THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST Page 11

  Because of her first-place standing in her class, Moll Enor had also been able to choose to come to the Trifid ring nebula. From the science station, Moll liked to watch the toroid bands of color caused by the centrifugal action of the gases. The bands were separated into turquoise blue darkening to purple in the center, surrounded by a wide band of yellow, and thinner bands of red and green on the outer edge.

  The colors were so brilliant that the first time she entered the gas cloud, she expected it to appear opaque inside. Instead, the interior shimmered with luminous discharges arcing between the tumbling asteroids, creating a delicate tracery of fine molecular chains, endlessly twisting and tangling together.

  Her station signaled when data was received from Mantegna’s internal synchrotron scan. Electrons moving at nearly the speed of light inevitably leaked into the Sagittarius as they spiraled about the magnetic field of the nebula. The other cadets were getting negligent with the Starfleet protocol of manually confirming the automatic scans, but it was necessary, since synchrotron radiation often distorted scanner readings.

  Moll hadn’t told them that Trill who were joined with the vermiform symbiont were particularly sensitive to annular phase transitions. Some joined Trill weren’t able to use the transporter system. She didn’t have that problem, but she didn’t want to find out the hard way that the Enor symbiont was sensistive to higher levels of synchrotron radiation.

  Mantegna muttered something as he abruptly began running a systems diagnostic check.

  “What’s wrong?” Wu asked.

  Mantegna stood up to activate the power boost. “I’m trying to find out. The comm link won’t open.”

  “Maybe something’s wrong with the phase buffers on the emitters,” Wukee suggested. “Or the ones on the relay. Remember last week—”

  “If you would give me a moment,” Mantegna interrupted, “I’ll tell you where the malfunction is. . . .” Campbell turned along with Moll as Mantegna thoughtfully murmured, “Hmm . . .” over the data.

  “Well? Are you going to tell us?” Wukee asked insistently.

  Mantegna reseated himself at the navigation console. “The problem is in the communications relay.” He scanned for the nearest relay buoy.

  Since Moll received the same telemetry report on the asteroids, she knew the nearest relay was in the tertiary phase layer of the nebula—what appeared to be the thick yellow ring from the exterior. Inside, there was no difference in the twinkling brightness of layers upon layers of discharge filaments that constantly appeared and disappeared between the asteroids. But cadet research teams were only supposed to catalog and tag asteroids in the outer red and green bands, because the turbulence of the magnetic field increased exponentially toward the gravity well.

  Mantegna asked Moll, “When will the next science team come through this section?”

  They all knew that was the sort of question she could answer. Having once seen their assignment rotations, she would remember everyone’s schedule. Suddenly, Moll felt as if the science pod was too crowded for four people and her eidetic memory.

  “Not until next quarter,” she said, tight-lipped. “They just came through this section.”

  Satisfied, Mantegna turned back to the helm to plot their course to the nearest relay buoy. He input the new coordinates to take the science pod in. “We’re going into the tertiary zone.”

  “I’ll reroute the comm to another relay buoy and notify the station,” Moll agreed.

  But Wukee sounded concerned as he asked, “Aren’t we supposed to stay out of there?”

  Mantegna raised his brows. “Communication systems have priority! Remember the regulations manual they gave us? What if a science pod got caught in a burst current and couldn’t get a signal out because the relay was malfunctioning?”

  Moll said reasonably, “Then they would divert their comm-link to another relay, as I just did.”

  Mantegna didn’t deign to reply. He was too pleased by the break in their routine. Truth to tell, they all were. Moll felt a rush of anticipation at doing something new—an eager dread of not knowing, wanting to know, but uncertain without information to fall back on.

  So Moll was more wary than the others, and was the first to notice that something odd was happening. There were more asteroids in the tertiary phase, and they were moving differently. The science pod closed in, but Moll was still unable to see the buoy.

  “Shields at maximum,” Mantegna announced.

