The Garden of Bethsalevah

[Atoz 77]

>>> THE GARDEN OF BETHSALEVAH >>>
Stardate 51979.4

"This planet is so beautiful!" said Ensign Penner impulsively, walking along the broad, open path with tall, slender trees on either side. "It deserves a better name that GK-465 dash VI."

Captain Atoz paused thoughtfully before answering. When the Federation had first begun exploring past its original borders, each sector in that spherical radius had been designated by a letter of the alphabet -- the next sphere beyond that by double letters. Some star systems, like Alpha Centauri, had names from ancient astronomical nomenclature; some were given names by the expedition which explored them; but since there could be hundreds of stars in a given sector, obviously there weren't enough names for every planet to have one of its own. Most had to be content with numbers.

In this case, however, he had to admit that his communications officer had a point. They had landed the shuttlecraft Calypso in a grassy clearing surrounded by wildflowers. The path they were following -- probably made by a herd of some sort of herbivore -- had just now begun following the shore of a clear, beautiful lake, almost perfectly round in shape. "What would you suggest, ensign?" Atoz said, as they stopped to admire its rippling surface.

"I don't know, sir -- I'm not good at names," said the girl with a sigh. The day was so warm, the cool breeze blowing over the lake was comfortable even in her uniform with short sleeves and miniskirt. "But something pretty."

"Bethsalevah," said the gruff voice of Lt. Rosh, the ship's Chief of Security, who was following closely behind them. The last time he had allowed the Captain to leave the ship on his own, the result had been almost disastrous, and he was determined not to make that mistake again.

"That's beautiful, sir," said Penner. "What does it mean?"

"It was the name of an ancient Eminian fertility goddess."

Just then Atoz' comm badge chirped. "Captain, this is Franklin. We've lost contact with the Odysseus again, sir."

"Drat, I thought I'd fixed that," said Penner. "Sorry, sir. I'll go." She started back towards the shuttlecraft, which was barely within sight through the trees, perhaps a hundred meters away.

"I wonder if Commander Weir has figured out what's causing that interference yet," said Atoz, as he and Rosh watched the girl hurry back down the path. There was some kind of electromagnetic variance in the ionosphere, making transporter penetration spotty at best -- which was the reason the survey team had come down by shuttlecraft. Upon landing, they had checked in with the ship in orbit without any problem. But now...

"A low-altitude relay satellite would alleviate the problem, sir," said Rosh.

"If they colonize this planet," said Atoz, "that's undoubtedly what they'll do."

The security officer cast his keen eye around the open forest. "This planet would indeed be a good candidate for settlement," he agreed. "Our scans have yet to discover any signs of indigenous civilization, nor of any dangerous animals."

"Well, we've only been here a few hours," said Atoz, as Penner reached the Calypso without incident and the two of them resumed walking, following the curve of the lake through a stand of reeds bordered by privet-like hedges. "This isn't the time to relax our guard."

Suddenly something huge came thundering through the tall grass in front of them. It was larger than an elephant and covered with blue-gray, pebbly hide, but that was about all they had time to observe before some invisible force seemed to crush the air out of their lungs, at the same time sending them tumbling backwards off their feet.

Rosh rolled into a crouch, instantly drawing his phaser as the snake-like trunk of the beast flailed threateningly in the air above their heads. "No!" gasped Atoz, getting his breath back. "It's not after us!"

Sure enough, as the security officer watched warily, poised to protect his Captain's life, the creature crashed into the privet to the right of the path. Its thick trunk reached up to pluck something out of the low-hanging branches of a tree, which it immediately transfered to its mouth. Only then did it seem to notice the two small Starfleet officers, turning a pair of large, sad eyes in their direction.

"We were just in his way," said Atoz with relief as he stood up and brushed off his uniform. "Sorry, sir," he added, addressing the animal, "you know how it is -- we're visitors here and we don't know all the local traffic customs." The thing gave a curious, low-pitched snort, but otherwise didn't move.

"It's a ma'am, actually," said Chief Medical Officer Pierce, who had been hurrying up the path in the wake of the monster, accompanied by a science officer in a blue and black uniform. "Lieutenant Rhyzkov and I have been observing a whole herd of them on the eastern side of the lake. They all seem to be females."

"She didn't hurt you, did she, Captain?" asked Rhyzkov, brushing her hair out of her eyes.

Not really, lieutenant," said Atoz. "Just... Come to think of it, did you feel something, Mr. Rosh? Some kind of pressure, pushing at you?"

"Yes, Captain," said the Eminian. "But there was no visible cause."

"Those would be subsonic vibrations," said Pierce with a grin. "She was telling you to get the heck out of the way, but naturally you didn't pay attention."

"We have recorded one or two vocalizations," said Rhyzkov, "pitched far below the range of our hearing. At close range, they can be quite energetic."

Now that they had the chance to observe the creature, its resemblance to a terrestrial elephant was superficial. It had a bony skull but, according to Pierce, not an especially large brain. Its eyes were proportionally larger, while its ears were very small, located near the back of the head. Its front legs were much longer than its rear legs, giving it the somewhat comical appearance of sitting down even while it was walking. The trunk was thicker than an elephant's, and the end branched into three small "fingers" which it used to delicately pluck leaves from the tree. After a moment, it seemed to grow tired of the humanoids watching it, and lumbered off in the direction it had come.

