"Dark Places"

[Atoz 77]

DARK PLACES

Captain's log, Stardate 53017.1: The Odysseus is making a stopover at the Terran colony on Enslin V, which is having problems with a fungus attacking its farmlands. While we attend to that, the First Officer is taking a shuttlecraft down system to check on a remote research outpost.

The runabout Charybdis II came out of warp with a bang and a shiver, giving a lurch as the gravity well of the pale blue gas giant caught hold of her. Commander Charles Fawkes immediately compensated, pushing the impulse engines up to half speed as he brought the craft into the planet's equatorial belt, well outside of its outermost ring. "That felt a little rough, didn't it?" he commented, keeping his attention on the attitude controls. "How's the manifold pressure?"

"Seven six four, sir," replied Lt. junior grade T'Pana at the Ops position. "Injector temperature was briefly in the red. Falling to within safe parameters now." Privately she thought that the First Officer had shaved the Roche limit a little too closely, but she had felt rougher hyperspace transitions during her training. After all, they had just traveled two billion kilometers in under fourteen minutes.

"Could be a botch in the intermix ratio," Fawkes said. Charybdis was relatively new and had yet to receive a thorough shake-down. "I'll have Mr. Vespis check it when we get back." He relaxed a little as the ship sped on around its orbit. "Weir?" he said over his shoulder. "Fancy taking the controls for a bit?"

Lieutenant Commander Diane Weir, sitting in the third seat towards the rear of the compartment, shook her head. "No thank you, sir," she said. "As a science officer I may have had to qualify as a shuttle pilot, but when I don't have to, I'm more than happy to leave the flying to those who enjoy it."

Fawkes' sure hand played over the console, putting the craft into a steep bank as she climbed towards one of the larger moons. "You're sure?"

"Quite sure," she said distractedly. Something on the sensor monitor in front of her had caught her attention. "Research Station Delgado is on the eighth moon, isn't it?"

"That's what we were told."

Weir shook her head, frowning. "That's funny, I should be getting a 21 centimeter spike from their fusion power plant, but I'm not... oh there it is. Its EM footprint is almost non-existent."

"If you can pick them up," Fawkes said, reaching for the communications panel, "we must be on their screens as well. Research Station Delgado, this is Commander Fawkes of the starship Odysseus. Do you read me?"

Silence. "Research Station Delgado," he repeated, "this is the runabout Charybdis requesting landing clearance. Please respond."

Moments later, the shuttle skimmed the surface of the barren, windswept moon. The outpost showed up on the viewing screen as a slim cylinder of white metal three or four levels tall, with an aerial tower and a beacon. "There's the docking port," said Fawkes, keying in the remote access code. "Let's see if they left the latch string out."

As the outer doors slid silently open, T'Pana said, "Excuse me, sir, but does not procedure require us to contact the ship in the event of unforeseen difficulties?"

"It may be nothing more than a problem with the comms," Fawkes replied with a shrug. "I'll call when I have something definite to report."

Under Fawkes' direction the Charybdis glided down through the airlock force field barrier and into the rectangular landing bay. As the ship touched down, the doors shut behind them. Fawkes secured the runabout's controls, then went to the exit hatch, pausing at the weapons locker to get a phaser.

Weir caught his eye. "Are you expecting trouble?"

"Better safe than sorry," Fawkes said, checking to see that the weapon had a full charge and slapping its magnatomic patch against his uniform at the hip. "Do you want one?" Weir shook her head.

The air inside the landing bay itself felt cold. Along the wall facing them were the windows of the reception room, but no one appeared to be there. To one side were two five-man shuttle pods and a worker tug. The engine cowling of the tug had been removed, and a box of tools was lying open on the deck as if someone were in the middle of a maintenance task. "Hello?" Fawkes called out, his voice seeming to echo in the big, empty room. "Anybody here?"

T'Pana, remaining next to the runabout, tilted her head and frowned at though at some faint noise she couldn't quite identify, and that the others apparently didn't hear.

Fawkes strode purposefully to the door to the reception room, which hissed open at his approach. Weir followed, then T'Pana. There were chairs and several generic paintings, opposite an abandoned receptionist desk inside a small alcove. Straight ahead an opening led to a transverse corridor which curved away to the left and to the right. Nothing appeared to be out of place; there was just no one here.

"Security," Fawkes said, tapping on his comm badge. "Security station, come in." A crackling whine seemed to come out of the communicator, but nothing else. "Operations!" he said, trying again. "Engineering! Medical section, respond!" He turned towards Weir. "How many people are supposed to be here?"

"Nineteen in all," she replied.

