By Nathan Warner
Can Starfleet Cadet Samantha Wiseman save a dying world that has thrived inside a Dyson Sphere?
It was only the second day of the U.S.S. Pioneer's visit to the newly discovered Dyson Spheroid near the lifeless Peloria Star System in the Gamma Quadrant, and Cadet Samantha "Sam" Wiseman could still only describe the views as "breathtaking," much to Lt. Barrymore's annoyance. She could not quite come to terms with the horizon rising up majestically in front of her, instead of curving down out of sight like on most planets. She could see the whole western continent just above her, and it was even more surreal to be looking "down" on the tiny blip of the U.S.S. Pioneer which was sort of reverse-orbiting "above" the continent. She still found it difficult to explain in her personal log.
Sam was standing just outside a large patch of luminous, purple, sagebrush near their landed shuttlecraft. The aromatic plants smelled like a mixture between Earth Sage and Betazed Lavender - the setting was so peaceful and relaxing, that on more than one occasion, Sam had caught herself enjoying it all a little too much and neglecting her duties. She watched a line of bee-like insects buzz by her to a sage-bush as she took another Tricorder reading of the foliage, analyzing the results with a sigh.
"Lt.?" She called behind her. Barrymore poked his head out from behind a Sage bush, running his Tricorder over a specimen of the plant.
"Do you have something, Cadet?" he asked, running his hands over the balding dome of his head.
"I'm now reading an increase in aridity of 10.03%," she reported glumly.
"Hmm...that's a full percent higher than the last reading," he mused, glancing around in bewilderment. "What could be causing this cellular dryness? It has to be a radiation problem!"
Sam sighed. Barrymore had been saying that for hours, but radiation readings seemed to be normative. She took a deep breath and stared into the distance at the smoke winding its way across the majestic view out of the “night” shadow they were under – a shadow produced by the rotating nocturnal blind orbiting the central “star” of the Dyson spheroid, which gave an artificial 6 hour darkness to the biosphere – although not entirely dark as the glow from the curvature above illuminated everything with a soft, green light. Again Sam’s eyes rested on the smoke. Of course, this was the reason they were visiting this wonderful monument to ancient engineering.
Two days ago, the Pioneer had received a distress call from what had appeared to be an empty patch of space. Upon arrival, they discovered the Dyson Spheroid - a massive black orb of a dense, unknown alloy measuring a diameter greater than Jupiter. Their hails were received by a woman of almost floral appearance who called herself Perfay of the Pelori – a highly advanced people who had once lived in the Peloria System. Captain Quarteran stood stoutly before the viewscreen, his Tellerite nose twitching with excitement.
"What sort of ecological disaster did you say you are experiencing?" he asked as she had repeated her request for assistance.
"Our habitat is degrading," she replied sadly, "as our ecosystems are experiencing an unmediated aridity from an untraceable source. This has resulted in some spontaneous brush-fires that are rapidly spreading across the western continent, and we do not have the means to contend with them!"
Of course, this sort of humanitarian request was exactly what Starfleet excelled at responding to, and Captain Quarteran offered his ship's services. Perfay eagerly accepted and gave them instructions to find the access duct into the interior of the Dyson Spheroid. Sam had fought to contain the butterflies fluttering up her throat from her stomach as she watched Lt. Rigel pilot the Galaxy class starship nimbly through the small portal or "eye" into the blinding white light of the interior.
"Polarize the view and scan the energy source," Quarteran had snorted.
"Sir, sensors indicate that this structure is constructed around an artificial fusion furnace," Lt. Barrymore reported from his science station behind the command ring. Sam nodded to herself - that made much more sense as to why this sphere was so much smaller than theory would demand for one constructed around a natural star. Dyson spheres were often built on a small solar system scale, whereas this structure had a diameter more on the scale of the Moon's orbit around Earth - tiny by comparison.
“Give me a panoramic view of the interior," Quarteran demanded. On the viewscreen, the lush concave curvature of the spheroid came into view. It was incredibly beautiful, and Sam marveled at the sight of rivers and massive lakes.
"Like a paradise!" she whispered, but not quietly enough.
"Cadet, do you have something to add?" Quarteran growled, putting her on the spot.
"Uh...no, Sir," she said, stiffening and turning back to shadowing Lt. Rigel at the Conn. "Sorry, Sir!" Quarteran grunted and turned back to the viewscreen. Sam was mortified that she had spoken her mind aloud - it had probably ruined any chance of leaving the ship on this mission! She inwardly sighed. It had been three weeks since starting her summer internship aboard the Pioneer to learn about Command. They had set out from Deep Space Nine and entered the Gamma Quadrant through the mesmerizing ripples of the wormhole. It had been a fascinating trip into only a partially explored region of space not far from its terminus. And now this amazing discovery! If only she could keep her mouth shut, she would get along better with everyone!