***
Once Penner slid behind the instrument panel of the shuttlecraft, restoring communications wasn't that difficult. The energy flux in the ionosphere was acting almost like an aurora, reflecting radio waves at random wavelengths, but it was just a matter of finding a frequency gap she could get a message through. Crewman First Class Franklin, the environmental specialist, said that he'd never seen anything like it, even in a turbulent class C atmosphere. "I was trying to beam up my tricorder readings, sir," he said. "It seemed like the flux was shifting on purpose, to cut me off."

"That's just your imagination," said Penner, smiling as she made a final adjustment. "Bad luck always seems a little bit perverse. Calypso to Odysseus. Please come in."

There was still a good deal of static in the transmission, but on the small viewscreen was the recognizable face of Ops officer Ensign Schechter. "This is Odysseus. Any problems, Amelia?"

"Not really, Kate. Just a little comm glitch." She swung her chair around. "All yours, crewman."

"Thank you, sir," said Franklin, waiting as she got out of the seat.

"Where's Nakamura, by the way?"

Franklin shrugged. "Collecting plants, I guess."

Penner sighed. "The Captain doesn't want us wandering off alone. I'd better look for her."

***
On the bridge of the Odysseus, First Officer Charles Fawkes was standing in between the Ops and Helm stations, talking with Schechter and Lt. Caeli, when the comm system's attention signal interrupted. "Engineering to Bridge," said the Chief Engineer, as her face appeared on the main viewscreen. "We may have a tiny bit of a problem."

Fawkes took a couple of steps towards the command chair. "Specify what kind of problem, Mr. Vespis."

"We seem to be losing potency in the antimatter banks," the Andorian replied, her antennae waving slightly with irritation. "It doesn't amount to very much, but I can't figure out why."

"How much is not very much?" asked Fawkes, narrowing his eyes.

"Engine efficiency has dropped from 97 percent to 95 percent," Vespis said. "Right now it's negligible, but if it continues, it
could be a problem."

Science Officer Weir looked up from her console. "This planet has an unusually strong magnetic field," she said. "Probably because of pergium and ultritium deposits in the upper mantle. That could have something to do with it. I'll run some simulations and get back to you, Commander."

"Keep on top of it, Vespis," said Fawkes. "Mister Caeli, what's our current orbital status?"

"Standard Geostationary, sir. Seven thousand five hundred kilometer perigee."

"It couldn't hurt to move to a higher orbit. Say, fifteen thousand. Make it so."

"Aye-aye, Commander."

[Atoz 77]

Petty Officer Nakamura had never seen a wild ecosystem like this one. The variety was astounding! Plants of different kinds grew in such a profusion, it was sometimes hard to tell them apart until you looked closely. As she walked along, straying a little away from the beaten path, she could almost see one species gradually segueing into a completely different one before her eyes. And none of the plants seemed to be in competition. There were no briars, no thorny weeds choking out rivals, and even the canopy trees were so evenly spaced, it was hard to believe they hadn't been planted.

One particular vine seemed very abundant. Sometimes she could see it snaking through the undergrowth, but most often she it clung to the tall trees, where its flowers and seed pods hung almost like decorations. Nakamura wondered what kind of seeds they held, but when she tried her tricorder, some kind of interference in the environment kept her from getting a good reading. The malfunction made it appear to be an energy spike of some kind inside the pod, which was ridiculous.

There's more than one way to fold a paper crane, Nakamura thought, putting her tricorder back on her belt and carefully plucking one of the pods, about five or six inches long. Although her training had impressed upon her the need to never harm the ecosystem she was studying -- in fact survey teams weren't allowed to carry dissecting tools -- she didn't think one pod would do any harm, especially since, with the appearance of flowers on the same vine, it surely must be one of last year's. She broke it open.

There seemed to be a weak flash of light, and about a dozen tiny fireflies appeared to erupt from the broken pod. Nakamura smiled as they darted about her head for a moment, then winked out of existence. The empty shell of the pod was filled with hundreds of tiny dry seeds, which spilled onto the ground like dust.

"Nakamura?" called Penner's voice.

"Over here, sir," she replied absently, as she looked inside the pod.

"Find anything interesting?"

"Yes and no," said Nakamura, dropping the empty pod and brushing her hands. "Did you notice how neat everything is, sir?
this place is almost like a botanical garden!"

"Yes, I was telling the Captain a few minutes ago..." As they talked, neither of the women noticed several pairs of beady eyes watching them narrowly through the trees.

***

"Here's something else you might find interesting, Captain," said Pierce, as the four of them began strolling back towards the shuttlecraft. "Have you still got that critter, Milla?"

Lieutenant Rhyzkov opened her specimen bag, and a small, slender creature with a long bushy tail scurried out, climbing her arm and perching on her shoulder. "We spotted several of these in the trees just over there," she said. "I was about to use the capture gun, but they do not seem to be afraid at all."

Atoz reached for the animal, and it hopped right into his hand. Grasping it firmly but gently behind the neck so that it couldn't bite him, he made a quick check of its teeth, then examined its body. It had a very squirrel-like shape, such as convergent evolution has created on hundreds of worlds -- covered in short, mottled gray fur with brownish stripes. Atoz turned the animal on its back to check its underside, and...

