REP: Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile (OCC - TNG era) 15 - The Rosette, PG 1/1

Title: Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile 15 - The Rosette 1/1
Author: Jay P Hailey OCC - TNG era 15/54?
Rating:PG
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Webpage HTTP://jayphailey. The Rosette
Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile
Episode 15: The Rosette
(Stardate 46760)
By
Jay P. Hailey
And
Dennnis Washburn

In my dream, I was standing next to a stream. There was a pretty, soft red grass under my feet and a tree nearby that looked like it had a lot of green hair.I was on a small rise and I could see a city off in the distance. It looked like someone had put a lot of thought into the design of the city. It was a single large tower. Inside the tower I could see breeze ways and pass-throughs. The upper surfaces were covered with a riot of foliage. It had an organic look, as though it had been grown rather than built.The sky was blue, with a hint of green. A soft breeze blew past me and carried the smell of the life forms of the planet. It felt and smelled wonderful. It had been a little while since I had been off the USS Harrier and on the surface of a planet. I marveled at the clarity of my dream.A couple of young people came out of the trees and approached the rise I was standing on. They held hands and their body language told me that they were out for a romantic stroll.The basket that the young man carried and the blanket that the young lady carried told me that they were going to have a picnic. I couldn't imagine a better place to have one.I waited patiently for them to see me. I didn't want to startle them. They did not see me. They looked right through me. I didn't think that I was visible to them. I had the feeling that I was watching a past event, although I couldn't really say why.They were speaking softly and happily to each other in a language that I didn't know. It seemed to be the language of the world that we had just visited, but I didn't want to take anything for granted.I had the feeling that the two people were young, although it was hard to tell. They were humanoid, but not human. They had a distinctly simian appearance. They looked like beefed up chimpanzees or slim gorillas. They seemed to be somewhere between seventeen and eighteen years old if judged by human standards, but I really couldn't be sure why I thought so.They set up their picnic and had a romantic lunch, ignoring me the entire time. It was nice to see, but I felt like I was intruding. After a while, I turned and looked at the vegetation or the city in the distance.Up in the sky, although it was broad daylight, I could see one of the sister planets to the one I was on. Five planets shared the same orbit in this system. They held each other together and yet stable in a complicated gravitational formation called a rosette.Flying machines came and went from the tower. I knew that it was just one of several on the planet, and each of the five earth-like world had many such cities of their own. All full of the happy, simian people.I had seen the wreckage of them.--When I woke up, my eyes felt like they had sand in them. I blinked several times. My head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton. I laid in my bunk and tried to sort out what I was feeling. I wasn't sleepy, but I was tired. It was hard to concentrate.Eventually I remembered my own standing orders about the dreams. I rolled over and dictated a report describing the dream. Out of idle curiosity, I accessed and read a couple of other reports about the dreams.They all seemed to be prosaic scenes of life on the Rosette --The Rosette had been the home of an advanced civilization, a million years ago. They had never developed faster-than-light travel. They didn't need to. They had new worlds to settle right in their own backyards.In time the Rosette civilization had come to fill the five worlds of the Rosette. They had wars over territory and resources. They did terrible damage to their planets by using them carelessly. Then they worked out a better way to run the situation. The Rosette People spent the next couple of hundred years restoring their five planets, and learning to live in harmony with them.The big city that I had seen was an arcology, a self contained system. It was essentially a space station built on the ground. All the same technology used to recycle air, food and wastes from a space station were adapted to minimize the impact of the city on its planet. Best of all, if the recycling systems got a little behind with the atmosphere, getting fresh air was as simple as opening the windows. Arcologies were excellent solutions to walking lightly upon the Earth, or any inhabited planet. They had two drawbacks. They were very expensive, and they required a fairly strict set of behaviors on the part of their inhabitants to function adequately.Ion-impeller drives were used to make flying vehicles stay up with a minimum of fuss in the air, The people tapped the cores of their planets to get clean, relatively benign energy. The beacons they implanted in the crusts of their planets to guide flying machines and spaceship were what had drawn the Harrier to the system to begin with. They were still functioning after a million years.Eventually the people realized that five earth-like planets in a rosette formation was a highly improbable occurrence. They came to realize that their worlds had been moved into position and then terraformed by an unknown hand.While the people were trying to puzzle this basic question out, the star that had warmed and nourished the five planets of the Rosette died of old age.Suddenly it began to bloat into a red giant in its death throes. It would bake the Rosette worlds thoroughly. The people knew that within a few years their worlds were doomed.They sadly built giant life boats to carry some of their people away. They hoped to find other inhabitable worlds. The ones who remained tried to make certain that their civilization would be remembered, when the ruins were discovered.--We followed the radio signals into the system. The signals themselves were simple navigational markers. From coded identification and time markers in the signals, we estimated that less than one in five was still working.The system orbited a white dwarf star. The dead corpse of its sun.
