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"The scanner readings being picked up by the fifth planet in the system are extremely unusual, Captain." T'Pol's voice cut through the quiet of the bridge as the ship finally approached the system of which Kerriel was the second planet. "We will be passing very close to it on our current heading. It might be worthwhile to take the opportunity to take a closer look at it."

Archer, who had been sitting in his chair trying to conceal the fact that every muscle in his body was rigid with tension, glanced across at her in surprise before realizing that she was simply trying to maintain the charade of normality. Other people besides herself would be checking those scans, and it could cause comment if she failed to report something that she would normally have been the first to pick up.

Phlox had kept him up to date on her 'progress', and so far no miracle had occurred. The toxin was still present and working its stealthy curse, even though the object of it had been removed. The science officer was now having to use a cosmetic cream to disguise the fact that bruises were starting to appear on parts of her body that her uniform didn't cover. Apart from that, whatever medication the doctor was using on her seemed to be enabling her to carry on as normal; if the captain hadn't been privy to the secret already he doubted if he'd ever have guessed it from her demeanor.

"In what way, 'unusual'?" he asked, playing along.

"Unusual in that there are no readings from it," she replied, keying various commands on her console. "There is a planet, and it would appear to have an atmosphere of some kind. But we cannot obtain any information more than that. It is there, and that is all we know."

"Why didn't we notice it last time?" inquired Hoshi in surprise.

"When we approached last time it was in apogee to our course." The ship was approaching from a slightly different angle this time as during the intervening weeks they had travelled in various directions to investigate anything that looked as though it might prove interesting. The return route had naturally taken them in a straight line, and they were thus coming closer to the fifth planet's orbit.

"Well. I guess we can spare the time for a quick peek as we pass." His gaze searched her face for agreement and noted the infinitesimal nod. "Travis, take us into orbit. We'll take a turn around it and see what we can get."

When they were safely in orbit around it, however, the fifth planet did not look welcoming. For one thing, the atmosphere that defied the sensors was no more accommodating to a visual inspection. It appeared to consist chiefly of a dense black fog. The movement of the planet below apparently generated some form of weather system, for here and there the fog was disturbed by very large whorls that must represent titanic storms down on the surface; but apart from that, there was nothing that could be deduced about it at all. At his order, Hoshi sent out the usual hails, announcing their arrival to anyone who might be listening. There was no reply, but he got the distinct feeling that someone, or something, had heard nonetheless. Staring at its inhospitable looking cloud cover, the captain found himself feeling the first stirrings of something like fear.

"Still nothing from the sensors, captain," T'Pol told him quietly.

"Hoshi. Hail on all frequencies." Everyone watched as she went through the standard procedure, but after a moment she shook her head. "Nothing, captain. Not even static."

He gave the order for a probe to be launched. The small bright projectile fizzed away from the ship's underbelly and vanished.

"Entering the stratosphere, Captain." Malcolm was tracking its flight via the tactical console.

"Receiving telemetry." After a moment or two the science officer frowned. "Transmission lost."

"Lost?" Archer turned in his chair. "You mean it exploded or something? Was it attacked?"

"I can't say, sir. Our scanners lost it as soon as it entered the troposphere." Malcolm shrugged helplessly.

"What data we did receive revealed traces of hyrellanium," said T'Pol slowly. "That would explain why we lost contact with the probe, and why our sensors are unable to penetrate the atmosphere. There was also extreme turbulence in the troposphere. This may simply have been too severe for the probe's guidance system to deal with."

"We could prep a second probe with an upgraded guidance system," suggested Reed. "If we pull the warhead from a Mark II and have the science team put together a sensor pack ..."

"How long?" interrupted Archer.

The lieutenant thought for a moment. "We can have the chassis stripped down by the end of the shift. How long to prepare the sensor pack, Sub-Commander?"

"We would require twenty four hours to design, build and test the sensor pack," replied T'Pol.

"And then we need to reassemble ..." Reed turned back to Archer. "Two days, give or take," he said.

The captain hesitated and exchanged a glance with T'Pol. "That's too long," he ruled. He punched in the comm. code for Engineering. "Trip, have your people get a shuttle ready. We're going to need it for a quick flypast."

"Yes, sir."

