The Adventures of Jean-Luc Picard
The Missing Starbase
by Jasjit Singh
(jasjit@uranium.dashmail.net)

The Missing Starbase

It was a routine survey mission. That is what is so peculiar about the whole story. And where Starbase 117 vanished to, we don't know, and may never know. But we are all still alive, or so it seems, and that fact, standing on its own, is a welcome relief.

But I should begin at the beginning. As I mentioned, it was a routine survey mission. I was stationed aboard the U.S.S Stargazer, Federation registry NCC-2893, as the ship's Executive Officer. She was a fine vessel, built to withstand the hardships of war. She could take quite a beating and was definitely battle-worthy.

We were well within the bounds of Federation space. Our mission consisted of a week of data gathering around an M-class planet that had been experiencing severe planetary weather disturbances - storms, hurricanes, earthquakes and the like. We were taking readings from sensor input both from the planets surface and the surrounding space. About the most exciting thing to do during that time, as Khalid, the Chief Engineer put it, was to read the output from the sensor logs. Khalid was a big, hulking figure of a man, with small eyes in an otherwise huge face. He was a genius, but he didn't let that fact be known ship-wide, for modesty perhaps, or other reasons that I could not fathom at the time.

Our uneventful survey mission being over, we proceeded to Starbase 117, where we were scheduled to dock for a brief stay, and to report our findings to Fleet Admiral Luberto. I recall vividly the bewilderment aboard the bridge of the Stargazer as we approached the Starbase, only to find empty space instead of the Starbase. The captain, Walker Keel, looked at me with a frown and then said to helm: "Is our course correct?"

"Aye sir, we are at the proper coordinates." responded Ensign Healey.

"Forward viewscreen on," said Keel, getting up from his chair and taking a few steps forward. The viewscreen in front of us blurred and then an image of black space materialized on it, with brightly glittering stars in the distant space.

We all looked at the screen, dumbfounded.

"T'Pau, does the Starbase register on our sensors?" asked Keel.

"No sir, sensors do not detect any vessel."

"Any signs of debris?"

"None, sir."

"Any anomalous readings?"

"Scanning . . . no anomalous readings, sir."

Keel shot me a puzzled glance and then returned to his seat. He contemplated the empty space that loomed before us on the viewscreen. Then he said: "T'Pau, try hailing the Starbase using the standard Starfleet comm protocol. Use both secure and open channels."

There was a brief pause as T'Pau attempted the hails. After a few seconds she looked up and said: "No response, sir"

"Try a general hail, all channels, all frequencies."

"Aye sir." - and then - "No response, sir."

Keel scratched his head. The he said: "Contact Starfleet."

When we had obtained contact with Starfleet we asked them if they knew anything about the mystery we were encountering. "What seems to be the problem, Walker?" It was Admiral Murray from Starfleet Command.

"Well Admiral, Starbase 117 seems to be . . . well, missing."

"Missing?"

"Yes Admiral. It's just - gone."

Starfleet had no idea what was going on. Their latest information (which was only minutes old), reported Starbase 117 functioning properly and very much in existence at our location.

* * *

Keel was on his feet, pacing slowly to and fro, hands clasped behind his back, chin sunk upon his breast. He seemed to be in thought. I was just about to consult Ops for the last transmission that had been received from the missing Starbase, when Keel stopped abruptly, looked up and said to me:

"Jean-Luc, take an away team in a shuttle, get a closer look out there."

"Aye sir," I said, rising. As I headed for the turbolift doors I selected my team: "Mr. Sainor."

Do-reth Sainor was a thin wisp of a man, not very tall, and quite unassuming. His presence, though, was never missed, and he had a keen mind and an even keener perception. Since he seldom missed any fine point or detail, I decided that he would be invaluable to me. Being the Science Officer aboard the Stargazer, he would have to collect the data we gathered in any case. He left his station without a word and joined me in the turbolift.

We took one of the smaller shuttlecrafts. They were not very roomy, but had more maneuverability, and the controls responded aptly enough, unlike some of the larger shuttles, which were a tad sluggish.