We orbited first one and then another dead cinder. The ruins on the surface told us a little about the Rosette People. The ruins had been baked by low powered plasma for a hundred years. The whole crust of the planet was a broken sheet of thick glass.We eventually hit the jack pot in the crypt. The crypt of the Rosette People was an amazing substance. It was nearly indestructible. The metal was similar to that used by a race called the Kalandans, a thousand years ago. The plasma could not hurt it. Our main phaser banks couldn't have penetrated the crypt. However, a simple mathematical puzzle opened it right up. Inside we found complete computer records of everything the Rosette People thought was fit to be saved.We spent a week there, taking copies of the complete archives and records of the Rosette Civilization.Bill the Probe flew around the system, with an extra fuel tank strapped on. He found wreckage in orbit around the star, and even the baked remains of a spaceship, but nothing living.We even took complete scans of every artifact in the crypt. The Rosette People tried to leave examples of what they considered important art and one of each type of object that they could jam into the crypt. We left the artifacts themselves, there. There was no telling who might be along later. If the space arks of the Rosette People had survived, and then their descendants deserved to find the crypts as well preserved as we could manage.We also left information about the UFP, and the logs of the USS Harrier in the crypt, along with readers for our data. If we didn't make it back to the Federation, then someday a Federation starship might be out this way. I hoped that they would find our records alongside those of the Rosette People.After learning everything that we could about the Rosette People and their records, we closed up the crypts, and resumed our course towards Starbase Twenty-Four.A couple of days outside the system, the dreams started.They only affected a few people at first. They reported extremely detailed and clear dreams depicting life on the Rosette worlds. They also began to grow sleepy and impaired. As the next day passed, more and more people in the crew became affected.--I gathered my head together, and wandered off to find Doctor Flynn, my Chief Medical Officer. Once I was in the sickbay, she sat me down on the diagnostic bed, and ran a full set of scans on me.As this was going on, I noticed that she was acting like a zombie, herself. Her eyes were red, and she moved slowly as if distracted. "You, too, huh?"She looked at me. "Me too, what?" Then she got it "Oh, yeah. More than half the crew has been affected in the last twenty four hours.""Do you have any ideas about what it is?" I asked. She had told me once already, but I couldn't remember exactly what she had said."I know exactly what it is. It's a sort of outside interference with the sleep cycle. It prevents REM sleep from having the proper effects. This leads to an imbalance of neuro-transmitters. The same sort of thing can happen inside a Tyken's Rift. What I don't know is what the cause is or how to stop it."I remembered that time. "Thank you.""I can offer a temporary solution. I can alter the neuro-transmitter levels in your brain with drugs. You'd feel fully awake, for a while." She brandished a hypospray."What's the catch?" I asked. With drugs there always is one."It won't be effective after about twelve hours. The brain will develop a tolerance.""No, thank you." I didn't feel bad, just sleepy. I didn't want to rely on the drugs if I could help it. I had been treated for alcoholism when I was young. It wasn't like the old days when the biochemical imbalances were permanent. Then treatment meant just being locked up until you were dry, and then practicing an arcane religion with a support group.In the twenty-fourth century the biochemistry could easily be rebalanced. Then you attended some counseling. I never had the chance to develop the disease actively, before I was cured. Nevertheless, I had been aware of my weakness ever since. I tried to stay away from drugs or alcohol as a regular thing. I also tried to deal with my discomforts inside before I let them be medicated."Captain to the Bridge! Captain Hailey to the Bridge!" The intercom announced. The Harrier went to yellow alert."You know, now that I think of it, that shot might not be a bad idea." I said.She responded "Now that you mention it, I think I'll have one, too."Dr. Flynn administered the hypospray and I ran out of Sickbay, heading for the Bridge.On the way, my eyeballs began to itch. My teeth began to burn a little, as though I had just eaten some spicy food. My head cleared right up. As I got to the Bridge, I realized in just what bad shape we were in."Report." I ordered as I crossed the Bridge to my seat. The senior officer present was Harksain Varupuchu. He had not yet been