"Computer on," T'Pana said quietly, behind the receptionist's desk. The computer screen activated, showing a silver logo over a cobalt blue background. It kept flickering as if a power connection somewhere was loose, but it refused to display anything useful.

Weir wandered several meters down the curving corridor, passing pocket doors leading to offices. Suddenly she stopped and gasped. "Commander Fawkes!"

A little further along, the hallway widened into an elevator alcove, and just beyond it a door which was labeled "Computer Core: Authorized Personnel Only". Here things weren't so neat and orderly. A picture was hanging askew with a huge crack in its plastic facing. A single boot and a pair of light intensifier goggles were lying there abandoned. Most ominously, a scrawl of crudely done letters was painted across the wall opposite the lift in some kind of glutinous looking, reddish black substance. "CROATAN," it said.

[Atoz 77]

"Is that Human blood?" T'Pana asked, raising one eyebrow.

What makes you say that?" Weir said quickly. A little too quickly. She stepped over to the wall, reaching up one hand to the substance as if she were going to touch it, but in the end she stopped a few centimeters short.

Fawkes frowned at the stain but didn't comment on it. He tried the door to the computer core, but it was on security lockout. "The main office should be back this way," he said, leading them back in the direction they had come from. "Maybe we'll find some answers there."

T'Pana suddenly stopped and tilted her head, listening. "Commander, something is coming."

The First Officer paused. "What do you mean?"

"Something is coming," the Vulcan repeated.

Just then, from the end of the corridor a loud BANG reverberated, the sound of something striking metal. Three or four blows landed on the door at the end of the hallway, causing dents to appear in the metal. Suddenly a silver blade was thrust through the seam from the other side. Fawkes unlimbered his phaser as, with a grinding noise, whatever it was forced the pocket door open.

What emerged was a bipedal creature larger than a bear. Its hulking body seemed to be covered in dark brown leathery scales, its arms and splayed hind legs articulated like some gigantic crustacean. Its head was protected by a flat bony plate, from which several black appendages draped around its broad shoulders. What eyes it had were small and widely spaced. As it caught sight of the three officers, it raised its head, opened a pair of sideways mounted jaws, and let out a throaty roar, a strangely trilling sound which made the small hairs rise up on the backs of their necks. Waving a four foot long sword, it marched forward.

"Hold it right there!" Fawkes warned, raising his phaser as Weir and T'Pana prudently moved behind him. He didn't want to shoot it, but the creature was advancing remarkably rapidly, and if it could lever through a door that easily, it was dangerous. He fired, the heavy stun beam slamming into its chest. The creature was shoved backwards several feet and stood for a second or two shaking its head. Then it charged forward again.

Fawkes fired a second time, and the creature shook off the effect even more quickly. "This isn't stopping it," he said to his companions, inching backwards while keeping his weapon on the beast. "Bug out."

Weir didn't have to be told. She would have preferred to return to the runabout, but they had already been cut off from the reception room. She bypassed the pocket doors leading to offices, reasoning that the last thing they wanted was to get trapped by a dead end. Under the circumstances that left only the lift. She heard Fawkes' phaser discharge again just as she tried the doors. They parted readily enough, revealing a circular car about six feet in diameter. "In here, Commander!" she shouted as she hurried inside, looking for a manual control panel, but there wasn't one. It obviously operated on voice commands. "Lowermost level," Weir said.

The doors began to slam shut again, but Weir threw herself between them to keep them apart. Like a perverse thing, they still tried to close on her, trapping her and crushing her torso. As she cried out, T'Pana joined her. The Vulcan thrust her hands into the gap, pushing with all her might, and managed to get the doors open just as Fawkes arrived on the run. He leaped into the car, the doors hissing shut behind him. The creature slammed into the closed doors, and they could hear it scrabbling at the metal. The seam quivered, parted a few centimeters revealing its hideous face, but by then the car was descending rapidly out of its reach.

"What was it?" Weir panted, massaging her bruised abdomen. "I've never seen a species like that!"

"Neither have I," Fawkes said, slumping against the interior wall of the car. "Outside of a nightmare."

The car abruptly shuddered to a stop, the light panels momentarily flickering off and on again as something heavy impacted on its roof. They all looked up, Fawkes bit back a swear word, but nobody needed to state the obvious. The creature had leaped down the lift shaft, still in pursuit! They could hear that nerve-racking trilling roar as its sword stabbed through the roof of the car. "Computer, resume!" T'Pana said, but there was no response.

Fawkes flung himself at the doors. The Vulcan added her strength to his, and together they pried the leaves apart. The lift had come to a stop between levels, leaving a gap of about half a meter at the bottom of the door between the floor of the car and the floor beams of the next level. While the First Officer held the doors, T'Pana scurried quickly through the opening and dropped to the floor below. Weir followed, drawing in a hissing breath from the pain in her injured ribcage. Fawkes spared a glance at the roof, where the creature was almost through, before he joined them, letting the doors snap shut.