  The pod slowed, letting their forcefield nudge away the jostling asteroids. Moll instinctively hunched down as a mountain-sized planetoid grazed overhead, shuddering as it impacted with another large asteroid, crushing a smaller boulder in between with a spray of energy sparks. Debris arched toward them, and the kinetic particles rocked the pod despite its stabalizers.

  “Merdu!” Wu exclaimed, as they all shielded their eyes from the burst of light.

  “Boost power to rear shields,” Mantegna called out, barely keeping his voice from cracking.

  Even Campbell was sneaking wide-eyed glances at the screen as he tried to adjust the deflectors to ward off asteroids.

  “The buoy must have been destroyed!” Wukee gasped out. “We should go back—”

  “No,” Moll denied. “I’ve still got the subspace signal on telemetry.”

  Incredulously, Wu asked, “How could it survive—”

  “There!” Moll exclaimed, pointing at the screen. “There’s a break in the asteroids. . . .”

  The deflectors of their pod were buffeted as they finally broke into the calm sphere at the heart of the spiraling asteroids. The communications buoy was spinning on its axis in the very center, with what appeared to be an asteroid stuck to it. They were whipping around so fast that the two blurred together.

  As they moved in closer, Moll warned, “Don’t get caught in the vortex.”

  “We’re in the magnetic calm between the two solenoids,” Mantegna dismissed. “It looks like we’ve got a live one here.”

  Campbell crouched over his console as if snatching the data off as it appeared. “Radius approximately ten meters.”

  Wukee was shaking his head over the science console. “The spin is disrupting our sensors. I can’t get a lock on it.”

  The other cadets kept glancing at Moll, even Mantegna, though he affected an air of calm. Self-consciously, Moll said, “We should notify the station immediately.”

  “We have another problem,” Campbell spoke up. “This entire vortex is moving through the tertiary phase, spiraling toward the inner phases.”

  Moll read the vector analysis with a quick glance. “He’s right. And we’re picking up speed.”

  Mantegna checked navigational sensors. “We’re in a primary jet stream.”

  “I’ve done my sensor sweeps, let’s get out of here,” Wu suggested. Mantegna raised one brow at Wukee, a silent reminder that he was the one in charge. His hands slowed as he deliberately reversed the coordinates to return them from where they came.

  Moll accessed the sensor logs, scanning the data, while Mantegna announced, “One quarter impulse power.”

  “Wait!” Moll called out, running a computer analysis to confirm her findings. “I’m reading a subspace beacon on the tag emitter. It’s very faint, but it’s there. Number 09Alpha-99B4.”

  Wukee whistled. “Why such a high number?”

  Mantegna started to check the tag inventory, but Moll already knew what it was. The ultimate find.

  “It’s a piece of planetary crust,” she told the others. “One of the original science teams found it in the inner band, but they had to jettison it when a charge arced between them. They tagged it and went back with a hyper forcefield, but it was gone.”

  “A rogue asteroid,” Wu said admiringly.

  “It’s more than that,” Moll insisted. “They found evidence of panspermia embedded in the matter. They’ve been looking for this asteroid for the past eleven decades.”

  The other cadets were staring at her, unused to an
outburst from her.

  Moll took a deep breath. “Don’t you see how important this is? We can’t allow the asteroid to be sucked into the gravity well!”

  “Then what did you do?” the voice asked, seemingly echoing around the empty white room. Moll felt isolated, sitting on a chair in the very center, with no edges in the arched ceiling or curved walls to focus on.

  She explained to the unseen voice, “Our team tried to stop the spin with a focused particle beam. We hoped that would break the magnetic field; then we could grapple the asteroid and take it back to the science station.”

  There was a pause, and Moll Enor couldn’t help the jump in her heartbeat. She was in deep trouble, called to a hearing before the Symbiosis Commission. Her testimony would be used to help the Commission decide if she had deliberately endangered the Enor symbiont by her actions.