In happier days it would have been a cheerful 'Will do, Cap'n', but Archer hadn't time right now to worry about the uncharacteristic tension in that reply; it was one more of the things that he had to shove uneasily into the back of his mind to be dealt with at some other time. He was guiltily aware of the deterioration in his relationship with Trip, but couldn't seem to find a way of trying to patch things up without embarking on a discussion that was far too likely to cause a serious breach between them. If he couldn't understand himself what had happened to him, how could he possibly expect Trip to do so?

"Travis, I want you to man the shuttle," he said aloud. "T'Pol, you'll be in charge of the scanners: see if there's anything you can find out at close quarters. Malcolm, I want you to go along as well."

"Me, sir?" The tactical officer looked surprised for a second, then nodded obediently and rose from his station. He would doubtless contact the armory on his way down to the shuttle bay and arrange for his deputy Ensign Muller to take his place on the bridge in his absence. Ensign Franks had been carrying out a few standard checks on circuitry in the situation room, and moved forward to take the helm from Travis. Hoshi was fully capable of keeping a weather eye on the science station, in view of the fact that nobody seemed interested in initiating a conversation with the ship right now.

"Wait a minute." He stayed the shuttle party with a quick gesture. "I want you to take one short dip inside the troposphere, that's all. See if you can scan the surface, if the sensors can pick anything up about it from there. One look and come out again. If you can't find anything just forget the whole thing. And don't take chances – any chances whatsoever. For any reason. Understood?"

They nodded or murmured assent and trooped out. He was left to wait and watch. A situation with which he was becoming all too familiar, but which he had never found easy to endure.

Receiving the message from the shuttle bay that the 'pod was now safely on its way, Archer watched the view-screen intently, trying to ignore the causeless knot of apprehension that was tightening in his stomach with every second. What they were doing was logical – it would have been hard to find an excuse for passing by such a mysterious planet without giving away their real reason for haste. There was no evidence of anything that would threaten the shuttle, after all. They didn't even have to land the shuttle on the planet itself, just run a brief pass through the lower atmosphere to find out what lay beneath that seemingly impenetrable layer, and return with the data. With the ship sailing serenely in orbit he'd followed his instincts by detailing Travis to take the shuttle's helm. He didn't doubt that Malcolm was a perfectly capable pilot, but Travis was the more experienced of the two – and not having the responsibility for flying the vessel would leave the tactical officer free to respond immediately to any emergency that might occur.

Emergency – why the heck should there be any emergency? His nerves were fraying. It didn't help that Trip had come up from Engineering and was messing intermittently with something in the wiring behind the tactical station he said there was a problem with. There had been something in Tucker's voice that told him this was just an excuse to keep an eye on events, but right here and right now wasn't the place or the time to start an argument about it.

The shuttle dipped away quietly towards the planet. The ship was tranquil. Everyone on the bridge was calmly manning their stations.

"NO!" A scream that would have burst his eardrums if it had been audible crashed through his brain. In pure reflex his hand slammed down on the comm. "Get out of there!" he yelled. "Travis, pull out! Pull out!"

There was no reply.


On board the shuttle, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed sat silently watching the instrumentation visible to him. With Travis at the helm and T'Pol manning the scanners, and no immediate expectation of his being required to man the weapons console – although he was, of course, poised and ready to do so if needed – he had little to do but wait and watch events.

It wasn't immediately obvious to him why the captain had been so insistent on his making one of the shuttle team; it would have been more comprehensible if there had been any intention of landing anywhere, or testing any weapons, or even any suggestion that there might be any ships in the vicinity – potentially hostile or otherwise. Nevertheless, it wasn't his job to question orders. At least, he comforted himself grimly, if they did end up landing there wouldn't be any water for him to worry about drowning in. In the unlikely event of this planet harbouring H2O in any volume, at this distance from its sun there wouldn't be a drop of it that wasn't perpetually frozen solid. Although, his pessimistic side gloomily pointed out, if one took this to its logical conclusion it would theoretically still be possible to for him to drown in any liquid gas such as methane, which occurs on many planets and has a freezing point of minus 182.47°C.

The fact that even the atmosphere was resisting the scanners was rather more worrying than the possibility of his meeting a gruesome end submerged in liquid methane, though. Apart from the question of what the inner atmosphere itself might be made of, there could be any amount of flotsam lurking in there. The shuttle was built to withstand quite considerable impacts, but a head-on with anything of any real size could be disastrous. For that reason the order for them to take only the briefest and shallowest of dips into it to see if anything could be detected underneath the tropopause was both logical and comfortable. If not, they'd been forbidden to take any chances and he personally would make sure they didn't.

