THE AIR WAS STICKY and filled with dust. Jake's hands were filthy, and he didn't want to look at his clothes. But he couldn't contain his excitement. He felt like one of those explorers in the stories his father used to read to him. Even though Jake was still in the station, he felt as if he were touching a forbidden world, one forgotten a long, long time ago. He felt as if he were conquering new territory.
He felt like he was on the verge of something big.
"I wonder if my father finished cleaning up the bar yet," Nog said, his voice echoing.
Jake whirled, raising dust. "That's all you can think about? Cleaning the bar?"
"There isn't much more to think about," Nog said. "This place is as exciting as a Vulcan wrestling match."
"I don't know," Jake said. "I think it's kinda cool."
And he did. They'd moved through twenty small linked rooms in the last ten minutes. The floors were covered with a fine gray dust, and the dust had caked in ventilation patterns on the walls. Jake had no idea where they were at the moment, but he had no worry about finding their way out. The rooms just lead one into another. All he and Nog had to do was follow their own footprints in the dust.
Nog sneezed. It sounded like an explosion in the enclosed area. "Sure was a good idea," he said. "Crawling around in the dust to find nothing."
They stopped in the middle of a room the size of a holosuite. Jake flashed his light around the walls and ceilings. Only gray metal. No sign of old furniture or equipment. Nothing had disturbed the dust in here in years.
The entrance to the next room was about a meter above the floor and looked more like a maintenance tunnel. They'd have to crawl on their hands and knees to get through it if it lead anywhere.
"We really should be mapping this out," Jake said.
"You should be mapping this out," Nog said, pointing his flashlight at his clothes and trying to pat off some of the dust. All he managed to do was fill the air around them, making the lights look like they were being shown through a thick fog. "I only came along because you asked."
Jake frowned at him. "Why are you being so difficult about this?"
Nog stopped patting. "I'm tired of people making me do things I don't want to do."
"You didn't have to come."
"You wanted me to."
"But I told you that you could leave if you wanted."
"You said that, but you meant I should stay."
Jake looked away. He had made it clear that he wanted Nog to stay. "You don't always have to do everything everyone else wants you to do."
"I'm not like you!" Nog had raised his voice. The room shook with the force of his words. "I'm not the commander's son. No one on the station gives me special permission to map stupid maintenance tunnels. No one tells me that I can spend all day watching the chief engineer. No one gets me three days away from the station so I can fly in some special ship with my father. I have to stay here and work for my uncle. And when I get back tonight, I'll get yelled at for not helping clean up and for being so dirty."
"Is that what's bugging you?" Jake asked.
"Isn't that enough?"
"I thought you didn't care that I was the commander's son."
Nog sighed in his impatient way. "It's just things are easy for you, and they're never easy for me. It's like these tunnels. You think it's cool to walk through them and map them, and Chief O'Brien will pat you on the head and tell you how good you were, and no one will thank me."
"Sure they will," Jake said.
"No, they won't," Nog said.
"They will if I tell them you did all the work."
"You'd do that?" Nog asked, his mood clearly brightening. Jake was always amazed at how surprised Nog was whenever anyone offered to do something nice for him.
"Sure. Because I don't want to do this by myself." Jake turned the flashlight toward the tunnel. "Come on. Let's see where this goes."
About three meters ahead, the tunnel ended in what appeared to be just another empty room. Jake pulled himself up and into the tunnel.
"Wait," Nog said.
Jake could see Nog's light from behind him as they crawled through the dust. The dust coated Jake's face. He was sweating. The air was close in here and smelled dry and ancient, as if it hadn't been used in a long time. But that couldn't be. All of the station's systems were hooked together, or at least, that was what the chief once told him.
Nog coughed at the dust Jake was kicking up into his face. "On the way back, I lead," Nog said. "Hurry up before I choke."
Jake crawled quicker, kicking up more dust. The tunnel opened up into the new room at floor level. Jake shined his light around the dust and gray walls until the beam stopped on a metal door. A moment later, Nog joined him.
Then he saw where Jake's flashlight beam was pointing and stopped. "Don't you wonder what all these rooms were used for?" Jake asked.
"Something secret," Nog said, "Or else they would be on the schematic."
That was what Jake had thought. Nog's voice finally held the same excitement that Jake had felt from the moment he discovered the panel.
"Yeah, real secret," Jake said. "But what?"
The two crossed the dust-covered floor and stopped in front of the metal door. It was the first door they had seen in nearly an hour of climbing and crawling through room after room of dust.
"I wonder where this goes to?" Jake said, noting that the door handle had the standard Cardassian latching and didn't seem to be locked, at least from this side.
"Let's find out," Nog said. He reached for the handle and pulled it down.
Suddenly Jake wanted to stop him. Maybe the door was a trap. Maybe it was wired to explode. Chief O'Brien had warned him about such things. But it was too late. Nog had already opened the door.
And nothing happened.
Except for the blinding light. After all that darkness any light seemed bright. Jake blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust.
There was no dust on this floor. The room was the size of his bedroom, yet seemed bigger because three more tunnels led off in different directions.
The light came from small ventilation grates spaced near the ceiling around the room. Only it was clear from this side of the grates they had never been designed for ventilation. Small steps lead up to each so that someone could stand on the top step and look out through the grate.
Three chairs, Cardassian design with metal backs, were spaced around the otherwise empty room.
"What is—"
"A spy hole," Nog whispered. "I've heard about rooms like this. Keep your voice down." He climbed the nearest stairs, but even standing on his tiptoes he couldn't see through the grate.
"Why is everything on this station built for tall people?" Nog whispered.
"Maybe because it was designed by Cardassians," Jake whispered back. He climbed the same set of steps and looked through the grate. And choked.
He could see into the back room of a shop on the Promenade. He couldn't tell which one, because he hadn't been in the backs of too many of them.
"What do you see?" Nog hissed.
Jake stepped down and moved to another grate. This one looked out into the main area of the Promenade. Laughter filtered through as two ensigns walked past arm in arm.
"Who's laughing?" Nog whispered.
"No one," Jake whispered back. He frowned. The cleanliness of this space bothered him.
"Well, someone was laughing," Nog whispered.
"No one important," Jake clarified. He glanced down at Nog. "We're on the Promenade. I can see the shops. How many of these spy holes do you think there are?"
"A bunch," Nog said. "I wonder if we can see into my uncle's bar."
Jake grinned. "That would be great if we could. Then we'd know if all the work was done."
"And I wouldn't ever have to go back in the middle of a riot." Nog turned around.
So did Jake. Three more tunnels. Even though he had been smiling, this whole thing left him disquieted. Of all the things he had expected, this was the last. Part of him wanted to go back, but turning around meant turning his back on adventure.
Nog was already down the stairs. "Let's figure out which passage leads to my uncle's bar."
"All right," Jake said. He was committed. For the first time since he had entered the panel, he wondered if this was the right thing to do.