So it came as a great surprise when the Captain unexpectedly sent Sam with the away team to meet Perfay. She overheard him telling Lieutenant Barrymore something about how fire tempers metal, or something. Sam could care less the reasons for the decision - her joy was overflowing. As brusque as he often could be, Quarteran had a soft heart and was always surprising Sam with his kindness and generosity in-between his gruff and impolite interactions. Sam was so elated by the decision that she could hardly keep from skipping to the turbolift on her way to Transporter room 3. There, she stepped up beside her idol, Commander Leslie Nevis - a woman so calm and commanding, so graceful and sure of herself!
The Commander nodded to her with a slight smile as she took her place. Sam felt incredibly out of place and inadequate, but before she could back out and retreat to her quarters, the attendant manipulated the transporter controls and the Away Team beamed down to a gorgeous view of the up-curving horizons beside an old manor house, not unlike an English estate, but the stonework was entirely softened by a web of flowering vines that almost completely obscured the house. In the distance, still thousands of miles away, Sam gasped at the trails of smoke bending away upwards into the distant atmospheric haze that eventually vanished in the curvature behind the “star” directly overhead. Suddenly, she was aware of an elderly woman coming up from the end of the walkway to the manor - Perfay of Peloria. She warmly welcomed them and soon they were deep in conversation.
"We were conversationalists," Perfay explained. "When our planet, Peloria, was dying with its sun, we threw our vast wealth, knowledge, and resources into building this habitat to save our way of life and provide a mobile home for our species. But in the end, an unforeseen warp-comet destroyed our planet and our civilization before anyone could escape. Only a handful of us survived – and most of them had been here, laboring on this structure - at least that is what I was told as a child. It has been over 500 years since the demise of our planet and I grew up here as a caretaker. We called it Haven." Perfay’s eyes were misting up and Commander Nevis nodded sympathetically to her distress. The Captain wasn't known for gentle diplomacy, so he had wisely sent Commander Nevis to meet Perfay on the surface.
"How many serve with you on this habitat?" Nevis asked the old woman gently. Perfay pulled her soft petal-like hair out her eyes - it was purple, but a soft natural, almost pastel color, starting to shade gray.
"Oh, didn't I mention?" she said in surprise, "Its just me! My family was the last to remain. And when my parents died, my older brother, Crocusus, left years ago to try and locate more of our race drifting through the Galaxy, but I couldn’t leave – not after…after everything my parents had given to preserve it! But it has been a lonely vigil." Leslie glanced in surprise at the surrounding wonder.
“But surely you have help? How do you take care of all this alone?” She asked in disbelief. Perfay glanced at the horizon. “Oh, I can still get around,” she said, mysteriously, “and I have the Attercops to help with the maintenance. Crocusus said the systems would hold together until he returned,’ she said, reflecting sadly on the memory of their parting, “but that was 50 years ago and I haven’t heard from him since."
Just then a buzzing noise approached and a small rectangular vehicle about the size of a book flickered down on them from the sky, hovering just a few feet off the ground inspecting a patch of flowers. Was this one of the "Attercops" Perfay had mentioned? At each corner, Sam could see the blur of fluttering wings like the insects back in her hometown of Glasgow. The little drone beamed something to the patch of flowers and then in a humming flutter, it flitted away to another patch of flowers several hundred feet away. To Sam’s eyes the flowers seemed to perk up substantially.
“But how many of these ‘Attercops’ do you have?” Leslie asked. Perfay straightened, resting her weight on her wooden cane.
“Oh, there must be thousands, hundreds of thousands!” she said, shielding her eyes against the never-ending horizon. “My brother would know – he managed all the technical systems here. I don’t count them, but whenever I make my daily rounds to the other side of Haven, I see them wherever I go.” Sam and Leslie glanced in surprise at each other.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” Sam started, “…but did you say you travel daily to the other side of this place?” Perfay nodded and then saw the confusion.
“Oh, you’ll have to excuse me!” she said, embarrassed, “I haven’t been around visitors for such a long time, I forget you may not know certain things – no, we Pelori have the natural ability to teleport ourselves some good distance – it’s as natural as walking, really. In fact, when you materialized near my Manor, I was a couple hundred miles away, but I saw your arrival, so I just stepped here.” Again, Leslie looked questioningly at Sam.
“Stepped here?” Sam asked.
