CHAPTER 22
It was refreshing for Sisko to see Deep Space Nine bustling again.
It took only about twelve hours to pack up everyone from temporary relocation facilities on Bajor and ferry them back to the station.
Sisko met Jake at the airlock, and they hugged for a full two minutes.
The daily routine returned quickly, as though it had never been suspended.
Sisko sat in his office, catching up on some fitness reports, when a visitor came to call.
"Commissioner Young!" Sisko said. "Please come in. Would you like something to drink?"
"Thank you, no." Sisko offered her a seat, and she sat. "The Commission will be departing in about an hour."
Sisko took his seat behind his desk. "I see."
"I wanted to thank you for your work."
"You're welcome."
She looked around the office. "Is this office secure?"
Sisko touched a control panel on his desk. "Yes, it's secure now."
"The Commission has reached a series of tentative findings. Officially, I cannot discuss our findings with you at this time."
"I understand."
"But before I left, I wanted to share some things with you. First, tomorrow there will be a memorial service for those who lost their lives in service on USS Observer. They will receive full honors." She looked at Sisko. "All members of the crew will receive full honors."
Sisko took her meaning at once. The Commission had decided that the explosion was an accident and not due to any evil intent by the probe team. "I see," he said.
"And second, you ended your presentation two days ago by making a series of predictions, for lack of a better word. You listed things that we might be able to find out, things that you were not privileged to know, or facts that the Commission may have withheld from you. You predicted that they would support the scenario you had described."
"Yes." Sisko had actually said that information in the possession of the Commission could also refute the scenario, but Sisko decided not to correct the Commissioner.
"I just wanted you to know that you are an accomplished predictor."
Sisko did not know how to interpret that. "Thank you," he said simply.
Young sighed. "This is unofficial, off the record."
"Of course."
"A team of investigators has already entered Observer's damaged Probe Preparation Bay. They have found among the rubble certain components that appear to be the remnants of a geologist's tricorder."
"Interesting."
"I thought you might think so. The remnants of the scanner's emitter bank were found, as well, of course. We also took a more, uh, careful look at some of our records of Observer's missions. I cannot say whether those records confirm your team's hypothesis, but I can say, uh, that they do not conclusively disprove it. And they do call into question how so many of Observer's time-critical missions could have been completed within the available time windows, had standard operating procedures been followed."
"Also interesting."
"Once we knew what we might be looking for, we started to see some questionable things. For example, we noticed that Observer's retrieval shuttle maintenance records indicated the shuttle ought to have logged a bit more space time than it actually did. Things like that."
"That is interesting as well."
"You might also find it of interest that Mister Stoan has taken quite a liking to your Mister O'Brien. Or at least, he is not nearly as, shall we say, difficult toward him as he is toward other colleagues."
Sisko smiled. "Miles worked very hard."
"Mister Stoan has spent some time in Mister O'Brien's laboratory, seeing how the gravitational and environmental sensors could have been, uh, 'spoofed'; is that the right word? I think he was genuinely surprised at how readily this spoofing could be done. And, well, I'm not sure I should be telling you this."
Sisko was curious, but he said, "If you don't think I need to know, I accept your judgment."
"Let me put it this way," Young said. "You deserve to know. Mister O'Brien made some predictions, and Mister Stoan was, to put it mildly, fascinated by those predictions."
"Oh?"
"Mister O'Brien had predicted that the probe in question might have previously failed to prime. We've, uh, known for some time which probe had exploded and we've known that this probe had previously failed to prime." She cleared her throat. "We thought that fact was irrelevant. In retrospect, we probably should have shared that information with you."
Yes, Sisko thought, you should have. He kept his thought to himself.
Young continued: "Mister O'Brien had also predicted not only that the probe had previously failed to prime, but that it had failed to prime on a time-critical mission. If so, the Observer team may have previously tried to prime it inside the Bay, which would subject its life detection system barrier to intense electromagnetic shear. We have since learned that Mister O'Brien's prediction was absolutely correct. It turns out that the probe almost certainly had FTP'ed on at least one previous time-critical mission."
"I see." Sisko wondered whether the words "at least" meant that the probe had actually failed to prime twice in its history, or more. Could it be that its barrier had been subjected to three or more doses of electromagnetic shear?
"Mister O'Brien further predicted that if the barrier were exposed to intense electromagnetic shear, it would be more likely to break. Well, Mister Stoan used Mister O'Brien's laboratory to put together a simulator to test this hypothesis. Mister Stoan fabricated some barriers and subjected them to controlled electromagnetic conditions and then to testing. He had some interesting findings."
"The barrier could fail?"
