Troi peered at the spot that Faal had indicated on the map. She didn’t recall much about that region, but she estimated that it was about two to three days away at warp five. Neither the captain nor Will Riker radiated any concern about the location Faal had chosen. She could tell that they anticipated an uneventful flight until they arrived at the barrier.
“Professor,” she asked, “how similar is the galactic barrier to the Great Barrier? Would your new technique be effective on both?”
Faal nodded knowingly. “That’s a good question. What is colloquially known as ‘the Great Barrier’ is a similar wall of energy that encloses the very center of our galaxy, as opposed to the outer rim of the galaxy. More precisely, the Great Barrier is an intra galactic energy field while our destination is an extra galactic field.” He ran his hand through his thinning gray hair. “Research conducted over the last hundred years suggests that both barriers are composed of equivalent, maybe even identical, forms of energy. In theory, the artificial wormhole process, if it’s successful, could be used to penetrate the Great Barrier as well. Many theorists believe both barriers stem from the same root cause.”
“Which is?” she inquired.
Faal chuckled. “I’m afraid that’s more of a theological question than a scientific one, and thus rather out of my field. As far as we can tell, the existence of the barriers predates the development of sentient life in our galaxy. Or at least any life-forms we’re familiar with.”
That’s odd, Troi mused. She wasn’t sure but she thought she detected a flicker of insincerity behind the scientist’s ingratiating manner, like he was holding something back. Perhaps he’s not as confident about his theories as he’d like Starfleet to think, she thought. It was hard to tell; Faal’s own telepathic gifts made him difficult to read.
Sitting beside Troi, Beverly Crusher spoke up, a look of concern upon her features. “Has anyone thought about the potential ecological consequences of poking a hole in the barrier? If these walls have been in place for billions of years, maybe they serve some vital purpose, either to us or to whatever life-forms exist on the opposite side of the wall. I hate to throw cold water on a fascinating proposal, but maybe the barrier shouldn’t be breached?”
There it is again, Troi thought, watching the Betazoid scientist carefully. She sensed some sort of reaction from Faal in response to Beverly’s question. It flared up immediately, then was quickly snuffed out before she could clearly identify the emotion. Fear? Guilt? Annoyance? Maybe he simply doesn’t like having his experiment challenged, she speculated. Certainly he wouldn’t be the first dedicated scientist to suffer from tunnel vision where his brainchild was concerned. Researchers, she knew from experience, could be as protective of their pet projects as an enraged sehlat defending its young.
If he was feeling defensive, he displayed no sign of it. “Above all else, first do no harm, correct, Doctor?” he replied to Crusher amiably, paraphrasing the Hippocratic Oath. “I appreciate your concerns, Doctor. Let me reassure you a bit regarding the scale of our experiment. The galactic barrier itself is so unfathomably vast that our proposed exercise is not unlike knocking a few bricks out of your own Earth’s Great Wall of China. It’s hard to imagine that we could do much damage to the ecosystem of the entire galaxy, let alone whatever lies beyond, although the potential danger is another good reason for conducting this preliminary test in an unpopulated sector. As far as we know, there’s nothing on the other side except the vast emptiness between our own galaxy and its neighbors.” He pressed a finger against his padd and the screen behind him reverted to the compelling image with which he had begun his lecture: the awe-inspiring sight of the galactic barrier stretching across countless light-years of space, its eerie, incandescent energies rippling through the shimmering wall of violet light.
“Starfleet feels—” he started to say, but a harsh choking noise interrupted his explanation. He placed his free hand over his mouth and coughed a few more times. Troi saw his chest heaving beneath his suit and winced in sympathy. She was no physician, but she didn’t like the sound of Faal’s coughs, which seemed to come from deep within his lungs. She could tell that Beverly was concerned as well.
“Excuse me,” Faal gasped, fishing around in the pockets of his tan suit. He withdrew a compact silver hypospray, which he pressed against the crook of his arm. Troi heard a distinctive hiss as the instrument released its medication into his body. Within a few seconds, Faal appeared to regain control of his breathing. “I apologize for the interruption, but I’m afraid my health isn’t all it should be.”