“Yes,” Perfay said, “Oh…well, a step is a good 35 miles, and if you really push it, you can do maybe 60 miles at a time, but that is pretty exhausting these days!”
“We don’t mean to be impertinent,” Leslie said, “It’s just we’ve never seen anything like it. Would it be possible for you to demonstrate what you mean, perhaps?” Perfay nodded.
“Certainly,” she said, handing Sam a pair of spectacles that had hung about her neck, “but you’ll need these. Now look for me at Willoan’s Well over by that the third hill to the north.” She pointed to what looked like a patch of sagebrush surrounding a small hill – probably some 40 miles away – and then she took a step and vanished. Sam visibly jumped in surprise, and though not showing it, Leslie was just as shocked. When Sam had stopped turning around looking for Perfay, the Commander pointed to the spectacles in her hands.
“I believe those must be some sort of binoculars, Cadet,” she said. Sam held up the spectacles and looked through them – they magnified the surroundings perfectly! She scanned the horizon and found the spot. “Okay, I see the hill, and…Oh!” She gasped, “I see her! She’s waving at me from the crest of that hill – it must be about 40 miles away!” Leslie took a look through the spectacles and let out a low whistle. Then as quickly as she’d left, Perfay popped back next to them. “And you can do that all around the Annular diameter?” Leslie asked in astonishment.
Perfay nodded, clearly pleased at the surprise her “common” ability had given her visitors, “but it is getting harder to visit the whole of Haven – I am getting old! And the Attercops are wearing out with me.” She turned suddenly very serious. “I fear this paradise will die with us,” she said sadly. Leslie bent her caring gaze on the woman who carried alone the weight of what remained of her world.
"What can we do to help?" she asked. Perfay held back her tears and took Leslie's hand.
"Just responding to my call for help meant all the world," she said with a lonely smile, "I truly wondered if I was alone in the Universe! But if you could do anything to help save my little hermitage, I would be deeply in your debt." Leslie nodded.
"We'll do everything we can," she replied. They beamed back to the Pioneer to report to Captain Quarteran and determine a course of action. In twenty minutes, they settled on a plan. Leslie and several teams would use shuttles to set up observation posts and forcefield generators to be a "fire-line" of sorts. Chief Engineer Ray Baxton would work on adapting the Pioneer's deflector array to try and suppress the hundreds of square miles of brush-fires from orbit. In the meantime, an engineering team was sent to the Fusion generator control center on the Eastern continent to ascertain if it was the root of the problem – a likely source as Perfay’s missing brother had possessed all the technical aptitude for maintaining the energy systems while Perfay managed only the biology of the ecosystem as best she could. A malfunction in the environmental controls was the likely source.
Sam and Lt. Barrymore were tasked with taking samples and readings of the flora on the western continent, where the fires raged the worst.
It was slow going, and two days later the Pioneer was still “snuffing out” fires with pulses from its deflector dish, high above the continent. The technique had worked surprisingly well, but soon after putting one out, another would flare up. They were keeping the fires from spreading, but they couldn’t do this forever.
From the hill where she was working, Sam watched the Pioneer bank and angle on a new flare-up and she could swear she could see the distorted shimmer of the pulse before seeing the faint red flecks of fire in the black patches on the surface below “blink” out. Off in the distance, she saw a herd of Pelori Antelope bounding across the fields, seemingly oblivious to the threat their artificial world faced.
She sighed. She and Barrymore were no closer to a solution as they continued sampling the plant biology for clues. Without knowing the biology of the plant life, it was almost impossible to determine what natural levels of anything were in the cellular structure. She turned her attention away from biology for a moment. The habitat was watered from below ground, not above – it seeped up through the soil to the root systems. Perhaps the irrigation system was the problem?
“Lt., what’s the composition of the water in the cellular structure of that sagebrush,” she asked. Barrymore attenuated his Tricorder, grudgingly – he felt the young cadet was getting bossier all the time.
“All your usual markers,” he said with a shrug, but then paused and tapped his Tricorder, “…and an almost imperceptible amount of some unknown mineral.” Sam bent her Tricoder on a fresh sprig of sagebrush. Its smell was intoxicating – perhaps a sign of the distress the plant was experiencing. Her scan revealed the faint signature only on the most sensitive setting. She set about mapping its metabolic pathway in the sage.
“That’s it!” she cried. “A degrading irrigation system, sending small but sudden doses of a mineral buildup in the pipes into the biosphere!” Barrymore checked her readings and nodded.
