Deep Gate 1

2387

There was a light glowing at the far end of the instruction hall.

Steret repressed a frown; annoyance, too, was emotion. One of the students had evidently decided to work late; he would speak to them, make sure they understood the importance of keeping regular hour, the necessity to allow proper time for sleep, to rest the brain and maintain peak levels of cognitive ability. It was only logical. The students had the ability to comprehend logic.

He paced across the otherwise deserted hall, picking his way between the hemispherical study cells, heading for the one that remained lit, where everything else was dark.

As he approached, he saw who was in the cell, and realized that a more flexible approach might be required. The overwhelming majority of students at the Vulcan Academy were, obviously enough, Vulcan. But this one - He saw the hairless head, the round, blunted ears, and he brought to mind this particular student's circumstances.

He halted at the rim of the study cell. "Student Shemosh."

Shemosh had evidently not heard him approach; now, the student raised his head and turned dark, liquid eyes on Steret. The Vulcan struggled with a sudden surge of emotion. He had never had romantic feelings for males - had, indeed, repressed all such passions, except during the septennial indignity of the pon farr - but the emotional charge, the naked need for closeness, for comfort, in the Deltan's eyes -

"Instructor Steret," Shemosh said. "I - I am sorry. I didn't know -" He looked around him. "How late is it?"

"Very late. I was about to close the Hall for the night." Steret squatted down at the rim of the cell, looked at Shemosh. The Deltan wore a plain, white, student's robe. The console screen before him showed diagrams and equations - some problem in hyper-dimensional geometry, it seemed, though it was far beyond Steret's own competence. Shemosh was a postgraduate exchange student, already an expert in recondite areas of subspace physics; he was an immense asset to the Academy, to the Federation, to the cause of science as a whole. Too valuable an asset, Steret thought, to be allowed to squander himself. "I understand your difficulties. But you should rest."

"I -" The Deltan's hands clenched into fists, and Steret shuddered as another wave of raw emotion broke against his Vulcan discipline. "I - Oh, you are right. Of course you are right. But I wanted -"

"Your reaction is natural and understandable," said Steret. "You have suffered a tragic loss. An emotional response is inevitable."

"My tragedy?" Shemosh's gaze turned to the screen. "My tragedy is nothing, compared with -"

"The destruction of Romulus is a great loss, certainly," said Steret. "But for most of us, it is a thing too large to be felt, only to be comprehended as an abstraction. A definite, localized, personal loss, on the other hand -"

"Yes," said Shemosh. He turned his face back to Steret, met the Vulcan's gaze with his dark eyes. "Yes, I know, you do understand. I know your discipline only forbids the expression of emotion, Instructor, not the fact of it." He gave a wan, rueful smile. "I know that you are trying to be kind."

"Insofar as my position and my cultural background permit it, you are correct," said Steret.

"Thank you," Shemosh said softly. "It is all that anyone can do," he added.

The Hobus supernova had behaved like nothing in history. The radiation, which should have been only a harmless though brilliant light in Romulus's sky, five hundred years in the future, had taken some short cut through subspace and arrived in a matter of weeks, at an intensity that reduced the entire system to rubble and vapour. Billions had died. And one, individual tragedy among all those billions - the crew of a Deltan trade ship, a close-knit family concern, passing too close to the subspace rift at just the wrong moment. They had been so proud of their brilliant son, when he won his academic scholarships, when he went to study on Earth, then on Vulcan....

"The past cannot be altered," said Steret. "It can only be faced. My cultural background will only permit me to suggest that you face it - logically. To neglect your own health, your physical needs, is not logical."

"You are right," said Shemosh. He sighed, and stood up. He took one hard look at the image on the screen, then turned the console off. "I will - go to my quarters. And try to sleep."

"That is logical. I know it will also prove difficult." Steret stood up, too. "I regret that I cannot offer you greater assistance. Perhaps you should consult with a counsellor from your own culture, or one similarly skilled in the expression of emotion."

"It's a good idea," Shemosh said. His face was thoughtful.

"It is the best that I can offer you. Again, I regret that I can do no more. But the past is the past. There is nothing that any of us can do to change that."

Steret watched, impassively, as Shemosh clambered out of the cell, muttered something under his breath, and made his way across the darkened hall, out into the open air and the hot Vulcan night. Then he closed down the cell, made a final round of inspection, and retired.

But Steret found sleep hard to achieve that night, too. He had heard Shemosh's words as he left, and they puzzled him.

"Nothing any of us can do," the Deltan had said, "except wait, maybe."

Present Day

"Maintaining separation at five kilometres," Lieutenant th'Talish reported.

Captain Leaman grunted. "Not so long since I'd get worried, having a Klink that far up my - never mind," he said. "Time to target?"

"Closing to optimum scan range in seven minutes," Commander T'Tel answered from the main science station.

"All right," Leaman said. "Call the Klinks, let's tell them what not to expect."