Troi recalled her earlier impression of infirmity. Was this ailment, she wondered, what the professor was trying so hard to conceal? Even Betazoids, who generally prided themselves on being at ease with their own bodies, could feel uncomfortable about revealing a serious medical condition. She recalled that Faal had brought his family along on this mission, despite the possibility of danger, and she wondered how his obvious health problems might have affected his children. Perhaps I should prepare for some family counseling, just in case my assistance is needed.
Faal took a few deep breaths to steady himself, then addressed Beverly. “As ship’s medical officer, Dr. Crusher, you should probably be aware that I have Iverson’s disease.”
The emotional temperature of the room rose to a heightened level the moment Faal mentioned the dreaded sickness. Iverson’s disease remained one of the more conspicuous failures of twenty-fourth-century medicine: a debilitating, degenerative condition for which there was no known cure. Thankfully noncontagious, the disorder attacked muscle fiber and other connective tissues, resulting in the progressive atrophy of limbs and vital organs; from the sound of Faal’s labored breathing, Troi suspected that Faal’s ailment had targeted his respiratory system. She felt acute sympathy and embarrassment on the part of her fellow officers. No doubt all of them were remembering Admiral Mark Jameson—and the desperate lengths the disease had driven him to during that mission to Mordan IV. “I’m very sorry,” she said.
“Please feel free to call on me for whatever care you may require,” Beverly stressed. “Perhaps you should come by sickbay later so we can discuss your condition in private.”
“Thank you,” he said, “but please don’t let my condition concern any of you.” He held up the hypospray. “My doctor has prescribed polyadrenaline for my current symptoms. All that matters now is that I live long enough to see the completion of my work.” The hypospray went back into his pocket and Faal pointed again to the image of the galactic barrier on the screen.
“At any rate,” he continued, “Starfleet Science has judged the potential risk of this experiment to be acceptable when weighed against the promise of opening up a new era of expansion beyond the boundaries of this galaxy. Exploring the unknown always contains an element of danger. Isn’t that so, Captain?”
“Indeed,” the captain agreed. “The fundamental mission of the Enterprise, as well as that of Starfleet, has always been to extend the limits of our knowledge of the universe, exploring new and uncharted territory.” Picard rose from his seat at the head of the table. “Your experiment, Professor Faal, falls squarely within the proud tradition of this ship. Let us hope for the best of luck in this exciting new endeavor.”
It’s too bad, Troi thought, that the rest of the crew can’t sense Captain Picard’s passion and commitment the same way I can. Then she looked around the conference table and saw the glow of the captain’s inspiration reflected in the faces of her fellow officers. Even Beverly, despite her earlier doubts, shared their commitment to the mission. On second thought, maybe they can.
“Thank you, Captain,” Lem Faal said warmly. Troi noticed that he still seemed a bit out of breath. “I am anxious to begin.”
This time Troi detected nothing but total sincerity in the man’s words.
Two
“The most difficult part,” Lem Faal explained, “is going to be keeping the torpedo intact inside the barrier until it can send out a m
agneton pulse.”
“That’s more than difficult,” Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge commented. He had been reading up on the galactic barrier ever since the briefing, so he had a better idea of what they were up against. “That’s close to impossible.”
The duty engineer’s console, adjacent to the chief engineer’s office, had been reassigned to the Betazoid researcher as a workstation where he could complete the preparations for his experiment. To accommodate Faal’s shaky health, La Forge had also taken care to provide a sturdy stool Faal could rest upon while he worked. Now he and Geordi scrutinized the diagrams unfolding on a monitor as Faal spelled out the details of his experiment:
“Not if we fine-tune the polarity of the shields to match exactly the amplitude of the barrier at the point where the quantum torpedo containing the magneton pulse generator enters the barrier. That amplitude is constantly shifting, of course, but if we get it right, then the torpedo should hold together long enough to emit a magneton pulse that will react with a subspace tensor matrix generated by the Enterprise to create an opening in the space-time continuum. Then, according to my calculations, the artificial wormhole will disrupt the energy lattice of the barrier, creating a pathway of normal space through to the other side!”