He found Weir squatting, her breaths coming in gasps both from exertion and from fear, while T'Pana was standing, looking warily at a unshaven, sinewy looking man facing them a few meters down the hallway. He was wearing a torn and somewhat bedraggled gray and white civilian uniform, and he was holding a weapon of some kind, not a phaser but what looked like a projectile pistol, pointing it distrustfully at the officers. "Who are you? How did you get here?" he demanded.

"There's no time for that," Fawkes snapped, ignoring both the gun and the attitude. He took Weir's arm and helped her up. "Let's keep moving. I want to put some distance between us and that thing while we can."

***

From the portholes of The Leading Edge, the lounge at the bow of the starship Odysseus, the stars looked like sparkling glitter scattered across a blackboard. Captain Atoz, sitting down to a late lunch, spared them a wistful glance and started into his plate of ravioli, picking up his data padd with his free hand.

"Well, Seven, I think we've got it licked," said a cheerful voice suddenly, as Dr. Pierce sat down opposite him at the table. "We tried replicated zenite and the fungus seems to gobble it up. But Lt. Rhine from the botany section suggested we try adding griseomycarin, which is secreted from the mucus of Centaurian hepatic flatworms--"

"Hawkeye, I'm eating," Atoz complained mildly.

"Oh, sorry."

"When you're certain you have the right mix," Atoz said, "send about two tons down to Governor Uxbridge. Vespis already has the Telemachus and the Aeolus equipped with spray tanks."

Pierce nodded warily. "He wants to give it a try on a small scale first, right?"

"I talked him into it. He doesn't seem to realize that--"

His comm badge chirped just then, and the voice of Amelia Penner said, "Communications to Captain."

"Excuse me, Hawkeye," Atoz said, tapping the badge. "Go ahead, ensign."

"Captain, I thought you ought to know," Penner said. "It's been over half an hour and I haven't heard from the Charybdis."

Atoz looked out the porthole at the glittering stars. He was thinking: two billion kilometers. At the runabout's top speed, it could travel that far and back in under ten minutes. But there had been few enough opportunities lately for Fawkes to take a craft out for a spin and he was probably enjoying it while he could. And if he knew Weir, she was fascinated by whatever research was going on out there. "I wouldn't worry about it, ensign," he said. "Try them again at the hour mark."

[Atoz 77]

"My name is Carter," the unshaven man said. "Security." He noticed Fawkes looking at the gun that he was still holding on them. "Gyro-jet pistol, from my own collection," he said, slipping it into a holster at his side. "Phasers don't seem to do squat, do they?" He halfway grinned, almost as if he found it funny.

They were on Level 5, living quarters. Here the disorder was more pronounced. Not only did it look as if a riot had swept through, the white metal walls looked pitted and gray. The survivor led them down an escalator to Level 6, emerging in the lounge and dining area with Flexglass windows looking out on the barren and desolate landscape of the moon. They halted for a rest at a table at the far end of the room. The nearby wall separating the dining room from the kitchens was made of translucent panels, giving them good 360 degree visibility.

"Its nervous system must be radically different from ours," Weir speculated. "Selanogen-based life forms can't be stunned, for example. But where did it come from?"

They all looked at Carter, but he only shrugged. "****** if I know. I started getting emergency calls, intruder alerts. The next thing I knew, people were disappearing and the station was overrun with the things."

"Overrun?" said Weir, a slight edge to her voice. "Do you mean there's more than one?"
"Either that or it comes back to life," Carter said blandly. "I've killed it at least three times."

"Is there anyone else alive?" Fawkes asked him.

Carter gave a humorless chuckle. "Not that I know of. But I haven't found any bodies either. I think the beast carries its victims off and stores them in a larder somewhere."

Weir felt sick at the very suggestion, but he looked so pleased at the appalled look on her face, she hesitated to say so out loud. "It is an intelligent being," T'Pana pointed out, "not a wild animal. It is wearing a belt and clothing."

Fawkes frowned. He certainly had noticed the sword, but not the clothing. Then again, he had been a bit preoccupied trying to stay alive. "If we can make it back to the top level, there's the runabout."

"Don't you think I tried that, admiral?" Carter barked. "It won't let me get close. I also tried to contact Enslin V as soon as things started to go bad. Nothing but subspace interference."

"Commander Weir," said Fawkes uneasily, "do you have a tricorder with you?"

