"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 surrept.i.tious 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 ... "

Chapter Four.

"HAUNTED," CAPTAIN PICARD snorted. "Superst.i.tious claptrap. Belay that att.i.tude, ensign."

He moved to the command center, not quite ready to sit down, plagued by the sensation that those ent.i.ties were still walking around him. He cast an intolerant glance at Wesley Crusher, communicating that all they needed now was the wisdom of a teenager to gum up the works. As he caught Wesley's whipped-puppy expression, Picard felt once again the sting of his decision to make Wesley an ensign, a decision no good parent would make, yet one that he, as a man who had never had children, had made without realizing the consequences. He should have known better, for as commanding officer he was indeed the father of all his crew and complement. Wesley's face was the face of a child; no seasoned officer would take the reprimand so personally. And having given it, Picard could not take it back.

There were many things which could not be taken back. Such an error and a disservice, promoting the boy to the bridge so early, without the earning. Not so much a disservice to the bridge, but to the boy.

Picard watched the viewscreen, turning away from the young face that occupied his mind now.

Yes, promoting Wesley to the bridge had aroused the resentment of Starfleet officers who might not be as brilliant but might be more deserving. Wesley Crusher had become the supreme knick-knack- a pretty display of talent, but not really functional. Anything he did on the bridge had to be monitored, no matter that he could calculate things inside his head sometimes before the computer made its reports. That was just how it was.

And why did I do that to him? Picard wondered, letting the familiar thought roll through his mind all in that one glance. Do I feel so responsible for his father's death? Do I owe Jack Crusher so much for the mistake that killed him ... that I would make another mistake with his son? Am I so anxious to gain the grat.i.tude of this boy's mother that I would use his brilliance to showcase my good will? And now I risk destroying his distorted image of himself if I withdraw his status as acting ensign and put him back where he belongs ... Ah, Picard, tu t'es fait avoir.

He sighed, and turned to his command crew. "All right. Ensign Crusher says ghosts. It's as good a starting point as any."

Worf's Klingon brow puckered. "But, sir, ghosts are fables!"

"Perhaps so, from a metaphysical perspective," Picard said evenly and without a pause. "But we're not going to address that. We're going to approach them from a wholly scientific vantage. Disband all thoughts of wraiths and think in terms of alternate lifeforms and mind forms. Mr. Data, what can you give me on that?"

Caught off guard by having so folklorish a subject cast at him, Data blinked and appeared suddenly helpless.

Riker stepped in, knowing better, but still not fast enough to stop himself. "An android wouldn't know anything about life, sir, much less the occult."

The captain's eyes struck him like blades. "I'm talking about spectral apparitions, Riker, and you are out of line with that remark. Aren't you?"

Bruised, Riker nodded smartly. "Yes, sir, I guess I am."

"I asked Data a question."

Data may or may not have appreciated the dressing-down on his behalf, but the fact was he found himself floundering on such a subject. To a being for whom knowledge had always meant plain facts, this mystical concept was quicksand. Very conscious of the attention he was getting, Data glanced at Riker, straightened a little, and spoke.

"Sir," he began, "I would postulate that, since the lifeforms were picked up by Geordi's visor and then by the recalibrated bridge sensors, they are not foibles of Earth thaumaturgy, but indeed of a substantive hylozoic const.i.tuence."

Picard's mouth crumpled. "What?"

"They're real."

"Oh. You might've said so."

"Sorry, sir."

"What you mean," Picard continued, "is that something incorporeal need not be unalive. Traditionally, ghosts are unalive. These beings aren't."

Data c.o.c.ked his head. "Difficult to say, sir. That transgresses into the realm of semantics. We would have to isolate what it means ... to be alive."

The android's sudden discomfort with those words drew Picard's attention once again to his eyes, to the boyish innocence of a being who had gone all the way through Starfleet Academy, spent a dozen years on Starfleet vessels, yet somehow remained the quintessence of ignorance. Data would have to have that word applied to him ... but no book learning, regardless of its extent, could replace the priceless pleasures and brutalities of living interaction.

"Do we have an a.n.a.lysis from the science labs yet?" the captain asked.

Data played with the computer board nearest him and accessed the information as it was fed back to him through the computer's sophisticated comparative-a.n.a.lysis system, then said, "They seem to be some sort of phased energy, sir."

"What does that mean?"

"Apparently they exist here in pulses. Here and not here. They don't always exist in one place. It's not energy as we commonly define it. It is more like a proto-energy. It has some of the properties of energy and matter, yet sometimes none of those. It seems unfamiliar to our science." Data looked up. "Apparently stability is not their forte."

