Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Young Adult Books #9: Cardassian Imps by Mel Gilden

Author:Mel Gilden [Gilden, Mel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0-671-51116-5
Publisher: Minstrel Paperback
Published: 1997-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

“Thank you for your time,” Sisko said. “Please show us to the airlock.”

None of the Trulgovians moved or said anything.

“Out!” Odo shouted.

One of the Trulgovians walked over to them. “Come,” he said, and left the room. Once again struggling to keep the correct Trulgovian in sight, Sisko and Odo set off through the ship. Sisko was pleased and more than a little relieved when they came in sight of the hatch.

They stepped out of the Trulgovian ship and into the airlock, where Odo called a decontamination crew.

“We look like one of them,” Odo said as he slapped the Keithorpheum off his clothes. It fell around him in clouds that slowly settled down.

“Yes,” Sisko said as he slapped his clothes as well.

“Remind me to speak to Dax about her definition of harmless.”

The decon crew soon arrived and caused a wave of programmed nanites to wash over them. Each nanite was a microscopic machine that picked up a speck of the dust and carried it to waiting containers. Soon Sisko and Odo and the ground around them was clean.

“Why can’t we do that with the station’s systems?” Sisko asked.

“Nanites would solve our problem neatly,” Odo agreed.

He and Sisko walked back to the habitat ring. Lights were dim and the air was unusually heavy with the musks of metabolizing beings.

“Smells like a locker room,” Sisko said.

On the Promenade, the increasingly foul air caused most beings to move slowly, as if they were badly fatigued. A few large-eyed creatures skulked in the growing shadows-night hunters, Sisko was sure. Morose customers sat at the bar in Quark’s. Nobody was playing Dabo, so the Dabo girls were, without much enthusiasm, playing some card game among themselves.

“Good luck,” Odo said as he handed his tricorder to Sisko. He indicated his office with a nod of his head. “I want to make sure no one is taking unfair advantage of our power reduction.”

Sisko walked to the lift, which frustrated him because it rose to Ops so slowly. When he arrived, Dax and O’Brien were standing at the engineering console watching the readout intently. Kira was leaning with both hands on the situation table while she glared at it.

“How are we doing, people?” Sisko asked as he leaped off the lift before it had even risen to floor level. Seeing their faces, he knew he wouldn’t like their answers.

“Tuning the transporter for sensitivity to Keithorpheum was no problem,” Dax began.

O’Brien, excited, interrupted her. “And as far as we can tell, the transporter is actually picking the stuff up. We’ve beamed almost a ton of it into space.”

A ton sounded like a lot. Not even Trulgovians could toddle around with a ton of dust on their clothes.

“But?” Sisko asked. “I’m sure there’s a ‘but’.”

“But,” Dax went on, “more of it just seems to appear.”

“How is that possible?” Sisko said, allowing a little of his anger to show. “You said Keithorpheum was harmless, inert.”

“That’s what the book says, Benjamin. I’m sorry.”

Dax’s apology caused Sisko to cool down a little. He knew that Dax and O’Brien were doing their best.

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