  It was the highest crime under the Commission’s jurisdiction, and the most severe sentence for a joined Trill was to be ordered into protective custody. If the host didn’t comply with the ruling, they could even be put to death so the symbiont could be passed to a competent host. Much of the screening performed by the Symbiosis Comission was done to eliminate Initiates with psychological instabilities to prevent that from happening.

  Moll knew she wasn’t at that level yet, but her unseen judges beyond the curved wall could order her to leave Starfleet and return permanently to the Trill homeworld. And there was nothing for her here, nothing but the pool. Though it was her preferred retreat, a lifetime of the same experiences, compounded by her eidetic memory, would surely lead to madness.

  The soothing monotone voice asked, “What was the risk level of this procedure?”

  “We had never done it before, so we knew it could fail,” Moll admitted.

  “Did it fail?” the interrogator asked.

  “Yes.” Moll cleared her throat as she remembered the magnetic arc that surged between the pod and the metal-rich asteroid. An electronic fire had whipped through the Sagittarius, fusing power relays in every system of the science pod.

  A holo-image of Wu suddenly appeared near Moll. She knew her fellow cadet was at the Academy on Earth, in an empty room, his image relayed via comm-link to Trill. He was smiling nervously, as the voice asked, “Starfleet Cadet Buck Wu, why did you agree to attempt the dangerous procedure that Cadet Moll Enor suggested?”

  “Why?” Wu repeated, shifting his eyes upward, apparently addressing the ceiling for lack of a person to focus on. Moll could sympathize, facing the same thing herself. But the Investigators of the Symbiosis Commission believed a more honest testimony was given this way, uncolored by a witness’s reaction to the Commissioners.

  “Yes, why did you do as Cadet Moll Enor suggested? Was she in command of your mission?”

  “No, Mantegna was.”

  “Starfleet Cadet Mantegna is on record that he was against the attempt,” the interrogator intoned, noting the sequence number of the testimony for the Commission members to access.

  Wukee opened his mouth to reply, but he was replaced in a burst of static by Campbell. Campbell looked as if he was at attention, stiff and self-conscious.

  “Starfleet Cadet Ho Campbell,” the voice announced. “You were also a member of the research team on the Sagittarius science pod.”

  “Yes, sir!” Campbell snapped to attention. “I believe Cadet Moll conducted herself with bravery befitting a Starfleet officer, sir!”

  The voice didn’t respond to Campbell’s declaration. “Was it part of your duties to retrieve asteroids?”

  “Duty?” Campbell asked, shifting slightly, his voice lowering. “No, we tag asteroids with subspace beacons. It’s the science teams who retrieve them.”

  “So the attempt to retrieve the asteroid was outside the normal bounds of your duties as you understood them, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Campbell’s proud, pained face turned into static as his holo-image was replaced by one of Mantegna. He was settling the sleeve of his shirt, tugging lightly on the cuff, feigning nonchalance at the interrogation.

  “Starfleet Cadet Yllian Mantegna,” the voice announced. “Commander of the Sagittarius research mission. Why did you attempt to destroy the magnetic field with a focused particle beam, the procedure suggested by Cadet Moll Enor?”

  “She said it would work. I trusted her judgment.” He continued to examine his shirt. “She’s supposed to be brilliant, isn’t she?”

  “Do you believe Cadet Moll Enor misrepresented the risk?” the interrogator asked.

  Grudgingly, Mantegna admitted, “No. But she said she could do it.”

  Moll winced at his condescension. But she had seen him panic when their main power array was blown apart by the feedback from the particle beam. As emergency life support came on line with the distinctive ruddy lights, he had let out a frightened squeak like he was two years old. Mantegna knew she would never forget—and succeeding generations of hosts would never forget—the way he had nearly levitated out of his seat when the hatch to the lifeboat automatically cycled open. He was the first one inside the lifeboat, even though he had to push Wukee aside at the hatch to get in.

  Smoothly the voice asked, “Did you order Cadet Moll Enor to remain behind in the science pod?”

