By the Book (18 page)

Archer stood back, his arms crossed, watching as some of the best minds he had ever had the pleasure to be around struggled to solve the same problem. Sometimes he felt very lucky to have surrounded himself on this first mission with such a great crew. This was one of those times.

Captain's log.

I have decided that I will talk to the alien first.

T'Pol disagreed. We had to take the argument to the ready room. She was quite strident for a Vulcan. She's worried that my puny mind won't be able to handle an errant alien thought wave. I reminded her that she had said she wouldn't be able to handle one either.

That didn't quiet her for long. She believes that a captain should never risk his life for his crew. The captain, she says, is the most important person on the ship. Crew should be sacrificed before the captain takes a risk.

I wonder what she would have thought about all those old navy captains who went down with their ships while their crews escaped. Clearly we have some cultural differences here too.

Although I must admit, Starfleet does suggest that the captain take fewer risks than I do. The entire idea amuses me. This trip is risk enough; whether or not I face an alien who could kill me with a thought isn't going to add much to the risk factor that already exists.

Besides, I'm not going to have my staff do something I'm unwilling to do myself.

That's my justification and I'm sticking to it. Besides, this is an Earth ship and it is up to me to make first contact for Earth.

Once I got T'Pol to stop arguing, she went back to work. She and Hoshi are trying to create a voice/psionic energy translator that will allow me to talk to the alien. Assuming, of course, that the psionic shield Trip and the others were working on actually protects me from the alien's thoughts. Both teams feel they can be ready in five hours.

Five hours. Five hours seems like an eternity when I'm having trouble surviving through seconds.

More waiting. This is something I know I will have to adjust to, but in situations such as this one, it is difficult.

Looks like I'll have to find something besides pacing to fill the time.

They had moved the alien to an alcove off a corridor, an enclosed space that kept it isolated and yet allowed a relatively large group of people to work nearby. It had taken Archer a while to determine the best place to deal with the alien. He hadn't wanted to place anyone in danger except himself. That had taken some doing-and a bit of rearranging of equipment-but he believed they had found the right location.

Unfortunately, this tiny area of the ship did not have the same sophisticated environmental controls that sickbay had. Nothing they did could keep the smell down. The alien's stench was so thick here that Archer's eyes were watering. One of the guards that Reed had posted down the corridor was wearing a mask because, Reed said, she was afraid she'd pass out.

The smell-salty rotted oily and fishy mixed into one-was truly another presence in the room. If the aliens decided to stop communicating with telepathy, they could probably communicate with their odor alone.

Only on land, though.

He pressed the back of his hand against his nostrils, but that really didn't help much. The mask would have been a good idea if he weren't trying to communicate. He didn't want his voice muffled or his appearance altered. He wanted everything to go as smoothly as possible.

Trip was making the final adjustments to the psionic energy shield. The shield Trip, Ensign Cutler, Crewmen Williams, and Novakovich had invented seemed rudimentary. They put two pole-shaped machines on either side of the brig. The poles, used in unison, would create a clear energy barrier that would act like an invisible wall between Archer and the alien.

This energy wall couldn't even be felt and wouldn't hurt anyone who walked through it, because it was finely tuned to the psionic-wave frequency the alien used for telepathic communication. When the alien psionic waves passed through the energy, they were scattered and theoretically rendered harmless.

"It should work," Trip had told Archer. "But there's really no way to really test it without waking up our friend."

"So what happens if the psionic energy varies slightly?" Archer had asked.

"The shield won't block it," Trip had said.

"So I have to make sure I don't get the alien to raise his voice at me," Archer had said.

Trip hadn't laughed, which was probably the proper response. Archer felt amused, however. He was living a life he had never imagined he could live, filled daily with incredible risks. This was just one of them.

Dr. Phlox stood just inside the energy barrier, waiting to inject the alien with a stimulant and wake it up. Archer's greatest concern was that the alien wake slowly. He didn't want Phlox to get caught by any alien attempt at communication.

