Chapter Three

CAPTAIN, I’M PICKING UP an energy blip. . . .”

Tasha Yar caught back her voice and grimaced at her readout board, confused. A flop of bangs had come back over her eyes as though to insist some part of her would always rebel against the discipline. Her delicate Lithuanian complexion blotched slightly around her cheekbones as she willed the instruments to start giving her sensible information, especially when Captain Picard appeared at her side and looked down at those same instruments.

“It’s gone now,” she told him bitterly. “How can that be? Worf, do you have anything?”

“Nothing,” the Klingon thundered, redoubling her impatience. “I don’t like it.”

“Steady, both of you,” Picard said. The readings looked absolutely normal. These two hotheads were dependable, but the doubting Thomas side of him wished he himself or Data or LaForge had also happened to see this flicker of energy Worf and Yar claimed had been there.

Suddenly Yar struck her board with the heels of her hands and shouted, “There it is again! But it’s inside the ship!” She slammed the intercom without consulting Picard. “Security to Deck Twelve, Section A-three!”

“Inside?” Picard stepped closer. “Are you sure?”

“It’s gone again!”

“Check your instruments for malfunction. Worf, do the same with long-range sensors.”

Yar took a deep breath. “Aye, sir.”

“Checking,” Worf said, much less embarrassed than Yar was.

Picard straightened. “And call Mr. Riker to the bridge.”


Troi continued to gaze thoughtfully at the empty space where the holograph ships had been chugging across her table. Her gaze was unfocused, contemplative, and though she had tried to raise her hand several times to press the Revive and Continue point on her computer board, something stopped her every time. Nor could she make herself ask the computer to continue. Continue giving in.

A dream. But not one formed within her own mind, of that much she was becoming certain.

The door opened again, this time without the polite buzzer, and Riker strode back in. Troi gained almost instant control over her troubled expression.

Teasing him with her eyes, she asked, “Have you been hiding in the hold all this time?”

“How much power are you feeding into that unit?” Riker asked her.

She blinked. “Pardon me?”

He stopped, his thigh just brushing the edge of the table. “Your holographs. They’re bleeding out.”

She started to respond, but was cut off by the intercom.

“Commander Riker, your presence is requested on the bridge. Report to the bridge, please.”

Riker touched his insignia com. “Riker. I’ll be right there.”

He brought his attention back to Troi. “Your history lesson. It’s bleeding out into the corridor.”

Her lips touched and parted as she tried to understand what he was saying and to find the right answer. His expression, his tone somehow made her think there should be an answer and she hated to make him feel as silly as his statement sounded—but what was he talking about?

Finally she steadied herself and coolly said, “But that’s not possible.”

Riker shifted to his other foot. “Of course it is. You should have maintenance check the energy intake on this thing.”

Working to avoid the inevitable, Troi tried not to feel responsible. “No,” she said, “it can’t be. Don’t you remember? I turned it off before you left. I haven’t turned it back on.”

Without really changing very much, Riker’s federal-blue eyes took on a perplexed hardness that wasn’t directed toward her at all, but toward a sudden mystery. His mouth tightened over the cleft chin so slightly that she might have missed it had she not been watching for changes.

Troi knotted her hands on her lap and resisted the urge to touch him. Caught by the ominous perception in his eyes, she added, “Completely cold . . . ”


“This is crazy,” Yar complained. She flattened her tiny mouth into a hard ribbon and forced herself to report in a more correct manner to her waiting captain. “Security reports no unusual activity on Deck Twelve at all, Captain. My instruments are in perfect working order. I don’t understand this.”

On the forward bridge, Captain Picard had his back to Conn and Ops and didn’t see Data start to open his mouth to add his two bits, or see LaForge gesture at the android to keep quiet. Everyone else saw the motion and understood its prudence, especially when Picard raised his voice and roared, “That’s quite enough of this waffling about. Next time the glitch appears, I want the computers on this vessel ready to record it. We’ve got the most advanced technology available to the Federation incorporated into the memory core and active matrices of this vessel, and you people are still relying on intuition and your own eyes. Now, snap to and let the ship do its job.”

His tone indisputably said that he didn’t mean they should let the ship do their jobs for them, but that they should be doing their jobs better, more completely meshing with the systems beneath their hands. Picard was simply the kind of commanding officer who didn’t like to have anything out of line.

He swung around, glaring at the main viewer as though he were looking for something and couldn’t find it, as though he could coerce an answer out of the darkness of space, and mused, “Too damned young.”

The port turbolift came open and Riker stepped out, escorting Troi by the elbow. Odd . . . she still looked unprepared to come to the bridge, her hair still down, her casual short uniform on instead of the usual one-piece she had taken to wearing most often and the two of them stood together before Picard, their faces troubled.