"Science officers don't go to the loo without a tricorder, sir," she replied making a brave attempt at a smile as she plucked the device from her waist and unfolded it. "I'm scanning the building, but I can't get any life form readings, even our own. There's some kind of subspace transduction field operating, overwhelming everything." She tried a different kind of scan and gave a disheartened sigh when she saw the result. "I'm sorry, sir. I can't make anything of these readings. If I could use the station's computers I might be able to learn more."

Fawkes grimaced. "That's a problem isn't it?"

Suddenly his comm badge chirped and came on all by itself, letting out a blast of static. As he tried to tap it off, T'Pana's also activated, and then Weir's. The automatic volume controls went haywire. The scream soared quickly to uncomfortable levels that made them grimace and cover their ears. Fawkes had snatched his off, thinking about stomping it into silence it when he thought he heard a word in the midst of the random noise.

T'Pana had noticed it too. "Commander, it..."

"Croatan..." the distorted voice seemed to be saying, "can do...tal...fa...once... heaven... " It sounded like pure gibberish.

Weir gasped out loud, clutching at Fawkes' arm. Something was moving in the kitchens, its shadow visible in the translucent panels as it glided towards the swinging door. Fawkes took out his phaser, casting a glance at Carter. The security officer was frozen in place, his face as white as a sheet.

A humanoid figure suddenly burst through the door. It simply glided through the plastic as if it wasn't there. In contrast with the creature they had met upstairs, it was tall and slender, a uniform ghostly white. Its upper body appeared to be clad in a form fitting body suit, falling to a long trailing skirt. Its hair was long and seemed to float behind it as though blown by a non-existent wind. Its face – or rather her face, because it was evidently female – was fixed in a goggle-eyed expression of shock and bewilderment. Her mouth was moving, mouthing in perfect sync the senseless sounds coming out of the comm badges.

Fawkes had no idea what to make of this. The meaningless cacophony was still pouring from all three communicators, grating on his nerves and making it hard to think. He instinctively glanced over to Weir and saw her backing away, staring at the apparition with a disbelieving frown. "Come on!" he shouted over the din, shaking her arm.

The three of them retreated down the length of the dining room. Carter shook himself out of his paralysis and followed. Fawkes turned a corner, not having the slightest idea where he was going as long as it was away. Unfortunately he led them into a cul-de-sac which ended with a door marked "Infirmary". They took refuge inside, but the phantasm once again passed through the closed door.

Carter whirled to face their pursuer, drawing his gyro-jet pistol. The projectile shot straight through the phantom and blew the door behind it to pieces with a thunderous explosion. "DIE!" he screamed, "DIE!", firing again and again, blasting fist-sized holes in the door frame, but not harming the specter in the least as it continued its relentless advance.

It was obvious that his shooting was doing no good, but he was terrified, unable to stop. If this went on, he was liable to kill one of them with a wild shot. Fawkes lunged, grabbing his wrists and pushing the gun towards the ceiling. T'Pana saw his intention and joined in, clasping her strong, slender fingers onto a nerve bundle in the man's shoulder. Carter sagged to the floor unconscious, leaving Fawkes free to face the dreadful apparition once again.

Hovering just above the floor, it looked at him with an expression of hatred, mouthing, "Can do it... glows..." If only the **** noise would stop so he could think! "Croatanal... fa... once... heaven... eye..." Fawkes raised his phaser to the molecular disruption setting and fired. The specter halted as the beam plowed into it. Its image wavered and abruptly vanished, as the beam itself faded and died. Simultaneously their comm badges shut off.

Fawkes glanced at the power level indicator, startled to find that his phaser was almost empty. Something was draining it far faster than usual. "Science Officer, what was that?" he said.

Before Weir could answer, Carter sat up. "That was Dr. Boylan. As far as I can tell, she was the thing's first victim."

"Are you saying that was her ghost?" Weir said incredulously.

The security man looked at her sharply. "Have you got a better explanation?" he snapped.

"This type of subspace field often has a peripheral impact on our brain tissues," she speculated, "specifically the visual cortex, causing people to hallucinate."

He scoffed. "And we all happened to hallucinate the same thing?"

"We'd better keep moving," said Fawkes. "If that creature is still stalking us, we don't want to be caught here."

"To where, Commander?" T'Pana asked reasonably.

He turned to Carter. "What's below us?"

"Storage," Carter said sulkily. "Maintenance, power plant. Lots of dark corners to hide in."

"Then we have to go up," Fawkes concluded. He hesitated to say it, but... "Let's try the stairwell."

***

The stairwell was dark. Fawkes, groping his way forward, tripped over some unseen obstruction, and caught hold of a railing just in time to keep from tumbling right over it. "Careful there," he heard Carter say. As his eyes adjusted to the dim service lighting, he could see the four story drop in front of him that he had barely avoided. He was inside a shaft about four meters in diameter, the zig-zag flights of the stairs on one side and on the other side the tracks of the lift mechanism. The disabled elevator car they had escaped from was two levels above him, hanging askew, half off the track.

