"The Lion Sleeps Tonight"

[Atoz 77]

>>>THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT

Cal Hoygens woke up at 0500, feeling tense and tired the way he did every morning these days. It felt hot inside the cargo carrier, even though he knew that the environmental controls were working. The engineer rolled over restlessly in his bunk, but he knew he wasn't going to get back to sleep. Might as well get up, get dressed, and see how much the damage was.

He opened the door of his tiny cabin carefully so as not to awaken the others stacked in their bunks -- as a senior engineer, he rated a cabin to himself. As he did so, he wondered how many of them were lying awake, waiting for the sun to come up, wondering when Commander Hale was finally going to get fed up and call Starfleet for help. Making his way to the galley, Hoygens turned on the replicator and got himself a cup of coffee. Breakfast could wait. He wanted to check on Claiton first.

Hoygens slid open the door to outside and immediately the muggy tropical heat engulfed him like a pair of invisible arms. It was still dark out, but the compound was covered with a thick white blanket of fog. "Frag it!" he cursed. The stuff was like a rolling cloud. He could make out the shape of Container #3 and a bare suggestion of Container #4, and he couldn't even see the other three, let alone the construction site.

Then he became aware of the drums, beating in that steady, unhurried way which Hoygens had gotten so used to and grown to hate. It wasn't a simple tom-tom. The rhythm had an annoying, slightly off beat bum-bumpty-BUMP-bum that really got on your nerves after awhile. The drums throbbed in the thick atmosphere of the jungle, resonating in the engineer's head like a toothache.

He made his way quickly through the fog to Container #6 and rapped sharply on the door before he opened it. You didn't just snatch open a door at five in the morning these days, not unless you wanted to get shot. "Claiton?" he called as he stepped inside. "Everything all right?"

"Oh yeah, just grand, boss," the technician said sarcastically, easing her finger off the trigger of the phaser she was holding. "The drums started around three o'clock. Off and on since then."

"Kalla!" Hoygens hissed. "I hate that witch! Seen anyone around the compound?" He sounded almost eager. Just let him catch her someplace she shouldn't be and--

"Not a peep," Claiton said, gesturing toward the sensor station which she been watching for the past four hours. The compound was protected by low-level repulsion field to keep out insects and small animals, but knowing of the Kalla's often-expressed hostility toward the settlement, someone was detailed to keep watch all night just the same.

"Nobody?" Hoygens said incredulously. Just then, the drums stopped. The silence was eerie.

Hoygens cleared his throat. "Okay, Claiton. I'll take over until daybreak. Why don't you go get some breakfast?"

"Thanks, Mr. Hoygens," she said. The technician shivered as she got out of the chair, leading Hoygens to really look at her gaunt face, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep.

"You don't look so good, Ires," he said. Of course in the month they had been here, they had all come down with minor agues and complaints, so that was nothing new.

"I'm just beat," the technician replied, slumping back into the chair. "I'll be okay after some sleep."

"Better get Taggert to look at you, after you've had breakfast.

"You're the boss," she said with a brave smile. This time she made it to the door, leaving the phaser behind.

Hoygens left the door ajar as he slipped into the chair, looking at the sensor display. He could see the solid rectangular shapes of the expedition's six cargo containers, plus the four buildings they had been laboring to construct. He could see pings from myriads of lower life forms, dotted all through the surrounding jungle but keeping clear of the almost perfect circle of the repulsion field. Inside that field, he could see exactly one blip, representing Ires Claiton as she made her way back toward Container #3.

Touching a couple of control buttons, Hoygens expanded the range of the sensor sweep. Further up the river about seven kilometers was the native village. The Karuthians had been friendly enough at first, although they didn't understand exactly what the Federation people wanted in the jungle. But they were willing to show the explorers around. All but Kalla and her cronies, that is.

But there, less than a kilometer from the compound, Hoygens spotted a small cluster of blips that represented humanoid life forms, around a hot spot which could only be a fire. That must be where the drummers were located. Hoygens ground his teeth. If only Commander Hale would allow it, he'd love to take a couple of men with phasers out there one night and--

"EEEEEE!" A woman's scream cut through his thoughts. Claiton! The engineer's eyes snapped across the sensor screen and immediately picked out the blip that represented the technician. She seemed all alone in the middle of the compound. "EEEEE!" the scream shrieked again.

Hoygens hit the alert button and instantly lunged out the door of the cargo carrier. "Claiton!" he shouted. He ran through the fog toward Container #3, and it's huge rectangular shape loomed ahead of him. But where was the girl? "CLAITON!"

People were pouring outside the containers now in response to the alert signal. Hoygens was startled to realize that the fog had just that suddenly lifted. He could see the entire compound, lit up quite clearly by the lights on both ends of each container. He could see the tall trees of the jungle, completely surrounding the compound like still, silent giants. But he could not see Claiton anywhere. She was gone.

[Atoz 77]

Stardate 53875.9: The Odysseus has arrived at Karuth I, a newly settled planet in the Sagitta Delta sector. Or perhaps I should say newly settled by the Federation, since according to the ship's database, it already has a native humanoid population, classified as level 2 on the industrial/technological scale. And yet for some reason, the Federation has allowed a group of sixty Alpha Centaurians to establish a temporary colony here.