affected by the dreams."A Kliges'chee ship is pursuing us. It is a battle cruiser.""Red alert."Stephanie Anderson, my Chief of Security sleepily keyed the button, and the alert klaxon sounded. I could see her struggling to clear her head, and failing.We were exploring the frontier for the Zantree Alliance. The Zantree Alliance had traded a full refit of the Harrier in exchange for our exploration of the frontier area. We were reporting directly back to the Zantree Alliance member Poong's World. We were the only starship that the Zantree Alliance could afford to send out here, and that was because we were going here, anyway.The Zantree Alliance was so hard pressed by the Kliges'chee that one ship here or there might make the whole difference in their war.I had a bad feeling. The Kliges'chee were supposed to be behind us, fighting the Zantree Alliance. If there was a battle cruiser here, then there were three possible reasons why it might be here. First, it might be lost from the main body of the Kliges'chee fleet and unsure of where it was. This was the best case scenario for both the Zantree and us. Secondly, it might be a scout trying to circle around the Zantree Alliance, searching for a way to strike them on an undefended side. This was bad for the Zantree and uncomfortable for us. For the Zantree it meant that the Kliges'chee were able to spare ships for this kind of speculative scouting missions when the Zantree could not. This meant that the Kliges'chee had more available ships. This was a bad sign for the Zantree Alliance. For us it could get uncomfortable. It was only three months to the Klingon border from here. If the Kliges'chee pursued us, then I had no real alternative but to run for the Klingon border. I could lead a Kliges'chee fleet into the Klingon Empire. The Klingons might or might not view this as treachery, with predictable results for us. Worse, it would spell the beginning of the end of the Zantree.The third, and most awful alternative was that we had stumbled into the lead elements of a Kliges'chee fleet that had already come around behind the Zantree. This would mean hot death for the Zantree Alliance and the USS Harrier."Range to the Kliges'chee?" I asked Varupuchu."He will be inside weapons range in approximately eight minutes." The Andorian reported.Li'ira stumbled onto the bridge. I could see that she was also suffering from the effects of the dreams. She sat down heavily and tried blearily to catch up with what was going on."Mr. Spaat, what is your condition?" I had to make sure of who was with me."I am impaired, Captain." Spaat said, mildly.I looked at him. He seemed as bright eyed and bushy tailed as any Vulcan ever got. "Really?""Unless something is done, my efficiency will begin to suffer within the week.""Oh. We'll see if we can avoid that.""Thank you, Captain.""Can we out run the Kliges'chee?""That depends on how long you wish to flee from the Kliges'chee ship, sir.""Oh, just until we lose it.""That would appear to be impractical, Captain. His acceleration and maneuverability are similar to ours. He could follow us no matter what we did. Unless random circumstances operated in our favor, he could call for reinforcements, and simply wait for us to suffer a breakdown."I thought it over. "Oh, well, running wasn't really what I had in mind, anyway."Varupuchu looked at me. "Really, Captain?" His voice seemed disapproving. Knowing Varupuchu as I now did, I knew that it was. He viewed risk to the USS Harrier very dimly, indeed."If the Kliges'chee realize that the whole rear area of the Zantree Alliance is undefended, then they will be quick to take advantage of it. I'm going to try to make him think that there is a definite Zantree presence here.""Uh-huh." Varupuchu's shrug was as noncommittal as any Frenchman could manage.I turned to Stephanie. "Send a message to the other ships in our squadron. Use tactical channel eight, but use light coding.""Captain?" Stephanie hadn't been able to keep up the conversation, and was now lost. "What ships?""Can you jam their sensors?" I asked her. There was no time for her to catch up."Aye, sir." She set to work.On the Bridge Engineering Station I saw that the Harrier was at ninety percent of main power. We were covering the rest with the auxiliary impulse reactors."Bridge to Engineering. Why isn't the warp core up to one hundred percent?""Engineering to Bridge, Dubonich, here, Captain. Chief Engineer Vengla had the reactor rigged with an odd set of protocols, I don't understand 'em completely, and I'm reluctant to change them in an emergency, Sir.""Where is Lt. Vengla?""Sickbay, sir. She was badly affected by those dreams."I thought about it. Ruezre' Vengla had a special, intimate relationship with the engines of the Harrier. It would take more time than we had to puzzle out what her set up was. To change it to the standard setup would require