Star Trek - Imbalance Part 8

The shrieks of the group above Worf reached deafening proportions and five more Jarada clattered into view. The leader launched itself at the Klingon, its claws extended like daggers. Worf braced himself and grabbed for the Jarada's arms. Closing his hands around the bases of the lethal claws, he pulled the insectoid forward and flung it into the last of the Jarada below him. That Jarada went down under the impact and two more insectoids started the downward slide on their backs.

The approaching Jarada slowed when they saw how Worf disposed of their leader. Taking advantage of their momentary hesitation, Worf gave a loud roar and charged them. Caught off guard, they were slow to respond, and he got past them before they could take advantage of the close quarters. One swiped at him and caught his arm, slicing his uniform and drawing blood with its sharp claws. Then he was above them, where his height and greater reach would serve to best advantage.

Turning, Worf kicked the nearest Jarada, landing a well-placed blow on its thorax. As it fell, its body slammed into the legs of the fighter next to it. While the second guardian struggled to keep its balance, Worf closed in and grabbed its arms. For someone who followed the Klingon's daily exercise regimen, the Jarada was not a major challenge. He jerked the insectoid from its feet and swung it into the two remaining fighters. All three smashed into the wall with a satisfying crunch.

With all his opponents temporarily disabled, Worf headed back up the shaft, searching for the first available exit. He found it around the first turn on the opposite side of the shaft from the other doors. Still, he had to get away before anyone raised the alarm or reprogrammed the locks, so he located the control pad and tapped in the combination.

The door started to open, hesitated partway, and began sliding shut again. Afraid that his access would be cut off, Worf jammed his shoulder into the opening. The mechanism grumbled and protested as he forced his way through. At the last minute the panel snapped shut on his wrist. From beyond the door he heard the shrieks of a horde of guardians swarming into the shaft.

Growling under his breath, Worf braced his foot against the doorjamb. Curling the fingers of his free hand around the door, he pulled on it. At first nothing happened. He threw his entire weight into the effort, and finally the panel moved barely enough for him to work his hand loose. He released the door and jumped clear, just as a dozen guardians clattered past.

Worf looked about, checking his surroundings. He was in another shaft, this one damp and poorly lit. Streaks of black mold and greenish slime covered the walls and most of the floor. The air stank from the dampness, from mold and mildew, and from other things he was reluctant to name. He was on a landing at the top of the shaft, which descended an indeterminate distance. Briefly, he studied with longing the door he had just come through. A warrior should die in battle, even if dishonorable opponents resorted to overwhelming odds to defeat him. He should not be expected to fight cold, and slime, and unnameable biological horrors.

Growling under his breath, Worf started downward. His duty was to get to his captain any way he could. If that meant wading through ankle-deep slime or swimming frigid rivers, then that was what he must do. With any luck the Jarada would find this shaft as distasteful as he did. Looking at the carpet of grayish-green and black stuff that covered the ramp, he could well believe that he was the only living creature to have blundered into this shaft in decades. Even the bioluminescent glowstrips were fading, their internal nutrients all but exhausted and the bacteria inside them dying.

It was slow going, keeping his footing on the tricky descent. At each door he paused, listening to the sounds in the adjoining shaft. The shrieks and the ma.s.sed clatter of Jarada claws made it obvious that an entire army of guardians was searching for him. If they ever thought to check this shaft, he was in serious trouble. However, at least for the moment, their oversight let him put more distance between himself and the location of the attack.

The shaft grew damper as he descended, until the water flowed in runnels along the walls. He approached one door where the noise on the other side was so loud that he was sure he had been discovered and the Jarada were about to pour into the shaft. As he crept closer, he saw that the bright crack that marked the opening was uneven, the door warped too much to form a tight seal against the jamb. A dozen Jarada were milling around on the other side of the door, their chittering claws and discordant voices reverberating inside the shaft.