As we headed towards the coordinates, we began our scans: wide-beam scans, narrow-beam scans, techion scans, scans for traces of tetrion particles, and so on. Everything seemed to be coming out negative. It appeared more and more that this part of space was just what it seemed: normal, with no sign of a Federation Starbase or other vessel. The comm station beeped and then Keels voice came through it: "Keel to Shuttlecraft One."

"Go ahead, Captain," I said, continuing the scans.

"Anything out there, Jean-Luc?"

"Nothing so far, sir. We are continuing scans on all bands. We are also analyzing the data, which all seems to be, normal."

I could hear his sigh. "Carry on. Let me know if you find anything. Keel out. "

"Understood sir."

I was busy at the control pad, not looking out of the shuttle. It was all black space anyway. Just then I heard something like a rustle of leaves, and turned my head to face Sainor. He was looking at me intently, eyes glittering, as if he wanted to communicate something to me. I opened my mouth to say something, but was interrupted by a proximity alarm sounding in the shuttlecraft.

**Warning, object at ten meters. Collision imminent. Warning!!**

I looked ahead. There, in front of us, almost completely covering the viewscreen, and growing larger every second, was a living, throbbing Starbase. Starbase 117. It looked as if it was manned. At least the warp core was functioning, since all stations systems appeared to be running, and it was registering on the scanners. On all scanners at once, in fact.

There were several different alarms sounding in the shuttlecraft. I shut off the sensors, and took the helm. We were perilously close to the wall of the Starbase, and would strike it if our course was not altered.

**Warning, object at six meters. Collision imminent. Warning!!**

I tapped the controls, and swerved hard right. We swung about, clinging to our seats. The white wall ahead of us swung away, only to be replaced by the extension limb of a docking clamp. Again I tapped the controls and entered a new vector. It was fortunate that the little shuttlecraft was easy to control. As we thrust upwards, we were pushed back into our seats, and saw the extension limb disappear underneath our shuttlecraft.

We had traversed almost the entire height of the Starbase when the comm beeped once again. It was Keel. "I see you found our missing Starbase, Jean-Luc." There was a hint of humor in his voice.

"It just appeared, out of nowhere," I replied.

"We have tried hailing them. There is no response. Shields are down. Life support is functioning. Hastings is preparing to beam over there with a security detail. I want you to dock and find out what the hell is going on with that station."

"Aye sir"

We docked successfully. It was good to know that at least the Starbase's computer was functioning at peak efficiency.

The Starbase personnel, however, were another story. I don't think that anything could have prepared us for what we saw on board that Starbase. Even now I have visions in my nightmares of it.

We had just disembarked from our shuttlecraft, and entered the hallway. Lights were dim, flickering. The only sound was the low hum of the warp core, which was the power signature. Everything else was silent. We could even hear our own breathing. We drew our phasors and tri-corders, and proceeded in.

We walked along the curving corridor for a few minutes without seeing or hearing anyone. That was strange in itself. Our footfalls, light on the carpet, seemed to echo in the silence. The low hum of the warp core was a constant companion, and started to irritate me after a while. Perhaps because of the absence of any other sounds.

Eventually we reached a doorway that led to the main deck. As I was preparing to open it, I felt Sainor's hand on my shoulder from behind. "Be wary, Picard," he said quietly. I nodded, and forced the door open. Lights in the chamber were not functioning, and it was pitch black inside. I stepped inside, followed by Sainor. As I did so, I seemed to step onto something wet, or liquid. I lifted my foot, looking down at my shoes. Sainor activated his portable flashlight, sending a bright wide beam onto the main deck. I was able to see what I had stepped in. It was red blood.

I heard Sainor gasp, and looked up. What I saw astonished and horrified me. I felt my skin crawl and a chill went up my spine as I looked upon what only seemed like the aftermath of a massacre. The main deck was littered with corpses. Human corpses. They were wearing Starfleet uniforms, and must have been the station personnel. They were at their stations, lying on the floor, thrown across control panels and flung over railings, even pinned to the walls.