"It's missing its left hind foot," he said. "Not too unusual. Narrow miss by a predator, I suppose. It seems to have healed well, though."

"If you'd like to borrow my tricorder," said Pierce, offering the device, "you'll find that that's not scar tissue. Rhyzkov and I both checked, independently of one another."

"What are you saying, Hawkeye?" said Atoz.

"I'm saying the animal was born that way. Talk about a five finger discount."

"Born missing a foot?" This had to be a joke. Atoz wondered what the punchline was going to turn out to be, but to his surprise, Pierce and Rhyzkov both kept perfectly straight faces. "That's ridiculous! That would be..."

"Lamarckism," said Rhyzkov. "Offspring inheriting bodily changes their parents acquired in life. Possibly genetic memory, also."

"But evolution doesn't work that way."

"Not on Earth," said Pierce. "Not on any planet we've ever heard of. Until now, that is."

***
Penner and Nakamura had moved into a forest area where the ground was damp and boggy, and the trees had thicker trunks, draped with hanging mosses. Even here the vines could sometimes be seen, with their yellow, trumpet-like flowers. "What's in these pods?" Penner asked.

"Some kind of spores," replied the botanist. "I wouldn't handle them, sir; there's a chance they could be toxic."

Penner laughed, carefully lifting one of the flowers so she could smell its aroma. "It's hard to believe anything on this planet could be dangerous."

"I know what you mean," said Nakamura.

Without any warning, a large green reptile leaped out of the tree, landing on top of Penner and knocking her down. Nakamura was frozen for a second in horror -- the thing was easily six feet from the end of its snout to the tip of its long tail, and it made a deep-throated hiss as it latched its sharp fangs into the Comm officer's shoulder. Penner gave a shrill scream as Nakamura fumbled her small type I phaser out of her belt and started firing in panic.

Luckily enough, she was standing so close her first shot struck the lizard right in the head, sending it tumbling. The phaser was set on level five, medium stun, but even so the reptile was twitching where it lay, struggling to raise its head. Nakamura shot it again before dropping to her knees beside Penner. "Are you all right?"

Penner was sobbing, more from fright than from pain. The reptile had ripped a big chunk out of her gold and black tunic, but hadn't had time to do more than take a fairly shallow nip out of her flesh. "I think I can walk," she stuttered, leaning on Nakamura as she struggled to stand up. "Help me to the shuttle."

The two women looked around, trying to get their bearings. But as they turned in the direction they thought the Calypso was, they could see four or five more of the reptiles, running upright on their hind legs through the trees, balancing with their long tails. Surrounding them.


Captain Atoz and the others (having released Rhyzkov's specimen back into the trees) had nearly reached the Calypso when their comm badges all chirped at once. "Help!" called Nakamura's voice. "We're being attacked! Southwest of the LZ! Hurry!"

All four of them broke into a run. Ahead, they could see Crewman Franklin emerge from the shuttlecraft and turn left and then right, presumably trying to figure out which way was southwest. As he started running, two six-foot reptiles darted out of the forest behind him and ran him down. He never knew what hit him. The first reached down with its muzzle and caught the crewman's leg, snatching it out from under him. The other just slammed into him, taking a bite out of the back of his neck. Franklin hit the ground and rolled over as the two lizards attacked him again. Then he went quiet.

Atoz and Rosh halted and fired their phasers simultaneously, knocking the reptiles off the crewman, then fired a second time to make sure. As they passed Franklin, Atoz heard Pierce and Rhyzkov stop to see if they could do anything for him, but he and the Security Chief tore off into the forest, desperately putting on more speed.

A couple of minutes later, Atoz had to halt, both to catch his breath and to look around for any sign of the two missing crew women. Although the Eminian was not winded, Rosh stopped alongside him, tapping his comm badge. "Nakamura? Penner? Where are you? Respond!" The two men listened intently, scanning the forest...

Then they heard branches snapping off to their left. Penner and Nakamura came limping together through the trees, followed closely by four of the reptiles. Atoz and Rosh took aim and fired. Two of the lizards fell; the remaining two retreated to a more prudent distance. "Captain, thank goodness!" gasped Nakamura breathlessly, as the men ran over to help them. "We were just about..."

Penner was looking at Atoz with something of a smile of relief on her face, but suddenly her eyes seemed to roll upwards and she dropped into a dead faint. Her skin felt very cold and clammy, her pulse weak. "It could be shock," said Atoz, looking carefully at the bite on her shoulder. "Or it could be poison. Mister Rosh, cover us!" He picked up the young Comm officer in his arms and hurried towards the shuttlecraft as fast as he could, leaving Nakamura to follow and Rosh to bring up the rear, covering their escape with his phaser.

***
The turbolift doors hissed open as Vespis arrived on the bridge to report to Fawkes. "There's definitely some kind of power field emanating from the planet, draining our antimatter. Main power is now at 84 percent. Our metaphasic shields seem to be slowing the depletion rate, but it's still falling."

Weir turned from the Sciences station. "It's most powerful within about ten thousand kilometers of the planet. If you hadn't moved us to a higher orbit when you did, we'd already be in serious trouble."

The First Officer folded his arms grimly. "Any indication if it's artificially generated from some particular spot on the planet?"