“Captain,” Riker asked, “may we have a word with you, sir?”


*  *  *


Troi’s distress was no longer obvious. It had been carefully cloaked by her professionalism once again, and only those who knew her very well could tell that her hands were held a little too tightly against her lap as she sat in her lounge in the command area and told them her story of dreams. And there was only one person here who knew her that well.

Will Riker watched her, forcing himself not to interrupt, not to say anything after he too had finished describing the incident in the corridor, no matter how silly it sounded. He simply stood by, as the others focused on Troi. It hadn’t been easy for her, telling the captain that she had a dream that wouldn’t go away, and for Riker describing that person—or whatever he was—in the corridor had been just as strenuous. Only Captain Picard’s studious attention to their silly stories told them that he’d seen enough in the galaxy not to dismiss such things as silly.

The captain stood over Troi now, absorbing the whole idea of her dream with what Riker had told him about. Earth ships, humans in uniform—somewhere there was a common denominator. He meant to find it.

“Can you describe your perceptions more specifically, Counselor?”

Troi tipped her pretty head. “I’ll try to verbalize them, Captain, but I must advise you these are imprecise explanations. Telepathic impressions are sometimes too vague for interpretation.”

“Do your best.”

She nodded once. “My mind describes to me several different historical periods, not necessarily all of Earth, though the clearest ones seem to be human or humanoid. Perhaps that’s simply because of my partly human heritage—I can’t say. Some, though . . . some are so alien that I don’t know any words to describe what I’ve seen.”

“Alien, you say?”

“Yes, very obviously so. But the ship I envisioned was definitely of Earth.”

“Believe me, we’ll get to that in a moment. Go on.”

She paused, but not for long. Picard wasn’t a man she cared to keep waiting. “There’s a haze of apprehension . . . urgency . . . resistance. But no violent intent.”

“You can’t be sure of that!” Tasha interrupted from the afterdeck with her usual serenity. She caught Riker’s eyes, and his disapproval, but she plugged on. “I mean . . . if they’re alien sensations, then Deanna could be misinterpreting them completely. To their home beings, those impressions might be hostile, aggressive, and dangerous.”

“You’re too suspicious, Tasha,” Riker said defensively.

“I’m doing my job,” she retaliated. Not so much as a glimmer of regret marred her conviction. She knew perfectly well she was volatile—it was an advantage. Unlike Worf, who constantly worked to control his Klingon explosiveness, Tasha would stand up for the worth of her own. Riker saw that in her eyes as he looked back at her now, in the underlying ferocity beneath her face, and indeed it caused him to back down. Not until he’d been silent for several seconds did he realize how completely she had gotten her point across.

Troi picked up on the tension immediately, though she needn’t have been telepathic for that. It chewed at her; her job was to keep watch over the emotions and mental states of the starship complement, to guide them through tensions and head off the truly harmful contretemps that came and went in this kind of extended separation. How awful to be the cause of this . . . how terrible.

She tipped one hand up as it leaned against her thigh and said, “No . . . Tasha’s right. Because though there’s no perception of aggressive intent,” she said, pausing then to say the one thing that truly frightened her, “doesn’t change the fact that I’m receiving glimpses of violent destruction.”

Not giving those ominous statements any chance to take hold on the imaginations of the bridge crew, Picard lowered into his command chair beside her, hoping to put her and everyone at ease. He was aware of the effect these little disturbances were having on the crew, especially when they saw Deanna Troi’s usual poise inexplicably shattered. “Can you focus on that? Are we in danger?”

“That’s what confuses me, sir,” she said steadily. “While I see images of destruction, there seems to be no intent behind it, even though it’s definitely the product of a mind and not natural phenomena. As I said, no violent intent.”

“That’s reassuring, at least.”

“But, sir, you don’t understand.” She stopped him from rising with a light touch on his forearm. “I shouldn’t be getting concrete images at all. It’s simply not among my abilities to receive visions and forms. As such,” she added reluctantly, “I’m not certain you should trust my judgment.”

A soothing smile appeared on Picard’s princely features. “I trust your interpretation, Deanna.”

“But she’s a telepath,” Dr. Crusher pointed out. Until now the doctor had been a silent observer, fascinated both personally and professionally by Deanna Troi’s story of unwelcome impressions and unfocused dreams, and as her voice cut through the distinct tension, it added a touch of common sense they needed right now. “She’s not a psychic. There’s an important distinction, you realize.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Troi said, looking at her gratefully. “That’s what I mean. The difference between what I can do and what I’m somehow being forced to do.”