Captain Atoz materialized in the center of the town a little after noon local time, along with Science Officer Diane Weir and Chief Medical Officer Ben Pierce. Although the transporter technician had warned them, Atoz instantly felt the heat and humidity hit him like a slap in the face after the controlled environment he was used to on the ship. His skin begin perspiring immediately, the moisture wicked away as the smart fabric of his red and black Starfleet uniform adjusted to it.

A fairly large section of rain forest had been cleared of trees and foliage and paved over with thermoconcrete, with a round space in the exact center where Atoz guessed a fountain would eventually be built. Directly in front of him was a neat-looking administration building made of brick with a covered portico and square columns. A pair of two-story residence halls flanked it on either side, plus the skeleton of a third. Thirty or forty colonists were busily working on all four of these buildings -- installing windows and roofing, or carrying equipment back and forth from the cluster of six cargo containers which the colonists were apparently still living in. A couple of pieces of earth-moving equipment were parked underneath a shelter. The compound was surrounded by a three-foot embankment of packed earth which separated it from the nearby river.

"They picked a lovely spot for it," said Weir, her eyes drawn to the tall canopy of trees as she stood primly beside Atoz in her blue and black uniform, a tricorder on her waist.

"What's so great about the tropics?" grumbled Pierce on his other side. "If you asked me, I'd prefer a temperate forest, a rugged coastline, the maple leaves changing colors in the autumn..."

"And North Atlantic winters?" smirked Weir, who came from Canada herself. "Would you wish that on them, too?"

"Absolutely. Nothing gets your blood pumping quite like a good New England winter morning. Frost on the pumpkins, ice on the rivers..."

"I see what you mean," Weir said, swatting at an insect which had started buzzing around her face. "The rain forest must be full of dangerous creatures. You grew up in the tropics, didn't you, Captain?"

"There aren't that many dangerous creatures on Indra II, at least not on land," Atoz said. He spoke a little absently. Watching the colonists at work, something didn't feel right to him. They seemed to be going about their tasks listlessly, almost mechanically. They paused to rest frequently and generally didn't seem to care much about their work. No one seemed to have noticed the three Starfleet officers beaming down in the middle of the town. Finally one of the workers did spot them, made an almost comical double-take, then dropped what he was carrying and scurried off into the administration building. The rest of the colonists took notice of them at the same time and simply stopped working to stare at the three of them.

A moment or two later, two men and a woman emerged from the admin building, their loose-fitting jumpsuits stained with sweat from laboring in the tropical heat all morning. As they came out of the building, they froze in their tracks as their eyes confirmed what the messenger had told them. Then they kept coming, a burly, sandy-haired man in the lead.

"Starfleet?" he snapped, giving Atoz a suspicious look. "What do you want here? Who sent you?"

Atoz exchanged a wry look with Weir. "I'm Captain Seven Atoz of the starship Odysseus," he said mildly, extending his right hand in greeting. "My Science Officer, Diane Weir. Ben Pierce, Ship's Doctor."

The sandy-haired man was still looking at Atoz as if he was an alien who had just fallen out of the sky. "Uh... forgive me, Captain," he said, slowly reaching out and shaking his hand. "It's just that I wasn't expecting... I'm Peter Hale, commander of this expedition. This is Cal Hoygens, senior engineer. Gail Taggert, our doctor."

They exchanged hellos. "But I still don't know what you're doing here," Hale said gruffly.

"Starfleet is responsible for the safety of Federation citizens, Mr. Hale," Atoz said. "This settlement is within my exploration area, so Admiral Sealover asked me to stop by and see how you were getting along. Do you need anything?"

"Well yes!" Hoygens blurted out. "We've got--"

"Shut up, Cal!" Hale snapped. "We don't need help. We can handle our own problems."

"You can't be serious, Hale," Dr. Taggert said wearily. "Twelve people are dead! Ires Claiton is missing! Does it look like we can handle it?"

"Yes we can!" Hale said, his cheeks flushed with anger as he rounded on her. "This is the 24th century! We're not going to be driven away from this planet by some prancing, primitive witch doctor!"

"It's not 'we', it's 'YOU'!" the doctor insisted heatedly. "It's your pride at stake, isn't it? You'll see us all dead before you admit you need help."

"Hale!" said Hoygens, grabbing the leader's arm as he turned violently on Taggert. "Calm down. Nobody's talking about giving up. It's just... this is a starship. Maybe they can do something we haven't thought of."

Atoz, Weir and Pierce had been watching the argument with growing uneasiness. The anger seemed to drain from Hale as he realized that the entire colony had stopped work and were watching him. He snatched his arm away from the engineer.

"All right," he said wearily, rubbing a finger over his eyebrow. "Come with me." Brusquely he turned and went back inside the administration building. The others followed him.

He led them down the half-finished corridors and into his office, which was fully furnished. Once the pocket door had closed behind them, he turned to face them. "We were chartered to establish this settlement on a grant from the BioGen Corporation, to search for new pharmaceuticals. Half of our personnel are chemists or lab technicians. It was supposed to be a breeze. A representative of the Federation Department of Interior had already contacted some of the tribal chiefs in the area, to get permission for a temporary outpost."

"Temporary?" said Atoz. "This building doesn't look temporary."

