“Don’t keep me in suspense, Devi.”
Patel rose and walked around the crater’s edge, scanning as she went. “Do you remember how the water sources on SWOW were lined with silicon?” she asked.
“SWOW?”
“DK-1116.”
“Oh, right. The lakes. Yeah, that was weird.”
“It was intentional. The water had to be pure to function as a natural circuit breaker. But how did they come up with that? I mean, you solve problems by working with the elements that are readily available, but that’s still a leap, isn’t it?”
Paris studied his own readings and noted the presence of a band of silicon several meters down that could have been a natural deposit but was a little too regular in its size and shape. More important, there was a hollow space within the silicon formation for which almost nothing natural could account.
“The Edrehmaia did it first, and the others learned from them,” he realized. “The species that studied DK-1116 must have also spent some time analyzing this asteroid field.”
“That’s right,” Patel agreed. “What if the technology we’re looking for is simply the Edrehmaia substance itself? They place a few cubic meters of the substance at the center of these asteroids and quantumly code it to become entangled with the other deposits as well as the planet.”
“Then you wrap it in silicon to make sure it doesn’t activate accidentally,” Paris said.
“Or when someone digging for samples happens to strike too deep,” Patel suggested, clearly thinking of Gwyn and Seven’s earlier mission.
“And then you place a vein of frozen water within the silicon, pure water, that prevents unintentional reaction.”
“The heat generated when the planet’s energy is released warms the asteroids and the water, which melts and trickles up to the surface, forming this small crater with its residual hydrogen,” Patel continued.
“Which allowed for the reaction of the Edrehmaia base that transmitted the energy waves to adjust the star’s motion so it didn’t destroy the rest of the system when it broke orbit,” Paris concluded.
“The technology isn’t on the asteroids,” Patel said. “It is the asteroids.”
“Let’s go,” Paris said. “We’re going to pick up Seven’s team a little early.”
“What’s the rush?” Patel asked.
“I just really want us to be the ones that figured this out before she did.”
VESTA
Doctor Sal’s workload once she had returned to duty hadn’t been terribly strenuous. The most challenging problem she’d faced as part of the Full Circle Fleet had been Nancy Conlon’s degenerative condition, and despite the fact that Conlon might well be dead already, Sal hated unfinished business on principle.
She had approached Conlon’s illness the same way she did most problems—take what you know and build from there. Vega Nine’s cure, while instructional, had not been a perfect fit. In that case, the introduction of an alien virus had been responsible and ultimately possible to unwind by introducing a new vector into the infected patients that restored the proper protein sequences. The problem with Conlon’s illness was that it was impossible to determine the actual cause. Proximity to the alien possession that had preceded it suggested that the assault had to be connected. But the alien in question was gone and the few scans that existed of Conlon while possessed hadn’t been thorough enough to show any definitive cause.
It did, however, suggest that the trauma had begun in her brain. This was further supported when the first serious damage it caused was also to her brain.
There was no reason for Sal to continue working this problem. Odds were good that even if they found the Galen with her crew still alive, Sal wouldn’t be permitted to rejoin the team treating Conlon.
But that didn’t mean that she couldn’t keep thinking about it, and hell, if any of her new thoughts showed promise, a test or two, run on her own time and to satisfy her own curiosity, wouldn’t be out of bounds.
All of her work up until this point—the Vega Nine vectors, the metamorphic cells—had been designed to treat the resulting damage to Conlon’s DNA. Sal still believed that the metamorphic cells would have cured Conlon, but as she would never again be able to access them, it was another dead end.
Perhaps she needed to search for a new vector, something malleable enough to effect change in the damaged cells without activating their self-defense mechanisms.
Or, perhaps, she needed to start over. From the very top. She had far more experience than any other doctors in the fleet at treating syndromes like Conlon’s. The other physicians on the case had deferred to her expertise, time and again, working to minimize the symptoms and buy Sal the time she needed to find a cure.
Had that been her mistake? She hated to think Regina had been right, but her primary complaint had been the secrecy with which Sal had pursued her goals. Had she shared her theories and plans with the others, they might have said no, but she hadn’t bothered to ask.
Pride placed deep in her pocket, where it was most useful, Sal transmitted a message to Voyager’s sickbay. Soon, the wide, mottled face and warm eyes of Doctor Sharak appeared on her viewscreen.
“Doctor Sal, it is good to see you,” he greeted her. “I trust you are well?”
“I have been better,” Sal replied.
“I believe that is true of all of us and will be until we have found our sister ship.”
“I cannot help but feel the call of unfinished business,” Sal said.
“Do you require assistance?”
“I do. I have been going over the work I did on Lieutenant Conlon’s case.”
“I, too, believe we will find her, and while I hope the Doctor will have made progress, I do not think any efforts we might make on their behalf would be wasted.”
“You identified the DNA damage repair syndrome first,” Sal said. “In your initial diagnosis, did you spend much time attempting to locate the cause?”
“As I reported to you when we first discussed the case, I did not,” Sharak replied. “The progress of the
