Scientific Curiosity

[Samantha_Kent 0]

"What did you do?"

 

"This can't be good..."

 

Sam barely heard the worried tone of the security officers with them as she watched the wall in front of her split apart, cracking cleanly in half at the point where Lieutenant Daena's fingers had touched it. A deafening grinding noise erupted as the pieces pulled apart, revealing a dim aperture through which they might pass. Torches all along the walls sprang suddenly to life and Sam squinted into the yellow-white brightness, unable for a moment to see past the wall.

 

It occurred to her to be frightened of what they might find down here, with at least a few seconds delay between them and any sort of help from Arcadia. It occurred to her that the clock was ticking, that they only had limited time to find the Inechie connection before all hell broke loose upstairs. It occurred to her that Malik, behind her by a few steps, had no idea what had passed between her and Brian recently, that the engineer on the bridge had been giving her an odd look that she feared she recognized all too well, that there were a thousand things for her to worry about.

 

But she couldn't do it, not with that dim unknown hanging just in front of her, beckoning her. Lieutenant Daena and Ensign Gault were standing to either side of her, and she had seen their expressions on entering this room -- she had no doubt her own matched them. Wonder, fascination, curiosity. The years Sam had spent on that Starbase before her transfer had been good training, good experience, but her team had never shown the enthusiasm, the wonderment that for Sam was one of the core parts of a scientist -- the need to know more. And now she was working with a team who felt that as keenly as she did, and the excitement of that realization trumped all the worry that she might have been feeling.

 

She took a step cautiously towards the open walls, then paused, glancing back at the team, a wide smile spreading across her face. "Well...this is something, isn't it?"