=/\=
During one of his piloting lessons with Tom, shortly before Voyager's discovery of the Talaxian colony, the pilot had decided Icheb should know what to do if the artificial gravity ever failed in a shuttle he was occupying. Tom had no reason to believe his piloting protégé would be in a position to take the Spacewalk course at the Academy anytime soon. Learning how to handle weightlessness seemed advisable, given one of Tom's experiences with B'Elanna, when they had to evacuate their shuttle just before it exploded.
Once the Delta Flyer attained orbit around a fairly large moon, Tom demonstrated the deliberate way a person needed to move in zero-G. "If your movements are jerky," he explained, "you're liable to shoot across the compartment and maybe slam your head against a bulkhead." After Icheb seemed to have gotten the hang of the technique, Tom turned the level of artificial gravity to half of Luna normal. They practiced for several more minutes before Tom turned it off completely, and both of them began to float around the cabin. At one point, Icheb pushed off the ceiling a little too crisply and bounced off the floor. With his quick reflexes, he was able to grab hold of the back of the navigator's seat and stabilize his motion before crashing into anything else, especially Tom.
Once they'd maneuvered back into the pilot and co-pilot seats, Tom turned the gravity back on. "You did well, Icheb. That's the first practical exercise covered during the six-week Spacewalk course at the Academy. Cadets take it during their third year. We'll practice inside the shuttle a few more times before proceeding to the spacewalk stage. When Voyager's in orbit around a planet where it would be a safe place to practice those techniques, I'll ask the captain to allow us to go outside of the ship. B'Elanna will be delighted if you qualify to complete repairs on the hull while the ship is aloft. Our Day of Honor 'spacewalk' was one of the best things that ever happened in our personal life, but we did almost die. She always turns a lovely shade of green whenever she thinks she needs to go outside the ship in an environmental suit. I suspect that's the real reason she asked the captain to land on a planet for a refit a while ago. She was able complete a fine-tooth check on the exterior while dressed in her uniform."
The opportunity never arose. Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant very soon afterwards. Icheb told this story to his suitemates, however, and the week before their class was scheduled to begin, he demonstrated what Tom had shown him. Everyone practiced the movements wherever they walked inside their suite. "Thanks for the lessons, Icheb " Austin said at one point during their practice sessions. "It'll be great to be ahead of the curve in this class." And they were.
While Icheb and his suitemates were orbiting the Earth, especially while they were outside of the spacecraft and practicing exterior repairs, they enjoyed another experience that was almost as fascinating as learning how to manage their movements while weightless. For the entire six weeks, the great blue globe of Earth spun beneath them, glowing with its diverse beauty. The sands of desserts, the rocky promontories of mountain ranges, and, especially, the sparkling blue and green seas, revealed themselves in steady progression, day after day, while the lights of cities sparkled when they passed over the night side. They observed the weather from far above the surface, tracking several tropical storms form off the coast of Africa, as the trade winds blew them across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean. Three deepened into severe hurricanes.
Austin kept close watch on one that threatened to hit the Texas coast. It wobbled southward, slamming into the Yucatan and then into the interior of Mexico rather than maintaining a destructive course towards his home. One day, as they stood together at one of the viewports of the station where the class was being held, watching one of the storms cross the ocean, Austin asked Icheb "Did your home planet have weather patterns like this?"
"I don't know. I wasn't there long enough to learn much about the weather patterns on Brunal."
"I'm sorry. I knew you weren't . . . I shouldn't have brought it up," the Texan murmured.
"It's okay, Austin. I can't forget my home planet. I do remember that the percentage of the surface covered with water was much less than Earth's. I noticed it when Voyager was in orbit over Brunal, while I was refusing to even meet my parents. I couldn't access any of my early memories, but maybe my subconscious wanted to warn me of possible danger. I remember thinking it was a desolate sort of place, compared to a much prettier planet we'd visited for shore leave just before we went to Brunal. I don't know if Brunal was always grim like that, or if Borg incursions had something to do with it." He sighed then, and added, "From orbit, you could see the scars left from where the Borg had assimilated entire cities. The damage to the environment was catastrophic. I remember my father Leucon telling that was why the people developed genetic resequencing technology. They needed to develop plants to restore the planet's ecology."
"Bajor suffered like that from the Occupation. The Cardassians poisoned entire districts on my planet through carelessness. They stole our resources and didn't care what would happen to us once they left. Our scientists are trying to restore those areas using similar technology - and sometimes the old-fashioned kind of breeding plants and animals through observation, trial, and error," Farys remarked.
Verit was the one who put it in perspective for them all. "In my studies, I learned that Earth's environment was damaged by actions their own people had taken through industrial development. Fortunately, during the 21st century, steps were taken to limit the damage. They used plant life to remove excess carbon from the air, which stopped the temperature from rising as quickly as it had during the previous two centuries. The ice caps stabilized. When you see it now, so blue and aesthetically pleasing, it's easy to forget that destruction can come from the carelessness of the populace of a planet just as easily as it can from external invaders."
"That's good to remember, Verit. Thanks to my time on Voyager, I've seen many worlds. It would tragic if a lovely world like this were destroyed by the Borg. And even more, if its own populace ruined it through short-sightedness."
=/\=