"All dead," said Sainor slowly, pocketing his tri-corder. We looked around us as Sainor moved the light from one end of the deck to the other.

"How did these people die?" I wondered aloud, more to myself than to Sainor. We were both struck with awe and disgust, for many of the bodies had been mutilated.

Some of them were seated in their chairs with their skin peeled from their bodies, looking up in desperate silent screams. Others were lying on the floor with their limbs literally severed from their bodies. One man had been pierced through the chest with some sort of spear, and he was pinned to the wall high above our heads, blood still dripping from his fatal wound.

After a few seconds I gathered the resolve to wander down the three steps onto the main floor of the deck, picking my way among the hacked bodies and pools of human blood, and made it to the station commander's chair. He was lying in it, limp and lifeless. I walked up to him, with Sainor beside me, and stood shocked.

His head was thrown back, his face contorted horribly, fingers clawing at the leather of the seat. But what was most horrific was that his body seemed to be punctured by several holes, caused by perhaps a blunt spear or other primitive weapon. He had been brutally attacked, and it appeared that his assailant had not stopped stabbing him, even after death. The white bone of his shoulder blade was visible, his rib-cage was cracked and broken, with several ribs thrusting out in what only must have been an excruciatingly painful ordeal for him.

I grimaced and turned quickly away. "What happened here?" Sainor whispered urgently.

"I don't know, Mr. Sainor, but whatever happened, we have to determine what it was, and that it does not happen again." Our voices echoed eerily in the stillness of the room.

Our comm badges beeped and a familiar voice came: "Hastings to Picard," It was Eddy Hastings, Security Chief of the Stargazer. He was aboard the Starbase now, with his security detail.

"Go ahead Eddy," I replied.

"I assume you have seen the dead," his voice seemed distant, far, while we stood in this dark place of death.

"Yes, we are on the main deck. The station commander is among the dead. Have you located Admiral Luberto?"

"Aye sir. He's dead, Jean-Luc."

"We will try to access the computer logs from here. Conduct a station-wide search for any survivors."

We informed Keel of our findings, and then I tried to access the main computer. It needed some cajoling, but finally gave me access. There were power fluctuations, however, and it was difficult to gain any reliable information from the workstation. I did obtain some data concerning station operations, though, and was able to remotely transfer the crew roster to Hastings. His team used it to identify the dead.

Hastings' security team reported in as they searched each deck. So far all they had found was more dead bodies. Sainor and I left the main deck as soon as I was able to secure an upload frequency from the main computer. While I was working with the computer Sainor had restored the deck lighting, causing the room to be flooded in bright white light, which stung the eyes at first.

I blinked up at him as he walked towards me. "Tired of the dark, Mr. Sainor?" I remarked.

He looked around at the blood-splattered walls, and then said: "Not just the dark."

His voice was solemn, mourning. I turned to finish up at the workstation with a renewed sense of urgency.

* * *

After our work was finished on the main deck, we headed towards Engineering, and then Astrometrics. Every place we went to was littered with dead bodies, murdered in the most horrible and grotesque ways. The experience of seeing the dead began to take on a surrealistic impression to me. I began to feel like the living among the dead. The place of the dead. Hades. My mind was wandering. I would be lost, in thought, pondering, when Sainor's quiet, strong voice would bring me back gently. He knew what was happening with me. He felt it too. He was determined to keep us both from falling into that black pit of hell called madness. Though I teetered upon the brink more than once, and more often the longer we spent on that Starbase, Sainor remained steadfast.

Astrometrics was, as we had predicted, the same as the other rooms. But when we came to science laboratory, we heard noises. We had out phasors out in an instant, set to wide beams and maximum stun setting. We were not about to take any chances, for whatever had killed these people might still be aboard the station, and after seeing what it had done to other humans, I was not inclined to have desire to discuss anything with it. But we did not want to make any mistakes either, and so maximum stun it was.

We swept the laboratory once, and then twice. We could not see anybody. The sounds were a low thud followed by a quick scratching. Sainor scanned the room with his tri-corder. He pointed towards an ante-chamber. "One life sign," he whispered, "human." Human. Could a human have done all this? And even if a human was capable of this carnage, how would it be possible for one human to murder hundreds?