Weir shook her head. "No, sir. I've put together a planetary dynamics model with the help of the ship's computer. It's a natural field, generated by exotic elements in the mantle and crust."

"But it's reacting insisted Vespis, her antennae standing upright. "Look, it started off slowly, hoping we wouldn't notice. Then when we began to move out of range, it got more intense. And look at the way it keeps cutting off communication with the survey team. Some intelligence must be controlling it."

"Granted it appears that way," said Weir. "But our sensors are still unable to detect anything remotely like a technological civilization down there."

"What if it's a kind of technology we've never run into before?"

Weir shrugged her shoulders. "Sensors only detect what they're designed to detect. There's still plenty of room out here for unknowns."
"This is beginning to sound," said Fawkes impatiently, "like the kind of philosophical debate that can wait for another time. My concern is the safety of the ship, and our people on the surface."

"Of course, Commander," said Weir. "At our present distance, we should be safe enough until we can recover the survey team."

Vespis frowned thoughtfully. "I could try to reconfigure the magnetic containment matrix," she said. "That might buy us some more time."

"Right, get on that then," said Fawkes, turning to face the Ops station. "Ensign Schechter, put me through to the Captain." But before anyone could move, a tremor went through the entire ship, violently enough to send everyone reaching for support. The Red Alert siren began to sound.

"Now what?" said Vespis peevishly, bracing herself against the back of Weir's chair.

"Commander, the ship is losing altitude," said Caeli, as his fingers flew over the helm controls. "Thrusters ineffective. Something's pulling us down into the atmosphere."

[Atoz 77]

The reptiles seemed to learn fast, keeping their distance as the party hurried back to the safety of the shuttlecraft. As Rosh stood guard outside, Atoz gently dropped Penner into a seat. Pierce was already elbowing him aside without ceremony, kneeling beside her with his tricorder. "It looks like some kind of neurotoxin," the doctor said grimly, as he flicked open his medikit and injected her with a hypospray. "I can stabilize her for now, Seven, but we should get her to Sickbay as soon as possible."

Atoz nodded. "How about Franklin?"

Rhyzkov, securing the crewman in one of the rear seats, shook her head. "I'm afraid his neck was snapped, sir." Nakamura shakily eased herself into the seat behind Penner.

"Captain!" Rosh called from outside. "Something is happening."

Atoz emerged from the Calypso's hatchway -- noticing as he did so that the warm sunny sky had turned overcast -- and followed the direction of his Chief of Security's disquieted stare. Several large, blue-gray shapes, still fairly distant, were moving swiftly down the path from the direction of the lake. As a former Science Officer himself, Atoz had enough experience with large herbivores not to be alarmed right away. He took a few steps forward, as Pierce came outside to join him and Rosh.

"What's got into them?" asked the doctor.

"It's not a stampede," said Atoz, puzzled. The elephant-like beasts weren't in a panic, but they also weren't showing the normal ambling gait of herbivores. The entire herd was coming steadily on, striding as if with a single purpose in mind. But it wasn't until they had passed the lip of the clearing, less than twenty meters away, that it dawned on Atoz that they were headed straight for the shuttlecraft. "Get inside," he said urgently.

The three of them ran for the hatch, but the creatures let out a thundering bellow. Atoz felt the subsonic vibrations churning his insides and making him nauseous. The muscles of his legs seemed to cramp, and he tumbled to the ground. The others seemed to be affected the same way. Rosh went down, his hands clamped to his ears, but Pierce managed to stagger into the open hatchway.

As Atoz scrambled to his feet, he saw Rosh gain the entrance to the [/i]Calypso[/i], but then a huge, gray-blue body blocked his view. The clearing was full of the creatures now, a couple of dozen at least, slamming their bulk into the sides of the craft as they tramped this way and that. Atoz ducked under a thick trunk which was reaching for him, narrowly avoided getting stepped on by a pair of gigantic feet, and pulled back out of the way as a third swung around backwards and nearly sat on him.

Cut off from the shuttlecraft, he wasted no more time, but ran for the trees. Perhaps he could lose them there.

***
"Status, Mr. Caeli?" said Fawkes, standing next to the command chair. Although the Red Alert sirens had been muted, the indicators were still flashing, making him a little nervous.

"Holding position at eleven thousand nine hundred kilometers," the helmsman replied. "But it's taking full impulse power to do it."

Fawkes turned to the Science Officer. "Diane, any ideas how we can break free?"

"It's a planetary geomagnetic field, Commander," she asserted loftily, "attracting the ferrous compounds in the hull like an iron filing. We're talking about one of the four fundamental forces of nature."

"Didn't Vespis once tell me that if you can't change the laws of physics, you can at least tweak them a bit?"

"That sounds like something Vespis would say," said Weir, rolling her eyes a little. "But who knows? Between the two of us, maybe we can come up with something."

"I have the Calypso, Commander," said Ensign Schechter at Ops. "Audio only."

Fawkes strode forward to the Ops station, activating his comm badge. "Captain, this is Fawkes. Can you hear me?"

Over the speakers, they could hear a hiss of static, interspersed with occasional bangs like something heavy pounding on metal. "No, this is Pierce," came a voice, somewhat shakily. "Is there any chance you can beam us up? Like immediately if not sooner?"

"Negative, doctor," said Fawkes. "We have problems of our own. What is your situation? Where's the Captain?"