Hale let out a sigh. "Temporary with an option to renew if we find promising results. We're not taking anything away from the planet. When we discover something, we break down the chemical formula so that it can be synthesized. Look, we've already found a substitute for retilax, without the allergenic side effects. Who knows what we'll find if we stay here long enough? We have more right to this jungle than a tribe of primitives who aren't even using it."

Atoz was taken aback by the commander's attitude, but he decided not to press that topic just yet. "I take it things didn't work out as easily as you thought?" he said. "You've been here nearly two months and still haven't finished your living quarters."

Dr. Taggert scoffed. "We weren't here six days before we were hit by an illness," she said, pulling her data padd from the pocket of her suit. She quickly located her patient files and handed the device to Dr. Pierce. "Fever, chills, severe anemia. At one point half the colony was in bed, barely able to move."

"Sounds a little like malaria," Pierce said, looking over the records.

"Yeah," Taggert said. "Naturally we screened everyone for parasites in the blood. Nothing. It was persistant, too. It would sweep through the colony every six days, regular as clockwork."

"Some kind of toxin?" Pierce suggested.

"I guess. But I could never pin down where it was coming from. The best I could do was treat the symptoms, keep them warm and replace the hemoglobin loses. Patients would recover, then six days later they'd come down with it again. I had nine people die that way."

"Then there was Gillis," Hoygens said. "He wandered away from camp, to have a swim in the river he said. When we found him, his skin had been peeled off."

"How much skin did he lose?" Pierce asked, searching the files.

"ALL of it," said Hoygens. "Every square centimeter. Two other men went missing at night. When we found them, they weren't recognizable. It looked as if something had swallowed them and regurgitated them. And Ires Claiton--"

"All right, that's enough, Cal!" Hale snapped. "I think they get the picture." He slumped into his chair, looking subdued.

"You have sensors, don't you?" said Atoz. "If there's something that big roaming around the forest, wouldn't you have had some kind of warning?"

"Yes, we have sensors," Hale scoffed. "We've catalogued forty-five species of insects, spiders and scorpions, ten of snake, two of monitor lizards, but nothing -- absolutely nothing remotely large enough to swallow a grown man. Anyway we set up a repulsion field that acts on the central nervous system, supposedly keeping back lower life forms, and someone keeps watch all night."

"Earlier you mentioned a witch doctor," Atoz pointed out.

The term seemed to sting Hale, making him squirm uncomfortably in his chair. Hoygens and Taggert looked at one another, then at the floor.

"Kalla, the village gonga woman," Hale said. "When we first arrived, we met with Madego, the local chief. It took some doing to make him understand that we wanted to set up camp here for a while, to stay here so that we could study the plants. He kept pointing to the hills, which wouldn't have suited our purposes at all. Finally we got him to agree."

Atoz frowned at that. He guessed that there was a lot here that Hale was leaving out, perhaps persuasion, perhaps bribery.

"Then a couple of days later," the commander went on, "we got a visit from Kalla. She's a piece of work, let me tell you. She said this was sacred ground, taboo. There was no way we could stay. Nothing could shift her. We explained that the chief had given his permission, and she said it wasn't his to give. She was the gonga woman, the sorceress. She also hinted that she had ways to punish us, that she could invoke the spirits of their ancestors to make us leave."

"Let me get this straight," said Pierce, looking up from the medical records he had been perusing. "You think the local witch doctor has been casting spells on you?"

Hoygens stiffened. "You haven't heard the drums yet," he said.

[Atoz 77]

Hale and Hoygens pleaded that they had work to get back to, since eleven of the remaining 47 colonists were currently down sick with the mystery illness. Taggert took Pierce to sickbay to see them, and while they were doing that, Atoz and Weir strolled around the compound.

"You didn't say much, Diane," Atoz said.

"I didn't have much to add, sir," the Science Officer said. "At least nothing I thought they'd be interested in hearing. Naturally I have a healthy respect for native customs and folk medicine, but I draw the line at magic and ancestral spirits."

"Hoygens mentioned drums," the captain said. "Could it be something psychosomatic? The power of suggestion?"

"I can't see how the power of suggestion could strip a person's skin off, sir."

"A column of driver ants could do that," Atoz suggested.

"But driver ants would have cleared a path through the entire area. They would have been hard not to notice."

They had come to the dry fountain. Atoz planted one foot on the raised parapet, leaning forward on his knee. "So what's our move, Diane? We could beam down some security, but Hale has sensors and he has phasers, just as we do. He posted guards, and they got nowhere."

"I don't know if more guards are the answer, sir. With all due respect to Mr. Hale... maybe he was focused on the wrong target."

"You're going to suggest we talk to Kalla the sorceress, aren't you?"

"Clearly she knows something about this phenomenon that we don't."

"But we just agreed that neither of us believes in magic," Atoz said.

Weir raised her right eyebrow. "I don't believe I said anything about magic, sir," she said coolly.

Just then Pierce emerged from the cargo container which was doing duty as sickbay and spotted them. "It's just as Dr. Taggert said, Seven," he reported. "Severe anemia and fever. Definitely not malaria or any parasitic infection I know of. I did find a toxin I don't recognize in their blood, though. I'd like to beam up to the ship with some samples and run them through the computer."

"While you're doing that," Atoz said, "Diane and I are going to the native village."

