Free Cybersong by S. N. Lewitt

said.
    Neither the captain nor Paris answered. They didn’t have to.
    The cavernlike living and working quarters spoke for themselves under the high illumination from the shuttle.
    No furniture was recognizable as such. Each of the spaces had sparkling crystals hanging from the ceilings and more squat, rounded matching pieces projecting from the floor. It looked like a natural formation, like a true cave carved by rivers before time.
    “What a sense of beauty,” Janeway said softly. “No wonder they appear as beautiful no matter what form they take.”
    “I don’t see anything that looks like a control area or Engineering,” Paris said. “It all looks like a cave. B’Elanna’s going to have a field day with this one.”
    “We’re too far away to tell,” the captain reminded him. “When we get closer, I would bet that several of those projections are very recognizable controls.”
    “You’re on, Captain,” both Paris and Kim said together.
    The captain smiled. “I think you’ve both been spending too much time playing pool on the holodeck. What are the stakes?”
    Paris smiled evilly. “A cup of reallive Earth-origin coffee,” he said.
    “You’re on,” Janeway accepted, grinning.
    “Come on, gentlemen,” the captain chided them gently. “We don’t have the rest of the millennium.”
    “Well, where should I put her down?” Paris asked, all business again.
    “How about there.” The captain pointed to a spot that shone brilliantly when the lights of the shuttlecraft hit it. “Looks like there’s something important over there.”
    “It’s where I’d put a command center,” Paris concurred. “Close to the front and center. Okay, Captain, we’re in.”
    He brought them slowly toward what appeared to be the bright core of a dead command center. In the illumination from the shuttle it was full of high contrast and deep shadow. Nothing made any sense at all except that the reflected radiance at the core didn’t really seem to go with the rest of the dark, silent ship.
    The cave that had become a ship.
    “It makes sense,” Janeway mused aloud, her scientific curiosity unstoppable even when faced with a threatening enigma.
    “Troglodytes taking to space. The dark and the isolation wouldn’t be difficult for them. It would be a natural extension of their habitat.”
    Tom Paris ignored the captain’s theorizing. As he approached the sheared plating, he found that there was no decent landing site.
    The entire deck was covered with jagged crystals and large projections up-thrust from what appeared to be a fragile crust.
    “I’m going to destroy this stuff if I set down on it, Captain,” Paris admitted after one good look. “If you think we can risk it, I’ll go ahead, but …”
    “No,” Janeway came back quickly. “I don’t want to compromise anything that might be part of their technical system. If we can use it, we will. No, let’s land three decks down. That’s empty, it looks like it might have been a cargo bay or something. Then we’ll have to walk.”
    “In environmental suits,” Paris groaned.
    It took a few minutes to pull on the suits. Paris hadn’t worn one since his training mission at the Academy, and he bet that everyone would have liked to keep it that way.
    “How do I get the cooling on this down?” Paris fumed, sweat running down his face.
    “Uh, Tom, I’ll take care of it,” Kim said. “Just let me finish with the captain. They tried to make it easier in this version.”
    Easier. Right. Tom Paris had heard that before. It wasn’t easier, it was a mess. But Harry, more recently at the Academy, was familiar with the new design and got the suits adjusted to a pleasant temperature.
    Not that being cool enough made it easier to move. It reminded Paris of how his mother had made him wear sweaters under his coat in the winters, and how hard it had been to bend his arms.
    “Let’s go,” the captain said, and led the way out of the shuttle and into the torn alien