Piecing it all together and still getting a choppy mosaic at best, Picard nodded. “Tell me what you’re feeling,” he said, “in one word.”

She didn’t answer immediately. Several long and anxious minutes went by as she selected and discarded a number of possibilities. Those around her watched as each crossed her face, each perplexing her with its inadequacy.

Then she found it. Or the one that came closest. For the first time in all those minutes of searching, Troi fixed her gaze on Jean-Luc Picard and worked her lips around a word.

“Misery.”

When she spoke, the misery shone in her eyes. She was caught in empathy for that instant, empathy for the beings whose impressions she was being given, or being forced to receive. It was as though she were asking, imploring, for help. After a pause she drew a breath and sighed, her lovely brows drawn tight as she realized the full impact of that word was somewhat lost on them. After all, they weren’t feeling it.

Picard saw the change in her face. “Misery can be many things, Counselor,” he said to her.

She nodded. “Yes,” she agreed. “Clinically I would call it a kind of dysphoria. But I’d be inaccurate to say there was no physical suffering. Yet I don’t perceive a sense of body. It’s quite confusing, sir. I’m sorry.”

“Permission to stop saying that, Counselor,” Picard offered. He placed his hands on his knees and stood up. “Now, let’s see about these ships.” He led the whole crowd up to the extra-large monitors at the aft science station, where Worf was moving aside to let everyone curve around his post. The captain spoke up immediately. “Computer, show me various military vessels from—when did you say?”

Troi stepped forward, somehow managing to stay close to Riker, to gather strength from his presence. “The most familiar one was late nineteen-eighties, Captain. An Aegis cruiser, according to records.”

“Computer, engage as specified.”

On the screen, almost instantly, a 2-D image of the Aegis appeared.

Picard asked, “Is this the right ship?”

“Oh, no, sir. Simply the right . . . idea. The right age.”

“Computer, expound upon this index.”

The Aegis was replaced by a different vessel, then another, and another, while the balmy female voice ticked off descriptions.

“Destroyer, United States Navy . . . PT boat, United States Navy . . . computer support vessel, Royal Canadian Maritime Command . . . light amphibious transport, United States Navy . . . nuclear submarine, Navy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics . . . Invincible-class V/STOL carrier, Royal Navy of Great Britain . . . CV-type conventional-power aircraft carrier, United States—”

“Stop!”

Troi drew back from her own outburst, but continued to point at the screen. “This is very close.”

“Close, but . . . ” Picard prodded.

“But . . . I don’t know. I know very little about surface vessels.”

“Computer, specify this vessel.”

“U.S.S. Forrestal, CV-59, commissioned October 1955, United States Navy.”

“Very well, continue.”

Another ship popped on the screen, looking much the same to the untrained eyes watching it now. “CVN-type nuclear-powered full-deck aircraft carrier—”

“Yes!” Troi jolted. “Yes, this!” She pressed a hand tightly over her mouth, profoundly moved by what she saw.

Picard remained subdued, capping her reaction with his own implacability. “Computer, specify.”

U.S.S. George Washington, CVN-73, Enterprise-class aircraft carrier; commissioned January 1992, United States Navy.”

Troi pulled her hand from her mouth. “This is extremely familiar to me.”

A tangible discomfort blanketed the bridge. All eyes flickered, then settled on her. Of course, she felt it without looking. Self-consciously she corrected, “Rather, to the impressions I’ve been channeling.”

“Yes,” Picard murmured, glancing at Riker over Troi’s dark head, “of course. You said something about names.”

Troi stared at the aircraft carrier as if she feared it might disappear like all the other images. “Vasska was one. Arkady . . . and Gor . . . Gorsha—no, it’s not right, not complete.”

“Data, you up here, please.”

Caught by surprise, Data all but hurtled to them from the lower deck, taking the seat at the science station as though he’d been deeply stung by their not asking for his help earlier. Riker moved aside a bit farther than necessary, giving in to a twinge of prejudice, but he forced himself to let it pass. Data was the qualified one. An instrument running an instrument.

Evidently Data was ready to guide the search through Enterprise’s vast memory core, focusing on the specific type of aircraft carrier and the names Troi had spoken; he didn’t request that she repeat them. His fingers nearly tangled in his haste to participate and be useful amid all this talk of feelings and senses and memories.

If there was disappointment, he didn’t allow it to show on his face.

“Sir,” he began, “I regret this may take some time. I’ll have to operate by a process of elimination. May I suggest you allow me to notify you once I pull it off.”

If that was his polite way of asking them not to hang over his shoulder the whole time, it worked.

“Very well.” Picard motioned the little crowd away and leaned toward Riker. “What was it he said?”