"The village? What good will that do?"

"We won't know until we find out," Atoz said.

"Listen, Seven, be careful. You should know that one of the colonists, Ires Claiton, is missing. She was taken from the compound in the middle of the night. They seem to think the natives are responsible. I don't know about that, but watch your step."

Atoz tapped his comm badge. "Atoz to Odysseus. Three to beam up."

***

The village was seven kilometers away, so rather than blunder around in the jungle paths and most likely getting lost, Atoz first beamed up to the ship. As Pierce headed for Sickbay to analyze his samples, Atoz called up the bridge and filled in his First Officer on what had been going on, and what his plans were.

"I hope you don't mind me telling you, Captain," Commander Fawkes said, "that this sounds like a slightly dangerous stunt to me."

"Oh I don't mind you telling me at all," Atoz replied. "It struck me as a little on the hazardous side, too. I trust you to keep an eye out for us."

"I'll do that, sir."

"I located that village for you, Captain," said Lt. Blackadder, the transporter technician. "It's not on the river at all, actually. It sits on the ridge, two hundred meters above the valley floor. Right there." She pointed to the plotting screen.

"All right then," Atoz said. "Set us down about fifty meters from the village, taking care that we don't materialize within sight of anyone if you can help it."

"I think I can manage that, sir," the technician said, reaching across her panel to synchronize the pattern buffers as Atoz and Weir stepped back onto the pads. "When you materialize, the village will just a smidge to your west-northwest. Follow the sun and you shouldn't have any problems."

"Let's hope not, lieutenant." Atoz glanced across at Weir. "You don't have to come along, Diane, if you'd rather..."

"As you pointed out, it was my idea, sir," the Science Officer said. "And don't think I'm going to let you walk into a potentially dangerous situation without backup."

Atoz faced the transporter console. "Energize, lieutenant."

Atoz and Weir materialized on an overgrown path which was difficult to make out at first. The undergrowth was so thick that even fifty meters from the village, they couldn't see any sign of it, even though they could hear the hollow sound of drums beating, too low in pitch to allow them to identify precisely where they were coming from.

They set out walking, following the sun, and presently they encountered a line of huts raised about two meters off the ground on stilts. Several fat, domesticated birds were grubbing about in the undergrowth, taking no notice of them. No one else was in sight.

By now they could hear voices mixed in with the sound of the drums, a dozen or more performing some kind of chant. Not taking the trouble to be cautious, they proceeded past a few more huts until they reached the center of the village, where a crowd of natives were standing in a circle, stamping their feet while they chanted in accompaniment to the drums. In the middle of the circle, half a dozen males were drumming with their hands on hollow logs, while three or four females were dancing, their bodies glistening with perspiration.

This was Atoz and Weir's first look at the natives. They were humanoids with blue skin, dark masses of hair, and large, seemingly luminous eyes. Their arms and legs were slightly longer and more graceful than those of humans, their skulls slightly more elongated, tapering in the front to almost form a snout. They were quite handsome creatures, dressed in loincloths and kilts made of some course cloth. They were most definitely mammals, and the females seemed to have no inhibitions against showing the evidence.

The music was spellbinding. Atoz couldn't help getting caught up in the infectious rhythm. He wanted to stamp his feet to the beat along with the natives. Fascinated, he watched the dancers as they lost themselves in the music. Weir, less interested in cultural anthropology than her captain, kept her hand on the phaser at her side, looking over her shoulder nervously in case someone spotted them.

At last someone did spot them. The music came to an abrupt halt -- although that may have been simply the ceremony coming to an end. At any rate, one of the natives noticed the two Starfleet officers in their midst. The awareness seemed to ripple through the crowd like a spontaneous wave. One of the natives ran across the clearing and disappeared into a hut, while the others all stared at Atoz and Weir as if they were aliens who had just dropped from the sky. Atoz was struck by how familiar their reaction was -- it was exactly the same greeting they had received from the Federation colonists.

"Um... hi," Atoz said, stepping slowly into the center of the area. "We don't mean to interrupt. We just want to speak with Kalla."

If his universal translator was working, the natives showed no sign of it. None of them said a word. They acted as if they were waiting for something to happen.

"I am Kalla!" She was beautiful, this primitive, barefoot goddess. There were streaks of white paint on her arms and on her face, bold against her blue skin and accentuating her already high cheekbones. She was dressed in a sort of sleeveless robe, open in the front to expose her chest. Amulets hung between her breasts. She was grinning at the two Starfleet officers, her broad smile showing strong white teeth. "I have been waiting for you."

Atoz thought this was unlikely, but a witch doctor would naturally want to appear all-knowing to her audience. "My name is Atoz," he said. "This is Diane Weir. We've come to talk to you about our people's encampment--"

"I know who you are, Chieftain Atoz," the gonga woman interrupted. "I know why you have come." She gestured upward toward the forest canopy far overhead. "The spirits have told me how you arrived in your magic canoe. They told me how you visited your servant Hale. What they do not tell me is why you persist in your foolishness." She strolled back inside her hut, gesturing toward the two officers that they should follow. They did.

