Assuming the gleam in her captain’s eye didn’t translate into action. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of going down yourself, Captain,” she said, hands on hips.
His eyes turned to her, the gleam giving way to wistfulness. “Don’t worry, Christine. Just an idle thought.” He sighed. “Time to put those days behind me now. I have to be a responsible captain anda responsible father. You won’t have to argue with me about who leads the away teams anymore.”
Vale studied him, knowing that he wasn’t too unhappy about it. He and Deanna had been through a rough time after deciding to conceive a child: first a long, unpleasant set of treatments to overcome their cross-species compatibility issues, then the miscarriage, then the near loss of their second unborn child. It had put a strain on their relationship, but they had come through it stronger and more committed to each other—and to their little girl—than ever. She knew that at this stage of his life, Will Riker was happier to be by his pregnant wife’s side than to go gallivanting around uncharted planets in souped-up shuttles. But there was still a part of him, she knew, that felt nostalgia for that freedom and excitement.
She laid a hand on his shoulder briefly. “Don’t worry. I promise to bring back plenty of holos.”
Most of the team was already present. Aili Lavena was running preflight checks, no doubt eager to get down to a new ocean. Melora Pazlar and Lieutenant Kekil, the Chelon biologist, were loading equipment and sample cases. That left only Ranul Keru, she thought—until she heard a familiar soft whirring sound and turned to see Ensign Torvig Bu-kar-nguv approaching. “Permission to join the away team, Captain?”
Vale did a double take, followed by Riker a second later. Both of them had long since grown accustomed to the appearance of the young Choblik: a meter-high mammalian with a cervine head, ostrichlike body, and long slender tail, but augmented with bionic implants. The surprise was that those implants had changed. The cowling that protected his skull and snout had been modified with a more streamlined prow, his deerlike ears swept back into recessed nooks. His robotic arms appeared to have been modified to fold up flush against his ventral plate, which had been also been reshaped for streamlining and even given a slight keel. His foot-claws had been replaced with paddlefeet, and the extra handlike manipulator at the tip of his tail had been replaced with a structure like a Japanese fan. A dorsal fin rising from his spinal armor completed the ensemble.
Riker finally found his voice. “Ensign. I see you’ve…dressed for the occasion. How, uh, how long did this take? You really should’ve consulted me before making any major modifications…”
“Oh, it didn’t take long, sir. I was due for a regular swap-out soon anyway, and I figured I might as well…Hm. I suppose it would be literally true to say I decided to make myself useful.” The little engineer seemed pleased by his wordplay, but more in the way he took quiet pleasure in any new discovery than out of full-fledged humor.
“And…how hard would it be to change back afterward?”
“It wouldn’t pose any difficulty, sir. I have the necessary equipment in my quarters.” He tilted his head, his mechanical irises widening in realization. “I apologize for not making a formal request, sir. I just got so interested in the project…”
“Say no more, Ensign.” By now, everyone knew how Torvig was when he got intrigued by a new project. Although he wasn’t highly emotional by humanoid standards, he was a creature of pure impulse when it came to intellectual curiosity and experimentation.
The captain turned to Vale. “Christine? It’s your mission.”
“Well, Vig, um…I wouldn’t want all that work to go to waste…but Droplet doesn’t seem like the kind of planet where we’d need an engineer along.”
“Oh, I’ve uploaded the xenobiology and planetary science databases into my memory buffer, Commander,” he said. Much of the Choblik’s intelligence was assisted by the bionic implants that some unknown benefactors had given them millennia in the past; without them, Torvig would be only a fairly bright woodland animal. He thus had the ability to upload new knowledge at will, though it took his organic brain some time and practice to process it. “Besides, the aquashuttle systems are largely untested, so it might be a good idea to have an engineer along. And I don’t take up much room, ma’am.”
Vale chuckled, conceding the point. “Okay, okay. If nothing else, you can keep us cool with your, umm, fan there.”
“Thank you, Commander. I ama fan of yours.”
“Oh, no,” Vale whispered to Riker as the Choblik clambered aboard the shuttle, stumbling a bit on his newly enlarged feet. “Now that he’s discovered puns, he’s going to be ‘experimenting’ with them for weeks and driving us all out of our minds.”
“Look on the bright side,” Riker replied. “Down there, he won’t take it badly if you tell him he’s all wet.”
CHAPTER T
WO
DROPLET
The away team’s first destination was a small cluster of floating islands at a high southern latitude, comfortably removed from the equatorial storm belt. The winds on an ocean planet built up swells that never broke against land and thus could grow to mountainous size. There was wind at these latitudes, of course, the same steady, predictable circulation patterns that could be found planetwide. But sensors showed no major swells heading toward this grouping. Swells of such size could be fairly gentle and would pose no risk to the aquashuttle; but until the nature and behavior of the disklike islets were determined, it was better not to take chances.