The Best And The Brightest Part 3

"That's impossible!" Starsa blurted out, and was shushed by the others.

"Starfleet Command reports that their flagship, the EnterpriseD, has been recalled to Earth to investigate this anomaly." The blue c.o.c.kade bobbed impressively. "Now we take you to the tunnels near the Presidio, home of Starfleet Academy, to view the remains."

"Remains!" Starsa exclaimed again.

"Will you please shut up?" Bobbie Ray asked with exaggerated politeness, shouldering some of the remaining cadets aside to get a better view.

t.i.tus sat down at his desk, staring out the window at the Golden Gate Bridge. He was just as pleased to have their minds so quickly diverted from the antara match. He listened with only half an ear as the announcer described how the workers had discovered the severed head while installing additional seismic regulators in subterranean caverns to control earth movements that were typical along the San Andreas fault.

"Subterranean caverns," t.i.tus repeated under his breath, realizing what that implied. Impatiently, he waited for the broadcast to end and the last of the cadets to depart to spread the bizarre news.

Finally only Bobbie Ray and Jayme were left, and t.i.tus knew Jayme would probably linger in their room all evening unless he asked her to leave. He had noticed she didn't like spending much time in her half-empty room, ever since Elma had resigned from the Academy. Jayme had more than once voiced her hope that a new cadet would fill the s.p.a.ce after the half-year break, but her room was still empty.

"I have an idea," t.i.tus told them both. "That is, if you want to have some real fun instead of holofakery."

Bobbie Ray curled one lip at the intended slight. "What's your bright idea this time?"

"You've never had a real thrill until you've descended a hundred meter fissure into an underground cavern."

"You want to go down to the caves?" Bobbie Ray asked in disbelief. "Are you crazy? You know how many security teams they must have posted?"

"We can't disturb the excavation site," Jayme agreed. "It could interfere with the Enterprise's investigation."

t.i.tus raised his eyes to the heavens. "I'm not stupid. We can explore the caverns without going near the Presidio." He directly challenged Bobbie Ray. "Unless, that is, you're too scared."

Bobbie Ray hesitated, then shrugged, willing to go along with anything, as usual. Jayme briefly considered it before shaking her head. "You don't know these caverns. They're dangerous; that's why they were sealed off ages ago."

"We're not worried," t.i.tus a.s.sured her. "It's better to have three people on an underground exploratory team, but we'll go duo without you if we have to."

"Even if I did agree to go, you'd never find a way to get inside."

"Just leave that to me," t.i.tus told them, feeling much better now. "I'll get us below ground. Or I'm not an Antaranan."

t.i.tus had grown up in the human colony of Antaranan, more in the caves than on the surface, so he figured there was n.o.body better to find their way through these puny San Franciscan caverns than himself. His mother was a biospeleologist, and had often taken him into the unexplored caverns and pa.s.sageways that riddled the crust of Antaranan, far beyond the familiar chambers used by the colony to grow the essential fungal-meats and fragile vegetable matter away from the harmful solar rays.

It wasn't difficult to access the maintenance records of the seismic regulators under San Francisco, as well as the original surveys of the caverns performed hundreds of years ago. Most of the main access ports were in the heart of the city-the financial district, in Union Square, even the ancient yards of the Southern Pacific Railroad.

When he showed Jayme the map, she shook her head at all of the access ports he suggested. As she liked to tell the other cadets, she knew the city inside out.

"This is where we should go down," she insisted, pointing to a small auxiliary porthole near the Cable Car Barn Museum.

Bobbie Ray squinted at the print over that area. "Chinatown?"

"I was looking for a more out-of-the-way place," t.i.tus protested. "That's one of the most crowded areas in the city."

"Exactly!" Jayme exclaimed. "Everyone's too busy and there's too much going on for anyone to pay much attention to a few people going down the access port."

"Sounds reasonable," Bobbie Ray agreed. "Maybe we should get some orange coveralls. After all the media attention with the arrival of the EnterpriseD, no one will think it's unusual for workers to access old tunnels."

"Fine," t.i.tus said, resuming control of the expedition. "Then you'll be ready to go on the next free day?"

"Sure; should we tell Starsa?" Jayme asked.

"The last thing we need is her medical alert going off," t.i.tus protested. "This isn't some joyride we're going on. It's serious. Both of you should make sure you really want to do this."