Worf continued downward, descending the equivalent of five more decks before he found another door. Its outline was dim, barely brighter than the surrounding walls, and he almost missed it. However, a rivulet of water leaking through a crack between the warped door and its frame caught his attention. Holding his breath, Worf listened for several minutes, but nothing moved in the corridor beyond the door. It was either a clever ambush, worthy of a Klingon, or he had reached an unoccupied portion of the complex. The only way he would find out was by leaving the shaft.

It didn't take him long to decide. Vertical movement would not bring him back to the Governance Complex and, when the Jarada finally realized where he had gone, this shaft was the ultimate trap. Also, while the ramp continued downward, the last thing he wanted was to take the predictable exit on the lowest level.

His decision made, he raked his fingers along the wall, shuddering as he touched the algae-and mold-covered stone. Nothing happened, but three light-colored streaks marred the organic coating on the wall. Worf growled under his breath, realizing there was no way to escape this slime hole without leaving road signs to mark his pa.s.sage. He tried again with no better luck. The control panel, if indeed there was one for this door, appeared to be dead.

He was about to start downward again, when he remembered his fight with the door at the top of the shaft. Maybe this one would succ.u.mb to the same treatment. Worf checked the edges and found that the door was warped enough for him to force his fingers into the crack. Bracing his feet against the jamb, he pulled with all his strength. A low, tortured groan came from somewhere inside the wall. He kept up the pressure and felt the mechanism yield marginally.

Encouraged, he summoned another all-out effort and was rewarded with the shriek of metal dragging against metal. Slowly, he forced the door back into its frame. From the sounds, he thought the door was operated by a spring and piston device. With luck it would hold the door against his pursuers, if he could get it closed again.

When the opening was large enough, Worf squeezed through the door and released it. It rebounded partway and stuck, a beacon to anyone that he had forced his way through. He examined the door, surprised to find its surface incised with carvings. Much of the wood veneer was rotten and crumbling, but he found enough purchase for his hands. Grunting with the effort, he pushed the door toward its closed position. The squeals and moans were almost as loud as when he had opened the door, giving him hope that the Jarada would have as much trouble with it as he had had.

Worf couldn't seat the door completely into its frame, but the final gap was only a finger's width. He doubted that the Jaradan exoskeleton provided enough leverage to open the door by brute force, and he hoped his pursuers would not realize the full potential of his superior Klingon anatomy.

With his back protected as best he could, Worf examined his surroundings. A tunnel, in no better shape than the shaft he had just left, stretched before him. The flickering glowstrips, the mold-streaked walls, and the damp floor told him that this area had long been abandoned. He concentrated on his location for a moment, trying to decide where he was in relation to the Governance Complex.

Breen had headed generally east when they left the Council Chambers, and he thought the tunnel ahead of him was pointing south, which meant that he would have to go to his right when he got the chance. To the right and up, he promised himself, looking at the wet and moldy pa.s.sageway with distaste. If someone had tried to design a Klingon's worst nightmare, this would be a champions.h.i.+p contender. The only thing left to complete the horror was a swarm of Tribbles. Suppressing a shudder, Worf started down the corridor, his boots squelching in the damp slime.

Chapter Thirteen.

THEY WERE ENTERING the third hour of the search and still Data had found no sign of the missing crew members. He had concentrated his scans around the city, where most of the away team should have been located, but so far he had had no success. Once or twice he had registered a trace that might have been Riker, but when he tried to focus in for a transporter lock, he lost the scan. Either Riker had been moving very fast or someone was deliberately screening his sensors. At the moment either hypothesis was equally likely, although the android suspected his human colleagues would favor the sabotage theory.

Data adjusted the settings on the scanners for the tenth time in as many minutes, trying to improve their resolution. As he watched the results scroll across his screen, a part of his brain kept returning to the idea of how one might disrupt a sensor scan without making it immediately obvious. It would take some subtle programming and a complex algorithm to simulate random noise, but the more he considered it, the more the idea seemed plausible.