“Sir—” Tasha raised her hand in a brief gesture, and quickly drew it down when Picard turned. “I’m Lithuanian.”

Picard swallowed an impulse to congratulate her and merely asked, “And?”

“And I recognize those names. They’re Russian.”

“Ah! Very good, Lieutenant. Mr. Data, make use of that.”

“You bet,” Data clipped, and didn’t see Picard’s double-take as he turned to his station.

“Captain . . . ” Troi turned abruptly. “If I may, I’d like to return to my quarters. Perhaps I can clear my mind. Focus in on these impressions, or let them focus in on me.”

Picard noticed that Data was still watching him, as though the decisions hinged upon one another—computer search and mind hunt. “That’s sound strategy,” he told her, “since we don’t seem to be able to zero in on it any quicker with our hardware. I want you to be careful, however. And nothing is too small to report.”

“Yes, sir,” she murmured, and as she pivoted toward the turbolift she caught Riker’s concerned gaze. “I promise.”

The bridge was wide, the walk to the turbolift uncomfortably long as Troi deliberately kept herself from showing anxiety. Riker’s own legs tensed; he empathized with her every stride, wished he were going with her, that he could somehow help. Seemed like lately all he and Deanna could be to each other was a mutual distraction . . . 

“She’s a very competent broad,” Data offered.

So innocuous. So deadpan . . . 

Riker stopped breathing. Picard glowered. LaForge and Worf both stiffened in place, Tasha flushed, Bev Crusher looked away.

Troi was barely reaching the turbolift. Had she heard?

Data sat in a pool of perpetual good intentions, his chair swiveled ever so slightly toward the rest of them, and as all eyes crawled to him with that collective reprimand his expression became confused. He glanced from each to the others. “Chick? Dish?”

The turbolift doors brushed open. A preoccupied ship’s counselor stepped in.

“Bird? Bun? Babe? Skirt? Fox?”

“Data!” chorused Picard, Riker, and Yar, just as the lift doors closed.

The android flinched, and closed his mouth in an almost pouting manner. His gold-leaf face took on a sudden innocence; he looked vulnerable. Under their scolding eyes, he retreated once again to his memory search through the starship’s deep mainframe, and Picard noticed a definite shift of Data’s shoulders when attention fell away from him.

“Stations, everyone,” Picard said casually, setting the mood for the bridge to relax until there was a reason not to. The tension didn’t entirely dissolve, but each officer made a laudable effort not to contribute to its increase.

From one side Picard accepted a graceful nod from his ship’s chief surgeon. He recognized the decidedly medical gesture—Crusher wasn’t going to offer an opinion—not yet. Not until all the cards were on the table. Not about Troi’s agitated condition, not about these unclinical occurrences, not about anything.

“I’ll be in sickbay, Captain,” she said roundly, “whenever you need me.”

Picard nodded an acknowledgment, warmed beyond logic by her words, and the past once again moved between them, the mutuality of sadness and vision that had made them acquaintances long ago yet had also stood in the way of their ever becoming close. He watched with a twinge of regret as Crusher pivoted and left the bridge.

Burying his feelings, Picard approached Riker from so practiced an angle that Riker didn’t notice him until he spoke. “Mr. Riker.”

“Oh—Captain . . . aye, sir? What can I do for you?”

“Better ask what you can do for yourself. Tell me again what you saw in the corridor.”

Riker shifted uneasily, unhappy with the idea that he’d been “seeing things.” He still held a heavy rock in his stomach, his brows still tightened over his eyes no matter how he tried to relax his face. “I wish I knew. It looked as solid to me as you do now—he did, rather. When it faded, I assumed it was overbleed from Troi’s holographs. But it wasn’t. And I wasn’t imagining it.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“Because it didn’t do what I would’ve expected it to do. I think my imagination would make something act as I might expect it to, but this . . . man . . . reached out to me with the strangest expression. It’s difficult, sir. I’d like to be more concrete—”

“Captain,” Data abruptly called from above, whirling in his chair. “I have it, sir.”


“Hi, Mom.”

Wesley Crusher raised his head as his mother strode into their quarters off the main sickbay. His face had the typical porcelain smoothness of sixteen-year-old skin, his hair combed a little too neatly, his clothing pin-straight on his skinny frame. He’d taken to looking more like that since the captain made him acting ensign. It seemed to Beverly Crusher that Wesley was keeping himself perfectly groomed just so he wouldn’t look out of place among the uniformed personnel on the bridge, and like any sixteen-year-old he carried it to extremes.

“Wes,” she began, not in greeting. “I need you to do something for me.”

He gladly turned away from his study tapes. “Sure, Mom. What?”