"That's an interesting nona.n.a.lysis, Mr. Data. Seems to me the computer is turning backflips to avoid admitting that it doesn't know."

"At the moment, I cannot blame it, sir."

Picard gave him an acid glare, but was pleasantly distracted when Troi came to him, deliberately holding her hands clasped before her, evidence of her effort to keep control. "Sir ... "

"Go on, Counselor, nothing's too outlandish at this point."

"If they are ... ghosts-that is, the remaining mental matter of deceased physical forms," she said, "can they be destroyed?"

"Destroyed." Picard tasted the word. "You mean killed, don't you? To be able to be killed is one of the signs of life."

Moved by his blunt response to the problem, Troi forced herself to push the point. "And if they can be killed, does that mean they're alive?"

"No one has talked about punitive action yet, Counselor," the captain said. "But these images of destruction you're receiving," he added. "I can't dismiss those."

From her expression they could see she wasn't trying to split hairs; the question was very urgent to her, a true matter of life and death. "Yes, sir, I know. But I'm desperate that my perceptions not be misread. I don't trust myself to a.n.a.lyze them yet. I wouldn't want you to take punitive action before it's warranted, just because of me."

"Are you saying you do sense a danger to us?"

Frustrated, she tilted her head and sighed. "I'm trying not to say it, but I'm also afraid not to. If you understand me ... "

"Oh, I think I understand. These ent.i.ties exist on a plane so different from our own that their very existence may endanger us. We've run into that sort of thing before in Federation expansion."

"Yes, sir, that's what I mean," Troi said anxiously. "Even if they pose a danger to us, do they deserve to be killed when all they've done is trespa.s.s onto the ship?"

"Mmmm," Picard murmured. "And will they be as generous when discussing us, I wonder." He paced around her, contemplating the carpet. "I'll keep all that in mind. Whatever the case, I will not allow my crew to succ.u.mb to superst.i.tion. We will find the answers, and they will be scientifically based."

Troi straightened her spine. "Yes, sir."

"Yes, sir," Data said, turning to his console.

"I agree, sir," Riker said. "Whoever these beings are, we have to a.s.sume they're sentient, and that they have intentions that we'll have to figure out before we can act."

"Yes," Picard murmured. "And the question remains," he added softly, scanning the bridge, now as eerie and silent as a graveyard at dawn, "what are they doing here?"

The words put a pool of ice water around all their feet. The captain didn't wait for it to warm.

"Mr. Riker, my ready room. I'll have a word with you."

Riker forced himself to follow the captain's retreating form into the private room off the bridge. No sooner had the door brushed shut behind him than the captain froze him in place with a lofty glare.

"You undermined my authority, Mr. Riker."

Trying to replay the past moments in his mind without the jitters that still ran the deck on the other side of that door, Riker asked, "Did I, sir?"

The captain stood with his compact frame backdropped by the viewport's starscape, appearing quite the n.o.bleman among the peerage. "You did."

Inclining his head, Riker offered, "But I saw those forms closing in on you. I didn't know what they intended."

"You needn't have done your Olympic pole vault on my account," the captain said. "A simple word of warning would have been sufficient."

Squaring his shoulders-but not too much-Riker proclaimed, "It's my job to protect you, sir."

"Yes, I know that's the official story," Picard said. "When you've come back alive as many times as I have, you'll earn the right to have someone look after you as well. I'll thank you to allow me the dignity of taking my own punches from now on. Dismissed."

"Geordi, look at this. Geordi, look at that. Geordi, tell us what this is made of. Geordi, look through walls like Superman. Sure, no problem, I'll look. All I am is what I look through."

"Take it easy," Beverly Crusher murmured as she adjusted the tiny filter on the miniaturized low-power sensory compensator in LaForge's visor. "You know, you should have a medical engineer doing this."

"No thanks," the young man grumbled, blinking his flat gray unseeing eyes at her, trying to imagine what she really looked like-really.

"And you should have rested after what happened on the bridge," she told him evenly. "You can't ask your body to power this sensor system to that level without letting yourself rest. That's why it hurts you so much, Geordi. You're unremitting."