Malcolm frowned, recalling the captain's repeated emphasis on that instruction. Normally, Archer was a damned sight too keen on taking chances for his liking – though in all fairness, usually when it was his own neck on the block as opposed to anyone else's. This excessive caution was rather unlike him. It was, of course, technically possible that he was finally coming around to sharing his tactical officer's viewpoint of extreme suspicion of practically everything, but (welcome though this would have been) it was a mite unlikely. It could only be concluded that it was this particular mission that the captain was worried about for some reason. The fact that he hadn't admitted this, or divulged that reason, was a worry in itself; and if there was anything other than shooting weapons and causing explosions in which Lieutenant Reed was a past master, it was the art of worrying. Out of the sheer want of something to do to take his mind off things, he removed the phase pistol from its clip at his belt and checked the power cell in it quite unnecessarily.

"Just coming to the tropopause. Might pick up a little turbulence, but it shouldn't be anything we can't handle." Travis's voice was cheerfully confident. "Any change in the readings yet, Sub-Commander?"

"None." The Vulcan's slender fingers ran lightly over the scanner controls. "Please exercise caution, Ensign. We have no means of knowing what visibility will be like when we penetrate the upper layers of the troposphere."

Bloody hell. Now even T'Pol was telling them to be careful. Malcolm checked the power cell again, followed by the pistol setting, which wasn't remotely likely to have changed itself. Was he the only one around here who didn't know what the problem was?

It was like falling head first into icy water. It was worse than falling head first into icy water. Light simply vanished from the universe, along with oxygen and coherent thought. There was the sound of a shriek, but it could have been only the reaction of his brain: the overriding sensation was of absolute, mind-rending horror. His fingers clenched on the pistol. He knew he was pressing the trigger but nothing happened and he couldn't stop anyway. Not that there was anything to fire at. Nor could he have summoned the co-ordination to aim even if there had been.

The emergency lighting should have come on if the power had failed. It hadn't. There was only a silence that screamed in their ears, waiting for the whistle of air that would signal the start of the long, sickening descent through the utter darkness to the frozen surface thousands of metres below. From this height and at this trajectory, they'd burn up like a meteor. None of them would survive until impact – unless they were extremely unlucky.

Suddenly light burst into existence around and inside the shuttle again and the stars were slewing across the view screen. T'Pol was out of her seat, literally fighting the helm away from Travis. The young helmsman was struggling and sobbing in the Vulcan's grip, while the shuttle was bucking and veering through space. They were heading back towards Enterprise as fast as the thrusters could drive them, but they would never be able to make any kind of controlled approach. The sleek silver shape of the ship appeared in the distance, coming closer at ominous speed. Even if they didn't smash headlong into her, at this velocity even the tiniest clip against the hull would send them into a spin that would smash them around its insides like so many china dolls in a tumble dryer. From the comm. station the hails from Enterprise were continuous and desperate, adding to the uproar.

His brain in so much chaos that he couldn't even imagine what had happened, or what was happening now, Reed reacted instinctively to an obvious assault on a member of the crew. He sprang up, releasing the trigger of the weapon that was blasting uselessly into the deck plating beside him, and pressed the muzzle of it to the back of the science officer's head. "Let go of him!" he yelled.

"Certainly, Lieutenant." She knew what was going on; she stopped immediately, though she didn't release Mayweather's wrists. "But if you would lean over and check this warning light first, I think it would ensure the safety of the shuttlepod afterwards."

That got through to him. The safety of the shuttle was paramount. Still panting with fear, he transferred the pistol to his other hand and leaned his weight across Travis's heaving chest, trying to see the warning light that the Vulcan's urgent nod had indicated. Down there it had to be something to do with life support. They couldn't afford to have anything go wrong with that...

He would later reflect bitterly that even when he was out of his head with terror and shock he should have known better than to let a Vulcan get even partly behind him. His attention had been sufficiently diverted to let the pistol muzzle waver just off target. He didn't even see T'Pol's right hand momentarily release Travis's wrist just long enough to slide into the angle of his neck.

The phase pistol clattered to the deck.

A moment later his inert body followed it.


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