As they made their way toward the center of the bridge, passing Nog at the engineering console, Ezri saw the eyes of all the crew directed forward. She peered up at the main viewscreen. The clouds surrounding the planet had erupted in one area, as though forced up from below. The movement of the cloud cover had become far more violent, she saw, even causing numerous breaks through which the planet’s surface was now visible. The effects could not have been the result of the pulse, Ezri realized at once, because if they had been, then Bowers would already have ordered Defiantaway. “What’s happening down there?” she asked as she and Julian came abreast of the command chair.
“We’re not sure,” Bowers said, vacating the chair and allowing Ezri to take it. “But we’re seeing some breaks in the clouds, big enough to allow us to scan through them. The energy buildup at the source of the pulse appears to be dissipating there and spreading out into the atmosphere.”
“Is the pulse still a danger?” she asked.
“Not as far as we can tell,” Bowers reported. “At least, not right now.”
Ezri turned and looked past Julian, over toward the engineering station. “Nog,” she said, “you did it.” The away team must have succeeded in deploying the devices Nog and his engineers had developed and sent down to the surface. For the moment, it appeared that four billion Vahni Vahltupali would be safe.
“Not me,” Nog said, turning in his chair toward her. “The explosion should have sealed the interface. The energy should have been trapped on the other side.”
She looked to Bowers. “Has the thoughtscape emerged onto the planet?”
He shook his head. “We can’t tell what happened.”
Quietly, so that only Bowers could hear, she asked, “Has there been any sign of the shuttle?”
“We’ve been scanning outward from the site of the pulse wherever we can,” Bowers said, lowering the volume of his voice to match hers. “So far, nothing.”
Ezri considered their options. She eased herself up out of the command chair and walked over to the engineering station. “Nog,” she asked, “how long until the Saganwill be repaired?”
“At least two more days,” he said.
She turned and looked back at the viewscreen. Even if Saganwere available right now, she did not know if she would order it down to the surface. As much as the cloud cover had been in motion when Defianthad first arrived here, there had been enough stability in it that, when openings through the clouds had formed, the crew had been able to safely send both a probe and the shuttle through and down to the planet. But now the scene on the main viewer showed an atmosphere in complete turmoil. The idea of putting more lives at risk—
“I’ve got the shuttle,” Ensign Merimark called from the tactical station.
Ezri heard reaction from the bridge crew, but she ignored it, instead pacing over to stand beside Merimark. “What are you reading?” she asked.
“I’m picking up Chaffee’s transponder signal,” Merimark said. “I’m trying to scan the location…it’s difficult, there’s still energy in the clouds, and they’re moving so—wait…there…it’s on the surface…I’m reading hull plating—” When the ensign suddenly stopped speaking, a sense of dread filled Ezri.
“What is it?” she asked.
Merimark looked up with a weary, pained expression on her face. “The shuttle crashed,” she reported. “There are no life signs.”
Ezri felt whatever strength she had left in her drain away. She looked over at Julian. He stared back, the anguish he felt apparent on his face, as it must have been on her own.
“Lieutenant Nog,” she said firmly, finding strength in her responsibility to the crew. “I want the Saganready as soon as possible, crews working on it around the clock.”
“Aye, sir,” Nog said.
“Lieutenant Bowers, I want options,” she told him. “I want to find the away team.” She did not need to add alive or dead.
“Yes, sir,” Bowers said.
Ezri had already lost Gerda, and now maybe she had lost Vaughn and Shar and Prynn, but she would not leave this planet until she knew that for sure.
Ezri sat in the command chair, watching along with the rest of the crew as the planet below was transformed. Above the area from which the pulse had once originated, a huge mass of unidentifiable gray matter burst up into the atmosphere. Like the darkened image of a nuclear detonation, the mass emerged kilometers wide through the cloud cover. The clouds themselves fled from the explosion of matter, pushed aside by the enormous displacement of air.
The gray mass spread as it surged upward, and at its edges, began to turn back toward the planet, as though gravity had only just prevented it from surging out into space. Its surface whirled at uncounted points, a collection of spinning vortices impossibly bound together. The mass seemed to hover as it unfolded, as if now defying gravity.
And then it plunged down, not falling back to the planet, but diving toward the surface. The mass hurtled earthward, streaking down faster than it had climbed up. It struck the ground with phenomenal force, instantly liquefying rock at the points of impact, and sending expanses of ground blasting outward. The mass pushed along the surface, dislodging the crust to a depth of ten kilometers.
The clouds, tossed away earlier, now returned and joined the maelstrom, swirling into the mix of gray matter and rocky debris. Energy surges forked like lightning across the exterior of the enormous amalgamation. The mass grew across the surface.
And then the planet became shrouded once more, buried beneath a churning gray shell that hovered between solid and liquid states. The mass undulated like a living thing. It reached unbroken from pole to pole.
Ezri watched all of this, something she had not witnessed in nine lifetimes of experience, and thought, Vaughn and Shar and Prynn are down there.
Or at least, they had been.
Over the course of hours, the great, gray shell smoothed and calmed, but sensors could not pierce even its outer layers. Through breaks in the cover that had occurred during the transformation, though, scans had indicated that the energy level at the site of the pulse had dropped to zero. Whatever had happened down on the planet—and whatever price had been paid to make it happen—the pulse had been neutralized.
The science and engineering teams continued searching for a means of penetrating the shell, either with sensors or with Sagan,once it had been repaired. While the crew held out little hope of finding the away team alive, Ezri refused to accept that—felt that it was her duty to refuse to accept that. She had briefly thought about the eulogies she might have to deliver for her crewmates, not much more than a week after the service for Gerda Roness, but she had quickly scuttled such morbid—and inappropriate—notions. As the acting captain of the ship, Ezri remained dedicated to doing all that she could to save the away team, and she would presume them alive until it had been proven that they—
“Something’s happening on the planet,” Ensign Merimark announced. “I’m reading a break in the shell…two breaks…both sizable.”
“Put it on the viewer,” Ezri said. The main screen blinked, and one view of the planet was replaced by another, targeted view. On the surface of the gray shell, two small, circular holes had appeared.
“The openings are both fifty-three-point-three kilometers in diameter,” Merimark reported. “Depth…they reach all the way down to the planet. I’ve got full sensor contact down to the surface.”
Foreboding suddenly washed over Ezri, the narrow cylinders in the shell uncomfortably reminiscent of the barrels of weapons. She recalled the simulation of the pulse that Nog had shown her down in engineering, and she now envisioned the destructive energy hurtling through the cylinders and out into space. “Are there any energy readings?” she asked.