Star Trek: Starfleet Academy - The Next Generation - 05 - Atlantis Station by V. E. Mitchell

Author:V. E. Mitchell [Mitchell, V. E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Juvenile Fiction, Fantasy & Magic
ISBN: 9780671884499
Google: lWX5_cBVP_0C
Amazon: 0671884492
Barnesnoble: 0671884492
Publisher: Aladdin
Published: 1994-02-15T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

7

He was perched on a vertical sheet of cracked and broken rock. How the robot had gotten up the cliff, Geordi couldn’t guess. He wasn’t sure how to get it down, either. Even someone with lots of experience using remote equipment would have trouble getting out of this position.

Straight below him, rounded boulders and jagged blocks of dark rock littered the ocean floor. He turned his head, and a cone of light followed the movement. Anything situated more than a few feet away was blurred by the murky water.

The ground shivered beneath him. Pressure pulses, like waves passing, pushed against his right side. Curious, he looked in that direction.

At the edge of his vision, dense black “smoke” billowed from an irregular column of rock. Geordi struggled to see what was happening. Suddenly, as if he were zooming through the water, the boiling clouds jumped in front of him.

He tried to make out the details, but the light was too poor. Whether the robot’s lenses were focused close or far, the light from his spotlight determined what Geordi saw. To get a better look, he had to get closer.

How was he going to get down the cliff? Geordi wondered. There were almost as many kinds of remotely operated robots as there were jobs for them to do. Nobody had said anything about what type of robot he was using. That meant either that he should already know how to run the robot or that the directions were readily available. Geordi decided the information must be somewhere in the computer. He just had to figure out where. If, like his classmates, he had used the helmets before, he would know the answer.

What was the correct command? “Computer” reached the main system on a starship or in certain areas of the Academy. It didn’t work everywhere, though. Geordi chuckled, remembering a classmate who had asked for the answers during a test.

The computer in this station seemed much like a starship’s. If he had designed the system, Geordi thought, he would have used a different command to access the robot’s controls.

“Robot,” he whispered into his microphone. Nothing happened, and his robot remained motionless. “Command” and “control” didn’t work, either. He was starting to feel desperate. He’d never be able to face his classmates if he had to ask for the command.

“Remote?”

A menu in soft green letters appeared on the lower corner of his view. His left pinkie moved the cursor. He flipped through his choices. Everything he needed was there. Relieved, Geordi asked how to make the robot move.

It took several minutes to sort through the directions. His robot could do many different things. It was, he discovered, a high-powered research and exploration unit designed to work in dangerous environments. Rugged and durable, it could withstand years of hard work under harsh conditions. If Geordi wanted, he could drop the robot off the cliff without hurting it.

He could not, however, float himself free. For all its abilities, this robot was a walker, a ground-based unit.

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