We advanced into the ante-chamber. It was considerably smaller than the rest of the lab. There were some storage cabinets here. It was from one of them that the sounds were emanating from. I stood before it, while Sainor took position behind me with phasor aimed and ready.

With one swift movement I swung the door open. Inside crouched a man in a white lab overcoat, with his arms over his head, shaking visibly. "Please!" he groaned, "please don't kill me!"

I looked from him to Sainor, who had put away his phasor.

"Who are you?" I demanded.

"Please don't kill me!" he wailed, "please! I beg you!"

I squatted down in front of him and said quietly. "I am Commander Jean-Luc Picard, of the Federation Starship Stargazer. We were scheduled to dock here for data exchange and mission briefing. Can you tell us what happened here?"

He looked up now. He was an old man, with white hair, and lines on his old leathery face. He did not seem to bear any marks or wounds. But his eyes were wild with fear, bloodshot. He was a man terrorized. He abruptly looked from me to Sainor, who stood with arms folded, observing.

"You came, please, help me. You must get me out. Of here. It went wrong, all wrong! They might be back, we might go back. I must . . . I have to get out! You must help me! You will help me won't you!?"

"Try and calm down, we will take you with us and our doctor can have a look at you."

"Doctor yes! Yes, I need some sedatives I imagine. Something, oh my God! You must get me out of here! We must leave this starbase! We must leave immediately! Or we might all die!"

He began to babble incoherently. I stood up and faced Sainor. "Lets take him back to the Stargazer," -- and then on my comm badge to Eddy -- "Eddy, as soon as you have finished your sweep report back to the Stargazer."

"Aye Sir!"

From the tone of his voice it appeared that Eddy Hastings did not desire to stay on board any longer than he needed to.

* * *

The man we had found on board the Starbase was named William Magnus. Indeed he was no other than the famed Dr. William Magnus, one of the greatest Federation scientists. We left Dr. Magnus in Sick Bay until he had recovered somewhat. When he had calmed down, and was able to speak, Keel called the senior staff for a meeting in the conference room. "I was conducting an experiment on Starbase 117," Dr. Magnus was talking in a very different tone now, quiet, serene, calm, one might almost say humbled, "It was in warp-field metrics. It has been a simple fact-finding and data-gathering discipline. But no-one really looks at the data, I mean really analyzes it. There are secrets there, and I could see them, from very early on. But I did not have the necessary equipment to work on my hypotheses."

"Exactly what were these hyptheses that you had, doctor?" I asked.

"I postulated many years ago, that warp drive was only a by-product of the real output of a warp-field. The warp core generates enough energy to propel a starship forward in time and space at such and such a ratio, and so on and so forth. But what noone realized, or cared about, was that a warp-field has other effects too, such as a massive energy dissipation, an actual change in the Rohaan thermal coefficient. Have you ever heard of that? When you couple that with the massive amounts of neutron emissions from our standard warp-drive engine, that points to a startling fact."

Khalid, who had been sitting quietly until now, suddenly leaned forward in his seat and looked at Magnus with an alarmed expression on his face. He had a pad sitting on the table in front of him. It was blinking with freshly entered data and solved equations.

"You don't mean to say you created a Quantum Singularity?" he asked Magnus. The doctor looked at Khalid and shook his head.

"A Quantum Singularity, no. There are ways, even for that, but not with the by-products, as most would call them, of our warp engines. No sir, what I created was far more powerful than a quantum singularity. Not just a simple rift in time and space, something more and beyond that. I had expected, that when the Rohaan coefficient was around 0.5, we would see an effect similar to a natural wormhole. But I was wrong." He sighed, and shook his head. "The fluctuation was too great, and too erratic. It shifted so suddenly that it was hard to compensate for phase variances. We could not keep up, we had a sudden drop to 0.04, and thats when everything started going wrong."

He looked up at us, and he seemed to have aged a hundred years. Those old grey eyes, that haggard face. Three hundred and seventy lives is not an easy burden to carry on your mind.