Phlox didn't seem bothered by the odor. He waited calmly, as if standing in a stench worse than ten thousand garbage dumps was normal for him.

Hoshi and T'Pol were working behind a nearby wall. They were putting the finishing touches on their own device. Theoretically, the device would change spoken words into psionic energy that the alien could understand. However, they were fairly certain it would be broadcasting only gibberish at first to the alien, which, T'Pol had said calmly, "Would be a problem."

Sometimes Vulcans were so prone to understatement. Archer had to keep an alien who had been knocked out calm when it woke up, then talk enough gibberish to it so that it would try to communicate back enough for the device to figure out how to translate.

Archer didn't give the entire thing much of a chance of success, but there didn't seem to be any other option short of just packing up and heading to the next star.

He wasn't ready to do that. Not yet. The last thing he wanted was for his first two attempts at first contact to end in failure.

Part of it was pride; part of it was that he didn't want T'Pol to report the failure to Vulcan; but the main part was sheer stubbornness. He was facing a puzzle and he was going to solve it.

To try to speed the communication learning process, Hoshi had hooked up the computer's main translator functions to it. She and T'Pol would be making computer adjustments from a safe distance while Archer tried to speak with the alien.

With a little time and patience on both his part and the alien's part, Hoshi assured him they should be able to develop a translation program that would allow him to communicate with the alien, Archer verbally, the alien telepathically.

Should. If. Maybe. Might. There were just too many words like that associated with aspects of this idea. Archer liked to have a few more assurances.

"We're ready," Trip said.

"Ensign," Archer said to Hoshi, "how's our translation device?"

She peeked around the corner, even though she had been instructed not to. "I think it's ready."

"How about a stronger vote of confidence than that?" Archer said.

"Well," she said, "I do think it's ready, but we won't know until we've tried it."

Archer resisted the urge to shake his head. He wanted a bit more confidence than that-and to get it, he was going to ask a Vulcan. He could barely believe that either.

"T'Pol, will our device work?"

"It will work," she said from behind the wall. He couldn't see her, but he could imagine her there, standing tall, her face serious. "Whether or not it will work as we want it to is another matter entirely."

So much for the vote of confidence.

"We can call this off," Trip said.

"And do what?" Archer asked. "Have you figured out another way to test these devices?"

"No," Trip said. "Unfortunately, they have to be tested in the field."

"Well, then." Archer centered himself behind the two poles. "Let's begin."

Trip gave him an uncomfortable look. Hoshi slipped behind the wall, as she had been instructed to do. Dr. Phlox frowned just enough to make his elaborate eyebrows angle against his forehead ridges.

No one moved.

"Trip," Archer said, "I believe the first step is yours."

"Right." Trip flipped a switch on the side of one post. Something hummed. The post trembled, flared with light, and then vibrated slightly. After a moment, the other post trembled, flared, and vibrated too.

Archer thought he saw a shimmer between the posts-long and thin, like a heat mirage on a desert road-and then the shimmer vanished.

Trip did a quick check, and then nodded. "Stay centered behind it, and you should be fine."

Trip meant that Archer should remain in the center of the two poles and stand behind them, but telling him to stay centered was good advice for his emotions as well.

"Will do," Archer said. Through the two poles, he could see the still-unconscious alien. It was on its back, its legs flopped to the side. After some deliberation, Phlox had placed it in that position so that it couldn't move quickly should something go wrong.

Archer hoped that these aliens, like turtles, had trouble righting themselves after landing on their backs.

"Okay, Dr. Phlox," Archer said. "I think the next point goes to you."

Phlox ran a scanner over the alien as a final precaution. Archer glanced over his shoulder. He could barely see Reed's guards, rifles in hand, waiting to fire if the alien tried to escape.

Phlox moved his scanner to one hand. With the other, he injected the alien, then scampered out of the way. "Captain, give it a few minutes to come up. It might be a little groggy at first."