The interior of the hut was full of artifacts -- animal skins, displays of feathers and bones, open wooden cabinets full of painted gourds, jars and candles. Kalla took a long iron knife and squatted on the grass-covered floor. Atoz tried not to look at what was exposed between her legs as he sat down cross-legged, and Weir followed his example.

"When I spoke to Hale," Kalla said, thrusting at the ground with her knife, "he told me that he had magic superior to mine. Have you also come to threaten me with your magic? Have you come to tell me how superior you are?" Beside him, Atoz could feel Weir tense, fingering her phaser as she watched the movements of the knife.

"I generally find threats to be more trouble than they're worth," he said. "As for our superiority, that's debatable at best. What I have come to do is try to understand."

"Understand this, Chieftain Atoz," the sorceress said. "This valley is taboo. It is the home of the Omol."

Atoz frowned, concerned that his universal translator had not translated "Omol". It had had no trouble with the word "spirit" for example, or with the word "taboo".

"Omol?" he said. "What is that?"

"Omol is Omol." Kalla gave a sly glance at Weir, then she shifted her position on the floor of the hut so that she could reach into a cabinet to their left. Carefully she lifted out a curiously shaped white candle and passed it to Atoz.

"Just a moment, Captain," Weir said sharply, taking it from him. The candle had felt waxy, leaving his fingers feeling oily. The Science Officer rubbed her forefinger and middle finger with her thumb, sniffing. "I thought so. The candle has been treated with a mildly toxic vegetable oil. If you had slept with it burning nearby, you would probably have had hallucinogenic dreams." She handed the candle back to Kalla. "Thank you but no thank you."

The sorceress smiled. "This is your gonga woman, Chieftain Atoz?" she asked. "She protects you?" She was asking if Weir was his medicine woman, his witch doctor.

"Yes, I am," Weir said defiantly.

Kalla clapped her hands loudly twice. Two villagers came into the hut carrying a large bundle between them wrapped in heavy cloth. They set it down on the floor and fell reverently to their knees. The sorceress reached over and yanked back part of the covering. The bundle was a woman, a white-skinned woman with fragments of a loose, gray-green jumpsuit clinging to her.

"What happened?" Atoz said suspiciously, scrambling to his knees while Weir rushed over, flipping out her tricorder and scanning the body.

"She's dead, sir," the Science Officer said. "Probably the missing colonist Ben mentioned. Circulatory collapse, shock. She's been completely drained of blood."

"We found her this way," Kalla said, "wandering in the jungle. We tried to help her, but she perished. The Omol was evidently hungry."

"The Omol?" Atoz echoed. "You weren't threatening Hale, you were trying to warn him about this, weren't you?"

"Do not stay in the valley, Chieftain Atoz," the gonga woman said. "Death walks there. Death has always walked there."

[Atoz 77]

Without standing on ceremony, Atoz and Weir started back down the path at a brisk walk which often verged on a run. "The picture I'm getting of Omol," Atoz said, "is not of a disease at all, but some kind of life form, which can somehow insert a toxin into the bloodstream and suck hemoglobin straight through the skin."

"In some cases, proteins also, sir," Weir agreed, "if you remember the men who were found with their skin dissolved. It apparently fed on the colonists slowly at first, taking just enough hemoglobin to give them anemia. Then as it grew bolder, it got hungrier."

"But how could it do all that without once being seen? The colonists have sensors."

"They have tricorders, sir," Weir corrected. "I'm sure our ship's sensors could do better. In any case, they didn't know what to look for. If the life form can somehow camouflage itself..."

They had come to the edge of the ridge, looking down a steep cliff face at the river below. It was easy to make out the rectangular section of canopy which the colonists had cut down in building their campsite, still some five or six kilometers away. A dense white mist was forming about half a kilometer upriver, almost as thick as smoke.

"It's the middle of the afternoon," Weir said, whipping out her tricorder. "The atmospheric conditions aren't right for fog." For a moment, her fingers danced over the device, scanning and analyzing. "The cloud contains various toxic organic elements and compounds. I'd say we've found Omol, Captain."

"A gaseous life form?" Atoz said incredulously. Then he realized that if it were stretched thin enough, it would easily be mistaken for a fogbank. Who would be afraid of fog?

"I'm not sure if it qualifies as a life form, sir," Weir said, "but it seems to be acting like one."

"And it's heading purposefully toward the compound," Atoz said, tapping his comm badge. "Atoz to Odysseus. Two to beam up, directly to the bridge, Mr. Blackadder."

***

Ben Pierce, crouching beside the bunk built into the bulkhead of the cargo container, checked the pupillary response of the patient lying there, while his other hand clutched the man's clammy wrist, simultaneously feeling the strength of his pulse and his body temperature. Even though the medical tricorder that Dr. Taggert was using gave much more accurate and precise readings, he had learned long ago that patients were vastly reassured by the physical touch of a physician. "You look fit as a fiddle to me," he said with a grin, "ready to go five rounds with a Klingon and then take on his sister the rest of the night."

"Blood oxygen level has risen 12%," Dr. Taggert said, her eyes on her tricorder, "kidney function normal. How do you feel, Johannsen?"

"I feel okay," the patient said.

"Dr. Pierce's patented snake oil does it again!" Pierce said, handing the hypospray to Dr. Taggert. "Just keep an eye on their electrolyte balance. I'll bring some more as soon as my lab can replicate it." He had beamed down again fifteen minutes earlier, having completed his analysis of the blood work and come up with a treatment that would neutralize the toxins he had found in the samples.