The only way the Enterprise's sensors could have missed the entire away team for so long was if all of them had been removed from the city. Keiko and Tanaka were probably outside the range of his scans, since he had no idea what direction they had gone when they left the city. He should have found the others, however, since their destinations were supposed to be inside the city limits.

While part of his brain monitored the sensor readings, Data started working on plausible mechanisms for disrupting the scans. Given how little the Federation knew about the Jarada or the precise levels of their technology, he had no hard evidence for rejecting any known jamming technique. For that matter, they had no firm idea of how much the Jarada knew about the Federation. What he had was two very large systems of unknowns-which he had to solve to locate the missing away team.

While he was working on that problem, two unrelated facts swam to the surface of his brain. First was how much the Jarada had seemed to know specifically about the Enterprise and its crew from the beginning of this a.s.signment. They had requested the Enterprise and its captain by name, they had known the first officer was a competent amateur musician, and-despite their adherence to strict protocol in previous encounters with the Federation-they had presented a friendly and genial facade to their visitors, almost as if they had known the exact approach that would win Picard over with the least amount of effort.

The second fact was the scan that the Jarada had run on the Enterprise when the s.h.i.+p had met them for the first time at Torona IV. After briefly disrupting key elements of the s.h.i.+p's computer and control systems, the Jarada sensors had apparently done no further damage to the Enterprise. But what if the disruption had been a side effect, the result of a high-speed data grab from the s.h.i.+p's main computer? The computers were heavily s.h.i.+elded to prevent such thefts, but the protection could never be absolute in a dynamic system. As long as the computer's users needed to get information into or out of its memory, vulnerable access paths into the computer existed which could be exploited by a determined enemy. In the relief of successfully completing their mission at Torona IV, they had not questioned what the Jaradan scan had been looking for, but now Data wondered.

He called up the s.h.i.+p's logs and sorted through them to find the unreduced scan records he needed. It took several minutes to find the information, since much of it had already been archived to provide working s.p.a.ce for current projects. Even when he located the records, they were too complex and too ambiguous to give him an immediate answer. After ordering the computer to run simulations on the readings and to show him the most likely scenarios of what had happened to the computer's memory banks when they were scanned, Data turned his attention back to the current sensor readings.

A warning light caught his attention, indicating an anomaly in the orbital scans. He switched to those inputs, checking for the signals that had triggered the alarm. The number of objects in their immediate area-in orbits around Bel-Major, BelMinor, or both-was staggering. In the last day he had seen more collision warnings than he had ever encountered outside a simulator, but a brief look at his screens told him that a stray moonlet was not what had triggered the computer.

Radiation trails of the kind normally a.s.sociated with old-style nuclear propulsion systems fanned out from the planet like the lines in a children's hypertext on gravity potential. The readings were faint, difficult to separate from the high background radiation in the area. Data ordered the computer to repeat the scans and to refine its calculations to minimize the uncertainty. It still reported the same results. To the limits of the a.n.a.lysis, between ten and twenty one-or two-person nuclear-powered s.p.a.cecraft had taken off from BelMinor within the last six hours and were in all probability hiding among the moonlets that littered the area. Data was about to report his findings to the captain when the proximity detectors sounded yet another collision warning.

The three small fighter craft swooped from behind a large asteroid so quickly that they were on top of the Enterprise almost before they had registered on the sensors. Picard signaled for red alert and the emergency lights began flas.h.i.+ng. "Collision alert," Data announced for broadcast throughout the s.h.i.+p. "Brace for impact. This is not a drill."

"Mr. Data, report! Conn, warn them off!" Picard snapped, his words overlapping the warning from the proximity detectors. Chang's voice, telling the approaching s.h.i.+ps to change course, wove a muted counterpoint to the android's report.