  Mantegna sat forward, his eyes narrowing. “No, Cadet Enor volunteered—insisted, actually. She said someone had to stay with the asteroid to try to stop the spin. I told her she’d never get the pod’s systems powered up before it crossed into the inner phases, but she thought she could.”

  Moll crossed her arms protectively over her stomach and the symbiont. The way she remembered it, Mantegna didn’t say three words when she had explained that she would stay with the asteroid until they returned with a rescue team. He had cycled the hatch closed so fast they almost didn’t hear her advice on how to best use the lifeboat thrusters to get out of the vortex. How could she describe her feelings as the vacuum broke between the pod and the lifeboat, when she desperately wanted to call after them to wait for her? It had been her idea to stay, but she felt abandoned.

  “Did you agree with Moll Enor’s analysis?”

  “No. That’s why I ordered the evacuation,” Mantegna replied.

  “At that time, did you believe the asteroid was worth the risk of staying behind?” the interrogator pressed.

  “No, I did not.”

  “Did you believe Cadet Moll Enor was endangering her life?”

  “No. She could have left in the other lifeboat at any time.”

  “Do you believe Moll Enor made the correct decision to stay with the asteroid?”

  Moll held her breath, hoping Mantegna’s arrogance would finally help her out. If he believed that what she had done involved no danger and was basically of little importance, the Commission might believe that, too.

  But Mantegna stunned her by admitting, “I have to say, she did it. She stopped the spin and slowed the vortex, giving the rescue team time to reach both her and the asteroid before they entered the inner phases. She deserves the Starfleet commendation she was awarded.”

  Moll could have groaned at his unexpected accolades. Just when she least needed it, Mantegna finally gave her his approval. The problem was, she wasn’t in trouble with Starfleet! It was the Trill who had her on trial.

  Next, the investigators for the Symbiosis Commission played the internal log from the science pod, thoughtfully provided by Starfleet. Moll had to force herself to sit still as those desperate hours unfolded again. She couldn’t watch her own face, knowing the doubts that drove her, with the fear that she had made a terrible mistake staying in the science pod. The lifepod was even less shielded than the Sagittarius, and while it may have saved her life, the symbiont would have been harmed—and the Commission had those facts right in front of them.

  As the log played out, the interrogator counted the rising radiation rate within the pod, well over the acceptable tolerance levels for the symbiont. Then there was the final burst of activity as she
finally created a link and filtered enough energy through her tricorder to create an arc between the pod and the relay buoy, shorting out the magnetic vortex. The asteroids spun away, finally released to rejoin the chaotic helix motion, while the buoy and the panspermia asteroid slowed, spinning around each other as they were jostled from the jet stream.

  In the recording, Moll bowed her head to her arms. There was silence as the image continued, then the interrogator cut in, saying, “A rescue team arrived within the hour. Cadet Moll Enor was treated on board the rescue ship for fifth degree radiation burns.”

  Moll couldn’t watch the holo-image. Nothing could convey the gut-wrenching pain of synchrotron radiation exposure. Or her dread that she had made a mistake that would cost her everything.

  “Were you aware you were endangering your symbiont?”

  “Yes,” Moll admitted, raising her chin. “But I believed it was an acceptable risk.”

  “Why do you consider your actions acceptable?”

  “Because saving the asteroid with the panspermia fossil was of paramount importance.”

  “Importance to whom?” the voice inquired.

  Moll tightened her lips. “To everyone! There’s nothing more important than evidence of a fundamental connection between all humanoid life-forms. Especially now, when we have to work together to fight the Borg!”

  Her voice rang out, but with no faces to judge reactions, she couldn’t know if they understood. “Don’t you see, this panspermia fossil supports Galen’s discovery that humanoid species in our galaxy have a common genetic heritage. We were “seeded” in the primordial oceans of many worlds. It’s proof of a biological imperative that we should work together.”

  “What is your primary concern, your duty to Starfleet or the safety of your symbiont?”