"Wait here," he whispered, and tentatively started up the staircase, alert for any sign of the creature.

Weir watched him ascend, wondering how he could bring himself to do it, knowing that his phaser was practically useless. She could hear Carter's rasping breath as he stood at the edge of the railing, pointing that pistol of his at the ominous shadows. A warm hand suddenly touched her on the sleeve. "Excuse me, commander," T'Pana said softly. "May I keep contact with you? The retinas of my eyes have fewer rods per square millimeter than yours do."

"Oh, of course," Weir whispered, clutching her hand and squeezing it reassuringly. "I should have thought of that. Don't be frightened." As soon as she said it, she knew it was the wrong thing to say. The lieutenant was a Vulcan. She wasn't afraid, merely expressing a properly logical concern at being unable to keep up in the dark. As Weir felt her own shallow breathing, her heart pumping, her stomach in knots, she wished that she could be like that. She remembered how T'Pana had originally heard the creature's approach long before she or Fawkes had. "Do you hear anything?"

"I hear too much," the Vulcan replied. A dull, rhythmic scrape was coming from somewhere, regular enough to probably be some kind of machinery. Carter was fidgeting, clicking the safety of his gun on and off in a way that made her very nervous. All at once they heard a loud metallic bang from directly overhead. A man-sized object fell past their landing, and Weir nearly screamed, thinking it was Fawkes.

"It's all right," the First Officer's deep voice called softly. "It was just something blocking the stairs. Come on up."

Weir and T'Pana crept cautiously up the stairs, expecting to be ambushed at any moment, while Carter shuffled awkwardly a few steps behind them. A sudden crash echoed through the dark elevator shaft, causing Weir's heart to leap into her throat. Another followed, until she was reasonably certain it was coming from below them. Fawkes loomed ahead on the next landing. "This is as far as we can go," he said quietly. "The next landing is blocked solid."

On Level 4, they found laboratories. "Commander," Weir said, consulting her tricorder again, "the subspace field is much less intense up here." Her fingers danced over the controls as she tried to focus the scan. "Whatever is causing it must be on one of the lower levels."

"Can you get a better idea of what it is?" the First Officer asked.

The Science Officer slowly shook her head. "It has some of the characteristics of a hyperspace transduction rift. That's probably why your phaser drained to quickly. Mister Carter, what kind of research were they doing here?"

"Classified," he answered shortly. Then he shrugged. "I don't really know much about it."

Weir pushed open the door to one of the labs and went to the console. She activated the computer, its display flickering madly as it had done earlier, while T'Pana took over one of the auxiliary stations. "The computer is being a little finicky," Weir reported after a moment, her eyes scanning the menus on the screen, "but I think I can bring up Dr. Boylan's notes."

"Hold on," Fawkes protested. "Is this the time? We should rather work on finding another route up to the docking bay before Mr. Cuddles figures out where we are."

"I'll second that one, admiral," Carter said.

"Commander, this is alarming," T'Pana said, pointing to the engineering display she was looking at. "There appears to be a buildup of heavy nuclear ions in the fusion power plant, source unknown. Unless something is done, I estimate a catastrophic overload within the next twenty to thirty minutes."

[Luke]

"Science officers don't go to the loo without a tricorder, sir." I LOVE that line!

[Atoz 77]

As Captain Atoz stepped off the turbolift and onto the bridge, Dr. Pierce looked up from Sciences station where he hovered over science officer Milla Rhyzkov's shoulder. "The shuttles just completed their first pass," Pierce reported. "We're correlating the tricorder readings from our ground units now, but it will be awhile before we know for sure."

"Make sure your little concoction gets the spores as well," Atoz said. "We don't want to have to do this again next year." He turned to find his way blocked by Amelia Penner.

"Captain, it's been an hour," she said. "And they still don't answer my hails."

Atoz frowned. Now what? Fawkes knew better than to stay out of contact this long! "Lieutenant Rhyzkov, can you do a long range scan for the Charybdis, around the ninth planet?"

The science officer stood up. "I just did one, sir. At Ensign Penner's request." The Comm officer bit her lower lip, giving the Captain a somewhat sheepish look. "I found no sign of the Charybdis, but there is a slight hyperspace glitch in that region of a kind I have never seen before. It may be interfering with sensors."

Atoz stepped past Penner and sat down in his command chair. This was beginning to worry him. Unfortunately his responsibility to the colony couldn't be ignored. The ship had to remain here until the fungus was eradicated. He leaned forward to address the helmsman. "Lieutenant Caeli, I want you to take the Penelope down system to check on them. Take along a medical team and two security guards."