Jayme nodded. "If you go, then I should go, too. I checked, and it is safer with three people."

Bobbie Ray yawned, reclining back on the cushions of his bed. "I think you're blowing this whole thing out of proportion. We saw those caves. Looks like an afternoon stroll to me."

"Just you wait and see." t.i.tus tried to sound ominous, but Bobbie Ray ruined it by laughing.

Irritated, t.i.tus left as the laughter continued to ring out behind him. He decided to take the transporter to the workout arena to blow off some steam. He couldn't wait to get that big Rex down on his turf. Then they would see how tough he was.

By the time their next free day came along, the EnterpriseD had finished its preliminary investigation on Earth. The a.n.a.lysis of the artifacts found at the dig site suggested they originated from the planet Devidia II in the Marrab sector.

It was barely dawn when t.i.tus woke to the news that the EnterpriseD was breaking orbit and was en route to Devidia II to investigate. He quickly called the others to get them moving. They needed to get past the upper tunnels and into new territory before the caverns were filled with secondary Starfleet investigators.

Bobbie Ray was like a limp rag, never eager to get up early, and being provocative undoubtedly because he knew how impatient t.i.tus was to get down to the caves. "Yeah, yeah, just a few more minutes," the Rex repeated, rolling over lazily.

t.i.tus prodded him again, fresh from his own shower and ready to go. When Jayme poked her head around the door, also up and eager, t.i.tus finally warned, "I'll tell everyone you wimped out and we had to go without you."

That did the trick, and within minutes the three cadets had transported into Chinatown. Jayme had taken the entire Quad on a tour of the city soon after the academic year began, so t.i.tus had already gotten a glimpse of the riot of color and noise and smells offered by the historic district. The streets were narrow canyons-very different from other Earth cities he'd seen so far, with their open green parks and towering spires. They had to watch their step along the sidewalks to avoid the squatting Asians who were tending their ion-grills, roasting a variety of real and exotic animal products right on the street.

Bobbie Ray kept stopping to toss credits at the vendors, picking up skewers of unidentifiable meat, while Jayme kept running into the makeshift booths to rifle through colored scarves and costumes. t.i.tus was too busy trying to get his bearings with the map on his padd, but somehow in the past few hundred years, the street locations and names had inexplicably shifted.

"We'll never find it!" he finally exclaimed, standing in the center of a five-way intersection that shouldn't have existed.

Bobbie Ray stuck a large fried insect in his mouth and briskly began crunching. The guy had a bottomless pit where his stomach should be.

"Close your mouth!" Jayme snapped, obviously disgusted by the sight of legs and feelers being randomly mashed around in the Rex's mouth.

"Want one?" Bobbie Ray asked, offering her a plasteen container that was piled with the desiccated bodies of Terran gra.s.shoppers.

"You know," Jayme told him with a wicked glint in her eye, "you shouldn't wear that color. Orange on orange makes you look like a big Zarcadian squash."

"Will both of you pay attention?" t.i.tus demanded. "We're going to have to pick another access port. We'll never find the one in here."

"Oh, give me that!" Jayme s.n.a.t.c.hed the padd from his hand, muttering under her breath about "tourists."

With a few flicks of the screen, she overlaid a current map and zoomed in on their targeted access port.

"Here it is," she said. "Right behind the Ho Ching Acupuncture and Telekinetic Healing Clinic."

"Oh, what a relief," t.i.tus said sarcastically, taking back his padd.

"What would you do without us?" Bobbie Ray commented, grinning around the spindly legs of the gra.s.shoppers.

Jayme was right-no one paid any attention to three orange-clad workers opening the access port in the alleyway. Kids were running past, people were hanging clothes out overhead, and antigrav carts trundled by on both sides laden with warehouse goods or fresh produce.

Closing the access portal overhead, they stood in a rounded dirt-floored chamber similar to the one shown on the media broadcasts where Data's head was found. t.i.tus felt a sinking feeling, wondering if all the caverns had been reconditioned by the workforces over the years.

"This way," he ordered, keeping his worries to himself. At the rear of the chamber was a long ladder, leading down. Here the walls were rougher and the black pit was too deep to be illuminated by their handlights. t.i.tus began to feel a little better. "Down we go!"