"Yes. Exposure to intense fields indeed makes the barrier more brittle, and makes it more prone to cracking along its pleats. The barrier can still be within technical specifications, but it loses some of its resilience. This loss of resilience may be serious. The impact of the striker may produce a crack, and even a small crack might be enough to allow a part of the striker to touch a part of the core, and the result might be detonation. Mister Stoan has concluded preliminarily that there would be a significantly increased risk of catastrophic barrier failure when the striker tries to hit the core and is stopped by a compromised barrier. He has not yet quantified this risk, however."
"So even if the barrier is in place, the explosion becomes, at least, possible."
Young lowered her eyes. "If not inevitable. How many times had Observer launched probes already primed? Two thousand times? Three thousand? Maybe more? Eventually, the failure was going to happen."
"Mmm," Sisko mumbled agreement. That was Human nature: Observer's probe people had built a stellar reputation using this clever short-cut, and they weren't going to stop using it if it meant a loss of prestige and privilege and honor. Besides, they'd gotten away with it for a long time with no harm done. They would continue to use it until it blew up on them.
Young suddenly smiled kindly. "And there's one more thing."
Sisko waited. He wondered why Young was smiling.
"We contacted Lieutenant Gaulle on Starbase 12. She worked in Observer's Preparation Bay and at Probe Control. She indeed had knowledge of what Observer's probe team did on its missions, those that were time-critical and those that were not." Young spoke the next words carefully. "She insisted that we guarantee her that she would face no charges, and that she would bear no risk of being taken from her husband's side, regardless of what she told us. With that guarantee, we persuaded Lieutenant Gaulle to speak to us."
"And?"
Young hesitated. "I'm sorry; I cannot tell you what she told us."
Sisko was disappointed. "I see."
"But I can tell you that she, uh, did not dispute the principal points in your hypothesis. That is all I can say." Young smiled kindly again.
Sisko nodded. By saying so little, Young seemed to be saying quite a lot. If Sisko had been dead wrong in his re-creation of what had occurred aboard Observer, Gaulle would surely have disputed several of his "principal points." Sisko thought it likely that Gaulle would at least have been asked whether she had ever been at the Probe Control Station, and had given the authorization code and the detonation command while a probe was still in the Probe Preparation Bay.
And she did not dispute that.
And Gaulle would certainly have been asked whether, inside the Probe Preparation Bay, she had deliberately deactivated a probe's automatic safety systems, or watched such things being done.
And she did not dispute that, either.
Young rose, and Sisko did as well. "So thank you once again, Commander Sisko, thank you and your team. The Commission will be issuing its final report to the Select Council in due course. I expect that the full report will be confidential. The work of your team will be given credit in the full report, by name. I also expect that an abbreviated report will be made public, but your work, and the work of your people, will not be acknowledged therein; except to say that the Commission's conclusions are based in large part upon the work of an independent investigating team."
That sounds like another confirmation that the Commission thinks we got it right, Sisko said to himself.
"After that, I expect that the Gas Giant Mapping Project will be reviewed, possibly revamped." Young hesitated. "Possibly canceled."
They shook hands. Sisko bid farewell with these words: "Whatever the future may bring, Commissioner, may it bring the best of luck to you."
EPILOGUE
Stoan slipped out of his daytime attire and donned his comfortable robe. He entered a small chamber adjacent to his bedroom and settled himself on the floor cushions. The lights in the room dimmed automatically. He began his meditation.
The events surrounding USS Observer continued to be prominent in his thoughts. He reminded himself that, officially, no one blamed him for what had happened. The Select Council had accepted the Commission's report with few comments. Instead of asking for recommendations for improvements in the Gas Giant Mapping Project, the Select Council recommended terminating the Project entirely, on the grounds that Upsilon Radiation was simply too dangerous. A shorter version of the Commission's report was released to the public. Stoan had expected that publication of the Commission's abbreviated report would diminish his reputation, but such a thing did not come to pass. Though the Commission was soon to be dissolved, he would retain his teaching position.
And Starfleet had even come to him with a new challenge. Several Humans were recently hospitalized due to a release of hazardous vapors at a refinement facility on Noame's Planet. It was unclear what had caused the release. Would Stoan be able to investigate the cause, and evaluate the safety systems, and suggest improvements, so that such a catastrophe could never occur again?
On this, Stoan meditated.
He was inclined to accept the challenge. The preliminary information available to him suggested, however, that Stoan would be more likely to succeed if he had the assistance of someone who had a good grasp of failure analysis; someone who was logical, intelligent and clever; someone with good instincts for evaluation of system weaknesses; someone who understood how Humans thought and behaved.
Stoan wondered whether Miles O'Brien was content in his posting at Deep Space Nine.