“Then it’s only two million light-years to the next galaxy, right?” Geordi said with a grin. “I guess we’ll have to build that bridge when we get to it.”
“Precisely,” Faal answered. “For myself, I’ll leave that challenge for the starship designers and transwarp enthusiasts. Who knows? Maybe a generation ship is the answer, if you can find enough colonists who don’t mind leaving the landing to their descendants. Or suspended animation, perhaps. But before we can face the long gulf between the galaxies, first we must break free from the glimmering cage that has hemmed us in since time began. We’re like baby birds that finally have to leave the nest and explore the great blue sky beyond.”
“I never quite thought of it that way,” Geordi said. “After all, the Milky Way is one heck of a big nest.”
“The biggest nest still hems you in, as the largest cage is still a cage,” Faal insisted with a trace of bitterness in his voice. “Look at me. My mind is free to explore the fundamental principles of the universe, but it’s trapped inside a fragile, dying body.” He looked up from his schematics to inspect Geordi. “Excuse me for asking, Commander, but I’m intrigued by your eyes. Are those the new ocular implants I’ve heard about, the ones they just developed on Earth?”
The scientist’s curiosity did not bother Geordi; sometimes his new eyes still caught him by surprise, especially when he looked in a mirror. “These are them, all right. I didn’t know you were interested in rehabilitative medicine. Or is it the optics?”
“It’s all about evolution,” Faal explained. “Technology has usurped natural selection as the driving force of evolution, so I’m fascinated by the ways in which sentient organisms can improve upon their own flawed biology. Prosthetics are one way, genetic manipulation is another. So is breaking the barrier, perhaps. It’s about overcoming the inherent frailties of our weak humanoid bodies, becoming superior beings, just as you have used the latest in medical technology to improve yourself.”
Geordi wasn’t sure quite how to respond. He didn’t exactly think of himself as “superior,” just better equipped to do his job. “If you say so, Professor,” he said, feeling a little uncomfortable. Lem Faal was starting to sound a bit too much like a Borg. Maybe it was only a trick of light, reflecting the glow of the monitor, but an odd sort of gleam had crept into the Betazoid’s eyes as he spoke. I wonder if I would have even noticed that a few years ago? Geordi thought. His VISOR had done a number of things well, from isolating hairline fractures in metal plating to tracking neutrinos through a flowing plasma current, but picking up on subtle nuances of facial expressions hadn’t been one of them.
“Chief!” Geordi turned around to see Lieutenant Reginald Barclay approaching the workstation. Barclay was pushing before him an antigrav carrier supporting a device Geordi recognized from Professor Faal’s blueprints. “Mr. DeCandido in Transporter Room Five said you wanted this immediately.”
The carrier was a black metal platform, hovering above the floor at about waist level, which Barclay steered by holding on to a horizontal handlebar in front of his chest. Faal’s invention sat atop the platform, held securely in place by a stasis field. It consisted of a shining steel cylinder, approximately a meter and a half in height, surrounded by a transparent plastic sphere with metal connection plates at both the top and the bottom poles of the globe. It looked like it might be fairly heavy outside the influence of the antigrav generator; Geordi automatically estimated the device’s mass with an eye toward figuring out how it would affect the trajectory of a standard quantum torpedo once it was installed within the torpedo casing. Shouldn’t be too hard to insert the globe into a torpedo, he thought, assuming everything is in working order inside the sphere.
“Thanks, Reg,” he said. “Professor Faal, this is Lieutenant Reginald Barclay. Reg, this is Professor Faal.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Barclay stammered. “This is a very daring experiment that I’m proud to be a part—” He lifted a hand from the handlebar to offer it to Faal, but then the platform started to tilt and he hastily put both hands back on the handle. “Oops. Sorry about that,” he muttered.
