The Escape Read Free Page A

at the main viewscreen. Her gaze followed theirs, and her mouth opened involuntarily. She shut it quickly, glad no one had seen her. But the feeling that had caused the reaction remained. Row after row, kilometer after kilometer of ships filled the viewscreen. They went off the edge of the screen in all directions.
    She made herself limit down her focus. Each ship seemed to be identical to the others, round with three slender tripod legs, as a sort of landing gear. The ships were spaced an even distance from each other. She pulled her focus back to the entire screen again. The rows of ships seemed to go on forever in all directions. How was this possible? She was having real trouble grasping the scale of what she was seeing. They looked almost like children's toys lined up neatly, Yet they were all real. Very real.
    - "Captain." Kim was standing in operations, his fingers poised over the screen controls. "From what 1 16 can tell, this is the largest of four-ah, I suppose you could call them bases. Or maybe ports? There seems to be a base or port in the middle of each of the continents on this planet." "Are there life sips?" Chakotay asked.
    Kim looked away from the screen, tapped the ops panel before him, and read the results. Then he shook his head. "Nothing above rodent size." "Captain," Tuvok said. "There are extensive remains of a humanoid civilization scattered over the planet, but nothing as preserved as these ships appear to be. There are also large building ruins scattered between the ships at regular intervals. No ship is very far from what was once a building. A very efficient design and use of space." "What's the size of this?" Janeway asked, not taking her gaze from the screen. "I have comno sense of scale." Tuvok nodded. "This facility alone is twice the size of the Federation's Luna Station. One-eighth of Vulcan would be covered in these ships if all four bases, as Mr. Kim called them, were combined." "This base, or station, is square," Janeway said, trying to put this in a perspective she understood. "You're telling me, Tuvok, that if we put the northwestern comer of this base in Federation Headquarters in San Francisco, the edges of the base would stretch south to the center of Los Angeles and east to Reno?" Paris whistled.
    "Yes, Captain," Tuvok said, "although I doubt the ships would line up a tilde neatly on Earth." He took a deep breath. Janeway recognized the pause. He made one just like it each time he imparted information that had an element of speculation to it. "And one more thing. These ships were never meant to fly, at least not by any means we know of." "What?" Janeway spun to look at Tuvok.
    His steady gaze met hers. He understood her sudden excitement. Neelix had led them to a technology they hadn't seen before. Janeway slapped her comm badge. "B'Elanna, ard you studying the ships onscreen?" B'Elanna had spent the trip in Engineering, coaxing all the power she could out of the warp engines. "Yes, Captain." "Do you have any idea what they were?" "Not from here, Captain. Without a hands-on inspection I couldn't even tell you what their power source was, let alone what their function might have been. But I can confirm that the metals in the ships" bodies and engines are ones we need for repairs." "Captain." Kim had moved to the science station.
    "The ruins around the ports are layered as far back as I can get readings. And this is a very, very old planet." "So," Janeway said, turning back to stare at the incredible sight of square kilometers of ships parked side by side, "we're talking about the home of a very old race that moved on, or maybe died out a long time agoTs "It would seem that way," Chakotay said.
    "Things are not always as they seem," Tuvok said.
    66 Go on." "There is no logic in this situation," Tuvok said. "The ships are obviously quite old, yet they are in a better state of repair than any of the surrounding Is ruins, including the buildings spaced evenly throughout the port." "Your