"I don't know, we're out of contact," said Pierce's voice. There was another loud CLANG! and a hollow metallic scraping sound during which the doctor paused, seemingly grunting in pain. "And as you can tell, the natives aren't exactly friendly at the moment. We've been--" Then silence.

"They're not transmitting any more, Commander," said Schechter.

***

Half a dozen of the elephants pursued Atoz into the forest, trotting along at a much steadier pace than the running Human could keep up for long over rough terrain. He steered for a thicker stand of trees, and had very nearly made it when he felt a thick, serpent-like trunk wrap around his knee from behind and jerk him off his feet. He was struggling to get loose from the beast, trying not to imagine the crunch of his bones under that massive body, when a phaser beam came out of nowhere and struck the brute.

Even heavy stun made little impression on an animal this size, but it was enough to force its trunk to relax, enabling Atoz to wriggle free. Seconds later, he and Rosh had made it to a line of slender trees growing too closely together to allow the elephants to pass. Atoz thought surely they could bulldoze their way straight through them, but to his surprise, they merely stopped, sometimes reaching futilely with their trunks, but coming no closer. He got the distinct impression that they were trying to avoid harm to the trees.

"I thought I told you to get inside, Lieutenant," said Atoz, catching his breath.

"My place is with you, sir," the Eminian replied stoically.

"You're the only one here besides me who can pilot the shuttlecraft."

Rosh shook his head. "I fail to see your point, sir." Of course he did, Atoz thought. The Security Chief would sooner take a phaser to his own head than leave his Captain behind.

Back in the clearing, the elephants were taking turns slamming their heads into the Calypso, and finally managed to turn it over onto its side. "Should we open fire, Captain?" said Rosh.

It was not an easy decision. No exobiologist liked the idea of firing on animals which were presumably only following some instinctual behavior, especially since in this case they would be forced to use dangerously high phaser settings. On the one hand, the shuttlecraft's main structural members were made of tritanium -- twenty times harder than diamond -- so as long as the hatch held, the people inside should be reasonably safe. On the other hand, if they did nothing it was very likely the engine pods could be irreparably damaged.

Atoz made up his mind, raising the setting on his phaser to ten and having Rosh do the same, but at that moment the animals stopped their attack. With one final crashing thump into the side of the upside down shuttlecraft, they backed away, formed a loose semicircle, and merely stood there, making a low pitched moaning sound through their trunks. "They are behaving most irrationally," Rosh commented.

Atoz could only agree. The survey team had done nothing to provoke the creatures into attacking in the first place, certainly not the entire herd. And now they had apparently called off their attack, also for no obvious reason. Following this train of thought reminded him of something else he had missed... "The reptiles! Mister Rosh, have you ever heard of an animal with poisonous fangs hunting in packs?"

"No, Captain," said the Eminian, after pondering the question a moment. "Pack hunters run down their prey. Venomous creatures are generally solitary hunters."

"Exactly. So what's causing all these animals to attack together?"

***

The shuttlecraft came to rest on her starboard side, then with a tremendous creak, fell over, landing upright again. "Now I know what the ball on a Dabo wheel feels like," said Pierce. The others looked around, not daring to believe that their ordeal was over. The doctor scrambled to Penner's side. Her skin felt clammy, and she had a fever. "I'm cold," she muttered.

"That's because I've disabled your lymphatic system to slow the progress of the venom," said Pierce, giving her another hypospray injection. "Just try to relax."

"I'm sorry about this, Dr. Pierce," she said softly.

"What are you sorry about?"

"I'm the communications officer, remember? I know how many reports you have to fill out whenever you loose a crewman. Messages back and forth from Starfleet Medical..."

"I don't know how to break this to you, ensign, but you're not quite dead yet." The girl tried to smile, but it wasn't very convincing. "Look, see these three pips on my collar? You do not have my permission to give up. Is that clear?"

"What's that noise?" said Nakamura suddenly, clamping her hands over her ears.

With their attention called to it, the others were aware of a very faint humming sound, like a tiny vibration in the skin of the shuttlecraft. Rhyzkov opened up her tricorder. "Subsonics," she reported. "The creatures must be standing outside, vocalizing."

"They can't get through the hull that way, can they?" asked Pierce. "Vibrate it to pieces, or something?"

Rhyzkov shook her head. "Not nearly powerful enough. In fact, I am amazed that Nakamura heard them at all through the hull plating. They--"

"Leave us alone!" the botanist shouted, squirming across the deck and pressing herself between two of the seats in the center of the craft, still clutching her ears as if the sounds were causing her pain. "Make them stop! Make them stop!"

Pierce and Rhyzkov hurried over to help her. "Where is it hurting you?" asked the doctor, scanning her with his feinberger and unable to find anything wrong.

"Protect Protect Protect Protect!" babbled Nakamura. "They're saying it over and over! Can't you hear it?"

Rhyzkov was frowning at something on her tricorder screen. "Take a look at this, doctor."

Pierce looked at the tricorder a moment, then turned back to Nakamura. "This is very important. You don't mean that they're actually talking, do you? That you can actually hear words that they're saying?"

The botanist hesitated. "No. Not so much words, now that you mention it. Just... a strong feeling. What's happening to me, doctor?"

