Titan 5 - Over a Torrent Sea Read Online Free
Author: Star Trek
main briefing room, the best view the sensors could get so far of the fourth planet of UFC 86783. The rest of the command crew didn’t yet know what was so exceptional about this planet, so she didn’t want to go overboard. Of course, she was here to convince them that this world, out of all the current candidates, should be the vessel’s next destination. But it wasn’t in her nature to broadcast her emotions too openly, even among people she knew as well as this crew. As a fragile, low-gravity Elaysian living in a high-grav environment, she didn’t like to feel vulnerable.
Deanna Troi leaned forward, no doubt sensing the excitement Melora held in check. She couldn’t lean forward too easily, since she was huge now, looking as though she could give birth any day. She had long since eschewed astandard uniform for loose maternity dresses in the blue and green shades of her department. It suited her, Melora thought. She found it odd the way humans talked about pregnant women having a “glow” about them, but Troi did seem to have a certain radiance these days. “A water world?” the counselor asked.
“More than that,” Melora responded. “A classic Léger-type ocean planet, class O, subclass L1. About three times the mass of Earth, nearly half of it water ice. Slightly lower than Terrestrial gravity due to the low density.”
“So what makes it interesting?” asked Ranul Keru. “We’ve charted plenty of those.” The large, bearded Trill had been a stellar cartographer once, but his priorities had shifted since his move to security. At the moment, he was preoccupied with this morning’s update from Starfleet about the developing situation with the newly emerged Typhon Pact. As if the crew hadn’t felt guilty enough about flying off into the unknown while the rest of the Federation dealt with the aftermath of the Borg invasion, the existence of this new rival power had been revealed mere days after Titan had crossed into uncharted space. Eight weeks later, it was still unclear what the rise of the Pact meant for the Federation’s future, and there was nothing the crew could do but watch and wait.
“Yes, but they’re usually not inhabited.”
Keru blinked. “And this one is?”
“Undoubtedly. We thought the oh-two levels might be from water vapor dissociation, but there’s a strong ozone line in its spectrum too, meaning the oxygen has to be biogenic. Plus there’s a substantial chlorophyll signature. It’s hard to get more detailed readings at this distance, due tothe sensor interference.” As she’d mentioned at the start of the briefing, UFC 86783 had an unusually dense disk of asteroidal debris for a system of its age, one rich in exotic minerals and radioisotopes that interfered with scans. “But we’ve managed to cut through the interference enough to get dynoscanner readings suggesting abundant higher-order life.”
“On an L1? You’re certain?” Melora answered Keru’s question with a nod, smiling. He definitely wasn’t dwelling on the Typhon Pact anymore.
“Maybe you could remind the rest of us,” Captain Riker said, “why that’s so unusual.”
“Because an ocean is basically a desert,” Melora said. “Life needs water to survive, but it also needs mineral nutrients. On a class-M planet, life in the oceans is richest where there’s mineral runoff from the land masses, and fairly sparse elsewhere. A Léger-type class O has no land, no minerals anywhere near the surface.” She worked the controls to display a cross section, the trim antigrav suit she wore making it easier to lift her arms against an artificial gravity dozens of times that of her native world. She’d mostly given up the holopresence system that Xin Ra-Havreii had designed to let her interact with the crew from her microgravity haven in the stellar cartography lab, since it had been making her too isolated from the crew. But this antigrav suit—the latest gift from Xin, who gave out brilliant inventions
Deanna Troi leaned forward, no doubt sensing the excitement Melora held in check. She couldn’t lean forward too easily, since she was huge now, looking as though she could give birth any day. She had long since eschewed astandard uniform for loose maternity dresses in the blue and green shades of her department. It suited her, Melora thought. She found it odd the way humans talked about pregnant women having a “glow” about them, but Troi did seem to have a certain radiance these days. “A water world?” the counselor asked.
“More than that,” Melora responded. “A classic Léger-type ocean planet, class O, subclass L1. About three times the mass of Earth, nearly half of it water ice. Slightly lower than Terrestrial gravity due to the low density.”
“So what makes it interesting?” asked Ranul Keru. “We’ve charted plenty of those.” The large, bearded Trill had been a stellar cartographer once, but his priorities had shifted since his move to security. At the moment, he was preoccupied with this morning’s update from Starfleet about the developing situation with the newly emerged Typhon Pact. As if the crew hadn’t felt guilty enough about flying off into the unknown while the rest of the Federation dealt with the aftermath of the Borg invasion, the existence of this new rival power had been revealed mere days after Titan had crossed into uncharted space. Eight weeks later, it was still unclear what the rise of the Pact meant for the Federation’s future, and there was nothing the crew could do but watch and wait.
“Yes, but they’re usually not inhabited.”
Keru blinked. “And this one is?”
“Undoubtedly. We thought the oh-two levels might be from water vapor dissociation, but there’s a strong ozone line in its spectrum too, meaning the oxygen has to be biogenic. Plus there’s a substantial chlorophyll signature. It’s hard to get more detailed readings at this distance, due tothe sensor interference.” As she’d mentioned at the start of the briefing, UFC 86783 had an unusually dense disk of asteroidal debris for a system of its age, one rich in exotic minerals and radioisotopes that interfered with scans. “But we’ve managed to cut through the interference enough to get dynoscanner readings suggesting abundant higher-order life.”
“On an L1? You’re certain?” Melora answered Keru’s question with a nod, smiling. He definitely wasn’t dwelling on the Typhon Pact anymore.
“Maybe you could remind the rest of us,” Captain Riker said, “why that’s so unusual.”
“Because an ocean is basically a desert,” Melora said. “Life needs water to survive, but it also needs mineral nutrients. On a class-M planet, life in the oceans is richest where there’s mineral runoff from the land masses, and fairly sparse elsewhere. A Léger-type class O has no land, no minerals anywhere near the surface.” She worked the controls to display a cross section, the trim antigrav suit she wore making it easier to lift her arms against an artificial gravity dozens of times that of her native world. She’d mostly given up the holopresence system that Xin Ra-Havreii had designed to let her interact with the crew from her microgravity haven in the stellar cartography lab, since it had been making her too isolated from the crew. But this antigrav suit—the latest gift from Xin, who gave out brilliant inventions
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