"I hope not too groggy," Archer said. "I need to convince it to stay where it's at."

Phlox made his way beside Archer, still scanning. "The stimulant is working. It will be away shortly."

"All right," Archer said. "Shortly or longly, I think it's time for you to get out of here."

"I could stand beside you and monitor-"

"We had this discussion," Archer said. "No. I need your expertise should something go wrong."

Phlox's oddly colored eyes studied him. Phlox didn't seem confident with this plan at all. "All right," he said. "Good luck."

With that he turned and moved down the hall and around the corner out of sight.

Archer was about to check with T'Pol when the intercom fluttered to life. They had decided to use it to communicate with the hallway, although no one had done so until now.

"The translator device is on and working," T'Pol said through the intercom. "So far no psionic energy readings."

"Thank you," Archer said.

Trip did one more quick check of the shield, gave Archer a thumbs-up, and moved off, leaving Archer alone with the spiderlike alien.

He squared his shoulders. This was like piloting a test craft. The pilots who believed something could go wrong often triggered that something. Those who had incredible confidence in their own ability and luck usually did fine, even if something did go wrong.

A thousand things could go wrong, but even more could go right. And if this went right, Earth would have its own first contact, a new culture from which to learn, trade, and understand.

Excitement shivered down Archer's spine. He clasped his hands behind his back as T'Pol often did, and waited.

A few of the alien's legs were twitching. It was coming round.

He held his breath. He felt as giddy as a kid.

More twitches. Then something underneath the carapace moved-the eyes? The mouth? He wasn't sure.

"I'd start speaking to it now, Captain," Hoshi said over the intercom.

"Hi," Archer said, not moving or smiling or doing anything that any culture might consider threatening. He had no idea what to say to a groggy, telepathic alien that he had kidnapped.

"Good start, Captain," Hoshi said, "but I think you might need to pretty much talk straight at it for a minute."

Right. He had known that. He had just forgotten that for a moment. All these rules about talking to aliens. With the Fazi, it was don't speak until spoken to. Now it was talk until the creature in front of him could understand.

"My name is Captain Jonathan Archer," he said.

The alien's clawlike feet all touched the ground.

"You're on board our ship Enterprise."

The alien remained rigid for a moment.

"I'm sure sorry for bringing you up here."

In a feat that Archer wasn't sure he would ever be able to explain, the alien lifted its carapace off the floor, then flipped itself over, as if it were in a circus, doing acrobatics.

Archer resisted the urge to back away. He kept his voice neutral. "Bringing you here was an accident. It was never meant to happen."

If that thing charged at him now, he was done for. It could get through the energy barrier as easily as he could rip through paper.

"You got caught in our transporter beam."

The alien seemed to be staring first at him, then at the small box where Archer's voice was being turned into psionic waves.

Archer decided to stop rambling and try to really communicate. He pointed at himself. "Human."

The alien's entire body dipped slightly. "Hipon."

The digital voice had an androgynous quality, which seemed to suit the alien, since they still hadn't been able to figure out its gender.

Archer wanted to make certain he understood. He pointed at the alien. "Hipon." Then he pointed at himself. "Human."

"Yes," the machine said.

Archer felt the tension in his shoulders lessen slightly. "I am the captain of this ship," he said, motioning first at himself, then around him.

"Captain," the alien said through the machine. "No need-to go-through- the basics. Your translation device is-functioning. An amazing device, but I-am not sure why-it is needed."

Archer could hear the cheering coming from down the hall and through the com link. With each word the translator seemed to be picking up speed and clearness.

"This is a psionic shield," Archer said, pointing to the posts on either side of him, "designed to block the wavelengths of your thought patterns from my mind."

The alien scuttled closer to it. Archer resisted the urge to move away. The alien appeared to be studying the poles. With one of its front legs, it reached toward the shield, but didn't touch the area in the middle.