"I really appreciate your help, doctor," Dr. Taggert said, folding her tricorder as the two of them made their way through the cargo container, checking on the other patients. "We came equipped with anti-toxins for all the routine tropical diseases and parasites, but I can see now that I wasn't prepared to handle the unexpected."

"When you live on a starship," Pierce said, "the unexpected is your normal routine."

They emerged outside into the compound again just as Hale came striding up, followed by Hoygens and three other men, all wearing phaser sidearms. "What's the story?" Hale said to Pierce, frowning. "I thought you had beamed back up with your captain."

"He's been helping treat the sick ones, Peter," Dr. Taggert said. "They're going to be all right, thanks to him. Where are you going?"

Hale slapped the phaser on his hip. "We're just getting the compound secured for the evening. If those drums start up again tonight, I'm going to go have a word or two with Kalla."

"A word or two?" said Pierce, "with a phaser in your hand? I don't mean to tell you your job, commander, but that's not going to help. You'd be better advised to let Captain Atoz handle it."

"Stay out of it, doctor," Hale scoffed, "if you know what's good for you. Come on, guys," he added to the four men with him. "Hoygens, I want you and Gillespie on the East quadrant. That way we can flank them. You others come with m--"

He broke off as suddenly they all became aware of a cloud of thick white smoke appearing from the direction of upriver, coming over the low embankment and drifting slowly toward them.

"What's that?" said Gillespie. "Have they set the forest on fire?"

"No," said Hoygens slowly. "It's moving against the wind."

"Nonsense," Hale said sternly. "It's some trick of the light. Montes, come with me. The rest of you stay here." He drew his phaser and marched off directly toward the cloud, with the other man at his side.

***

On the bridge of the Odysseus, Atoz ordered a visual display of the compound, while Weir had slid quickly behind the Sciences station. On the main viewscreen, they could all see the white cloud gliding slowly toward the cluster of cargo containers where Pierce and the other colonists were standing.

"What's Pierce doing down there?" the Captain said, exasperated. "Never mind. Don't answer that. He's being Pierce."

"The object is approximately 70 cubic meters, density variable," reported Lt. Rosh at the Tactical station. "Moving forward at a rate of one point four meters per second."

"How is it able to move against the wind?" asked Fawkes.

"I am not sure, Commander," the Eminian replied. "There appears to be some sort of thermodynamic chemical exchange taking place."

"It's extraordinary," said Weir, looking up from her console. "It's using gravity as a propulsion system. Essentially the substance of the cloud is in a continual cyclic freefall, the chemical exchange fueling its forward motion."

"But what holds it together?" Atoz asked. "What gives it coherence?"

"I'll have to get back to you on that, sir," said Weir, her fingers dancing over the controls of her console. "I've never seen anything like this before."

***

Hale and Montes moved cautiously into the white cloud, phasers at the ready as they peered carefully to both sides in order to locate the source of the smoke, if smoke was what it was. Funnily enough, it didn't smell like wood smoke. It smelled sweet, like honeysuckle. Pierce, Taggert and the others watched nervously, unaware that the cloud itself was the danger.

Abruptly Hale began to choke. He waved his free hand back and forth in front of his face, thinking that it was just wood smoke and he could clear it away. But it was worse that mere smoke. Suddenly couldn't breathe at all. He dropped his phaser, clutching at his throat now with both hands, his lungs burning as though he were breathing acid. Montes stumbled to his knees, gasping for air.

"Hey! What's happening?" Pierce said. The men were being drained of blood before his very eyes! Instinctively he started to dart forward to help them, but Taggert grabbed his arm to prevent him.

"No! It's too late!" she cried, as Hale and Montes both dropped to the ground, their skin looking pale white, lifeless and half-melted as though they had been partly digested.

After pausing for that few seconds, the cloud began to drift forward again. Hoygens aimed his phaser at it and opened fire. The bright blue beam stabbed through the white mist and hit one of the trees behind it, blasting the wood to pieces. The other two men fired as well, but the cloud kept coming. Hoygens flicked open the ephone attached to his wrist. "Perimeter alert!" he shouted. "Everyone inside! Seal off the doors and vents! Quickly!"

Taggert and Pierce ran for it. They could see the other colonists running for safety in the cargo containers. But from where they were, the administration building under construction was much closer and downhill. Pierce ran that way, with Taggert right behind him. Hoygens and the other two men made a fighting retreat, firing their phasers that seemed to have little to no effect. One of the men was too slow; the cloud rolled around him, engulfing him, and instantly he began to scream as if he was on fire. "Run!" Hoygens yelled, giving the other man, Gillespie, a shove.

Pierce made it through the sliding doors of the admin building, pausing to hold the doors open for the others. "Keep moving!" Taggert panted, running past him almost out of breath. Pierce looked up and saw that the clerestory windows overlooking the lobby hadn't been installed yet. The building was wide open! He followed Taggert as she dashed down the corridor and into Hale's office. The pocket door opened for them, and no sooner had they made it inside that Gillespie and Hoygens joined them, leaping through the doorway as the pocket door hissed shut behind him.

