Blue on Blue

Chapter Fifteen

Her footsteps were rapid and almost soundless.  It was the path Trip and Jonathan had followed, now oddly empty.  No captain strode beside her in companionable silence, with the eagerness of exploration lighting his eyes when he glanced her way.  There was no sense this time of Trip’s intrigued delight flowing beneath the run of her own thoughts.  There was only a low, steady apprehension riding somewhere deep inside her and the half-familiar sloping floor stretching before her. 

She recognized the glints of mica reflecting from the walls, but the scatterings of loose stones and dirt that littered the floor hadn’t been there in Trip’s memory. The sense returned that she was traveling through two separate times, Trip’s past and her future.  Already she could see changes.  There was more mica sparkling from the walls.  Many spaces were narrower, the curves more sharply angled than she had expected.  Were they new rock falls, or had information been lost to trauma or left incomplete because Trip hadn’t registered it as relevant enough back then, to have been retained?

It could be extremely relevant now.  At any moment, another tumble of rocks could alter whatever plans she made, possibly render them impossible without assistance from Enterprise.  But without knowing how fast or for how long tidal water from the lake had been streaming into the cave, Captain Archer could not afford that she turn back and wait for that assistance.

Wasn’t it about here that Trip first began to register the faint sound of water dripping?  She could hear it herself, though it was no drip now, but a steady spatter- like hard San Francisco rain on ancient cobblestone streets. The tunnel was getting older here and cruder.  The walls were rougher, the descent steeper and the footing less even.  A squeaking rodent skittered close beside her, the sound of its tiny footfalls mingling with the patter of water. As it traveled past, back the way she had come, its tail swiped across her leg just above the top of her boot.

“Captain Archer?”

She heard no sound but water as she rounded a curve in the tunnel.  It was no longer a patter but a steady stream pouring from a narrow gap in the tall, domed ceiling.

So, this was the cave.  The beam of her head lamp seemed to grow smaller as the distances it traveled to catch a wall, a dip in the floor or the shape of a rock grew greater.  She gave little more attention to the stone formations than it took to avoid crashing into, tripping over or striking her head on one, though she did recognize the long, pink stalactite Captain Archer had gazed up at with such admiration and the beautiful translucent blue of the one  neither he nor Trip had wished to destroy.  She was on the right trail.

Or wasn’t she?  There was a moment of uncertainty.  That blue on blue crystal had melted into momentary grey here as the memory trail was obscured.  T’Pol glanced around.  Which way had they gone after this? 

“Captain Archer?” she tried again.

Still there was no answer.  But only a few yards in front of her she found an area strewn with broken stalagmites and the gem toned crystalline shards.

And there was Jonathan’s voice as he knelt, holding up handfuls of that same shimmering blue.  “How much of this can you use as is?”  Then had come the yellow flash of Trip’s phaser blade and hands sorting sharp edged stones. 

T’Pol blinked.  Just ahead was the place where Jonathan had locked down the sample case.  She could hear the audible click it had made at almost the same instant that the toe of her boot brushed one of its smooth metal sides.  At almost any step now she would find the canister full of Cyrulinite.

“Captain?”

From out ahead of her and below, came the low, steady tumble of water over rocks.  .

There was a subtle leftward curve to the path and, set just beyond it was the canister full of the badly needed mineral fuel that had brought them here.  She passed it with little more than a glance.

“Captain Archer?”

Only steps away, in the bowl of a broken stalagmite, Trip’s phaser blade kit lay, gleaming.  She must be very close.

Shifting free of her pack, she picked up the smooth metal case and slipped it inside, exchanging it for the coil of rappelling line, which she looped over one shoulder, then clipped to her belt.  As she stood, putting the pack back on, then fumbling the package of stakes free of the adherent binding them to the coils, she studied the stretch of ground before her.  The light from her head lamp created intersecting shadows of rock formations, gradually changing from a glowing circular shape to an oblong one as it traveled along the descending narrow path and then disappeared over its edge.

As Trip had done, she dropped into a crouch, then to a crawl, exploring the shape, the steepness and solidity of the ground with each careful movement of a hand, a foot or a knee.  Close.  Closer.  If she needed to start implanting stakes for the rappelling line, this would be a good spot.  So would this.  Closer.  Only a few more careful feet until she could see over the edge.

The sound was different now than what Trip had remembered.  It was no mounting growl or rising roar, but the lapping swish and gurgle of waves on stones.

“Captain Archer?” she called, as she realized there were no more stones beyond the ones her hands circled.

“Here…  T’Pol!  Over here!”

She heard the captain an instant before she caught the glow of his head lamp, down several feet and to her right. 

Never been so glad to see a light, to hear a voice! 

She could not have phrased the thought better herself.