"Wait," Jayme said, unslinging her pack. "We have to put these on."

She held out the white jet-boots issued by Starfleet.

t.i.tus took one look and groaned. "We don't need those!"

"I'm not going down without safety gear," Jayme insisted. "And I'm not going to let you two go, either. This is supposed to be fun, not life-threatening." She glanced down into the shaft. "And those rungs look slimy."

Bobbie Ray checked the two pairs she set out for them. "You brought my size!"

Jayme slipped her white boots on and tightened the straps. With a little puff of dust, she activated the jets and lifted a few inches off the ground. "Good for thirty hours use."

Bobbie Ray buckled his boots on and was soon lifting himself up to the ceiling. "Maybe we should skip the ladder and go down this way."

"Maybe you want to give up now and go back to the Quad!" t.i.tus retorted. "What's the use of exploring if you might as well be in a holodeck?"

Both of them hovered silently, staring down at him. After a few moments, t.i.tus flung up his hands. "Have it your way, then! But we only use the boots in an emergency or I'm quitting right now."

Jayme sank back down to the ground. "That's why I brought them. For emergencies."

t.i.tus waited until Bobbie Ray also slowly floated down before jerking on his jet-boots and tightening them in place. "I think if you can't manage to hang on to a ladder, then you get what you deserve."

Bobbie Ray laughed. "Then you go first, fearless leader."

t.i.tus had the satisfaction of hearing the Rex's laughter abruptly end as they started down the ladder. For most humanoids, any sort of vertical drop offered a test of nerves. Especially when you couldn't see the bottom.

The light at the opening at the top dwindled as they descended. He skipped several side tunnels that went in the direction of the Presidio and Starfleet Academy, choosing to go as deep as he could. The fracture widened at the bottom, becoming more rugged and raw. They climbed through a steeply inclined crack, into an underground canyon that stretched as far across as the Academy a.s.sembly Hall. A stream had eroded the bottom into a gorge, and they had to edge along the wall, brushing their hands against the slippery, calcified coating on the rocks. t.i.tus could imagine the tremendous force of earthquakes breaking open the crust around the San Andreas Fault, leaving behind this network of caverns and crushed rock.

They pa.s.sed cave flowers slowly extruding from holes in the rock, growing from the base and curling back like squeezed toothpaste. t.i.tus checked one of the largest, nearly twenty-five centimeters across, and found that the delicate formation was pure gypsum. There were also shields or palettes forming from water seepage through cracks. The ridges of calcite were deposited on both sides, growing radially into parallel plates or disks, separated only by a thin opening through which drops of water continued to fall. Jayme stopped behind two large circular shields, her light outlining her body through the translucent calcite.

t.i.tus was more than pleased with their awe and wonder at the underground world. But he wasn't satisfied yet. Bobbie Ray refused to acknowledge the effort it took to climb down so far, and he even scaled the wall bare-handed to get the tip of a crystal-clear stalact.i.te for Jayme. Her glance at t.i.tus clearly said who she thought was winning this little contest of skills.

t.i.tus took them up a high talus mound and into the next cavern, where flowstone coated the cave fill, narrowing the volume of the void. This cavern was filled with fallen ceiling blocks and most of the stalagmites had been broken off near the base by earth tremors. Additional seepage gave them an unusually fat, short appearance.

They retreated back to the shaft. Though the ladder left off, the fractured hole continued down. t.i.tus uncoiled the rope he had brought and hooked it onto his belt. The other two followed him without a word of complaint.

A couple of dozen meters down the shaft narrowed, too small for them to go any further, but another fracture led east, fairly horizontal, following the path of the caverns far above them. Water coated the walls and floor, and here Bobbie Ray had even more of an advantage with his surefooted agility. t.i.tus and Jayme kept slipping, and once t.i.tus would have fallen badly except for Bobbie Ray's obliging hand.

After clambering carefully some distance through the tunnel, t.i.tus noticed a fissure overhead only because he was looking for it. With the help of Bobbie Ray's height and reach, they muscled their way up the fissure into another large cavern, in line with the other two they had already explored.