"We did move out of time and space. But we didn't travel through a wormhole. It was nothing like I had ever seen. It could only be described as an interspatial vortex. Originating from my little experiment in the Science Lab. We were pulled through this phenomenon into another dimension, a place very different from this Universe where we live. The only thing I can say about that place is that humans were not meant to be there. One could not live there. We were only there for a few minutes, and it seemed like hours, days. We all went mad. I could not tell what was happening. You see, Captain, there are things in that place, things that drive a man insane. How I found that dimension, I do not know. And I hope I never find it again."

Keel's face was devoid of emotion."I do have one question, doctor," he asked."If everyone else aboard the Starbase went mad, how did you keep from following that route, or getting killed."

Now Magnus sighed, his shoulders sagged down, and the color left his face. "You see, they came. And they walked among us as if they were real. Well, in that place I suppose they were real."

"Doctor, who are 'they'?" Keel asked.

Magnus sighed deeply. And then he wailed out: "The dead! The dying! Demons, devils, evil spirits. Call them what you want. They live in that place, they reside there. Going there only put us as risk. Gave them a chance to do what they love to do. No, we were not meant to be there." Magnus appeared to be losing control again, but he took a deep breath, and recovered his trembling self.

"How I managed to survive, Captain," he continued "is by hiding. Yes sir, I hid like a coward. There are some places which are impervious to their senses, such as a within a titanium-lead alloy. Those storage cabinets I hid in were made of a titanium-lead alloy. they did not sense me there. All the while I heard the screams of the people all around me, such hideous screams. I am afraid that I cannot continue, Captain. I need a respite."

We had Dr. Magnus returned to sick bay, where he was kept under sedation. Meanwhile we turned our attention to other matters. Khalid had re-routed Engineering control to a workstation on the bridge and began work on obtaining the Starbase logs. "Uplink frequency verified, upload initiated," he reported, as he began an upload of the Stations computer logs.

Seconds later, the upload had been completed. "Commander, we have several missing fragments. Some of them are large data clusters. That was probably why you had trouble accessing the data from the station."

I looked at the terminal displaying the tattered file system and computer logs. "Can you recover it?" I asked doubtfully.

"Recovery is only partial. I will be able to patch it so we can recover the existing logs. Hopefully Dr. Magnus' experiment data is is still intact."

I nodded. Keel came up beside me. "Jean Luc," he said in a low voice, "I have sent a report to Starfleet command. They are not pleased about this development. Admiral Murray has given me a few options -- one of them is to destroy the starbase."

"With all the people still on board, sir?" I asked "Those people deserve a decent burial."

Keel shook his head. "I couldn't agree with you more, Jean-Luc. But you saw them yourself. Are they in any condition to be buried?"

I shuddered as I recalled how one mans body was scattered over an entire deck in pieces.

"I have the data concerning Dr. Magnus' experiment," said Khalid, bringing up some documentation and schematics on the workstation viewpad. Keel and I studied the views.

"It looks like a circuit to modify the flow rate to the warp drive," Keel commented. Khalid nodded and scrolled to new views.

"Here, look," he pointed, as he scrolled, "and here. And here. Dr. Magnus made use of several automation algorithms to move his general and specific tasks into modules, and then automate the processing. He used a lot of variant data. There are gigabytes of just experiment parameters. He really did not leave any stone unturned."

"I'd say he turned one stone too many," said Keel.

We left Khalid to continue his work on the Station logs; I was off duty for the next three hours, and decided to take some time and soak in a tub of soaking hot water. I felt the need to wash myself clean of something dirty that I had been exposed to.

An hour and a lot of scrubbing later, I sat in the little tub with bubbles floating all around me, steam rising from the hot soapy water, and felt genuinely better. All I needed now was a cup of hot Earl Grey tea. I reached for the towel . . .

. . . just as I walked toward the replicator, general alarm Red Alert! sounded. The Captain's voice came loud over the comm system: "Red Alert! All hands to battlestations!"