a total reboot of the engineering section at this point. We couldn't afford to shut down the warp core with a Kliges'chee battle cruiser bearing down on us, and so I let it go. "Do the best you can, Chief. Bridge out.""Engineering out.""Time to intercept?" I asked."Five minutes, thirty seconds." Spaat reported."Effect of jamming?"Varupuchu reported. "Ineffective, Captain." He shot a meaningful glance at Stephanie. I could see that she was suffering badly from the strange sleepy effects of the dreams, and was trying not to show it."Can you cover Tactical?" I asked the Andorian.He looked thoughtful. "I can try."Stephanie looked at me, hurt. I said "Get down to sickbay and get the neurological treatment from Doctor Flynn. Hurry!"Stephanie nodded slowly. I could see her hurt feelings abate as she understood. It was a slow process for Stephanie, today.Varupuchu moved to the tactical station, and started to work the sensor jamming.Li'ira, still reeling, took the operations station.Then I waited for two hours. It was difficult. I kept wanting to fiddle with things. I wanted to make sure that everything was going well with my own two hands. I couldn't. I had to let what was left of my crew handle it. Up until then I didn't really know how seriously I depended on the crew of the Harrier. I was a nervous wreck thinking that someone was sleepily setting us up to get destroyed by the Kliges'chee.It seemed like two hours. In reality it was about two minutes."How are we doing with the jamming?" I asked Varupuchu."Somewhat better, Captain. Shall I send the message to the rest of our squadron?" His voice was droll."Please do."Harksain reported the contact with the Kliges'chee to our non-existent patrol squadron.Soon we were within hailing range of the Kliges'chee. "Take us to one half impulse speed." I ordered Spaat. It was an invitation to the Kliges'chee for a fight. Phasers don't work at warp speed usually. Most starship combat is designed around a sublight encounter. The Harrier and the Kliges'chee battle cruiser were no exception. Federation starships had photon torpedoes for attacking at warp speeds, but even so, they were not too reliable. Starships could be billions of miles closer or farther away in the blink of an eye, at warp speed. It made warp speed battles difficult. It was usually too difficult except for computers.The good thing, or the bad thing depending on how you want to look at it, was that a mildly powerful tractor beam could ruin the alignment of a warp drive. At least long enough to make it go sub light. A stubborn starship captain could force another one into a battle. It was better to either go to impulse and fight, or to change course and flee.By going sublight and hailing the Kliges'chee ship, we were saying "Talk to us or get ready to fight.""Hail the Kliges'chee.""Aye, sir. Hailing."The Kliges'chee ship slowed to sublight speed and began to arm its weapons. Quickly the hideous form of a Kliges'chee was oozing across the main view screen."I am Captain Jay P. Hailey of the Zantree patrol ship Harrier. You are in Zantree Space. Prepare to stand down and be escorted out, peacefully."The Kliges'chee snarled. "All space belongs to Kliges'chee! You are food! You may call to your gods, now." It cut the channel."Arm all weapons." I said. "Have the shield protector on stand by.""Yes, Captain."I could see the status lights turn red as the phasers and photon torpedoes of the Harrier were fed energy."The Kliges'chee ship is approaching at full impulse, his weapons are armed." Li'ira said."Go to full impulse. Prepare to run attack pattern Delta." Spaat and Varupuchu set up the attack run on the computers with admirable speed."At the point where we hook around, I want you to fire the shield disruptor at him." I said."Yes, Captain." Varupuchu noted my command. Sometime in the past the Kliges'chee had developed a secret weapon that, when fired at an opposing starship destroyed its force fields. The shield disruptor could destroy the defenses of an enemy starship. Once you stripped a starship of its force field defenses it was nearly helpless, an easy target for a warship.The Zantree Alliance and their newest members, the Free Kliges'chee had developed a related device, the shield protector. It simply neutralized the effects of a shield disruptor. The catch was that your shields were a little weaker when it was turned on.The Zantree Alliance had thoughtfully equipped the Harrier with these devices when they had given her a refit.Attack pattern Delta is an old one, but still useful. It was designed by the Klingons about ninety years ago. In it the starship crosses in front of her opponent at an oblique angle, executing a slashing attack. At the last moment, the starship turns and presses the attack, usually curving in behind her opponent.It is used in a combat where you think the enemies' resolve might be broken, when