Faal eyed Barclay skeptically, and Geordi had to resist a temptation to roll his ocular implants. Barclay always managed to make a poor first impression on people, which was too bad since, at heart, he was a dedicated and perfectly capable crew member. Unfortunately, his competence fluctuated in direct relationship to his confidence, which often left something to be desired; the more insecure he got, the more he tended to screw up, which just rattled him even more. Geordi had taken Barclay on as a special project some years back, and the nervous crewman was showing definite signs of progress, although some days you wouldn’t know it. Just my luck, he thought, this had to be one of Reg’s off days.
“Please be careful, Lieutenant,” Faal stressed to Barclay. “You’re carrying the very heart of my experiment there. Inside that cylinder is a mononuclear strand of quantum filament suspended in a protomatter matrix. Unless the filament is aligned precisely when the torpedo releases the magneton pulse, there will be no way to control the force and direction of the protomatter reaction. We could end up with merely a transitory subspace fissure that would have no impact on the barrier at all.”
“Understood, Professor,” Barclay assured him. “You can count on me. I’ll guard this component like a mother Horta guards her eggs. Even better, in fact, because you won’t have to feed me my weight in silicon bricks.” He stared at the Betazoid’s increasingly dubious expression. “Er, that was a joke. The last part, I mean, not the part about guarding the component, because that was completely serious even if you didn’t like the bit about the Hortas, cause I understand that not everyone’s fond of—”
“That will be fine,” Geordi interrupted, coming to Barclay’s rescue. “Just put the sphere on that table over there. Professor Faal and I need to make some adjustments.”
“Got it,” Barclay said, avoiding eye contact with Faal. He pushed the carrier over to an elevated shelf strewn with delicate instruments. The antigrav platform floated a few centimeters above the ledge of the shelf. Barclay’s forehead wrinkled with anxiety as he looked up and over the carrier to the controls on the other side.
“Let me just scoot over there to even this out,” he said, smiling tightly as he began to walk around the carrier to reach the controls.
As soon as Reg took his first step, time seemed to slow down for La Forge. Geordi watched the rise and fall of Reg’s footsteps, the gangly engineer’s legs grazing the platform, which he didn’t give a wide enough berth. La Forge felt his mouth open and heard his own voice utter the first word of a warning. Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, Geordi watched with horror as Lieutenant Reginald Barclay’s left elbow plowed into the corn
er of the platform. The delicate equipment trembled. Reg jumped away. Geordi instinctively covered his eyes. It was one of the few times he wished that medical science had not restored his sight quite so efficiently.
When he finally gathered the courage to look at the equipment and assess the damage, La Forge thought he might faint with relief. The platform had miraculously righted itself. Time sped up to its normal pace again. He dimly heard Barclay’s apologies for the near-disaster, but was more concerned for the Betazoid scientist.
He glanced over at Professor Faal. The scientist’s face had gone completely white and his mouth hung open in dumbfounded horror. Has his disease weakened his heart? he worried. He hoped not, since Lem Faal looked like he was about to drop dead on the spot. He was shaking so hard that Geordi was afraid he’d fall off his stool. I wonder if I should call Dr. Crusher?
“Um,” Barclay mumbled, staring fixedly at the floor. “Will that be all, sir?”
Geordi offered a silent prayer of thanks to the nameless gods of engineering. He had not been looking forward to telling the captain how his team managed to completely pulverize the central component of the big experiment. He made a mental note to have Barclay schedule a few extra sessions with Counselor Troi. Some more self-confidence exercises were definitely in order…as well as a good talking-to.
“Watch it, Lieutenant,” he said, his utter embarrassment in front of Faal adding heat to his tone. “This operation is too important for that kind of carelessness.” He disliked having to criticize one of his officers in front of a visitor, but Barclay hadn’t given him any other choice. He had to put the fear of god into Reg, and let Professor Faal know he had the situation under control.
At least, that was the plan….