I had my uniform on in seconds and was out the door, into the hallway where people were running in every direction, hurrying to their posts. I made it to the bridge as soon as I could. It was flooded in red light. Keel stood facing the viewscreen, while Khalid appeared to be working frantically at the Engineering workstation.

Keel turned to offer me a brief glance as I walked onto the bridge. "Dr. Magnus's experiment, Jean-Luc," he explained, as we both looked at the floating white Starbase on the viewscreen. "It has somehow restarted. Only it began on the Stargazer. Something triggered it, temperature, atomic time, who knows, it might just have been enough disk arrays to store resultant data."

"How could it just start up again, without any setup data?" I asked.

Khalid answered me. "Magnus used several modules of automated sequences. It made for easier execution. There must have been a protocol subroutine left unlocked. When it sensed a functioning warp-drive, it must have started it's sequencing. Power started to be re-routed from Engineering. We noticed an energy buildup on the Starbase, and then realized that a remote data transfer was occurring. In a sense, the computer is running the experiment from here, remotely."

I looked out at the Starbase. It seemed to vibrate. Somewhere in there, Magnus's terrible experiment was coming to life again.

"Computer, locate Dr. Magnus," I said.

Doctor Magnus is in Sick Bay

"Doctor, we require your assistance on the Bridge, if you would be so good as to join us."

"I'm on my way" Already his voice was shaking.

I turned to Keel. "If we are not able to shut down this experiment, we need protection in the event that we find ourselves in the place that he spoke of."

"The place of the dead? That may just have been a fabrication, Jean-Luc."

"Quite so. But I would rather not take the chances. We have the capability of replicating pressure vessels of titanium-lead. It may be necessary to use them."

Keel nodded. "See to it."

I ordered Hastings to use the main transporter room to replicate enough of the titanium-lead "pressure" vessels so that every crew member would be able to use one. Using the main transporters would give us a faster replication rate than the usual method of replicating one at a time.

"Such a thing has never existed before," said Hastings, "I will need some sort of blueprints."

Khalid wheeled around in his chair and handed Hastings a pad: "Your blueprints."

Hastings nodded, and was away in an instant.

Suddenly the ship shuddered, and our viewscreen was illuminated with the faint green light of a tractor beam.

I turned to T'Pau. The Vulcan Tactical Officer was looking grim indeed, even for a Vulcan. "We have locked a tractor beam onto the Starbase," she announced.

"Did we do that?" I asked.

"No. Shipwide controls have been re-routed to engineering. It appears that a certain program caused the automatic tractor lock-on. Tracing memory address . . . it is the currently executing simulation of Dr. Magnus's experiment."

"We need to shut that experiment down, somehow," said Keel.

The turbolift doors opened and Magnus ran onto the bridge. "It has started?" he cried, "again?"

"Doctor, how do we shut it down?" Keel demanded. Magnus appeared fazed, confused. He looked at the floor, shaking his head. "I don't remember. I don't . . . "

"Doctor, you must remember how you shut it down."

"I did not do anything with the main controls. I was hiding in the storage cabinet. I only had a pad with me. I was monitoring the fluctuation of the Rohaan coefficient. It changed. I could only make cursory changes from my pad. The main experiment was running as it was programmed to. You see, everything is automated--"

He stopped, mouth open, when he looked up at the viewscreen and saw what was happening. As we watched, the starbase shimmered, and then seemed to fade away. But it did not. It returned to it's previous state, humming and throbbing with a powerful warp drive. Only the space surrounding it was different. A howl went up from Magnus, as he threw his arms up into the air and fell face forward onto the ground. I felt strange sensations crawl unde rmy skin. I looked out at the dark space, and it was bright -- there were many many more starts than usual, they seemed to be bursting with light. And long trails of glittering light streaked across the otherwise black matte of Space. This place, whatever it was, seemed very much alive.

"Helm, location," said Keel.

"Navigation does not register any known planets or systems, sir. We are in uncharted Space."

"But we are in Space, at least," remarked Keel. "Scan for any M-class planets."

