Part 2 (1/2)
”We're firing into its atmosphere to get feedback readings. Even though its core is unignited, the planet is putting out three times the energy it should, mostly in long-wave radiation. We have to be on alert in case of shock waves or gravitational recoil-”
”Data,” Riker snapped, wis.h.i.+ng there was an off switch. He silenced the android with a sandpaper look, then turned back to Troi. ”I should've told the computer to bypa.s.s standard procedure and not call you up here. It's my fault.”
She put out her hand in what began as an appeasing gesture, but as she spoke it turned into the kind of move a woman makes when she wants to steady herself. ”No ... it isn't your fault....”
The captain floated in at Riker's left. ”What's bothering you, Counselor?” he asked, gently but with an edge of impatience.
Her kohled eyes narrowed beneath those drawn brows. ”I heard something ... in my mind ... ”
”Can you describe it?” Riker asked. A twinge ran up his spine. Her muted telepathic talents always made him nervous. It wasn't exactly disbelief, because no one could dispute the existence of Betazoid mental traits, but it was a kind of distrust.
She backed up a step. ”I'm sorry ... ” She blinked, took a deep breath, and pretended to recover. ”Captain, I'm sorry for the interruption. I didn't mean to disturb your tests. Please excuse me.”
Before either of the men could speak, she made a quick and nervous exit.
Riker stared at the lift doors. ”I've never seen her act that way,” he murmured.
Data rose and came a few steps toward the ramp. ”Is Counselor Troi ill?”
”It's something else,” Riker decided quietly, more to himself than to Data.
”She behaved abnormally.”
Now he drew his eyes from the lift and struck Data with a look that would have bruised had it been a Ghost s.h.i.+p blow. ”I don't think you're anyone to judge,” he barked.
Picard tilted his shoulders as he turned, saying, ”Permission to leave the bridge, Number One. Temporarily.”
”Thank you, sir,” Riker said. ”I won't be long.” He had to restrain himself or he would actually have bounded for the lift. He cast one more acid glare at Data before leaving the bridge.
Picard smoothed the moment with a calm extension of the science tests. ”Continue phaser bursts at regular intervals.”
Data drew himself away from the stinging, confusing reaction Riker had given him and settled into his usual station at OPS on the forward deck. ”Science stations are receiving continual information from the planetary core now, Captain.” He lowered his voice as he had often heard humans do, and to LaForge said, ”Commander Riker is annoyed with me.”
LaForge shrugged. He glanced at the android, but saw not what human eyes would see. The android's bodily heat was unevenly distributed throughout the high-tech body, a body far denser than that of a human body of equal volume. The sections of infrared were localized into hot spots, more defined than the infrared blobs in a human body, and LaForge could easily discern the places where organic material was fitted in to intricate mechanics. Data gave off an electromagnetic aura, but he wasn't exactly a toaster oven.
”You could try being a little less stiff,” LaForge suggested. ”Learn some slang or something.”
Data's lips flattened. ”Slang. Colloquial jargon, nonstandard idioms, street talk ... it's often inaccurate. I have tried to incorporate that speech into my language use, but it does not seem to flow.”
”That's because you use it as though it still has quotation marks around it. You use individual words instead of the whole meaning of the phrase. You've got to try to use slang more casually.”
”What purpose does it actually serve?”
LaForge leaned toward him and delicately said, ”It makes you approachable. Give it a swing.”
As his lips silently traced that last word, a perplexed expression overtook Data's features. Unlike the times when he worked too hard at his expressions and ended up looking like a vaudeville clown, these moments made him look much more human than any he could force, these moments when unexpected emotion simply popped up on his face. ”Swing ... a child's toy, a sweeping maneuver-oh! An effort. A try. Yes, swing. I'll swing. Computer, show me all available dictionary and dialect banks on Earth slang, rapid feed.”
The computer came to life on the panel before him and its soft feminine voice, in a delivery much more at ease than Data's own, asked, ”What era's slang would you like, and what language?”
Geordi LaForge settled back into his lounge and mumbled, ”I always thought you needed a hobby.”