"Aye-aye, Captain," Caeli said automatically, jumping to his feet. "But sir, with a top speed of 2.1c, that'll take nearly an hour."

Atoz nodded. Runabouts could manage Warp 4.5, in other words 150c, but the only other such craft available, the Scylla, was out of service for structural repairs. "That can't be helped, Mr. Caeli."

***

Fawkes' mind quickly ran through various options. "Is there any way to shut off the reactor from here?"

T'Pana pressed a few controls experimentally. "No, sir. That requires a high level security access code."

Carter shrugged and said, "Don't look at me, admiral. I don't have anything to do with this technical stuff."

"It might be possible," the Vulcan continued, "to vent the ions from the engineering console itself. But that would require physical access to the power plant, on Level 9."

Fawkes shook his head. The idea of going back down that dark stairwell with that unknown creature stalking them made his skin crawl. "That's it then. We'll find some pressure suits and blow out one of these windows. The rest of you get to a safe distance, while I try to reach the runabout--"

"Commander, we can't do that," interrupted Weir, looking up from the main console. "I've been reviewing Dr. Boylan's notes. She was experimenting with subspace conduits, like the Borg used. Her particular methodology was to use trisoliton coils to create stable chronoton hyperspace bridges." She paused for a second uncertainly. The word "chronoton" had triggered a recent association, but...

"Yes?" Fawkes said impatiently.

"Well don't you see, sir? Her experiment must have opened an unstable gateway to another dimension! That's where the creature came from. I'm sure he doesn't like it here any more than we like having him."

"And you think reversing the gateway will send him back? That's all very nice, Science Officer, but we've got our own skins to worry about..."

"But the gate is also what is causing the instability in the reactor! Shutting it down would be the surest method of stopping the explosion. We have to go down to Level 8 where the coils are, and turn off the gate."

Fawkes thought it over. What she was saying was perfectly true. But risking his own life was one thing. He was prepared to do that as the price he payed for wearing a Starfleet uniform. He just wasn't so keen on risking Weir's and T'Pana's lives...

Merely stopping to consider it at all answer enough for Carter. "You're crazy, you know that, admiral?" he said. "You're a certifiable lunatic. That beast is waiting for us down there somewhere."

"I'm not asking you to go with us, mister--"

"I didn't say I wouldn't go," he interrupted. "It's just... well, if we're going I've got an idea better than going down that dark staircase again."

***

In the corner of the lab stood a thick cylindrical column that ran from floor to ceiling. Carter touched a control on the side. There was the hiss of an air seal breaking, and a panel slid open, revealing a vertical shaft less than a meter in diameter. "Free fall tube," Carter explained. "They use it to transfer samples and equipment up and down between levels. Before you get any ideas, UP doesn't work. I tried it earlier. Only down."

Fawkes leaned inside and looked down. At least there was lighting all the way to the bottom. He could just feel the low level anti-gravity field that slowed the descent of anything placed inside. Tubes of this kind this were only good for about 100 kilos and weren't meant for personnel use. There were flush hatches at each level but the only way to stop yourself would be to press your arms against the walls of the tube. And it looked like a fairly tight squeeze for his broad shoulders...

"I could go first, sir," T'Pana said quietly, "to see if it is safe."

He hated to use the word, but it was logical. She was the thinnest of them, and as a Vulcan would probably be better qualified than Weir to handle any surprise that might be waiting for her without panicking. "Very well, lieutenant," he said, handing her his phaser.

"That is not necessary, sir," she protested.

"Take it anyway," he said. He linked his hands into a stirrup so that she could conveniently reach the lip of the opening. Soon she was gliding gracefully feet first down the chute, bracing herself against the walls by touching them with her hands. At Level 8 she stopped herself, pressed a contact on the wall, and wormed her way through the narrow opening. She disappeared from Fawkes' sight for an inordinately long time, but a moment later her head reappeared.

"It seems to be clear, Commander," she reported, and disappeared again.

"I'm next," said Carter. He managed it much more awkwardly than the Vulcan had, his boots bumping and banging against the walls of the tube so loudly, Fawkes was sure the creature wherever it was could hear them. Once he was through and had joined T'Pana, Fawkes turned to Weir.

"Are you ready? I'd better bring up the rear, in case I get stuck."

The Science Officer sighed deeply. "Now is probably not a good time to mention that I don't like enclosed spaces," she said, but accepted his help in climbing over the lip.

