Imbalance by V. E. Mitchell

Author:V. E. Mitchell [Mitchell, V. E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction; American, Space Opera, Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Human-Alien Encounters, General, Media Tie-In
ISBN: 9780671775711
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1992-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

LONG SHADOWS lay across the campsite when Keiko finally crawled out of her tent. She looked around and groaned, thinking of the entire afternoon lost. Tanaka was sitting beside his tent, fussing with his tricorder and with something on a cloth in front of him. “Why didn’t you wake me up sooner?” she asked. “You know we have work to do.”

Tanaka looked up, noticing that she was outside her tent. He glanced around, taking in the shadows and the low angle of the sun as if he hadn’t been aware of them either. “I didn’t realize what time it was.” He pointed to the ground in front of him.

Keiko looked at the scattering of miniature electronic components, miscellaneous bits and pieces of metal, and assorted tools. At first she couldn’t fit things together into anything she recognized. Her second thought was that, just like Kiyoshi, Tanaka had managed to cram more tools and gadgets into his pack than was humanly possible. Finally, with a sense of dawning horror, she recognized the scattered components. “Our communicators? What have you done to them?” She hadn’t thought anyone could disassemble them without access to a complete diagnostics and repair unit.

If her attack insulted him, Tanaka gave no sign of it. Instead, he examined his handiwork with a rueful grimace. “The damage was done long before I touched them.” He picked up one of the components and handed it to her on the flat of his palm. “This is the frequency modulator. Without it, we don’t send anything anywhere.”

Gingerly, she took the tiny object and examined it. When it came to electronics, her entire knowledge could have been inscribed in readable letters on the part she held, with room left over for the complete works of Shakespeare. However, the modulator looked strange, almost as if it had been heated with a plasma torch. “It looks melted,” she said with a frown.

“That’s a good description, for a nonspecialist.” He took the modulator back, examined it critically, and replaced it on the cloth. “Someone wanted to cut us off from the Enterprise pretty badly. I’d guess they zapped us with a high-gain subspace transmitter at very close range. Whatever it was, it put out far more power than these circuits were designed to absorb. It also seems to have overloaded the data links in the tricorders, although everything else works.”

She knelt beside the cloth and looked closer at the other parts. Now that she knew what to look for, she could see that most of the components showed signs of damage. “Could it have been an accident? I mean, could we have driven past something that did it?”

“Oh, we drove past something, all right.” He gave the scattered bits of circuitry a final scowl and then began putting them into a specimen bag. “But it wasn’t any accident. Otherwise, the tricorders and my diagnostic equipment wouldn’t work either. Whatever it was, they picked the precise frequency that would burn out the communications relays without damaging anything else.

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