going to be eaten by a giant balloon.
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 pa.s.senger 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 in over four hundred years."
"So they can"t give us any idea of what to expect down there," La Forge said.
"No, they can"t. Sorry, Geordi."
"Then I guess we better just go find out for ourselves. La Forge out." He looked at his away team. "Everybody buckled up? Let"s get going."
Half an hour later, La Forge eased the lift to a halt again. They would have to stop more frequently to place the relays as they got deeper into the atmosphere. After scrambling atop the drive unit and attaching another comm relay, La Forge was startled by Worf shouting.
"Geordi, behind you!"
Taking a huge gasp of air brought La Forge rushing back to the present. His surroundings spiraled into focus. He lay on his back, helmet off, still gulping more than breathing. Several Narsosians stood around him, peering down. From his vantage on the floor, the tall Narsosians seemed to stretch to the ceiling. Their clothes looked like they were woven of squid silk and dyed with random splashes of color. As his brain was replenished with oxygen and his thinking cleared, he realized that the ceiling really was just a few centimeters above their heads. And the ceiling was...undulating.
La Forge reached up to his VISOR to make sure it was properly attached to its contacts on his temples. Just as he confirmed it was working properly, he finally recalled the airship sucking him into a dark, cramped s.p.a.ce, then being "spit out" again, through a biological airlock, into this place. The realization jolted him to action, and he rolled quickly onto his hands and knees then sprang to his feet. The Narsosians stepped back, giving him room as he spread out his arms for balance. The floor yielded a bit under his feet, making it difficult to stand still. He glanced around at the dome-shaped s.p.a.ce, its wavering walls, the bioluminescent stripes that lit it. It was about the size of the observation lounge back on the Enterprise and was clearly inside the airship.
"It"s all right," said a female Narsosian as she stepped forward. She made calming gestures with her hands and spoke in exaggerated soothing tones. "I know you can"t understand me, but you"re safe now..."
La Forge forced himself to relax. He got a better stance as he remembered trying out a trampoline on the holodeck once; the inside of the airship had much the same feel. "I can understand you." Surprised at the translator"s effects, the Narsosians whispered nervously among themselves. La Forge tapped his VISOR. "Like this helps me see, we have a specialized computer for translation. We translated your language from the distress call."
The woman looked suspicious. "We sent no distress call."
La Forge shook his head gently. "Not you personally. I meant the old distress call, when your ancestors left Narsosia. We recovered the scramjet the beacon was on."
Now they all looked suspicious. A couple of the males chomped their wide teeth together a couple times.
"We detected the signal a few days ago. My ship, the Enterprise, is in orbit around Askaria. We came here as fast as we could." He took a careful step forward, noticing something that had been missing from the mummified Narsosians. The downy hair that covered their skin could subtly shift colors. A quiet wave of blue seemed to wash over them, and although La Forge had no idea what that might mean, he pushed on. "Our ships are faster than light. s.p.a.ce travel is much easier now. Like most things."
The woman took another step toward him. "I"m Ontra. I lead on this float." Her down had turned a pale white.
"I"m Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge." La Forge smiled. Now I"m getting somewhere.
"What do you want with us?"
Or maybe I"m not getting anywhere. "We want nothing from you," he said, thinking about what Riker had told him about the delegation from the moon. "But I do want to thank you for rescuing me. I thought I was going to be doing the rescuing."
Ontra frowned. "Do we look like we need rescuing?"
La Forge wasn"t sure how to answer that, and he wished he had Troi here. But I don"t. I"ll have to handle this myself. "I"m sorry, I didn"t mean-"
"Our ancestors fought their way here and into orbit, losing dozens of ships along the way and to the depths. More fell as they built the elevators. We"ve lived here for generations, maintaining our technology, domesticating the floats and the flyers." She gestured around the room. "We bred the floats to have these large oxygen chambers and allow us inside. We are Askarians now. There are forty thousand of us, living on over four hundred floats. What could you do for us?"
"If you want, we could relocate you and the Narsosians on the moon to-"
"The grounders!" Ontra"s down flushed a soft orange. "They were given up on long ago."
"Just listen a second!" Realizing how loud he"d spoken, La Forge forced himself to take a breath. "If everything"s so great, why did we find a wrecked garden in orbit? Why are all the scramjets abandoned? Why hasn"t your population grown in six centuries? You can"t tell me you don"t need help."
Ontra opened her mouth as if to yell back, then hesitated. Her down faded to white again, and when she spoke it was just above a whisper. "We"ve tried to live honestly, not like on Narsosia. But our resources are dwindling. "
"Ontra," said one of the men as he walked up beside her. He was well over two meters tall, and his head rubbed the ceiling. "Please, don"t talk this way."
She smiled at him, and when she put a hand on his shoulder, his down turned light tan. "Ruro, we all know it"s true." Ontra turned back to La Forge. "There have been raids on the scramjets. The technology, nurseries, and gardens we used to share are now being plundered."
"That"s what I"m trying to tell you," La Forge said sympathetically. "We"re from the United Federation of Planets, which has a hundred and fifty members on thousands of worlds. We will freely share our resources with you. There won"t be any more raids. If you take me back to the elevator, you could speak directly with my captain. My crewmates might even still be there."