the attack that should be ending instead grows worse. It is also a classical set up for a dirty trick.I didn't know if the Zantree shield disruptor would work on the Kliges'chee ship, but it was the only ace up our sleeve. I was still too new at starship combat. I wanted to use every advantage and piece of leverage I could get.The Kliges'chee swept straight in at us. He fired his main cannon at us, scoring a hit. It is easy to speak of it in terms of a game or a sport. The Harrier had been my home for more than three years. I knew her inside and out, intimately. She was all that was keeping me alive. She shuddered with a sickening motion."Forward shields down by twenty percent, Captain. There is light damage to sections eight, nine and ten." Varupuchu reported."Fire at will, Mr. Varupuchu." I said. I knew that he knew that basic plan for attack pattern Delta. I had to hope that he would execute it correctly. Even if he was rough or clumsy with it, I couldn't do any better by remote control."Aye, Sir." Varupuchu responded. He worked the controls with his usual precision. The Harrier spat four photon torpedoes. Varupuchu had aimed them with great skill. One, two, three, four, they plowed into the Kliges'chee ship and detonated, wreaking havoc. It was interesting to watch. Part of me cringed to see the damage to the Kliges'chee ship. I knew as well as anyone might, what was being destroyed, and how they might suffer for it later. Part of me wanted to howl. My enemies were being destroyed. As we slid across the nose of the Kliges'chee he got one more chance to fire at us, before we slid into our "hook" maneuver.The Kliges'chee's cannon lashed out. It was not quite as strong as it was before, but we were much closer. The Harrier rocked, and then shuddered with the force of the blow."Port side shield down by thirty percent. Warp drive is out, and we are leaking plasma." Varupuchu might have been discussing the weather."Steady on." I said. It was the order to keep going with the game plan. I don't think my voice shook too much."Coming about." Spaat reported. The Harrier rolled over and launched into a big turn. Even through the inertial dampers I could feel my stomach settle down and to the side. We were turning tightly to come back around at the Kliges'chee battle cruiser. He wasn't where he was supposed to be. I had a bad moment as I realized that we had wheeled around through the position where we should have been able to see him. Varupuchu armed the shield disruptor. The lights on the Harrier's bridge dimmed as the power system added one more weapon than they were designed for into the load. A strange whirring noise filled the bridge.The Harrier kept turning, and suddenly, there was the Kliges'chee. He had turned into us as we began our maneuver. He would have been turning as tightly as we were except for the damage done by Varupuchu's deadly photon torpedo barrage.A strange euphoria enveloped me. I knew we had him. Even if the shield disruptor didn't work, we were out of the arc of his main weapon, while he was well within ours. I could see the repeater screen next to my chair, the readings of our sensors, concerning his condition. The Kliges'chee's shields were at fifty percent, all over. He was leaking methane, and some compartments were on fire from the methane still inside them. His power was low.Varupuchu fired the shield disruptor. From the nose of the Harrier, a blue coruscating ball of energy detached and floated over to the Kliges'chee battle cruiser. It was almost leisurely. Then it hit. The Kliges'chee ship rocked and suddenly stopped turning. At the same instant, on either side of the main-forward hull, two massive explosions happened. The Kliges'chee lost all power to his shields. His ship was defenseless.The next step bothered me, but I had to do it. If the Kliges'chee was able to report what he had found, or if he discovered that the Harrier was alone on the Zantree Frontier, then it would be an invitation to a Kliges'chee battle fleet.It still felt like murder when I said "Continue firing. Destroy the Kliges'chee ship."With quiet, economic strokes, Varupuchu keyed in the firing program. The Harrier's phasers chewed into the Kliges'chee's hull, until they found the antimatter containment unit. Once that was hit, the Kliges'chee battle cruiser detonated like a small star.The damage to the Harrier was surprisingly light, all things considered. We had a couple of bad burns from the plasma leaks, but no deaths. Within a few hours we had the warp drives back and again we set course for Starbase Twenty-Four.