“It does appear to be a hydrophilic compound,” he admitted, “and in normal concentrations, it wouldn’t be a problem, but the buildup on the inside of the plumbing means that if an acidic compound were suddenly introduced into the water supply, it would dissolve this mineral and send it on its way as a toxin to the habitat.” Sam nodded.
“We need to find that acidic source!” she exclaimed and then caught herself and stiffened at attention. “I mean…Sir, should we check for an acid source in the irrigation system?” Barrymore shook his head with a smile.
“Why not, Cadet,” he said, gesturing back to their shuttle.
Active sensor scans from a low flight over the continent revealed the problem.
“There!” Sam pointed at her console to what looked like a subsurface storage tank. Barrymore nodded.
“I’d say we’re looking at a ruptured fertilizer tank, feeding into the water supply,” he said. “And the tank’s material seems to be degrading – probably from age.” Sam continued scanning.
“These tanks are located every 2,000 square miles,” she said – and they all appear to be deteriorating on the western continent. We should tell the Captain!” Barrymore hid a smile at her enthusiasm.
“By all means, Cadet,” he said, “send him your report.” At the thought of presenting to the Captain and senior staff, all the wind went out of her sails. Her insecurities were tugging her down again.
“Actually, Sir, I’d feel better if you did the talking,” she said. Barrymore shook his head.
“Sorry, Cadet, but if you want to do this job, you have to stand by your work and be accountable for it. Every Starfleet officer needs to take responsibility for the work they do – good or bad.” Sam set her jaw.
“You’re right, Sir,” she nodded, “Thank you.” She turned to her console and raised the Pioneer. Captain Quarteran appeared standing stoutly on the bridge.
“Yes…Cadet?” he asked, hardly hiding his irritation at being hailed by a student.
“Captain, I may have an explanation of the situation,” she said, using all her strength to keep the nervous edge from her voice. Captain Quarteran had patiently listened to her report and surprised her by calling an immediate meeting in the conference room of the Pioneer with all the senior staff – and Sam who was tasked with presenting her findings. If she had been nervous before, she was petrified now, but she remembered what Barrymore had said, and she stood by her work. When she was finished at the end of the table, everyone turned to the Captain at the head.
“Well?” he asked them. Lt. Barrymore motioned towards Sam’s presentation.
“I think this is it, Captain,” he said. Commander Nevis nodded her agreement.
"The Cadet's logic is sound and it makes a lot of sense - I say we act on it," she advised.
“Very well,” Quarteran snorted, “Cadet Wiseman, I want you to work with Lt. Barrymore on a remedial plan for fixing these deteriorating fertilizer tanks. Have it ready for me in one hour. Lt., the crew is at your disposal. Dismissed.” The plan was ready in half that time and work crews were dispatched with orders to repair and replace the degrading tanks. The Pioneer's replicators were put through their paces and the whining sounds of materialization filled the ship as new tank fabrication became the order of the day. Three days later, the last repair crews left the surface after replacing the degrading tanks with newly replicated ones. The fires had ceased breaking out and the situation seemed to have stabilized.
“I would love that!” Perfay exclaimed, responding to Commander Nevis’ suggestion of establishing a Federation conservation team on the Dyson Spheroid to help maintain Haven and opening it up as a research facility.
“We would declare it a wildlife refuge - a Gamma Quadrant monument in memory of the Pelori and a Galactic treasure,” Leslie continued, “but that might mean more visitors than you are used to.” Perfay wiped a pearlescent tear from her eye.
“I would love to share our little piece of Eden with the galaxy,” she said, straightening and taking a deep breath. “Yes, it would give me the greatest pleasure to entertain the living and keep the memory of my people alive! And I am forever in your debt for coming to me in my time of greatest need – I truly thought I was going to die alone here.” Leslie stooped and gave Perfay a lingering hug.
“Just promise me you’ll visit,” Perfay said to Sam behind her, “the kettle will always be on!” Sam nodded.
"I will," she said with as wide a grin as her face allowed. "Visiting your world has been my greatest pleasure!"
They stepped away and she waved one last time to the old woman as Commander Nevis tapped her Communicator with as much delay as she could justify. "Nevis to Pioneer, two to beam up," she said almost reluctantly.
She and Sam exchanged a glance of mutual understanding like kindred souls speaking in an unheard language. They took in the majestic scene of Haven one last time.
“Breathtaking!” Sam whispered as she felt the familiar tingle of the transporter beam in her head. She was overwhelmed with euphoria for a moment and a deep abiding sense of joy to have made a difference in someone’s life – to have been there when they needed it – and what an adventure! This was what she loved about being in Starfleet, and she couldn’t wait for the next page in her story – all the unwritten chapters just waiting to be reached!