“Are you scheduled to go onto the bridge today?”

“Me? Well, not exactly. Mr. Data asked me to help him catalog some physics theories sometime this week, and I was going to use that as an excuse to go up there later—”

“Can you do that now?”

Wesley got to his feet, which made him suddenly as tall as his tall mother. “Really? I mean, how come?”

“Baby-sit the bridge for me.”

Wesley’s smooth face fractured. “Huh?”

“I want you to keep an eye on things for me. There’s something going on, and nobody’s sure what. It’s affecting Deanna Troi, and if I can’t have her expertise to call upon, then I want to at least keep a jump on conditions.”

Wesley grimaced. “Mom,” he began, “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

Dr. Crusher grinned sadly at him. “Call it medical intuition. Call it anything you want, but just be my spy on the bridge. I can’t go up there myself because I’ve got a lineup of pediatric checkups this afternoon, and besides, I’d be too obvious. Will you do it?”

He shrugged, sure there was a catch somewhere. “Of course I’ll do it.”

She patted the side of his face as she was given to do once in a while just to remind herself that this bright, lively, tall fellow was still the seven-and-a-half-pound infant who hardly ever slept a night through until he was twelve years old. “Thanks, buster. I’ll never forget this.”

She started toward the lab entrance, but turned when Wesley asked, “Mom, just what is it I’m supposed to be watching for?”

Beverly Crusher didn’t slacken her pace as she turned once again in midstride. “Use your imagination.”


Riker entered Troi’s quarters hesitantly. He knew he was interrupting much sooner than she expected. And there she was—so much like before, so much.

“Back again, Bill,” she murmured, and she smiled at him. The dim quarters lit up just a little.

It took him by surprise, as it always did, that “Bill.” Very few people called him that, and on this ship, only Troi. Only Deanna. “I’m sorry about this,” he said, approaching her, but this time not sitting down. “Believe it or not, Data’s already found the file. I didn’t want to bug you so soon, but—”

“Don’t apologize,” she said. “It doesn’t really suit you.”

His brows went up. “Doesn’t it? That’s bad.”

Troi shrugged. “Depends on the source.”

“The source doesn’t have the luxury of not knowing how to apologize,” he said. “Maybe someday.”

“Maybe someday Captain Riker. Don’t you think?”

“You’re digging, Deanna,” he accused with a grin. “I’m just so many loose-leaf pages to you, and don’t think I don’t know it. I’m not ready for captaincy, but I admit—”

“That first officer is an awkward position,” she completed fluidly.

Riker laughed and dropped into the nearest chair. “Quit doing that, will you?” At first he lounged back in the chair and casually waved his hand, but time was pressing, and he leaned forward again almost immediately. “I hate to rush you.”

“It’s all right. I’m anxious for the answer as much as for the peace. Solitude is not that welcome a companion.”

Riker paused then, wondering if she could sense his empathy for her, and the inadequacy of his understanding. Ultimately, as he found himself unable to draw away from her steady unshielded gaze, he simply asked, “Why do you stay? What can it do for you to stay among humans? We must drive you crazy.”

Troi laughed. “Oh, Bill . . . you’re such a decisive fellow. Don’t you know why I stay?”

“I’m on audio, Counselor. Tell me.”

Her smile changed, became more wistful, and she looked down. When she looked up again, her coal eyes sparkled. “I like humans.”

Riker grinned. “Do you really?”

“Yes, quite a lot. Better than I like Betazoids. But don’t tell anyone.” She pursed her lips conspiratorially. “Yes, I like them. Even though I make them uncomfortable, I like them very much. They’re so honest, so well-meaning, they have such deep integrity as a species . . . and my human half has given me something few Betazoids possess.”

“What’s that?”

She squared her shoulders against the back of the chair and said, “Discipline. Self-discipline, I mean. And . . . I believe I possess an intuition Betazoids never had to develop. My mother and her people take everything at face value, and they often think it’s a joke to invade the minds of others. I’ve learned that in the universe nothing can be taken at face value, and I learned that from humans. Do you know that as an alien hybrid, I can actually read a wider range of emotions than full Betazoids? Even though the impressions aren’t clear, I can do that. I have many advantages thanks to my human side, and I’m proud of it.”

Riker was appreciably silent, surprised by her generosity. He knew how often she must feel alone. He saw the glances that were cast at her as she came into a room or left one. For a long time he’d wondered if his affection for her was indeed affection or just a man’s protectiveness toward what he perceives as a woman’s weakness. Troi bore an excess of handicaps in her position as ship’s counselor, a position that was new to Starfleet, new to the Federation, and still undefined. No one really knew, or at least understood, what her purpose was on the ship. But they all knew she was here to watch them, to evaluate the overall psychological condition of the ship’s complement and report to the captain as necessary. A mental guardian—or watchdog, depending on perception. Someday the Federation would be able to define the post of ship’s counselor, or people would just get used to the idea, but for now Deanna Troi and the few like her would have to brook the vagueness.