"The s.h.i.+ps are single-man fighter craft, Captain. They apparently lifted off from BelMinor when our orbit carried us to the far side of the planet," Data said. "I had just finished a.n.a.lyzing our sensor data, which is extremely ambiguous due to the high radiation levels around Bel-Major, and was about to report the probable presence of up to twenty of this cla.s.s of vessel in orbit with us. From the sensor readings I am getting now, I surmise the pilots are Jarada, but the information is extremely peculiar. It does not correspond to anything else we have on the Jarada."

"Twenty-" Picard glanced at the screen, saw the smaller s.h.i.+ps still headed straight for the Enterprise, and interrupted himself. "Chang, warn them off!"

"I'm trying, sir. They are not responding to our signals."

Data answered Picard's next question before he even asked it. "The s.h.i.+elds will hold against a direct impact, Captain. Some people may be affected by radiation on the decks nearest the collision point, but the Enterprise should sustain no permanent damage. However, the approaching vessels will be completely destroyed."

"Chang, get a tractor beam on them and try to keep them from hitting us."

"Aye, sir." Chang punched in the coordinates of the leading vessel and activated the tractor beam. However, the small s.h.i.+p was under heavy acceleration and the tractor beam could not lock onto the s.h.i.+p's hull. The fighter plunged straight for the Enterprise and disintegrated against its s.h.i.+elds. The viewscreen flared white and the s.h.i.+p rocked briefly before the inertial dampers compensated.

"Do the same thing on the next one, Mr. Chang," Data ordered. "I will work Tractor Beams Two and Three to s.h.i.+ft it away from us."

"Yes, sir."

While Chang tried to hold the next fighter with his tractor beam, Data programmed two additional beams to help force the Jarada s.h.i.+p away from the Enterprise. Despite the android's speed and his ability to work each hand independently, Data and Chang managed to get only a partial grip on the attacking s.h.i.+p. It tumbled away from them and crashed into the Enterprise's s.h.i.+elds, exploding in a blaze of hard radiation.

"Get the pilot first," Picard ordered as Chang and Data tried for the next s.h.i.+p. "Security to Transporter Room Four."

Data relayed the coordinates for the pilot of the third vessel to the transporter room. While they waited for the report, the sensors picked up three more fighters approaching under extreme acceleration.

"Mr. Data." Picard's voice held a note of frustration. "What are our chances of stopping these vessels?"

For a long moment the only sounds on the bridge were the mechanical chirps of various status indicators and the brush of Data's fingers on the touchpads of his console. After what seemed an eternity to the waiting bridge crew, Data answered. "The probabilities are that we will do no better getting a tractor beam on any of these s.h.i.+ps than we did on the others. Our s.h.i.+elds are holding, with two small radiation leaks reported on the lower decks. All projections indicate that there will be no significant damage to the Enterprise even if all three of the approaching vessels collide with us. The radiation levels from the explosions will make transporting the pilots risky, but the chances for the pilots surviving are significantly greater than if they crash their s.h.i.+ps against our s.h.i.+elds."

"Make it so, Commander."

Just then the report came in from the transporter room. "We couldn't keep the signal lock on him, Captain. The radiation levels were too high."

After a moment's hesitation Data relayed the coordinates for the three approaching s.h.i.+ps. "Pull these in as fast as you can, Mr. O'Brien," he added. "Their s.h.i.+ps are rapidly approaching the danger zone."

"Aye, sir."

With an outward show of calmness Picard waited for word from the transporter room. Watching the fourth s.h.i.+p burst into a spray of blinding light against the s.h.i.+elds, he considered destroying the fighters before they hit the Enterprise's s.h.i.+elds. However, if he fired the phasers too soon, O'Brien would not be able to rescue the pilots. And to protect himself from any more attacks, Picard wanted those pilots. If there was any reason behind these suicide runs, any explanation for his missing crew members down on the planet, Picard's instincts told him he would get it from the Jarada in those s.h.i.+ps.