[Atoz 77]

Fawkes made a routine check with Lt. Caeli, to make certain the ship was maintaining its distance and that the engines weren't dangerously overstressed. The helmsman reported an increasing lag in the starboard impulse coil, which he was compensating for. Fawkes spoke to Ensign Polidoro at the Engineering station and corrected the problem by transferring power from the deflector array. Then he spared a glance at the two women quietly talking together at the Sciences station -- three if you counted Arachne, the ship's computer, whose holographic avatar clad in a white Grecian gown often interrupted the Science Officer and the Chief Engineer with an objection or to display a graph which summarized whatever hypothesis they were currently talking about.

"Okay, Commander," said Vespis, as they broke out of their huddle. "The best analogy I can come up with is the electron interference phenomenon. You know that a subatomic particle has properties of both a particle and a wave?"

"Of course," said Fawkes. "How does that help us?"

Weir took over. "When the ship goes into Warp, it folds a shell of artificial space/time around itself, so that it essentially behaves as a dimensionless particle."

Fawkes looked aghast. "You want to create a standing warp shell within a single diameter of a planet's surface? Are you crazy?"

"Of course not, Commander," said Weir. "Trapped within this strong geomagnetic field as we are, the ship and everyone on board would instantly be torn into their constituent atoms if you tried."

"No, we want to flip the shell inside out," said Vespis cheerfully. "Generate two opposing wavefronts which will interfere with one another and send the ship straight through the core of the planet."

Fawkes stared at the Andorian as if she had asked him to swallow his own head. Arachne added her two cents worth: "I calculate the chances of success at approximately 19.403 percent, Commander."

Vespis shrugged. "Plan B is to detonate about twenty photon torpedoes simultaneously at selected points around the ship, hoping to temporarily negate the field. But the chances of that succeeding are only about point six percent, especially since they'd probably blow the ship to tiny flinders in the process."

***
The overcast sky was rapidly getting darker, as a massive thunderstorm rolled in. The air got noticeably colder. Atoz tapped his comm badge. "Hawkeye? Rhyzkov? Come in!"

To his great relief, Pierce answered: "None the worse for wear, Seven. How about you and Rosh?"

"We're okay for the present. But the entire planet seems to be mobilizing against us."

"That fits with what we've discovered," said Pierce. "Believe it or not, there's a faint telepathic field down here. We wouldn't have found it except that Petty Officer Nakamura seems to be affected by it."

"Affected how?"

"Our best guess is she breathed in some plant spores earlier. They seem to be the natural focal units for the field. Every single plant and animal on this planet has these spores inside, which somehow link them all together into one giant hive mind."

"Gaea," said Atoz.

"It might even be conscious or self-aware in a limited sense. Benevolent for the most part, until--"

"Until some alien blunders in and triggers a defensive reaction," said Atoz. He looked up at the sky just as a shaft of lightning jumped from one cloud to another. "Would this hive mind be able to affect the weather?"

Rhyzkov answered. "Theoretically, Captain, there is no reason it could not tap into the planet's magnetic field and with the power available there, shift the weather patterns. Or even--"

Atoz had just leaped ahead of her in his thoughts. "Or even attack a starship in orbit! Hawkeye, we've got to figure out some way of communicating with it! Tell it that we mean it no harm!"

"Seven, it's a planet!" said Pierce. "What do you propose we do, go up and knock on a tree? The idea of language may be totally beyond its grasp. It wouldn't need it."

Rosh, who had been keeping watch on the animals all this time, fired his phaser at something Atoz couldn't see. "Stand by, Hawkeye. What is it, Mr. Rosh?"

"Captain, we may have to make a strategic withdrawal from our present position." The elephants, as if realizing that they couldn't get to them without damaging the trees, had backed off slightly, replaced by half a dozen cat-like creatures similar to leopards, slinking through the undergrowth towards them. Overhead, several large carrion birds were circling the area, and Atoz could dimly see several of the venomous six-foot reptiles making their way through the forest behind them.

"Yes, I'd say it's time for a withdrawal, lieutenant," the Captain agreed. There was another metallic thump from the shuttlecraft. But this time the elephants weren't blindly attacking it -- they were carefully, almost gently pushing it, sliding it out of the clearing and onto the path. In the direction of the lake!

***
Fawkes sat in the command chair, clutching the armrests as if steeling himself for a decision. "I'd be much more comfortable getting the Captain's permission for this first," he said to no one in particular.

Vespis looked around from the bridge Engineering monitor station. "Main power is now at 78 percent, Papa. Once it drops below 70, we have no chance at all. Do you want to wait?"

"Okay, okay, don't push." Fawkes took a deep breath. "Is everything set, Science Officer?"

Weir was staring intently into the viewscreen of her console and didn't look up. "Hyperspace insertion calculated to within four decimal places, Commander."

"Is your course set, Mr. Caeli?"

"Heading 001 mark 40, warp ten," the helmsman replied uneasily.

Fawkes glanced over at Vespis one final time, to find her staring at him solemnly. If Andorians were telepathic, he could almost believe she was trying to bolster his faltering will with some of her own. She winked at him instead, which accomplished much the same thing. "Engage," he said.

For a moment, everything seemed to be fine. A hush fell, time seemed to tick slightly sideways. The stars on the viewscreen, instead of smearing into long, brilliant streaks as they normally did when the ship entered warp, began to oscillate in tiny circles, changing color and bursting like fireworks. Then the ship abruptly pitched backwards, the entire hull humming like a tuning fork.