“You impress me,” he said spontaneously.

She laughed again. “Don’t be too impressed. I cry myself to sleep more often than I’d like to admit.”

Her faint Greek accent tapped the words out with the clip of a sparrow’s talons hopping across marble. Riker bit his tongue and kept his inadequate reassurances to himself. She didn’t need them—at least none he could voice.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and he knew he’d failed to keep his feelings to himself. “I’m needed, Bill. I can make a contribution that even full Betazoids could never make. For that privilege, I’ll happily pay the price. I’m not sure, though, that this is the place to make that contribution.”

Riker clasped his hands and leaned his elbows on his knees, gazed down for a moment, then looked up. “Do you know how guilty you’re making me feel?”

Troi flickered her eyes at him, paused, then tossed her head. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

Caught off guard, Riker blushed and couldn’t keep control of his smile, but she was still smiling too. Damn, she was good at that.

“To the bridge, Number One?” she suggested gently.

He stood up and reached for her hand. “To the bridge, Counselor.”


“Go ahead, Mr. Data.”

Picard spoke evenly as he stood on Troi’s right, Riker on her left, as though their presence at her sides would help protect her from what was to come. She still looked controlled enough, considering she’d gotten no chance whatsoever even to put her head back for a moment and absorb these events. Data punched up the records he’d discovered.

“Sir, I must apologize,” Data said. “The search was not as exhaustive as I first estimated. Counselor Troi’s perceptions were accurate and all the information came together—”

“Let’s hear it, then, Data. Don’t dawdle.”

“Yes, sir. As you can see on the monitor, this is a full-deck nuclear aircraft carrier from the nineteen-nineties. It was a Soviet Union vessel out on a demonstration run in the Black Sea when it mysteriously disappeared on April twenty-fourth, 1995.”

“Disappeared?” Picard rumbled. “Do you have any idea the size of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, Commander?”

Though Picard meant the question to be rhetorical, Data had an immediate answer. “Oh, yes, sir. Up to ninety thousand tons with a personnel complement five times that of our starship.”

The captain suddenly felt silly for having asked. “All right, go on. What was this ship called?”

Even Data was aware of Deanna Troi as he quietly responded, “The Gorshkov.”

Troi’s eyes drifted closed. She steadied herself within the sounds of that word, then opened her eyes again and kept tight rein on the battery of emotions—even the grief.

“Go on, Data,” Picard urged.

“Her captain was Arkady Reykov. He had a long, rocky political history before leaving that arena for the naval command. His disapproval of the Soviet system had caused him some discomfort, but his skill as a naval officer evidently overshadowed that. Such experience was at a premium in the U.S.S.R. in those days, so he was allowed to continue.”

Riker listened to the simplified description of a twisted international skein, all the tugs and pulls of that volatile period, and couldn’t help wondering what Reykov would have felt if he’d known the future. If he’d known he was a cog in the mechanism that led to Earth’s 21st-century cataclysms.

“And this Vasska?” Picard prodded.

The response, spoken as tenuously as spider’s threads snapping between two leaves, came not from Data, but from Troi.

“Timofei . . . ”

They turned to her.

Troi poised herself and completed, “Timofei Vasska. I believe he was first officer.”

Uneasily Picard turned to Data for confirmation.

“Yes, that is correct,” Data said, just as uneasily.

“Do we have photographs of them?” Riker asked.

Data glanced at him. “Possibly . . . let me run a search. Computer, show any available visuals of Reykov or Vasska.”

The computer settled into a long hum, but they didn’t have to wait long until its soft feminine voice said, “Only available visual on specified subjects is a news photograph shortly before launch of the Gorshkov. On screen.”

The screen did its best to focus a grainy photograph of some hundred or more uniformed men, apparently officers of the carrier, all standing together on the big flat deck. The figures were small and crowded together, but on the left two officers stood slightly apart and in front of the others, their faces blurred by the poor quality of the photo.

“There,” Riker said, pointing. “Computer, augment the two men in the foreground.”

Abruptly two faces appeared, somewhat blurred, yet their strong features and proud expressions quite clear on the screen.

“That’s him,” Riker murmured, pointing again, this time at the big man on the right. “That’s the man I saw in the corridor.”