"Data, try contacting the Jarada Council of Elders again. I wish to speak with Zelfreetrollan." Picard felt the deck shudder beneath him as the fifth s.h.i.+p destroyed itself against the Enterprise's s.h.i.+elds.

"Aye, sir." There was a brief pause while the android tried to open a channel to the planet. "They still are not responding, Captain."

"Captain," came O'Brien's voice from the transporter room. "We've managed to rescue two of the pilots from those s.h.i.+ps, but they're in pretty bad shape. Security had to stun one of them and the other is under restraints. Raving like a lunatic, he is."

Picard suppressed a groan. It figured that the Jarada pilots would be incapable of answering his questions. "Have security take them to sickbay for observation, O'Brien, and keep them under restraints at all times." He glanced up at the ceiling, signaling a new call. "Sickbay. Dr. Selar."

After a moment the Vulcan doctor answered the page, her voice calm and unruffled even though Picard could imagine the sudden influx of patients she was having due to the collisions. Somehow, despite the warnings and the drills, people always managed to get hurt. "Selar, here."

"Doctor, security is bringing you two prisoners. I need a full medical workup on them as soon as possible. Also, notify me the minute they are able to answer questions."

"Yes, Captain. Do you need anything else?"

Was that a hint of irony in her voice? Picard wondered. If it had been Crusher, the sarcasm would have bordered on insubordination. All doctors, it seemed, learned that skill as part of their medical training. "Thank you, Doctor. That will be all."

He s.h.i.+fted position, wondering why his chair should suddenly feel so uncomfortable. After a moment he remembered something Data had said earlier. "Data, how many of those s.h.i.+ps did you say were out there?"

"Between ten and twenty, Captain. The radiation levels in this system create too much background noise for me to get any more precise readings than that."

"Thank you, Mr. Data." Picard settled back in his chair, trying to look calm and in control. It was going to be a very long night, waiting to see what would happen next. Too many lives were at stake for him to move before he had enough information. At the same time-what could he do to speed up the process? Somewhere in the last day and a half the away team must have discovered something he could use to reach the Jarada. The attacks on the s.h.i.+p, the disappearance of the away team, even the apparent ease of the negotiations-all had to be part of the same pattern.

The question still was-why? If he knew the why of the Jarada's puzzling behavior, he should be able to antic.i.p.ate their next move. And for the safety of his s.h.i.+p, he had to antic.i.p.ate it. The Jarada's next attack might be with something more lethal than antiquated one-man s.h.i.+ps. Picard shuddered, feeling desperation finally kick his brain into overdrive.

"Why?" O'Brien demanded angrily, pounding his fist against the engineering console. "Why does the captain insist that I rescue the d.a.m.ned bugs who kidnapped my wife? We ought to just blast the lot of them to oblivion!"

"Calm down, Chief, and keep your mind on busi ness! The captain wants those Jarada for questioning." Geordi's voice contained a steely edge. While he understood O'Brien's anger, it was getting in the way of the transporter chief's work. However, Geordi had to admit that despite his bl.u.s.ter, O'Brien had performed brilliantly getting the Jarada pilots out of their craft.

Geordi skimmed through the results of Data's latest simulation, which postulated one way that the Jarada might be jamming the Enterprise's sensors, and then dumped the numbers to O'Brien's console. "We need a plan for holding the transporter lock against this kind of interference."

"This is all hypothetical," O'Brien snarled. "Why don't we just take a landing party down there and rescue them? Before the Jarada kill them?"

Geordi heaved an exasperated sigh. "If you have any suggestions on how to find them, I'm sure the captain will be eager to hear them. Otherwise, the best thing you can do is make sure we can keep a transporter lock on them when we find them, regardless of what the Jarada throw at us. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," O'Brien replied in a tone that contradicted his agreement. However, his hands moved across his panel, calling for information and cuing in the tests he needed to decide the best way to transport people through the Jaradan interference.

"Good." Geordi sent another set of reports to O'Brien's console. "Let's get cracking, so we've got the answers when they're needed."