"The warp field is unstable!" said Weir, raising her voice to be heard over the whine.

"I have an engine over thrust indication," said Caeli, struggling with the helm.

"They can't take the strain!" shouted Vespis, holding herself in her seat with difficulty as the ship lurched again. "Starboard coil is about to give!"

"Emergency power!" said Fawkes. "Adjust lateral displacement two points aft!"

"No good, Commander," said Caeli, shaking his head. "The field is collapsing!"

The Odysseus reappeared in normal space approximately five thousand kilometers higher above the planet, but tumbling out of control. Caeli did his best to bring the ship back around to an even keel. "I'm reading fluctuation in the warp core, Commander!" he said.

"Vespis?"

The Andorian rapidly punched buttons on her console. "The Core is stabilizing, but I'm losing antimatter containment in the starboard nacelle! It's no use! I can't get it to steady down!"

Fawkes' first impulse was to eject the entire nacelle, but he realized that it would be trapped in orbit next to them. "Vespis, lock down the antimatter chamber and eject it!"

"But--"

"Do it! Transporter room, lock onto the antimatter chamber and beam it out to bearing 181 mark 30. Maximum range!"

Twenty seconds later, there was a tremendous explosion as the antimatter reaction chamber went critical.

***

The explosion went unnoticed on the planet's surface because of the gray cloud cover and occasional violent flashes of lightning. A light rain was beginning to fall, hardly felt underneath the canopy of the forest. Atoz and Rosh had managed to find a rocky outcrop, about a meter higher than the surrounding terrain, which afforded them a slight advantage. The animals tended to come at them in waves, but from their higher position, the two men couldn't be overrun unless they relaxed their guard. Or unless their phasers gave out.

"I wonder, Captain," Rosh said hesitantly, "if we should consider raising our phaser settings to lethal intensity."

Atoz had been wondering the same thing. The attack against them was being coordinated by a hive entity which was at least bordering on intelligent. Once it realized that the individual animals were only being stunned instead of killed, would it have the insight to know that it had nothing to lose by pressing its attack to the utmost? Would he and Rosh be able to stand against the living tidal wave that would surely follow?

When he didn't answer, the Security Chief went on, "Perhaps, if we killed enough of them, it would diminish the strength of the hive mind."

Atoz had toyed briefly with that idea as well. "I doubt it. Most of the biomass of any given planet is in the plants, insects and so forth. To have an appreciable effect on the life force of the hive mind, we would have to somehow deforest the planet." He paused to shudder at the very idea. "Even if the Prime Directive didn't forbid it, I would never consider doing such a thing."

Rosh nodded. "You are correct of course, Captain. I had not considered that this was a Prime Directive situation."

"We're the alien invaders here, lieutenant," said Atoz. "Even if we didn't mean to be."

A curious rustling sound drifted down through the treetops. The sky darkened again, but this time it was not because of the weather. "Get down, sir!" shouted Rosh, as the clearing filled with birds.

There were hundreds, of all sizes. Some were brown, some black, some brightly colored. They rushed down upon the two Starfleet officers like a living cloud, but a cloud that could peck and and bite and scratch. Realizing in a flash that their phasers would be of no use, Atoz and Rosh dropped flat against the rocks, keeping their faces covered as the birds clawed at their backs, ripping at their uniforms and drawing blood from their necks and shoulders.

[Atoz 77]

Inside the Calypso, the rhythmic thumping and scraping of the large animals as they pushed the shuttlecraft was unnerving. Rhyzkov had opened up the flight engineer's panel and was working at restoring communications. Penner was feverish, but Pierce was keeping her cool and hydrated with water from the replicator. Nakamura was curled up in one of the seats, mildly sedated.

"They're going to push us into the big wet," she moaned. "Big... wet. They keep saying..."

"Big wet," said Pierce, mopping Penner's forehead with a cloth. "Milla? Can the shuttlecraft stand immersion in the lake? Would it still be air tight?"

Rhyzkov looked up, thinking. "With all the pounding it has already been subjected to? Very doubtful."

Suddenly Pierce had an idea. "How about the elephants? Is there any way to hook up the Universal Translator to the comm system, talk to them?"

The science officer shook her head. "We tried that earlier. Their vocalizations are outside the UT's broadcast frequency range."

Pierce gently shook Penner awake. "Amelia! We need to extend the frequency range of the Universal Translator. How would we do that?"

"Extend...?"

"The frequency range, yes. To about three or four cycles per second, if possible."

"Try... try swapping the C-10 circuit," said Penner weakly, "with the... um... C-30, I think. Yes, pretty sure the C-30. Oh, but don't forget to repolarize the... um... the..." She drifted off again.

"Repolarize the what, Amelia?" said Pierce, gently slapping her face. "Stay with me, sweetheart. We need you."

"Huh?"

"What do we need to repolarize?"

Penner frowned with the effort of thinking. "Repolarize the... um... the whatdoyoucallit... "

"Never mind," said Rhyzkov from inside the panel. "I think I have it. Try it, doctor."

"Who me?" the doctor protested. "I'm just a CMO. First Contact is a job for the Chief Science Officer."