Picard looked deeply into the Soviet officer’s strong eyes and murmured, “Reykov . . . ”

As he said the name, he realized his reaction was instinct. No one had told him that this was the captain of the Gorshkov, yet somehow he knew. Somehow there was a symbiosis, something in the face that he, as a captain, understood.

He turned to Deanna Troi. “Counselor?”

She steadied herself, gazing into the faces on the screen. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Reykov and Vasska.”

“Data,” the captain said, “do you have anything more on these two?”

The android nodded and said, “A little, sir. Timofei Vasska was thirty-five, a longtime exec of Reykov’s. Records are incomplete, but a few articles on the incident speculated that the two men were friends and may have plotted together to defect with some new technology.”

“What technology?” Riker blurted, not caring if he was out of order. He felt the tightness of Troi’s exquisite body beside him and might have done anything at that moment to ease her fear. He felt it so strongly that he might as well have been the telepath.

Data was about to answer when the lift door parted and Wesley Crusher strode onto the bridge, his long legs going like wheel spokes, and he grated to a stop as all eyes struck him. The placid expression dropped away under a slap of surprise—why were they all bundled together around the science station?

He hovered in place for a moment, then waved clumsily and smiled. “Hi, everybody . . . ”

The captain straightened. “What are you doing up here at this hour, Mr. Crusher?”

Wesley’s mouth dried up. Funny, but it all sounded so easy when his mother talked about this. “I . . . I, uh . . . ”

“Well, never mind just now. Get to it and don’t interrupt us again.”

Self-consciousness roaring through him, Wesley went to the other science monitor and tried to fake work, though he couldn’t keep from glancing at what the others were doing.

“On with you, Commander,” Picard said sharply.

Data glanced at him and picked up where he’d left off. “Gorshkov was carrying a special device, an electromagnetic pulsor which could deflect incoming rocketry and aircraft. The science was new at the time, but the Soviets had pushed through the preliminary testing and gone straight to a fully mounted pulsor on a vessel.”

“Fine,” Picard barked, “but what happened to them?”

“Oh . . . yes. Apparently the ship was . . . pulverized. Unexplainably and utterly.”

“My God,” the captain breathed.

“There was very little left of the ship,” Data said, pausing then, “and absolutely nothing of the crew.”

Riker nudged forward. “Nothing? Not a single body anywhere?”

“That’s correct. Relations between major powers had been steadily improving since the early nineteen-eighties, but when analysis of the flotsam indicated a cataclysm from outside the ship rather than some problem with the ship’s reactors, for instance, the world nearly buckled with mutual accusations.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” Picard murmured.

“But there was no proof that any nation had blitzed the ship. Add to that the appearance of seven Soviet naval aircraft from the Gorshkov which requested landing clearance on a United States carrier a short time later—pardon me, sir, I did not mean to be unspecific. The U.S. ship was the Roosevelt, and was hanging out in a nearby sea when the Soviet planes arrived in their airspace some sixty-nine minutes after witnessing the demolition of their own ship. Those pilots swore no missile had come in to cream the Gorshkov. Historians had theorized that if it hadn’t been for those pilots’ testimony so soon after the incident, international relations might have dissolved and World War Three started on the spot. Adding, of course, the blessing that the pilots were Russians themselves and could appeal to the outraged Soviet government without the baggage of racial distrust. Had the witnesses been American or British, we might not be here today. As it was, the issue was a canker between major powers for decades and a real pain for diplomacy.”

Picard frowned and murmured, “Mmm . . . thank you, Data.” He took Riker by the arm and pulled him to one side, then leaned toward him. “Why’s he talking like that?”

Riker blinked, but that blink cleared his eyes not on Picard, not on Data, but on Deanna Troi, who was in turn holding her breath and staring at the helm—at Lieutenant LaForge. Her face was frozen in astonishment as sensation flowed from LaForge to her.

Instinct rippling, Riker shot his glare to the helm.

LaForge was rising from his chair, slowly, like a sleepwalker, his hands pressed flat on his control board. He rose so slowly, in fact, that he was drawing attention to himself.

By the time Riker stepped away from the captain and came to the ramp, everyone else had noticed and was tensely watching, unable to look away. LaForge’s mouth hung open and he bent like a man punched in the ribs. His hands remained flat on his console, his legs stiff and slightly bent. Of course the visor hid his eyes, but from the set of his body, his face and lips, Riker could imagine what a seeing man’s eyes would show. Shock.

Wesley stepped toward the ramp, his reedy young body all knots. “Geordi?”

Riker snapped his fingers and pointed. “Wesley, stay where you are.”

But Wesley’s movement had nudged Riker into taking over that movement toward the helm.

LaForge breathed in short gasps. He didn’t respond, but stared—or seemed to stare—forward and slightly starboard of his position. He turned his head further in that direction, then twisted partially around to look across the entire starboard side of the bridge.