Hoygens engaged the lock and instantly went to the environmental controls, closing off the ventilation system and sealing the room off. Then he slumped against the bulkhead, speaking into his wrist phone. "This is Hoygens in the admin building. Report! Is everyone all right? Did everyone make it inside?"

While he did that, Pierce, Taggert, and Gillespie went to the window and watched breathlessly as the cloud surrounded the entire building. But it couldn't seem to get at them.

"The room is airtight," Hoygens panted. "With the ventilation turned off, it shouldn't be able to get in. We ought to be okay for a while."

Taggert looked frightened. "But there's no back-up oxygen system. Without outside ventilation, we'll eventually suffocate."

"It's leaving," said Gillespie. And sure enough the cloud was thinning out. The trapped people could see it rolling back up the hillside to drape itself around the cargo containers, where most of the other colonists had taken shelter.

"Will they be all right?" asked Pierce.

"They should be, as long as they don't panic," Hoygens said. "What the hell IS that thing? Has it been here all this time, and we didn't realize it?"

Pierce suddenly remembered his comm badge and tapped it. "Pierce to Odysseus. Can you hear me? Beam us out of here!"

The device responded with the reassuring voice of Captain Atoz. "Stand by, Hawkeye. We'll get you out of there."

"Won't work," Hoygens said regretfully. "The roof insulation includes an iridium grid, which incidently blocks transporter sensors. When the building is finished, we're going to cut conduits through it to allow transport, but..."

[Atoz 77]

"It's no use, Captain," said Rosh at Tactical. "Unable to make transporter contact."

Atoz paced back and forth across the bridge of the Odysseus, trying to come up with a plan. "Then we'll have to somehow force the cloud to move away. Have you come up with anything yet, Diane?"

"I'm detecting traces of dikoronium in the heart of the cloud," said the Science Officer, "forming an integrated latticework of molecules. This structure keeps the various elements that make up the cloud bound together electromagnetically. It might be analogous to a central nervous system or backbone."

"Do you mean the cloud is alive?" said Fawkes, not quite up to speed yet.

"Not the way we would define alive. It can feed, grow, even react to its environment, but it lacks the essential diversity of structure that characterizes a true life form."

"If it reacts to its environment," Fawkes said, "maybe we could send down an away team to lure it away from the building -- at least long enough for Dr. Pierce and the others to escape."

"Did those phasers have any effect on it at all?" Atoz asked. "They should have damaged it at least."

"Parts of it suffered damage," Weir said, "but it's capable of reforming almost instantly, converting elements in the air around it. The only way to hurt it would be to destroy the dikoronium lattice, and that means destroying the entire cloud at once in a fireball. Otherwise it will simply regenerate itself."

Atoz sat down in the command chair. "I'm not going to drop a photon torpedo on the building. Give me another option."

"Plasma torches," said Rosh, thinking out loud. "They might be able to accomplish the same thing."

"I was just thinking that," Fawkes agreed. "Three or four hitting it simultaneously would burn it before it had the chance to regenerate."

Atoz hesitated, trying to remember what Kalla had told him, trying to think through the implications. The villagers had obviously avoided the valley because they knew about the presence of the Omol. As long as it had only small animals to feed on, it was no danger because it couldn't reach them up on the ridge. But the colonists had given it a virtual feast. It had grown so large now that it had become a real danger to Kalla and her tribe, and eventually to the entire planet.

"All right, Charles," he said, making up his mind. "Take an away team and see what you can do."

"Mr. Rosh, you're with me," Fawkes said briskly, heading for the turbolift.

***

"What's taking so long?" Gillespie moaned, pacing back and forth nervously. "The air in here isn't going to last forever. Why aren't they doing anything?"

"Just relax," Pierce said, perched on the corner of Hale's desk. "They're doing everything they can." Hoygens was behind the desk leaning back in the chair; Taggert was sitting crosslegged on the floor next to the door. With the ventilation system shut off, all four of them were sweating.

"Yeah, but they're up there, safe in that starship," the other man said, returning restlessly to the window and peering outside again.

"Knock it off, Gillespie," said Hoygens. "It's bad enough without you going on about it. They'll come for us when they have a plan."

"Hey, it's gone," Gillespie said, brightening up. "Now's our chance."

"What are you talking about?" said Pierce, joining him at the window. Surely enough, there was no sign of the cloud around the cargo containers, as far as he could see.

Gillespie was already at the door, unlocking it. The door slid back into its pocket, and he was gone before anyone could stop him.

"Get back here!" hissed Hoygens, scrambling after him. Pierce and Taggert followed.

Gillespie trotted quickly along the corridor to the main doors of the admin building. The doors slid open, and through them they could all see the courtyard with its dry fountain. There was no sign of the cloud. Clutching his phaser in his hand, Gillespie ran outside. He turned around full circle...

That was when the cloud pounced, pouring down over the peak of the roof, engulfing Gillespie before he had the chance to fire. He screamed as the cloud ate him alive, dissolving his skin as it drained the blood from his body. The other three stood, stricken with horror by the sight.

Suddenly from out of nowhere a searing flame hit the cloud. Fawkes and Lt. Blackadder had charged to the top of the low embankment, each carrying a short-barreled plasma torch. The intense heat of the red beams chewed away at the edge of the cloud, eroding and dissolving it. The cloud reacted by turning toward them, but as it lost more of its substance, it became a crescent shape, the two horns curling like the arms of a monster determined to embrace them.