Chapter Fourteen.

RIKER SLAMMED INTO the bottom of the shaft, and the wind whooshed from his body. Dazed and battered, he slumped to the wet floor, gasping for breath. Every bone, every muscle, every nerve in his body screamed from the beating he had taken as he plummeted down the ramp. He had lost track of the number of times he bad banged his shoulder or his knee as he descended, struggling to keep some control of his course but not daring to stop himself for fear that the guardians would pour down the ramp before he reached the bottom.

He tried to move, testing his body to see how badly he was injured. By now he knew his bruises had bruises, each puffy swelling embellished with its own satellite injuries. His left knee was swelling rapidly and soon, he feared, he would not be able to bend it. Moving slowly, he rolled on his side and started to get up.

A loud sc.r.a.ping hum, accented by random clatterings and knockings, poured down the shaft. Before Riker could wonder who or what was descending so rapidly, Zarn shot around the comer. The Jarada was on his back, using his exoskeleton like a toboggan. He crashed into Riker, again knocking the human to the floor.

The impact flipped Zarn over and he scrambled to his feet. "That was most exhilarating. I see why you find so much enjoyment in descending in that manner." The insectoid moved to the outer wall and raked his claws over the mold-covered wall, activating the control panel.

Riker groaned and tried to stand. Somehow it was harder the second time. To make matters worse, when Zarn had hit him, the Jarada's claws had nicked him in several places and the cuts were smarting from the contact with his wet uniform. He shuddered at the thought of what could happen if he didn't get proper treatment soon.

"Hurry!" Zarn ordered, his voice hitting three shrill, discordant notes. "I overrode the standard setting on the door where we entered, but that won't keep them away for long. They'll be after us as soon as a squad reaches the door on the next level."

"Oh, great! That's all I needed to hear." Riker forced himself to his feet and cautiously put his weight onto his left leg. The knee was very tender and too swollen for him to bend it more than a few degrees, but it held his weight. Heaving a sigh of relief that the injury was not worse, he hobbled over to the door. "If we're in such a hurry, what are we waiting for?"

Zarn pounded on the control panel, which flashed a message at him in lavender characters. "Security breach? Vrel'keth brefteev! I'll give you 'security breach'!" His claws twitching against the control pads, he entered a long string of commands. A message in royal purple answered him, and Zarn tapped in anoth er long sequence of coded symbols. Finally the door began to open.

Zarn dashed through, beckoning for Riker to follow. "Hurry up! Someone is trying to lock us in the shaft. I overrode their program with my Council authority, but that won't last for long. When it occurs to them, they'll block all the overrides for this part of the complex."

Limping heavily, Riker stumbled through the door. He had barely cleared the frame when it began closing. He paused, listening for sounds of pursuit, but the shaft behind them was silent. "They're not on our trail yet. If you have any good ideas for throwing them off, this would be an excellent time for them."

Zarn started down the tunnel, moving ahead of Riker before he realized the human was not keeping up. The Jarada slowed, swiveling his head around to see what the problem was. His four-legged stride covered the ground with an easy lope that Riker envied, but at the moment he would have gladly settled for two sound limbs. "You must hurry if you don't want them to catch up with us," Zarn said.

"I'm doing the best I can," Riker grumbled, more than a little annoyed at his own weakness. The worst of it was that he didn't know how much he dared admit to Zarn about his injuries. He thought the Jarada was on his side, but he was beginning to wonder. His inability to contact the Enterprise and the repeated attacks were making him less and less inclined to trust Zarn. If he could have gotten himself out of this interminable dungeon on his own, he would have declined any further help from his host.

The Jarada watched him, studying Riker's limp for so long that he began to feel self-conscious. Finally Zarn pivoted his head forward and slowed his pace. "Truly, if your people are so fragile, how do you manage to survive? And why do you indulge in such activities as the sliding if you are not capable of absorbing the damage?"

