Chapter Five
Stevenson opened his
eyes.
"Wow...You are
the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life."
Transporter Chief
Robinson smiled: "You've been worrying us like hell, lieutenant."
He had been lying on
the transporter pad: "Well...I'm glad you still care." He grinned.
The doors of the
transporter room opened and Captain Kline entered, followed by lieutenant
commander Janna Sutter. "Stevenson!" He exclaimed when he saw the
engineer.
"Good to see
you again, Captain." Stevenson smiled.
"Stevenson? Where the hell have you been?!" Kline asked.
"People all over the ship have been having visions of you. I've even had a
vision of you!"
"I know."
Stevenson smiled. "It's going to take some time to explain..."
* * *
"That's totally
crazy..." Gregory Eskina said, sitting in the
chair next to Stevenson's in the observation lounge. "But I agree, it's the only logical explanation."
Kline nodded:
"So...How will we get the ship back in one piece? You said that some of it
is still trapped in the other...the other 'space-slice'."
"That's
right..." Stevenson said. "But unfortunately, unlike me, you can't
beam the whole ship back. It would take an enormous amount of power; power that
we don't have."
"So we need to
get back to our original thoughts." Sutter said.
Stevenson blinked:
"Sorry...I haven't stayed up to date this past day."
Sutter smiled:
"We've been thinking about trying to make that strange probe work. Try to
make it work in reverse, actually..."
Stevenson nodded:
"Well...It's probably the only thing we can do, now."
"Okay."
Kline said. "I want everyone to get working on it...Hopefully, Stevenson, you'll be able to find something that we've
missed."
"I hope so too,
sir." Stevenson said.
"Okay...Dismissed."
Kline said.
* * *
"So..."
Stevenson said. "What do we know about this probe?"
"Not
much..." Jennifer Mantion activated the monitor where a 3-D representation
of the probe was displayed. "We know its size, its weight, its shape...And
that's all..."
He frowned:
"It's a pretty big probe..."
"Yes." She
nodded.
"Our sensors
can't penetrate the hull?"
"No."
He sighed:
"Then we're dead..."
The doors of
engineering opened and Sylvia Burnel came towards them: "Any luck?"
She asked, scratching her left arm with the metallic fingers of her right one.
"No." Mantion said.
Burnel frowned:
"Really? Damn..."
"You look
tired, Sylvia." Stevenson said.
"You
too..." She smiled wanly. "It's because of all those visions..."
Stevenson frowned:
"Visions?"
"Yeah...I just
saw one a few minutes ago..." She said.
"But that's
impossible..." Stevenson said. "I'm back! You shouldn't be getting
any more visions from other space-slices."
Burnel shrugged:
"Everyone is still having visions on board, they
didn't stop when you came back."
"That's
impossible..." He said. "Unless..."
He stayed silent for
a moment.
"Unless
what?" Burnel asked.
"Unless...There's
a third one..."
"A
third what?"
"There were
others." He wasn't looking at anyone, he was thinking out loud. "They
were in the third one...That's why I didn't see them..."
"John!"
Sylvia said, irritated. "What's going on?"
"The ship,"
He said, finally looking straight at her. "It's not been separated into
two slices...It's been separated into three of them!!!"
"What?!"
"Our first
assumption was that the beam from the probe broke the ship into two different
space-slices...Well actually, there were three space-slices."
"And how do you
know that?"
"The
visions..." He said. "When some people said they saw me in
engineering, or in sickbay, or on the bridge...That was because I was also in
the same room but in the other space-slice, right?"
She nodded.
"When I was in
engineering in the other space-slice, people in engineering in this
slice said they saw me. After I came back, everyone is still having visions,
why? Because that probe isn't actually a probe...It's a ship!"
The two women stared
at him.
"Think!"
He said. "The aliens from that ship wanted to come over here, but there
transporter beam shattered space-time into three different space-slices...I was
sent to one of them, you stayed in this one, and they went to the third
one! That's why you're still having visions! You're having visions of the
aliens that are in the third slice."
"I believe I
understand." Mantion said.
"Yeah,"
Burnel nodded. "And you found out that they were in a third slice because
they weren't in your slice, and they weren't in ours, right?"
"Exactly!"
He smiled.
"And..."
Burnel said. "So, now what?"
Stevenson said:
"I said before that we didn't have enough power to beam the whole ship
back to this slice. Well we won't have to anymore, hopefully, if we manage to
beam out the aliens from the third slice, they will have a resolution to this
problem!"
"And how will
we locate them?" Mantion asked.
"With our
visions," Stevenson smiled.