At this point Rosh and Petty Officer Clausen appeared around the corner of the portico. The cloud swirled and struck back, a thick strand of its substance reaching out like a tentacle toward the two of them. Clausen was engulfed, choking as the Eminian threw himself forward, fighting it off with his plasma torch. Fawkes and Blackadder charged, pressing upon its flank and drawing its attention again while Rosh pulled the crewman to safety. Now the cloud seemed to change its mind, seeking to escape the withering heat of the plasma torches. But the only refuge available was the building itself. Smoothly it glided toward the entrance where Pierce, Hoygens and Taggert were standing. They turned and ran down the corridor, and the cloud oozed after them.

Down the broad main hallway, they bypassed the turn toward Hale's office and made for the maze of laboratories on the other wing of the building. Pierce's heart was pounding in his chest as Taggert led them into an examination room and let the pocket door slide shut behind them. Then she kept going through the door on the opposite side of the room, into another corridor.

"This leads to the chem lab," she explained breathlessly. "We can get out through the break room on that side."

But as they turned the corner, they found the way blocked by a haze of white mist pouring down from the ventilator mesh up near the ceiling. The cloud had cut them off.

"Is there another way out of here?" Pierce asked, backing away.

"Only back the way we came," Taggert gulped. They all felt spent from running. Meanwhile the cloud was rapidly gathering itself in, becoming denser by the second as it rolled forward. Hoygens fired his phaser, blasting a hole through the wall behind it, but not harming the cloud in the slightest. The curling white arm arched forward, reaching out to embrace him.

"Hit the deck!" shouted Fawkes, lunging around the corner with Blackadder at his side. Pierce, Taggert and Hoygens dropped flat on the floor as the two Starfleet officers opened fire with their plasma torches. Flames roared as the two heat beams leaped out like dragons' breath, devouring the nebulous thing. Pierce and Hoygens looked up hopefully as it disappeared.

"Stay down!" the First Officer grimly cautioned them. "Blackadder?"

"Scanning, sir." The lieutenant rested her plasma torch on her left hip as she flipped open her tricorder with her other hand and awkwardly keyed in the commands for a sensor sweep. "No evidence of dikoronium, Commander. I'd say we got it right proper."

Fawkes tapped his comm badge. "Fawkes to Rosh. Any sign of it on your end?"

"Negative, Commander," came the reply. "All clear."

***

Captain's log, Stardate 53876.8: Extensive sensor scans have failed to turn up any further signs of dikoronium in the planet's crust. Science Officer Weir theorizes that it must have arrived from a random meteoroid impact, and therefore the chances of another such gaseous pseudo-lifeform appearing are nil.

In the dawn of a new morning, Captain Atoz stood on the circle of thermoconcrete in front of the administration building, the fountain now finished and bubbling merrily in the sunlight. Weir and Pierce were with him.

"I don't mean to sound like a prig, captain," Hoygens said, "but you're SURE there aren't any more of those things around?"

"How many times does he have to say it, Cal?" Taggert laughed. "No! I never even considered the possibility of a gaseous life-form, they're so rare."

"Well, I'm just saying," the engineer said. "Without that thing around, we might just make a go of this. Sixteen people lost, including the commander of the expedition... We owe it to them to give it our best shot."

"If you want my advice," Atoz said, "be considerate of your neighbors. They were trying to help you."

"I did misjudge them," admitted Hoygens. "Speak of the devil. It looks like Madego himself!"

A tall, broad-chested native had appeared at the edge of the clearing, leading a procession of about a hundred natives. Kalla followed close behind him. He marched over the low embankment and past the fountain, giving it an amazed look, then made a greeting gesture with both hands toward Hoygens.

"May the sun shine on you, friends from afar!" the chief said. "We have come to say farewell, and hope that you prosper until we see you again."

"I hope you prosper as well, Madego," Hoygens said. "But... but why are you leaving?"

"We dwell in this place for three tahls," the chief said, "in order to pay respect to the spirits of our ancestors, and then we must return to our lands by the water where our farmlands grow. But next year we will return, never fear. We hope to find you here."

He turned to look at Atoz. "Chieftain Atoz! My gonga woman tells me that you by yourself have vanquished the Omol and driven him away. Is this true?"

Atoz wasn't sure how to respond to this. Kalla was giving him a look that seemed to go straight through him to his heart. What if the thing was sacred to them? But he had the feeling that it wouldn't be of any use to lie. "I had help, chieftain Madego," he said modestly. "It was done by my warriors."

"You are twice blessed then, to have such warriors," the chief said. "And now we must go. May the sun shine and the rains come in due season." He turned, and the procession followed him back out of the compound.

As Kalla came abreast of the Starfleet officers, she paused and looked Atoz straight in the eye. Then she turned to Weir, standing beside him. "Your magic was better than mine, after all, Dianeweir," she said, giving the Science Officer a slight bow. Taking an amulet from her own neck, she gracefully slipped it around Weir's neck. "Keep him safe, gonga woman," she whispered.

Weir nodded. "I'll do my very best." Then she watched as the procession left the clearing and disappeared into the jungle.

The end >>>>>>>>>