--The briefing room was quiet and disorganized. Most of us had the stares. Another night had brought another dream of life in the Rosette Culture. I had been an asteroid miner, pushing a little ship with a collection of big tools. It didn't move very fast, but that left me a lot of time to listen to the music of the Rosette . It was interesting while it lasted, but I was paying for it today."Okay, what do we know? These dreams seem to be scenes of life in the Rosette Culture right? How do we confirm that?"Bill the Probe spoke up. He was there along with Varupuchu, Spaat and a number of alien crewmen who seemed immune to the effects of the dreams. "I could compare the accounts of the dreams, with the records we got from the Rosette crypt." He sounded perky and helpful. I wanted to kill him."Sounds good, Bill.""I'll need access to the records and the accounts of the dreams." He said."Please make that available to Bill, Mr. Varupuchu." I said. I wandered off. I couldn't concentrate. I spent the rest of the afternoon staring at a screen testing graphic. The patterns were endlessly fascinating.A hand gently touched my shoulder. "Captain?" I turned. It was Varupuchu. He was gently disapproving, mixed with a certain amount of concern."Oh, ah... Mr. Varupuchu. How are we doing?" There was something going on. With effort I could recall what it was."Bill the Probe has confirmed that you are indeed, dreaming of life in the Rosette .""Excellent." I liked the Rosette . "The mystery now is how? How is the Rosette affecting us?"Varupuchu shook his head sadly. "I do not know. We only took aboard data. There was nothing physical. We recorded no strange energies or phenomena at the Rosette .""Then it's got to be the data." I said. This was fun. Kind of like a crossword."That's not possible. The data would have to act though our machines. Our machines are not capable of such things.""Has the data changed the machines?""No. They all appear quite normal. I had Spaat disassemble three of them."I remembered something. "If you eliminate the possible. then the improbable is all that's impossible, or something.""Captain?" Varupuchu knew I was raving, but felt that he had enough time to humor me."Something I was trying to remember. Who was it? James Bond? No! Sherlock Holmes!" I had just had a brilliant idea. So help me Ghod, I thought I was being a genius. "Come on! I know who to talk to about this!" I jumped up and ran down to the Holodeck of the USS Harrier.Varupuchu dutifully followed me, although he thought that I was just going mad."Computer!" I told the Holodeck "This is the Captain!" I drew myself up to my full height. "I need to talk to Sherlock Holmes!""Your program is complete." The Holodeck responded.Varupuchu and I went through the door.--"Fascinating! Do you mean to imply, Captain, that dreams may be imposed on the human mind from the outside?" Holmes' eyes glittered with enthusiasm."Really, Holmes!" Watson said with disdain. "Such a load of hogwash!""My good friend, once again, you see, but do not observe. A cursory examination of the good Captain will reveal that he is suffering from symptoms that resemble a lack of sleep.""You mean that he's drunk! I'm way ahead of you on this one, Holmes.""Tell me of the events in the Rosette again, and leave no detail out, no matter how small or insignificant they may appear."With prompting from Varupuchu, I was able to make my way through our cut down story again. I had elected to frame the story as though we were an ocean going ship investigating a ring of islands upon which were the remains of a lost culture. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the Prime Directive applied even to imaginary primitives.Holding up his hand in a refined gesture, Sherlock Holmes stopped me and got my attention. "You say that you and your doughty crew took from the islands only written records, intending that the survivors of the Rosette Culture should have the advantage of their native artifacts if they should return, am I correct, Captain?""That's correct.""Incredible." Scoffed Dr. Watson."And you say that the ruins of the Rosette contain many wonders, possibly even including a dream projecting machine.""Balderdash!" Watson could hardly contain his derision."And yet, you say that this is not relevant since you did not bring any of these devices back aboard your ship, the Harrier.""That's correct, sir.""The answer is simplicity itself! It is hardly worth bothering me over.""Yes, they are charlatans wasting your time!" Watson's hostility was getting old.Shushing Dr. Watson with a gesture, Holmes said "If you think about it for a moment the answer may come to you. Do not ask my advice lightly gentlemen for the price I charge will be steep.""What's that?" I asked."If this device exists, I must see it and examine it.""Surely, Holmes, You don't believe..." Watson was halted by Holmes again."Done!" I said."I think I get what you're driving at..." Varupuchu said."Too late! The Captain has agreed!" Holmes spoke sharply. "The answer is simply this. If such a device exists, and you have all the records of the Rosette Culture available, then the device should be mentioned in those