***

The deterioration they had seen on Level 5 was even more evident on Level 8. The main corridor was well-lit, but the light panels flickered alarmingly. The walls were covered with mildew and hairline cracks in the surface. T'Pana wondered if perhaps the dimensional gateway were in some way also interfering with the normal flow of entropy, making material objects age at an accelerated pace. If that were true, her logical mind continued, what effect would it have on the living tissue of her own body, or the bodies of her shipmates?

She moved into a side corridor to reconnoiter, looking for a signpost or something that might lead them to the main lab. The lighting in this area was negligible, the deck so littered that T'Pana did not intend to explore very far. But when she noted a half-open pocket door a few meters down the hallway, she was intrigued. Something was lying across the threshold preventing the door from closing.

The Vulcan crept cautiously closer, and discovered that the object was a Human arm. It was still attached to a dead Human body. But when she knelt down to inspect its injuries...

Something big suddenly ambushed her from behind. The impact sent her phaser skittering across the floor even while a powerful hand gripped her by the throat. "Why did you do that?" Carter whispered, pressing his pistol against her ribcage. "I told myself, here's a Vulcan. She's bound to stick her nose where it doesn't belong. And **** me if I wasn't right!"

T'Pana was aware of a slight concern at what would happen to her if his gyro-jet pistol went off where it was pointing, but it would be wrong to say she felt fear. Rather she looked back at the Human body on the floor, and the gaping cavity in its chest that could only be caused by explosive bullets. Inside the room were at least three other Human bodies. "Did you murder these people?" she asked calmly.

"**** Vulcan!" he blurted. "Always assume the worst, don't you?" The hand clenched around her throat trembled. "It was the Thing! That blasted Thing! It creates illusions you know? It makes you think you're aiming at it and the next thing you know you're blowing holes in Tom and Gilly and... Martha..."

T'Pana thought she understood. "I believe that in extreme situations, adrenalin surges in your species frequently cause a breakdown in reality testing. You panicked. If it was truly accidental, I do not believe you need fear incarceration."

"Incar--? Bloody Vulcan!" Carter hissed. "I ought to blow your cold, green-blooded head off right now!"

"Lieutenant?" they heard Weir call softly from the corridor where the tube was. "Where are you?" Carter pulled T'Pana further into the shadows.

[Atoz 77]

Fawkes arrived on Level 8 and looked around. "Lieutenant?" he called. "Carter?"

"Commander," Weir said starting towards a door at the far end of the hallway, "the main lab is this way."

Fawkes expelled a sigh of frustration. He couldn't let Weir go by herself, but he was also responsible for T'Pana and, when you came to think about it, Carter as well. He tapped his comm badge. "Lieutenant T'Pana, resp--"

He got no further because that awful static-filled noise came pouring out of his communicator again. Fawkes clapped his hands to his ears. "Croatan...glows..." the distorted voice whispered through the din. Weir's badge was also broadcasting the same senseless clamor. He could see her lean against the corridor wall, dropping to one knee in terror as the apparition of Dr. Boylan drifted up through the floor directly in front of her.

Fawkes automatically reached for his phaser before he remembered that he had given it to T'Pana.

***

The Vulcan's comm badge suddenly came on, spewing out that horrid cacophony. The noise was excruciatingly painful to her sensitive ears, but controlling the impulse to flinch came as naturally to her as breathing. Carter, however, was Human. "Crap!" he yelled, ducking his head and raising his right hand to it in a futile instinct to block the sounds. At the same time, his grip on her throat loosened.

T'Pana twisted out of his grasp, spinning around and thrusting the heel of her hand hard into the side of his chest. The impact knocked him backwards, but didn't make him drop his pistol. Under the circumstances, she ducked and scurried off down the dark hallway. Carter cursed and stumbled after her.

***

The ghostly specter of Dr. Boylan glided relentlessly towards Weir, its long hair and trailing skirt flying behind it blown by nonexistent winds. Its face was one of anguish and desperation as it mouthed the meaningless sounds repeated at ear splitting volume on their comm badges. "Fa... once... heaven... eye..."

"Weir!" Fawkes shouted, lurching forward. "Come this way! We'll get to the stairwell and--"

"Wait, Commander!" Weir said. The apparition had stopped just in front of her, reaching out but not touching. "She's trapped in interphase, between dimensions. I think she's trying to..." The Science Officer frowned, fighting against the urge to run, trying to think past the noise. "Croatan! Chronton! Alpha One Seven Nine! Commander, she's giving us the password!"

The comm badges fell silent. The phantom glided a pace or two backwards, its face now showing intense satisfaction as it faded away and disappeared. Weir rushed to the lab door and punched in the combination. Inside was a long, semicircular console. Power converter units ranged along the walls were throbbing and straining. In the focal point of the room was a brilliant green globe of light about two meters in diameter, suspended in midair above a metal coil. The light sputtered and flashed, sending out waves of distortion that made your eyeballs feel as if they were being turned inside out. Fawkes joined Weir at the console, desperately trying not to look at it as his trembling hands called up the engineering display. Red lights were urgently flashing, signifying that the reactor was reaching a critical point. If this didn't work...

