Sulu crawled.
The floor of the corridor was nearly vertical. Something
had gone very wrong with the gravity units on Starbase
34, Sulu thought to himself as he dragged himself a few
feet higher. ~I hope somebody gets down there and fixes
them soon.~
~Because if they don't, I don't think we're going to get out
of this.~
Behind him, a drop so steep and so slick he would roll
down uncontrollably if he fell, to fetch up with fatal force
against the next T-junction - a long way below. Ahead of
him, an unjudgable distance of nearly perpendicular
climbing.
Yes, something had gone very wrong with the gravity
controls, all right.
Sulu did not allow himself to think that there was a lot
more wrong with the Starbase than the gravity. The
screams he occasionally heard, for example. The walls
that wept blood. The corridor he had passed down that
was lined entirely in children's dolls, their heads severed
and placed beside their bodies.
The voice he could hear every now and then, reciting
children's jokes in a high, singsong tone. ~Knock knock!
Who's there?~
Sulu did not think about any of that. He glanced back
once, to reassure himself that his team was still behind
him, and his stomach turned over with vertigo. Sweating,
he fixed his gaze on the climb ahead.
~Knock knock! Who's there?~
Sulu was very aware of just how little he wanted to know
the answer to that question.
"Come on." Kirk said. "Not much further now."
It was the fifth or sixth time he had said it since finding
Drysden huddled in the corridor and chivvying him to his
feet. It sounded far less reassuring than it had the first
time, he was sure, but he kept saying it and Drysden kept
acting as if he believed it, although the yeoman must have
realised by now that they were hopelessly lost.
"Yes, sir." Drysden said gamely. "Yes sir, yes sir, three
bags full, sir."
Kirk looked at him sharply, but Drysden's expression was
devoid of humour.
The screaming started up again, and they both jumped.
The first time he had heard it, Kirk had pounded down the
corridors in search of the origin of the sound, but had still
not found it when it fell silent. The second time he had
proceeded more cautiously, trying to pinpoint the location
he sought. He had realised that the noise was shifting,
coming now from the left, now from the right. It was
impossible to follow it back to its source.
After that, he had ignored the wailing, though it set his
nerves on edge and went against every instinct he had to
do so. Someone nearby was in terrible pain and he should
be going to their aid. That was, after all, his job.
"Sir, what *is* that?" Drysden asked.
"I don't know, yeoman." Kirk said. "Stay close behind
me."
With no idea where she was, Larssen kept moving
forward.
It had been - an hour? two? since she had suddenly
realised that she could no longer see the other members of
the captain's team. Had realised, after a few minutes of
futile searching, that she had no idea where they were or
which way she should go to rejoin them. Setting out in the
direction she had thought most likely to take her across the
core to meet up with them, she had thought of her situation
as a minor setback caused by inattention - until the first
time she had rounded a corner and found the corridor
ahead full of grey mist, billowing back and forth in a way
she found inexplicably menacing.
Although she had stood there for several minutes, in the
end she had been unable to bring herself to walk forward
into the fog. Doubling back to cut around it, she had
found another corridor dipping sharply downwards and
disappearing under water. Larssen had waded out to the
point where the water met the ceiling, filled her lungs and
dived down, trying to see through the murk if the corridor
took and upward turn anywhere ahead. At the point where
her breath was running out and she had to make a decision
about swimming back, her choice had been made easier by
the half glimpsed sight of something moving up ahead -
something scaly, enormous, multiple.
She had surfaced gasping and not just from holding her
breath for so long.
"Boiled and saut ed rotting garbage..." she murmured,
finding the harsh Romulan syllables less comfort than they
usually were.
She was lost. Worse, she was beginning to suspect she
was not just lost but had been led deliberately astray by
something that wished her no good, no good at all. Every
time she managed to find a corridor that led her either
towards the Starbase core or back in the direction of the
shuttle-bay, some barrier appeared, and if she managed to
pass the barrier - leaping through flames, wading through
swamps, one nightmarish time tiptoeing through a
seething mass of hand-sized spiders - then there were
things beyond. Worse things.
Although the barriers had not yet hurt her, there was a pain
in her side when she breathed that came from a broken rib,
received when a door flew open and an entire lab of
science equipment had flung itself out at her until she had
fled back along the corridor to safety. The dry, cool,
spider-free corridor, she had noticed as she leaned against
a wall getting her breath.
Only to move on against rather quickly when she realised
the dampness across her back was not sweat soaking
through her uniform but warm fresh blood oozing down
the wall.
~Oh, Ifni, if You have any time or attention to spare for a
Lieutenant (j-g) in amongst Your cosmic responsibilities,
could You help me out here? Not, of course, that I'd ask
You to forgo the ordering of the laws of the universe or
the orbit of planets or anything, but if there is a spare
corner of Your attention... ~
For some reason, a half-remembered children's rhyme
from her childhood had lodged in her head and refused to
stop playing itself. ~One, two, three, four, five, six, seven!
Don't waste your time in dreaming of heaven! Eight nine
ten eleven twelve thirteen! Heaven's here and you don't
need to dream!~
~Heaven's here,~ Larssen thought. ~Yeah, right.~