He studied the tactical display. The mIn wo' showed up, precisely on station, five kilometres behind the USS Southmoor. Leaman could call up a visual, study the blocky, angular shape of the Naj'Sov science cruiser.... A botch job, he thought. Ugly, from its chisel prow right back to the oversized subspace radome covering most of its rear. A flying scrapheap, compared to the neat lines of his own advanced light cruiser. He shook his head. It had been easier when they were fighting the Klingons, dammit.

"I have the CO of the mIn wo' on screen," said Lieutenant Shaffer on comms.

"Let's have him." The Klingon commander's scarred face appeared on the main viewscreen. "Commander Qarn. Ready for your first test?"

Qarn bared his teeth. Leaman hoped it was a smile. "All systems optimal, Starfleet. But where is your target?"

"Dead ahead. It's just kinda hard to spot." Leaman smiled, himself. "This one's great for calibrating a base line. Just run your scan on the coordinates we've sent you, and you'll get zero."

"Zero on what?" Qarn asked. "Electromagnetics? Lidar ranging? Gravimetrics? Subspace interferometry?"

"Any of them," said Leaman. "All of them. Take a look at Galactic Object 4704, Commander. The biggest spot of absolute nothing in the known galaxy."

The anomaly was hard to spot, sure enough. This close, some stars were occulted by the convoluted black - mass wasn't the right word, Leaman thought; GO4704 had no mass. It emitted no radiation, either - nor did it reflect any, which was the only way to spot it. Matter passed through it, but came out the other side with its temperature reduced to that of cosmic background.... Where the energy went was just one of the puzzles about the object. There were several competing theories, but none had been verified, due to the effective impossibility of getting meaningful information out of the anomaly.

It was there. It was a mystery of space - harmless, unless you were unlucky enough to run into it. And it was, as Leaman had pointed out, a great place to set zero points on your sensor equipment.

"Helm, steer eight five mark zero," he ordered. "We'll get out of your field of view, Commander."

"Such excitement," the Klingon grumbled. "Very well. Let us test your zeroes, Starfleet."

Icons flashed around the mIn wo' on the tactical display. Qarn was running a full sequence on his new ship's active scanners, it appeared. Galactic Object 4704 looked... unimpressed, Leaman thought.

"Gravimetrics zero," Qarn said slowly. "Electromagnetics... zero. Temperature, absolute zero. I had not thought that achievable in nature. Subspace -" He leaned to one side, looking at something out of Leaman's field of view. "I thought you said this thing was all zeroes, Starfleet. I have theta-band subspace radiation here."

"Check the shielding on your sensor coils," said Leaman. "I'll bet you that's nothing but internal noise from your own ship's systems."

"I will take that bet, Starfleet. There is nothing wrong with my systems."

"Sir." T'Tel's eyebrow quirked. "I'm picking something up on our own sensors."

"What? Can't be. Double-check." Leaman activated a repeater screen, studied the feed from the science station.

"Positive for theta-band radiation," said T'Tel. "And I'm picking up some exotics. Readings consistent with anti-tachyon particles, though -"

"GO4704's been dead since it was first detected," said Leaman blankly. "Over a hundred and twenty years of just nothing -"

Qarn laughed, a huge explosive bark of scorn. "Nothing, you say, Starfleet? Look at it!"

"On screen. Visual." Leaman's mouth was suddenly dry.

Qarn's face vanished from the viewer, and in its place -

Galactic Object 4704 was a twisted toroid in shape - a shape which, given its black-on-black colour, had taken a long time to map. But there was no problem determining its shape now, not as it hung in the centre of the screen, tiger-striped with a pulsating rainbow of shifting colours -

The screen went blank. The Southmoor lurched violently, and a shower of sparks erupted from an overloaded console. Leaman's command screens blanked out, then filled themselves with static and gibberish. An automated alarm began to scream.

"What the hell just happened?" Leaman yelled. "Status report!"

"Working," said T'Tel. "We have - Sir, we appear to have inadvertently transected a radiation beam. Damage to several decks -"

"Warp power is out," added th'Talish. "Main deflector is shorted, non-operational. Structural integrity reads seventy-eight per cent. We still have impulse, I'm sealing our hull breaches -"

"Sir, the mIn wo' is hailing," said Shaffer.

"Let's hear them." Stunned, Leaman sank back into his command chair.

Qarn's face, when it reappeared on the screen, was flickering and scarred with static. "Starfleet. How bad is it?"

Leaman swallowed. "Warp power is out. No word on casualties yet -"

"I think you may have been lucky. Someone or something is tickling your galactic object, Starfleet. Tickling it with a radiation beam more than powerful enough to disable your ship. Tickling it hard enough to get a response." The Klingon's face was very serious. "I will tow you clear of the immediate danger zone, and my engineers are ready to assist you in making repairs. After which, I suggest we head back to Starbase 271 and make a report. This has become something more than an exercise in calibrating my sensors."