He nodded his cocoa-dark head in her general direction and said, "I don't mind the hurt. I can't just leave my post. But somehow I expected a little more appreciation from people who were stationed on Enterprise. I just a.s.sumed anybody who could get a.s.signed to this ship would be a little more up to date than the run-of-the-mill ship's crew." He closed his eyes tight against the pounding headache and rubbed his hand across them, waiting for the medication to work. "Riker just expected me to tell him. It's not that easy. I can't just glance at things like you can. I can't just pop out with words for the sensory impulses that make my brain act like a computer interpreter. Do you know that at close range a computer with a sensory readout can't match me? It'll miss or misinterpret things, because a machine doesn't understand things like I do."

"That's because it doesn't have the intuitive sense for interpreting what it sees," Crusher told him placidly. "You should be proud of that."

"I am," he insisted. "But I didn't know what those forms on the bridge were any more than anybody else did, including Mr. Riker. When people look at me, they don't see me. They just see that thing." He cast his hand in her direction, encompa.s.sing all of her and the item she held.

"They don't understand," the doctor said, "and you can't expect them to. They aren't going to understand how much it takes out of you to make this visor work."

"I know!" he shot back with a frustrated slap of his hand on his knee. "I know ... but it's hard to be reasonable sometimes, specially when everybody's kicking off a Geordi-what-do-you-see. They don't know what it took to learn to interpret all the information I get out of every square inch I see. I'm not a machine, doc, you know? My brain wasn't made to do this. It's not like I look at a thing and a dozen little labels appear to tell me what it's made of. I had to learn what every impulse meant, every vibration, every flicker, every filter, every layer of spectral matter ... people don't know what it takes out of me to say, 'I don't know what it is.' "

Crusher stopped her adjusting and paused to gaze at him, suddenly moved by her ability to simply do that. Because he was blind now, without his prosthetic, he didn't see her pause. He didn't-couldn't-see anything. And she was glad of it.

"It's not easy, you know," he went on. "It took years of retraining-painful retraining-to make my brain do this. A human brain is never meant by nature to do what mine's doing. And every time I have to say, 'I don't know' or 'I've never seen anything like this before,' it goes through me like a steel bolt. It means I'm truly blind."

"Oh, Geordi ... " Crusher murmured.

"Sometimes," he said, "I go through twenty or thirty levels of a.n.a.lysis and every one takes a piece out of me. When I can't tell what it is I'm seeing, it's not like a sighted person looking at a box and not being able to see what's inside. It's like holding your breath and diving deeper and deeper, no matter how much it hurts ... and when you can't touch bottom, you still have to plow back to the surface before your lungs explode ... oh, I can't explain it; I can't make you see."

He reached out in his blindness and by instinct alone he found the visor she held as she stood nearby-a blind man's instinct that told him where her hands were-and with his artificial eyes back in his own hand he slid from the table and somehow found the door. As it opened for him he went flawlessly through it, homing in on the sound and the faint gush of air from the corridor, as though to show her he could be a whole person without the burden of his high-tech crutch.

"Geordi," Crusher called after him, but she did so only halfheartedly, for she had no words to help him. She winced as Riker appeared out of nowhere and Geordi b.u.mped into him. It would've been such a smooth exit otherwise ...

"Lieutenant-" Riker started to greet, then simply gaped as LaForge plowed past him without even a "sorry, sir." After Geordi rounded the arch of the corridor and disappeared, Riker crooked a thumb in that direction as he came into the sickbay. "What's eating him?"

"You are." Crusher folded her arms and sighed.

"I am? How'd I get into this?"

"Funny you should ask." She grasped his arm and drew him into the sickbay, then planted him in the nearest chair and a.s.sumed her lecture position-any parent knows it. Sliding her narrow thigh up onto an exam table, she broached the subject with a practiced look of sternness. "He's a little bothered by that episode on the bridge."

"He told you about that ... okay, I'll bite," Riker said. "Why's it bothering him?"

Beverly Crusher's lovely art deco features were marred by the situation. "You sure you want to know?"

Frustrated, Riker held his hands out. "When did I start looking so aloof to everybody? I want to know."

"That's not what you came down here for."

"No," he admitted. "I came down because I knew LaForge was here and I wanted an a.n.a.lysis of physical composition of those life images. I figure he's the best man to do it."

"I think you'd better get Data to do it."

"Why? All of a sudden, everybody's functioning at half power. Isn't Geordi LaForge the expert on spectroscopy?"

"Only by necessity," she said, "not by choice."

Riker looked at her; just looked at her. Then he shook his head. "You're mad at me. Been conniving with the captain?"

Suddenly a common thread looped around them and Crusher's lips curved into an understanding grin. "Oh ... I see. No, I'm not mad at you. But let me give you a bit of advice."

"Please!"