CHAPTER 11
Sisko got a call from O'Brien, asking Sisko to come to the holosuite.
"Something I think you ought to see, sir," was the only explanation O'Brien offered.
Sisko called Dax and asked her to join himself and O'Brien in the holosuite. Sisko wanted to break the news to both Dax and O'Brien at the same time.
Once inside the holosuite, Sisko told Dax and O'Brien that the remaining survivors from the Observer had died. He recounted how it had happened.
"Poor devils," said O'Brien.
"Poor Julian!" said Dax. "He might be facing some serious consequences."
"Very likely, but we have to focus on other things now." Sisko turned to O'Brien. "Chief, what was it you wanted to show me? That is, to show us?"
"Computer," O'Brien called, "run simulation O'Brien Two."
Immediately the walls of the holosuite dissolved, to be replaced by a wrecked interior of a Probe Preparation Bay. Sisko, Dax and O'Brien found themselves standing on what seemed to be a glass floor over a cratered deck littered with debris. The bulkheads were bowed outward and there seemed to be no undamaged equipment in sight. The bench was gone, leaving considerably more room to move around than in the previous holo-simulation.
O'Brien gestured toward his feet. "Except for the platform we're standing on, and except for the artificial lighting, this is what the interior of Observer's Probe Preparation Bay looks like now. As you know, I ordered the computer to re-stitch the scans I made aboard Observer. Based upon those scans, this is the most accurate representation of the Bay. In case you're wondering, there are no bodies. They would have been vaporized." O'Brien spoke to the air. "Computer, show blast vectors."
A set of bright blue lines appeared, stretching from the decks and the bulkheads toward the interior of the Bay. The lines did not merge at a single point, but they all seemed to point to the same general location inside the Bay, a space that was a little lower than head-high, and was off center of the Bay.
"The computer looks at deformation of the bulkheads and decks, as well as debris locations and other things, to estimate where the explosion originated," O'Brien explained. He pointed to the space where the blue lines generally converged. His hand passed through the lines without disturbing them. "This is the place where the explosion occurred."
Sisko and Dax nodded. O'Brien gestured to them with an empty palm. "Sir, Lieutenant, would you please come this way? Let's stand over here. Okay, good. Now, watch this. Computer, correlate with undamaged Bay layout as shown in simulation 'Summary.' Map the blast vectors to the undamaged Bay."
The wrecked Bay dissolved and the pristine Probe Preparation Bay appeared. Sisko, Dax and O'Brien were standing on an undamaged deck. The bench appeared in the center of the Bay, at the site where Sisko and Dax had been standing some seconds earlier. Instruments materialized on the undamaged walls. The blue lines shifted slightly, but they still pointed to the same general region in the Bay.
Sisko saw the problem at once. "The explosion did not occur while the probe was on the bench!"
"That's right. No question about it. The explosion is about the right height above the deck for the probe to be on the bench, but there is no bench supporting it."
"What was the probe doing there, any idea?" Dax asked.
"I don't know." O'Brien held his hand in the region of blast source. "As far as I'm able to tell, the probe is not supposed to be there at all, under any circumstances. Not when moved to or from the bench, not when moved to or from the Locker, not even if it's a FTP being returned to the Locker. When I first saw the lopsided damage caused by the explosion I had thought maybe the probe was a little bit displaced from where it ought to be. I was shocked to find the displacement to be this much."
"How'd they get it there?" Sisko asked. "Did they lift it?"
"The probe is too heavy for these two men to lift," O'Brien replied. My guess is that they had the probe suspended from the crane and then used the crane to take it over there. That's the only way I can think of to do it. As for why they'd do it, that's a mystery to me."
"I may be wrong," Sisko said, "but I think you've found a really big piece to the puzzle, Chief."
"What does this tell us?" Dax asked.
"For one thing," Sisko responded, "it may mean that the procedures that Observer was supposed to be following weren't actually being followed when the explosion occurred."