records. Look it up, and keep careful note of the description. That will guide you in the search of the belongings of your souvenir hunting crewmen, Sir!"I was stunned, but it all fit. I had never considered that one of my crew would smuggle an alien artifact onto the ship. "Yes, I see. Thank you, Mr. Holmes." Varupuchu turned around, called for the arch and prepared to leave."Thank you, Mr. Holmes." I said. My breath was taken away by the speed at which Holmes had cut to the heart of our problem."I look forwards to your return, Captain Hailey." Sherlock said. His tone implied that he looked forward to meeting the Rosette artifacts much more than myself. "Speaking only for myself, I do not, sir." Watson was gesturing towards the arch, stiffly."Dr. Watson." I nodded as I exited."Good day, Sir." Watson said with the angry politeness that only the English can do right.As I left I heard the exchange continue. "Again, Watson, you see, but you not observe.""Really, Holmes, I think...""Why was the Captain's companion blue?""Was he!?"I caught up with Varupuchu halfway down the hall. "Isn't he great?""He is a Human who acts like a Vulcan." Varupuchu said "But he was quite correct."Bill the Probe contacted us. "Sirs! Sirs! I have discovered a relevant fact!" He sounded ecstatic."Explain, please Bill." Varupuchu said. I could see him repressing a smile at Bill's attitude."I checked the records of the Rosette Culture. They did, in fact, have a dream projector that operates much the way described in the dream accounts!" Activating a console in the wall next to us, Bill called up a schematic from the Rosette records. "See? It looks just like that!"It looked like a small computer device which had a huge gem mounted half in and half out of it's casing. It was about four inches long. The caption, suitably translated said "Dream Projector. Basic Educational Device.""I haven't found any records of it having an adverse affect on the Rosette People, Sirs, but their physiology was different.""Excellent work, Bill!" I said. I was impressed. He had performed competitively with the great Sherlock Holmes.--Once we knew what we were talking about, finding the device was easy. Just as Sherlock had surmised, a crewman working on the records transfer had come up with the dumb idea that one little artifact wouldn't hurt.Once it was turned off, everyone who had been affected quickly went to sleep and slept for a long time. When I awoke I felt more like myself.I was a little rough on Martin Pilat, the guy who had smuggled the device aboard the Harrier. I demoted him one rank, fined him three months pay, and confined him to quarters for a month. It was a very basic lesson in safety on starships. I made certain that everyone heard of it, and knew what had happened. Pilat's action had almost cost us the ship and our lives. Worst, it had taken so long to make the connection because he hadn't been having any of the dreams. He never made the connection between his souvenir and the disaster happening to the ship. He wasn't too popular for a while after that.--

Our report back to the Zantree Alliance was scarcely more popular. The Zantree needed to know that the Kliges'chee were scouting around their undefended frontier, even if they didn't enjoy the prospect.We also showed records of our combat against the Kliges'chee battle cruiser to the Zantree. The combined performance of the photon torpedo and the shield disruptor were considered a good sign. It seemed as though deflectors and shields weakened by weapons fire were more vulnerable to the shield disruptor than if just attacked by the shield disruptor alone.I hoped that the Zantree Alliance could get the photon torpedo into mass production soon enough to make a difference.--I steeled my nerves and knocked on the door of Holmes' apartment at 221 b Baker Street. Dr. Watson answered it. "You again! I thought that searching your crew and confiscating all their rum would keep you away for a little while longer yet, Captain.""Who's that?" Holmes demanded sharply.I held up the dream projector. "Mr. Holmes said that he wanted to see this."After a couple of weeks we were able to identify the odd channel that the projector transmitted on. We were never able to determine how it knew to program content or how it was able to interface with our dreams. The one I was showing to Watson was holodeck simulation. That way Holmes could destroy his sleeping patterns, and those of his unfortunate neighbors, without endangering the Harrier."By Jove!" Watson was stunned."Is this the device?" Holmes reached out past Watson and grabbed the dream projector."It's yours, Sir. Please be careful with it."Holmes simply turned away, examining the device with childlike joy."Th-Thank you." Watson said, weakly.-end-Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Trek. I claim original characters and situations in this story for me.