"And she is back on the ship," said Rhyzkov. "I'm only a lieutenant, so you are elected."

"But what will I say?" Pierce complained, taking the seat in front of the comm panel anyway.

"I'm certain you will think of something," said Rhyzkov, bracing herself as the shuttlecraft lurched roughly over a particularly uneven piece of ground.

"Uh... stop!" said Pierce, speaking into the pickup grid of the comm system.

To his astonishment, everything went quiet. The creatures outside stopped pushing on the shuttlecraft. Through the forward porthole, they could see the elephants swaying back and forth nervously. But after only a minute or two, there was a dull thump as they resumed. "Stop!" said Pierce again. "Do not do that! Do not push!"

The creatures stopped again. Two of them stood directly in front of the shuttlecraft, tilting their heads from side to side. "Speak?" said the synthesized voice of the Translator. "You? Speak? You?"

"They're confused, doctor," said Rhyzkov. "They recognize us as living things, obviously. But the shuttlecraft is just a big metal box to them. They can't understand how it can be talking."

"Well, the only alternative is to open the door and go out there," said Pierce dismissively. Rhyzkov nodded encouragingly, handing him a remote UT. "Oh no!" he said. "Oh no! Catch me going outside to be trampled to death by a bunch of alien pachyderms? Not a chance. Not Annabella Pierce's little boy."

***

Just as the elephants had decided to resume pushing, the side hatch of the shuttlecraft slid open. The entire herd backed away warily as Pierce very gingerly put one foot outside, then the other. Rhyzkov was right behind, nudging him forward. "Hello," he said into the UT. "We're friends!"

The creatures tilted their heads again – all of them nearly in unison -- as if the entire mind was thinking this over. "Ferndz?" the Translator said, as they shook their trunks violently from side to side. "Outside! Outside!"

"What does Outside mean?" asked Pierce.

"It's a hive mind," said Rhyzkov quietly. "You'd expect this. They do not have the concept of 'friend'. There is Outside or there is Inside. Nothing in between."

"Outside. Bad," said the Translator, as the creatures moved forward, crowding around him. "Remove."

"Stop!" said Pierce, waving his free hand back and forth, assuming from their own body language that this was a standard negative gesture. "Why must Outside be removed?" he asked. "Does Outside harm you?"

This seemed to puzzle them. They paused again, shaking their trunks back and forth, their bodies swaying gently as the mind thought about it. "Outside bad. Remove."

"Why?" Pierce insisted, swallowing his fear and taking another step forward. "We are Outside, but we mean no harm. If you want us to go, we will remove ourselves."

"You? Remove? You?" said the Translator again. The nearest of the elephants reached over to Pierce with its trunk, gently probing his head and shoulders with its three delicate fingers, and he tried to stand still, allowing the contact.

"Yes," said Pierce. "All you have to do is stop the interference in the atmosphere. Allow us to talk to the starship. We will leave, if that is what you wish."

"Star? Ship?" said the Translator, and the elephants in unison glanced up at the sky. Yes, they do know about the Odysseus, Pierce thought. They may not understand what it is, but they're aware of it. "You? Star? Ship?"

"Yes, that's where we came from," said Pierce. "We will return there, if you allow us."

"This is a lot for them to take in at once, doctor," whispered Rhyzkov nervously. "I don't think..."

Pierce reached for the trunk, which was by now beginning to cautiously explore his face. He grasped its fingers with his own fingers. "If you remove us to the big wet, you'll kill us. We will die. Is that what you want? Or will you simply allow us to go home?"

***

"Captain's log, Stardate 51979.7: The Bethsalevans have ceased the electromagnetic interference in the atmosphere, allowing the survey team to beam up to the ship. Science Officer Weir has spent the past two hours talking with them by means of a remote comm link, and she reports that their vocabulary is improving by leaps and bounds. They seem to be highly intelligent; they simply had no use for language before."


"And that brings me pretty much to the limits of what I'm authorized to do," said Weir, sitting to Atoz' right at the conference table. "Starfleet will have to send a First Contact team to go any further."

"I'm pretty sure the Enterprise is available," said Atoz. Yes, let Picard deal with them!

"Speaking of limits of authorization," said Fawkes. "Petty Officer Nakamura is understandably worried about her disciplinary action, Captain."

"She did violate Survey Team procedures, Captain," said Rosh. "And Crewman Franklin died as a result."

"Yes, but in this case," said Weir, "it may be a good thing she did. Opening the seed pod didn't harm the ecosystem in any way, but it was what alerted the Bethsalevans that we were aliens. Otherwise, they might not have realized it until we had a colony down there, tearing up the landscape. Many more people might have died."

"That's a good point," said Atoz, thinking about poor Franklin. "The procedural violation is a relatively minor thing, and we can't hold her responsible for its outcome."

Pierce nodded. "And if she hadn't ingested the spores, we might not have recognized the existence of the telepathic field until it was too late."

Atoz turned to the Chief Engineer. "Is the ship ready for departure?"

Vespis shrugged, and only someone familiar with the way her antennae conveyed emotion would have recognized a hint of sheepishness. "With only one working engine nacelle, we can make Warp Three, maybe Four," she said.

"Well, I think we're done here," said Atoz, rising from his chair. "Mister Fawkes, please set course for the nearest Star Base. Best speed. Staff meeting dismissed."

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