The Star Beagle Adventures
Episode 6: Perpetual Change
Scene 7: The Probe Laboratories
.
And boy you'll see
It's an illusion shining down on you and me...
6.7
The Probe Laboratories
.
Sergeant Tommy Richards swam from the forward Probe Lab back into the Probe Control Lab. The sliding French Doors between the two labs were stuck open, which had allowed the Control Lab to flood. Fortunately, the U.S.S. Beagle's vulcan-built circuitry was designed to function when either partially or completely immersed.
Both labs had flooded the moment the Whisky 4 probe had encountered the inside out and in that same instant pulled the U.S.S. Beagle into the spacetime/subspace knot even though the probe was nearly 30 light years away. This was the sort of causality that knocked "spooky action at a distance" into a cocked hat.
.
"How are the reserve probes?" asked Major Janet Carter.
The large, heavily muscled African American woman looked odd bobbing in the water wearing a large, bright yellow, rubber ducky floater. For some unfathomable reason, these were the only kind of life preserver the replicator would provide.
Safety requirements allowed her and Sgt. Richards to shed their waterlogged uniforms in favor of appropriate, protective clothing. For some reason, the glitch that consigned the two marines to yellow, rubber ducky floaters also refused to provide regulation swimwear. They had to make do with yellow dive suits decorated with light blue polkadots. There was an unspoken agreement between the two to never tell anyone about this difficulty with the uniform code.
.
Tommy Richards was darker skinned than Major Carter. At 6'5" and 270 pounds of pure muscle, he looked like the ideal U.S. Marine. Or he would if it weren't for the rubber ducky and the blue polka-dotted yellow dive suit.
"Sir, probes Echo 1 through 4 and probes Whisky 1 and 2 are all in the forward lab and ready for launch, despite being immersed. However, the immersion causes a problem with making any modifications to either their payloads or their circuitry."
"Understood, Sergeant. What about the launch tubes?"
"The launch tubes are all flooded, but ready for use, except for the tube that was used to launch Whisky 4. I crawled into the tube to verify this: the outer tube door appears to be missing. There is a long, glowing thread that begins where the tube door should be and cants at an angle congruent with the thread being attached to the probe.
Major Carter was puzzled. "Has the tube door been replaced with a force field?"
"I could not find any evidence of one. The water in the tube simply stopped where the door should be, but I was able to push the sensor of my tricorder through without any resistance and it read an atmosphere and pressure. But that only existed in a tunnel about 4' in diameter, radiating from the thread. And I say thread, but it is more like a cable about 4" in diameter." Sgt. Richards used his hands to describe the cable and its atmosphere.
.
"Permission to explore, sir?"
.
Major Carter boggled at the young marine. "Are you asking permission to exit this ship into an unverified atmosphere that radiates from a beam of light that might be connected to a malfunctioning probe located about 30 lightyears ahead? Are you planning to crawl along a cable of light across 30 lightyears to get to that probe?"
Richards shook his head, ran a hand across his jar-head cut platform of short, springy black hair. "It didn't sound like such a stupid idea inside my head, sir."
"Yeah, you're not going out there, Sergeant," Major Carter replied. "Not without an EVA suit. We need to learn more about the missing door. Take a cutting system so you can remove that door if it shows up once you get outside. I want a report on the structural integrity of the bow of the ship, but I don't want you getting more than 20 feet away from that tube door…"
.
6.7