Riker came around in front of the helm. “Geordi?”

“Sir . . . ” LaForge continued turning, resembling more than anything a music-box doll on a spindle.

Before him, all around the starboard curve of the bridge, human forms were milling. Far different from the warm mannequins of the regular crew, these forms were flat, glowing, staticky yellow, striated with jagged impulse lines—but unmistakably human. Not humanoid—human. There was something in the way they moved, the way they turned and walked and gestured, that made him certain of it.

“Sir . . . somebody’s here . . . ”

Riker moved a step closer, his shoulders drawing slightly inward as a shiver assaulted his spine. “But there’s no one there.”

“They are here, sir!”

Riker held out one hand in a calming gesture that didn’t work. “All right . . . tell me what wavelengths you’re tuned in to right now. Help me, Geordi. I want to see them too.”

Geordi moved choppily backward, bumping Riker, bumping his own chair, trying to avoid the unseen entities as he moved toward the science station on the upper bridge, but he never even got close. He bumped the bridge rail with one shoulder and couldn’t move anymore, but stayed there trying to convince himself he wasn’t going out of his mind.

“Geordi, just describe it,” Riker said, glancing at Picard for reassurance. “What are you seeing?”

LaForge trembled. “I don’t know . . . ”

“Lieutenant,” Picard snapped from above him, “give me a report. Analyze what you’re seeing and report on it.”

“Uh . . . they’re . . . narrow-band . . . low-resolution pixels at several wavelengths . . . toward the blue in the invisible spectrum . . . but some acoustical waves are giving me a visual of animated pulses—”

Picard’s voice was laced with impatience, but also with awe. “Are you telling me you can see what they sound like?”

“Yes, sir—more or less. God, they’re everywhere!”

“Data,” Picard urged.

“I have it, sir. One moment,” Data said as he worked furiously on the computer sensory adjustment, then struck a final pressure point and looked up at the viewscreen.

The visual of the bridge was chilling. Each saw himself, in place, as each was now. All appeared normal, all things right. Their bridge monitors were flicking the usual status displays, the beige carpeting, the bands of color on Wesley’s gray shirt, and the officers’ red and black, gold and black, or azure and black uniforms showing that the colors were right and the picture crisp—not very reassuring at the moment.

On the starboard bridge, specters walked. Over a dozen humanoid shapes glowed yellowish white, flat as X-ray diffraction images. Form, movement, shape, without definition, without depth, glassy human shapes moving behind a curtain of spectral impulses, outlined by a sizzling blue thread. Some were moving catatonically, milling back and forth on the ramp and in front of the big viewscreen and in the command arena. Some stood still, as though looking back at Riker as he dared approach the monitor, absorbing what he saw. He was looking into a mirror and there were images staring back at him that were beside him in the room.

He spun, scanning a starboard bridge that looked empty. His throat tightened and held back his one effort to speak. All he could do was watch as Captain Picard turned away from the monitor and also scanned what could not be seen by the naked human eye. Unlike everyone else, who had sidled away from that side of the bridge, Picard now moved toward it, his face a granite challenge.

“Open all frequencies. Tie in translator.” He waited only an instant for the click-beep that told him Tasha had shaken from her chill and complied. He raised his voice. “This is Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the United Federation of Planets. You are invading my ship without invitation. What is your purpose here?”

There was nothing. Riker kept his eyes on the shapes in the monitor, no matter that the hairs rose on the back of his neck because he knew they were right behind him.

“We request that you communicate with us,” Picard said forcefully. “State your intentions immediately.”

Riker watched the monitor, unable to look at the vacant deck, and his skin crawled. Two of the X-ray images began to move toward Picard, one from the side, one from behind.

Riker bolted. “Captain!”

He got the captain’s arm between both hands and pulled him aside, the urgent dance putting Riker between the captain and the approaching specters. Within a second, Worf dropped onto the command deck beside him, and above them Yar had drawn her phaser. In a purely human manner, Riker swiveled his head around, looking for what couldn’t be seen, and his stomach contracted as he waited for blows from invisible hands.

Then—

“They’re gone . . . ”

LaForge spoke up clearly enough to make everyone really nervous.

Riker didn’t believe it. Gut feeling told him otherwise.

But the captain trusted the wavelength-sensitive monitor that now showed only himself and his own crew occupying the bridge. Yet even he couldn’t avoid a surreptitious glance about the deck.

“All right, Mr. Riker,” he murmured then, “at ease.”

But no one was at ease. No one at all.

Wesley Crusher tightened his young eyes and whispered, “The ship is haunted . . . ”