Abruptly there was a sound on the quarterdeck, something akin to a growl, but as quickly it was gone and replaced by the resonant ba.s.s of Lieutenant Worf as he stared at his monitor.
”Not possible!”
Captain Picard drew his attention away from the blue giant and approached his own command chair, behind which the horseshoe rail arched upward and across the tactical console. Past that, Worf stood with his back to the bridge, staring at his status monitor as though his dissatisfaction could bore right through it. Of course, with a Klingon, that might very well be the case.
Pulling up the automatic extra measure of calmness he found himself using with Worf, Picard urged, ”Lieutenant? Something?”
”I'm not sure I saw it,” the Klingon spat.
But Security Chief Tasha Yar twisted her toned body without taking her hands off her tactical console and told him, ”I saw it too.”
”Saw what?” Picard demanded.
”An energy pulse, Captain.” The girl pushed back a lock of her boy-cropped blond hair. ”A huge one. Across the entire solar system.”
Only one step carried Worf all the way forward to Tasha's side. ”Very sharp and powerful, sir, a refractive scan. Like an instant sensor sweep.”
”It was too quick-fire for sensors,” Tasha shot back.
”Then what?” Worf boomed. ”There's no trace of it now.”
Picard used their argument to cloak his movement up the ramp to tactical, where he peered over the controls. There was nothing showing. ”Could it have been an aberration? Feedback from our experiments?”
”Sir, it came from outside the solar system,” Tasha said, her throat tightening around her voice as it always did when she let herself get excited.
”Track it.”
”Nothing left to track,” Worf said coa.r.s.ely.
Picard raised his head. ”Don't use that tone with me, Lieutenant. There is no crisis yet.”
Worf's big brown face didn't look in the least apologetic, given a particularly animalistic texture by the riblike cranium of his Klinzhai racial background, the strain which had emerged dominant during the last Klingon purge. He was imposing; in fact, he was downright terrifying, because the other crew members could always see that controlling himself was plain work for him and someday he just might lose the fight.
”Sorry, sir,” he rumbled. ”It was there during our last phaser burst, then it was gone.” He placed his big hands on the tactical board and burned a glare through the forward screen. ”I don't like it. It's like being watched.”
Picard stood back on his heels for a contemplative moment, his handsome eyes wedging. ”Could be another vessel. Let's make sure they don't miss us. Saying h.e.l.lo is part of our job. Put sensors on wide scan. Lieutenant Data, you handle broadcast of standard hailing frequency with greetings in all interstellar languages and codes as well as automatic universal translation.”
”I'm hopping to it.”
”Lieutenant LaForge, take us out of orbit. Disband further testing of the gas giant until we ascertain the trim of the solar system.”
”Aye, sir. Disengaging orbital condition.” LaForge pressed his fingers to the signal controls on the beautiful board at wrist level and just that easily drew the ma.s.sive stars.h.i.+p out of the gas giant's gravitational envelope. During that maneuver, while the s.h.i.+p was safely under control of the navigational computer, he took a moment to glance left to Data.
When he looked at the other crew members, he saw the layerings of infrared that he could intensify as needed, he saw blood running through arteries, arterioles, capillaries, and so on, but he saw them better than a computer would because his brain acted as interpreter and he was more intuitive than any computer. Over that infrared image, like a nylon stocking drawn over a mannequin, he saw skin and a hazy s.h.i.+ne of fine skin hairs. The mannequin appeared to be lighted from within, and had a slight glow.
But Data-Data was a work of art. Geordi alone could see the exotic materials, brilliantly blended, the different levels of heat and coolness, the different densities where metal met synthetic, where synthetic met organism, and where all meshed. He saw the density of Data's body, and all the million tiny electrical impulses that kept him working and ran like swarms of insects through his body when he worked a little harder or concentrated a little more or called up more strength. But it wasn't like looking at the computer stations before them or the mechanism behind the wall at the coffee/food dispenser. Not at all. Those were machines.
LaForge sometimes got the feeling that people forgot he could hear too. He had listened to Riker's tone just before the first officer left the bridge. He had heard the flutter in Data's voice when he mentioned that Riker wasn't too pleased with him. Data was mechanical, but to Geordi LaForge he was no machine.