“I was worried about that myself,” O’Herlihy said. “Thank God for that fire alarm. I might not have even noticed the smoke otherwise. As it was, I barely had time to secure a respirator and close the hatch.”
That wouldn’t have been enough if they hadn’t managed to put out the fire, Kirk knew. “So, you have no idea how it started?”
O’Herlihy shook his head. “I was engrossed in my work, completely oblivious, when the alarm went off. Next thing I knew, smoke was billowing into the flight deck.”
“Weird,” Zoe commented. “Who knew this ship was a fire trap?”
She floated nearby, sipping water through a tube. Kirk had insisted that the doctor examine her and Fontana first, since he had donned his respirator before them. Zoe was still coughing occasionally, and the doctor wanted to keep a closer eye on her, but apparently, there was no immediate cause for alarm. It seemed they had all managed to come through the crisis without any serious burns or injuries. Kirk figured they owed that to their prompt response to the fire and a hefty dose of luck.
“It’s not supposed to be,” he said. “Something here doesn’t smell right, and I don’t mean the smoke.”
“You can say that again,” Fontana said, rejoining them in the rec area. She had insisted on investigating the site of the fire the second the doctor had given her a clean bill of health. She carried a blackened steel cylinder that looked as if it had been baked inside and out. The cylinder was wrapped in a clear plastic bag to keep any charred residue out of the air. “Take a look at this.”
O’Herlihy squinted at her burden. “Is that one of the spare oxygen generators?”
The device, which was roughly the size of a wastebasket, was intended to supplement the ship’s life-support system in the event of an emergency or a temporary power failure. The solid-fuel canisters contained a chemical mixture that, once activated, could generate several hours’ worth of oxygen. They were stored at key locations throughout the ship.
“You bet,” she said. “I can’t be sure, but pending a more thorough investigation, it looks like this was the initial source of the fire.”
Kirk peered at the cylinder. Certainly, it was capable of generating enough oxygen to produce a fireball of that magnitude and keep it going indefinitely. But surely it wasn’t supposed to ignite like that.
“A malfunction?” He searched his memory, vaguely remembering a similar incident from the early days of space travel. “Didn’t something like that happen before? On a Russian space station?”
“Mir, 1997.” She gave Shaun a puzzled look. “Come on, Shaun. You know that. Every astronaut does. Don’t tell me you’re fuzzy on the details!”
Well, it was nearly three centuries ago, Kirk thought, and there’s been a lot of space history since then — at least, for some of us.
“The point is, there’s a precedent.”
Fontana shook her head. “That was more than twenty years ago and shoddy Soviet-era craftsmanship to boot. The ones we’re using today have been redesigned with safety in mind. You’d have to make a real effort to ignite one that way. It wouldn’t just happen by accident.”
“What are you saying?” Kirk asked, frowning. “That somebody tampered with the canister?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, and I think we all know who the obvious suspect is.”
She glared at Zoe, who suddenly realized that she was on the hot seat. She lowered her straw. “Whoa there, Detective Fontana! Are you implying that I’m responsible?”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m accusing you flat-out. Somebody sabotaged this ship, nearly killing us all, and you’re the only one who doesn’t belong here!”
“But I was nearly killed, too!” Zoe protested. “I helped you put out the fire!”
“So? You wouldn’t be the first terrorist to be willing to sacrifice themselves. Maybe you just chickened out at the last minute.”
“That’s crazy!” Zoe said. “I wouldn’t do something like that. I’m no terrorist!”
“That’s what they all say,” Fontana scoffed. She swung the bag containing the cylinder around, as if she was thinking of throwing it at Zoe. “Who else could have done it?”
Kirk put himself between the two women. “Hold on. Let’s not rush to judgment here.” He turned toward Fontana. “Alice, are you certain it was sabotage? Is there a chance that the generator ignited spontaneously?”
“Well, I’m no arson investigator,” she conceded reluctantly, “but those things are supposed to be foolproof. The odds that one would just go off like that must be a hundred to one. They’ve been carefully designed not to do that.”
She had a point, Kirk realized, but he knew from experience that even the most reliable technology could malfunction sometimes. Like the transporters back on the Enterprise, for example. Those had actually split him in two once. And on another occasion, they had transported him to a mirror universe. A primitive oxygen generator igniting by accident seemed fairly plausible by comparison.
“What do you think, Marcus?” he asked.
“I hate to say it,” the doctor answered, “but Alice may be right. Zoe’s motives and background are iffy. We don’t really know why she smuggled herself aboard.” He spoke more in sorrow than in anger. “This whole business is suspicious.”
“What?” Zoe sounded hurt and surprised. “Et tu, Doc?”
“I’m sorry, Zoe,” he replied. “But you are a stowaway. And oxygen generators don’t just ignite themselves.”
“I never trusted you,” Fontana snarled. “And it looks like I was right all along.”
Zoe grabbed Kirk’s shoulder and spun him around to face her. “Please, Skipper! Don’t listen to them. You’ve known me for months now. You know I wouldn’t do something like this. That’s not me!”
His gut told him she was telling the truth, but that wasn’t good enough, not when the safety of the ship was at stake. He couldn’t take the chance that she was more dangerous than she seemed. Another “malfunction” like that could kill them all.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “But you’re going back into the airlock, for the duration this time.”
“But I’m innocent! You know I am!”
“Maybe so,” he said grimly. “But that’s for a full forensic examination to determine, maybe back on Earth. In the meantime, I can’t have a suspected saboteur running loose on my ship.” He took her by the arm. “Fontana, please help me escort the prisoner to the brig.”
“With pleasure,” she said.
Seventeen
2270
“It’s dead, Mr. Spock. As the proverbial doornail.”
Montgomery Scott stepped away from the inert probe, which had been beamed directly to a force-shielded laboratory pod. In an emergency, the entire pod could be jettisoned into space to avoid harm to the rest of the ship. Antigrav lifts suspended the massive probe above the floor. A battery of specialized scanners, far more powerful and sophisticated than a standard tricorder, were aimed at the relic. Data from the scanners scrolled across a wall screen at the opposite end of the pod. Spock studied the data, which appeared to confirm Mr. Scott’s colorful diagnosis.
“I have to agree with Mr. Scott,” Qat Zaldana added. She faced the screen alongside the two men. “We’ve been studying the probe for hours now, and all indications are that it’s completely inoperative. Its internal components are nothing but slag. Its memory banks are fused.” She looked away from the screen to the blackened wreck itself. “Honestly, from the looks of things, it’s a miracle that the probe made it to this system at all. It’s been through a lot.”