Keel made a move to return to his chair. But something was very wrong. It seemed, as I was looking at it, that time seemed to slow down. Everything happened in slow motion. Keel was taking a step towards his Captain's chair. Magnus had looked up from his crouching position on the floor, and now he screamed.

"They are here!" he yelled. "We are doomed!"

I saw shapes materializing behind Keel. I had my phasor handy, and set to kill. I aimed and fired. The phasor beam went right through the shape and discharged into the bridge wall. I fired again with the same effect. The odd images began to move, heading swiftly for the nearest crew member. I grabbed Keel's arm and swung him about. He had his phasor out and fired at the shape approaching him, with the same results as I had had. The shape, which was not fully solidified yet, was coming straight at Keel. It seemed to be some sort of animal or humanoid creature, with two legs, two or maybe three arms, and a very grotesquely shaped head. But more than that we could not make out. Something was preventing it from fully materializing. At least for now.

It latched onto Keel. He stood completely motionless while it hovered behind him, seeming to envelope him.

"Hastings," I called on my communicator. "Are those pressure vessels ready?"

"We havent had enough time to replicate more than a few sir! Most of my men have been taken already."

Hastings' voice was raspy, and there was phasor fire and screaming in the background. I slammed down into my chair and initialized the routine for the emergency transporter. Busy, with my head down, I did not notice one of the alien beings begin to approach me. Meanwhile Keel had stopped being motionless and began to be dangerously violent. He was slamming his head against the helm controls, blood was already flowing from his forehead, and he seemed to getting more violent.

My mind was confused. It was a jumble, everything was a moving too quickly, too fast, for anything to register. But just then, as I completed entering the command sequence for the emergency transporter, my mind quieted and I heard a low voice. It was Sainor. Jean-Luc, he said. Instantly I looked up. The alien being was almost upon me, claws outstretched, moving in for the kill, leaping, almost floating on the air. I slammed my fist down on the controls, and the image before me vanished.

Instead I found myself on one of three transporter pads, in a blood-spattered transporter room. Men were lying on the floor, writhing in agony, or dead. The walls was awash in red blood. Hastings was at the transporter controls, he was choking, with one of the aliens latched behind him. I remember tears streaming down my face -- the Stargazer was becoming what the Starbase had become. Beside me stood two of the pressure suits, looking oddly like some strange ancient armor, recreated in titanium-lead alloy for a bodysuit in which one could walk. Quickly I got into the one closest to me, just as another alien being materialized in the room.

It was warm inside the suit. I had some room, although moving was difficult. I could only accomplish slow and awkward movements. But it worked for what it was designed. As I looked out the little visor, I could distinctly see the alien being standing in the center of the room, making no move, just standing there in that strange pattern. It did not see me. I sighed.

Slowly, very slowly, I began to move towards the door. I glanced towards Hastings -- he was out of air, and would have crumpled to the ground had not the alien been holding him up. I closed my eyes and walked out into the hallway. They were everywhere, and new ones materializing every instant. Some of them had weapons -- crude looking primitive weapons. They looked like spears. I remembered the station commander aboard Starbase 117. How he had been stabbed so many times. The ones holding the weapons seemed different from the others -- they were shorter, uglier, moved more clumsily, and were louder in their scraping and grunting.

I had not gotten far from the transporter room when I encountered an unusually large beast blocking my way. This one was unlike the others, large, towering, and apparenlty superior in some way to the others. For it seemed to be grunting orders at the others. I stood quietly waiting for it to move. It did not. Instead it looked at me curiously. It screeched. It could see me!

I was about to turn around, but then I felt a painful jab in my head, and could hear it's thoughts. Vicious, malevolent, hateful thoughts.

Why have you come here? it demanded.

We do not want to intrude upon your Space I replied.

Why are you here?

By accident. We want to go back to where we came from.

You will not go back! You will die here!

Who are you? Where is this place?

This place is our place. We rule here. Your death gives us life. We have no desire to make an alliance with you. We have no desire to return you to your place. You have come here and disturbed us.

How is it that you can sense me while the others cannot?