"It wasn't by choice," Riker muttered, envisioning Zarn with a bruised joint. The swelling against the Jarada's exoskeleton would indubitably be even more painful than the pressure in Riker's knee.

"I don't understand your answer."

Without waiting for Riker to explain, Zarn dashed into a side corridor. The floor was coated with mud, and a trickle of water meandered along one wall. Several pa.s.sageways split from the tunnel, each looking more dark and unhealthy than the last. Zarn chose one, apparently at random, then selected another tunnel that branched from it. With each turning the floor became muddier and the number of surviving glowstrips fewer. Where are we going? Riker wondered, but decided it wasn't something he wanted the Jarada to tell him. His instincts warned him that the answer would be unpleasant at best and, at the worst, he would find the story completely unbelievable.

After three or four turns Zarn entered a tunnel whose end was blocked by a huge pile of mud and dirt. His antennae sprung outward, giving his face a decidedly smug expression. For a moment Riker had to fight against an irrational impulse to wipe the look off Zarn's face. When the Jarada spoke, Riker was almost sorry he had resisted. "We will climb through there," Zarn said, pointing at the mound of dirt. "There is a short stretch of tunnel between two cave-ins. No one will look for us there."

Riker eyed the blocked tunnel dubiously. He was not sure he could fit through a Jarada-size opening, and he was certain he didn't want to try. However, he didn't think he could retrace their path and find a way out of these deserted tunnels, so he had to stick with Zarn. Reluctantly, he followed the insectoid up the pile of dirt, discovering that there was a large gap at the top where the ceiling of the tunnel once had been. He squeezed through and slithered down the other side.

"We will wait here," Zarn announced. "They will search these tunnels for five standards if they use the customary procedures. After that we will be free to go."

Riker heaved a sigh of frustration. The last thing he wanted to do was sit around in cold, wet mud for several hours. However, he had little choice. He lowered his head to his knees and, in spite of himself, was soon fast asleep.

He awoke slowly, unable to place where he was. It was cold, so cold and wet he thought at first he was still dreaming. Mud was everywhere, supporting him, surrounding him, and oozing into every pore of his uniform. Surely, he thought, so miserable a place could not exist outside a nightmare.

The sluggish plop of water into a puddle, as monotonous and maddening as the proverbial Chinese water torture, finally convinced Riker he was awake. Carefully, he pried one eyelid open to confirm his worst fears. He was alone in the blocked-off section of pa.s.sageway, with no sign of where Zarn had gone or if he intended to return.

Riker shoved against the ground, trying to push himself upright. He got nowhere, his muscles too stiff and battered to respond. With a groan he flopped on his back, and the cold mud found new places to penetrate. As it seeped into his hair, Riker decided that whoever said h.e.l.l was hot had never been there; eternity in a frigid mud hole like this seemed an infinitely worse punishment. Suddenly, his stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn't eaten in many hours. He gritted his teeth, knowing there was no food available, and willed himself to ignore the hunger pangs. His first priority was to get himself out of here.

Concentrating on his hands first, he began moving his fingers. Slowly, carefully, he worked the stiffness from his wrists and arms, flexing and warming each muscle until he regained use of it. Moving to his toes, he repeated the exercises for his legs, gently stretching and bending them until he could stand. He was pleased to find that the cold had taken down some of the swelling in his left knee. The joint was still painfully enlarged, but the fabric of his uniform no longer stretched taut across the injury.

He levered himself to his feet, his movements slow and awkward as he tried to keep his balance on the greasy mud. The middle of the tunnel seemed firmer, the floor less muddy. Riker squelched the five steps over to the driest area, thinking how mud had lost its attractiveness after he reached the age of ten. Before that he remembered the fights he had had every summer with his cousins in Oklahoma, when his aunt had sent them off to play in the creek that ran through the back forty. The four of them, with Riker the youngest by two years, had always returned covered from head to toe with the clayey red muck with which they had pelted each other.