***

T'Pana hurried along the darkened corridor only to come up against a dead end, the only door ahead leading back into the stairwell. Behind her, she could hear Carter catching up to her. "There you are, you murdering Thing!" he shouted. "I've got you cornered now!"

Lieutenant Commander Weir had speculated earlier that the subspace field might be causing hallucinations. T'Pana reminded herself that Carter had been exposed to it for over ten hours now. But at that point her musing was cut short as he fired. She ducked as the projectile shot past her, blasting a fist sized hole in the duranium door. Her fingers found the manual release and she pushed it open, slipping into the dark stairwell.

Given that the research station had nine levels, all things being equal the odds of the creature being somewhere above her were seven to two. Therefore the logical thing to do would be to go down, towards the brightly lighted power plant level. For that reason, she did the opposite and went up, trying to move as silently as possible. She was grateful that she was in control of her emotions because otherwise the idea of feeling her way along the railing as blind as a cave tahvet with nothing but death on all sides would probably be frightening enough to paralyze her.

From somewhere above, a regular scrape of metal on metal was sending echoes down the stairwell shaft. T'Pana made it to the next level above, then paused to listen. She heard Carter's heavy breathing on the landing below, then the soft tread of his boots as he started to climb after her. She reached for the manual release of the door to Level 7 and stepped back, covering her head with her arms as she crouched against the sturdy thermocrete wall.

At the hiss of the door opening, Carter's gyro-jet pistol boomed twice. The first projectile hit the railing and exploded a good two meters to T'Pana's left. The second passed by and struck the wall of the elevator shaft. As the echoes died there was an answering roar from overhead. The creature's trilling challenge seemed to come from everywhere, reverberating in the enclosed space. T'Pana crouched in her place, not daring to move, almost mesmerized by the sound.

Then with a rush, Carter was upon her. All she saw was a dark shape before he stepped into the light coming through the open doorway. In that uncertain light, he looked like a dangerous madman. Suddenly the metal landing shook as a second shape leaped out of the darkness. A silvery metal blade thrust through Carter's chest from behind. He looked down incredulously as red blood gushed from the wound, then he pitched forward as the creature yanked its sword free, its head tilting back and roaring in triumph.

But this time the building roared back. A deep thrumming came from the power converters on the level below them, pulsing with a plaintive metallic shriek from their nest in the bedrock, shaking the entire tower. A rush of multicolored energy seemed to spiral up the shaft from Level 8, unfolding like a kaleidoscope, twisting and swirling around the creature as it spread throughout every corner. T'Pana burrowed herself into the corner and held on...

And then it was gone.

In the sudden silence, T'Pana's comm badge chirped. "Lieutenant?" said Fawkes' voice. "Lieutenant T'Pana? Are you all right?"

The Vulcan took a deep breath. "I am well, Commander," she answered, her eyes coming to rest on the cold, still corpse sprawled in front of her. "However, Mr. Carter was not so fortunate."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"How are you and Lieutenant Commander Weir?"

***

"Hang on a tick and I'll check," Fawkes replied from the sitting position behind the engineering console. He pushed himself to his knees, grabbed hold of the console and pulled himself upright so that he could read the displays. "It looks like Weir successfully shut down the chronoton conduit. The reactor is no longer critical. I'm venting the excess heavy ions now." Belatedly he realized that the Science Officer wasn't visible at the main console. The upheaval had probably thrown her for a loop the same as it had him. Once the reactor was secure, he crossed to check on her.

Weir had been tossed against the primary data bank module and knocked unconscious. She was already coming around as Fawkes knelt beside her. "Don't try to move yet," he said, noticing the bad bruise on her forehead and looking for a first aid kit.

"I'm all right, sir," she said, trying to sit up. She was looking past him with a quizzical expression on her face. "At least I think I am."

Fawkes turned. A dozen or more men and women in civilian clothes were standing outside the doorway, looking happy to be there. One woman with long hair, bearing a remarkable resemblance to the specter which had haunted them for the last hour, rushed forward in advance of them. "No, you're not hallucinating," she said to Fawkes. "We were all of us trapped in interphase when the conduit underwent particle imbalance."

Weir looked up. "Dr. Boylan, I presume?"

The woman ran her eyes over the Science Officer's blue and black Starfleet uniform, a little worse for wear after what she had been through. "You got my message."

Weir smiled. "Yes, I did."

>>>THE END.