"It was cut off from the last cavern by the talus mound," t.i.tus explained nonchalantly as first Jayme, then Bobbie Ray, emerged through the jog in the fissure that led into this small cavern. They were slightly elevated above the floor.

t.i.tus was pleased that he had guessed correctly. Jumping down, he felt the loose rock shift and slip under his feet. Jayme actually went down on her hands and knees, unable to keep her balance, while Bobbie Ray hung on to the stone lip they had just jumped over, staring up open mouthed at the dramatic low-hanging ceiling that dripped continually. The fat drops sparkled like rainbow stars under their handlights.

t.i.tus knelt and picked up some of the rocky debris on the floor. "Hey, these are cave pearls."

"Real pearls?" Jayme asked, picking up a handful of the shiny white spheres. "They're huge!"

"It's calcified gravel and bits of stuff," t.i.tus clarified. "You don't find them very often, usually only in unexplored caves. I wonder if we're the first ones to find this place."

"That was a tricky entrance," Bobbie Ray agreed. "I would have never seen it."

t.i.tus finally had his moment of satisfaction. He felt as if he had been trying to catch up to his roommate since they both arrived at the Academy. Except that Bobbie Ray had all the advantages of a childhood on Earth, supported by wealthy parents, while t.i.tus felt like some kind of country b.u.mpkin, unable to tell a sonic haircutter from a steak knife.

"Look up here!" Jayme called, halfway up the gentle slope of the talus incline. "I think the ceiling fell in back here."

"It looks like the roof sank until it ran into the ground," Bobbie Ray agreed, swatting at the elusive, fat drops that continually bombed them from above.

They climbed the shifting slope to the point where the ground and ceiling met. The rounded debris constantly moved under their hands and knees. t.i.tus examined some of the bits, and was surprised to see elongated pieces as well as the more traditional "pearls."

"Why aren't there any stalact.i.tes in this cavern?" Jayme asked, standing in the last possible s.p.a.ce at the upper end. A dense curtain of drops speckled the air in front of them.

"This cavern is lower than the others. If there's too much water, there's no time for the sediment to form between each drop," t.i.tus explained. "That's what makes the cave pearls-the sediment forms as they're polished and agitated by the water."

"I think they're beautiful," Jayme said, gathering a few in her hand.

t.i.tus squatted down next to her in a relatively dripfree zone. He aimed his tricorder at one of the elongated pearls. "This is bone! Human bone!"

Bobbie Ray immediately dropped his pearls, absently rubbing his hands on his coveralls as he looked at the tricorder readings. "You're right. They're ancient!"

Jayme was also hanging over his arm, trying to see. "Give me a second," he ordered, keying in the commands. "Somewhere between twelve and fifteen thousand years old!"

"That's when humans first moved onto this continent," Jayme breathed, gently cupping her pearls in her palms. "They must have used these caves as shelter or storage. Maybe even burial. This is amazing!"

t.i.tus barely had a second to absorb their find before Bobbie Ray muttered, "Uh-oh! I think we've got trouble."

The Rex was staring back at the hole they had climbed up. Water was welling up and pouring over the low lip that held back the piles of cave pearls. It made a rushing sound as it disappeared into the cave pearls piled on the floor.

"Oh no!" t.i.tus exclaimed, running back down to their only entrance to the cavern. Now it was full of water. Even worse, water continued to pour over the stone lip and began to rise among the cave pearls. Soon, it had flooded the shallow basin and was rising higher, filling the cave.

"What's happening?" Bobbie Ray cried in true panic. "How are we going to get out?"

Jayme dipped her fingers in the water, sticking them in her mouth. "Salty. That's what I was afraid of. The tide must be rising."

They both turned to look at t.i.tus, mutely demanding that he do something. He knew he probably looked as panicked as Bobbie Ray. "The tide?"

"Yes, the tide's coming in," Jayme repeated, frantically scrambling through the cave pearls to the wall, searching up it with her handlight. "I don't see a high-water mark anywhere. Could it ... is it possible ..."

"You mean this whole cave gets filled with water?" Bobbie Ray asked in a high voice.

t.i.tus could only shake his head. "I don't know! We don't have oceans on Antaranan!"

"What!" Jayme shrieked. "You brought us in here and you didn't know what you were doing?"

Bobbie Ray leaned over the hole, digging at the rising water with his hands. When he came up soaked, his fur sticking out in clumps and clinging to his surprisingly skinny neck, t.i.tus had no urge to laugh. The fear in the Rex's eyes was too real.