Laughter. High and wild. Like a shreik. They are low. I have powers which they cannot comprehend. And neither can you. You cannot see us in our true form because of a phase variance which does not allow us to fully be here.

Yes, our shields.

We will deactivate them soon. And then this vessel will become ours.

Do you live in structured societies? Are you a civilization?

No. We only kill. And you are here not to explore, only to die.

I had thought that it would kill me. But it only turned around and walked away. I made some quick mental calculations. It was heading towards Engineering -- to shut down the shield generators.

I made my way back to the bridge painfully slowly. When I arrived there Sainor was bent over the engineering workstation, fingers flying over the console, while Khalid and the others lay in a tangled heap in front of the captain's chair. I could not tell if they were alive or not. Sainor did not seem to have any of the aliens attached to him.

"Sainor!" I cried. He looked up, but only briefly.

"We have only a few minutes before they disable the shield generators, Commander," he said. "Unless we return to normal space before they do, we will be stuck here forever."

I hobbled towards him. "How can we do that?" I asked him.

"The experiment. I am sending it matrix sets with null data. With nothing to vary, it should return to control defaults, which is what normally occurs when a regular wap drive is operating. Dr. Magnus mentioned that the Starbase returned to normal space after the Rohaan coefficient returned to a default value. I am hoping the same will be true of this starship."

I moved to the tactical station. "Disengaging tractor beam," I cut off the tractor beam, and armed the photon torpedoes. Sainor was still inputting the new data sets. Shapes began to materialize on the bridge.

"They are coming!" I called over to Sainor. He nodded and continued working silently.

They began to approach us. An alarm went off. The main computer was still online:

**Warning!! Sheild Generator overload!! Warning!!**

It was like shifting out of phase. The slow moving creatures fully materialized on the bridge, complete with their green skin and the bloodied spears that they held in their claws. They were long-limbed creatures, with claws and a thick leathery outer skin. One eyes in the center of their forehead, and long teeth that resembled fangs. Strange sounds emanated from them, sometimes shreiks, sometimes low muffled coughs.

One of them had reached Sainor. It was hovering over him, preparing to attach itself to him. But even as it did so, he turned, and made a gesture with his hand. A posture he stood in. A low chant that he hummed -- it echoed in my mind. The creature shrieked and was thrown back by an invisible force. It flew across the bridge and slammed against the wall on the other side, and then crumpled into a heap on the floor. Sainor returned to entering the data sets. In the next second, he had completed entering them.

"Now!" he said, re-initiating the experiment routines.

"Torpedoes away!" I fired a full spread of photon torpedoes. We watched as the bright red flares flew towards the Starbase on the viewscreen. Only meters away from us the creatures were closing in. We stood silently as the torpedoes reached their target and detonated. The Starbase began to explode brilliantly. As it did, we saw it shimmer and fade, and suddenly the creatures had disappeared. The space looked dimmer, with fewer stars and less brightly shining, and no brilliant streaks across space.

I tumbled out of my suit and ran towards the helm control. "We are in Federation Space," I said with a sigh.

* * *

We did have casualties. Thirty-five in all. And many more were wounded. But Khalid, Keel, and Hastings were alive. We were able to get them the medical attention they required. Sainor and I piloted the Stargazer to a medical facility where the crew was taken care of.

Later, after we had filed our reports, and Starfleet had conducted it's investigation of the whole affair, I sat in the Mess Hall looking out at the stars flying past as we travelled at high warp back to Mars for shore leave.

"May I, join you?" It was Sainor. I looked up and nodded.

"That was a close one, Do-reth," I said.

"Aye Commander, it was."

"Tell me, how were you able to stay so long without falling foul of one of those beings?"

"I was fortunate in that I could anticipate their movements."

"Mr. Sainor, you never cease to amaze me."

He bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement.

"Did you know what those beings were, and why they wanted to kill us?" I asked.

"Perhaps, Jean-Luc, it is as Magnus said. There are realms, where we are not meant to tread. The Universe is here. And it is vast. Perhaps we should just content ourselves with the exploration at hand."

The End

"The Missing Starbase"
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© Jasjit Singh, December 1998