"You're empathizing with Captain Reykov, then?" Picard surmised.

"At times," she answered. "His is the strongest personality. But, sir ... there are many others. Many others. Those sharp visions are clouded over by uncountable life forces around the phenomenon. Not in it, but existing in a halo all around it, as though drawn through s.p.a.ce wherever it goes."

"Are they prisoners?"

As Picard shot those blunt words at her, Troi flinched. She settled back in her chair, almost as though to remove herself, and dropped all emotion from her Mediterranean features and those inkdrop Betazoid eyes. "Are you asking me to theorize, sir?"

"I'm asking you to help me formulate a plan of action," he said, "or at least a plan of approach."

"Yes," she murmured. "Rather than helping, I've put you in a difficult position this time."

"It's not your fault, Deanna," Crusher said.

"Not at all," Picard echoed.

Troi searched her telepathic self for more from him, but the captain was not a man whose feelings gave up their shields easily. She sensed his resistance of her probe, a resistance as refined as he himself was, and respectfully drew back within herself.

"If these life essences are prisoners, as you suggest, and we destroy the prison," she continued, "will we be committing murder?"

With that question, she cut to the core of Picard's problem. He studied her. She was graceful, thoughtful, exotic-yes, that was the word for her-and so concerned, yet as helpless as the rest of them.

"You do have an artistic curve to your clinical self, don't you, Counselor?" he observed softly. "I realize your task is a strain. But mine is too. If our only chance of survival is to destroy those thousands or millions of minds you sense, what do I do? Save or sacrifice? Whose lives are forfeit?"

"That's the one flaw in the Prime Directive, Jean-Luc," Crusher said. "When interfering with another culture is the only way to save the lives you've been entrusted with-I don't know what I'd do either. Count heads and see who has more lives to save?"

The captain leaned back and ran his knuckle along his lower lip. "From what the counselor says, that puts us in a rather noticeable minority." He tapped the nearest intercom on the desktop and said, "Picard to bridge. What's the status up there?"

"Unchanged on the thing, sir," Yar reported. "Ship's condition is improving, but we're having to task many systems to reestablish power to the shields. Everything's strained, including warp power."

"Charming," Picard responded. "They're going to have to work faster."

"Yes, sir, I'd like to see that myself."

"Picard out. Counselor, do you have anything, anything more concrete to say?"

Troi sighed. "I've been trying to isolate the impressions, to see if they're only memories of lifeforms or actual life essences, but so far I have no specifics to offer."

"It's you I'm worried about," Crusher told her.

Troi's mouth bowed. "You're kind. But if I can't use my abilities to the good of the ship-"

"You know what I'm talking about," the doctor interrupted. "The inherent danger of telepathy. If other telepaths are more overbearing than you are, the force of their minds could damage you, Deanna. And I can't put a bandage on your mind."

"I've tried to close my mind, but they batter through my barriers-"

"Are you telling me these things could present an actual danger to you?" Picard suddenly roared.

Startled, Troi clamped her mouth shut and stared at the whole prospect. She hadn't yet heard it put into words, and it didn't sound very good.

"This whole business worries me," Crusher said. "After what Wesley described to me, I'd have suggested a ma.s.s delusion if it hadn't come over the computer screen. That element adds a frightening scientific reality to all this. Oh ... Captain, Wesley asked that I apologize to you on his behalf."

Picard puzzled this for a moment, then asked, "Whatever for?"

Crusher blinked. "I don't know. I thought you did."

After a moment he shook his head. "Don't recall anything particular, doctor."

She shrugged, embarra.s.sed. "I see. Then the apology is mine. Wesley's at that age where he thinks all adults are prejudiced against children."

Picard c.o.c.ked his hand toward her and mused, "Of course we are. They're children. They have to grow out of it. No one expects any more, or any less. When they're adults, they won't be children anymore. And there'll be new prejudices for them to ford."

"You mean like those against superior officers?"

"Yes." He chuckled, his mouth lengthening into a melancholy grin. The change in mood cleared his head, and he found the difficult situation a little easier to accept.

Troi turned to gaze out the viewport, waiting for the moment to end. And those against telepaths. To offer unclarity in place of another unclarity-to replace ignorance with ambiguity-is this my only service?

"If these beings are prisoners," Picard mused, "then they become my responsibility as well. I wonder if I have the right to decide on their behalf. We're going to have to increase our efforts to communicate with them somehow."

Troi looked at him, her fears returning. "But that requires power, sir. The ent.i.ty could focus on it and destroy us."

Crusher spoke up. "And there's something else." The captain tried not to sound weary. "Yes, doctor?"

She dropped her gaze to the desktop for a moment. When she looked up again, she met Jean-Luc Picard's eyes squarely. "What do we do if they simply will not negotiate with us?" she asked. "You know what they say about the road to h.e.l.l."

"Curious that Counselor Troi would have been focused upon by an electromagnetic disturbance."

"Keep your mind on your work," Riker grumbled at the android's comment. Irritation skittered through him as his hand hovered an inch from the intercom, an inch from calling sickbay. There was Data, a few steps away. Still walking around after that attack. Just shook it off. And Deanna was in sickbay, fighting for control of her mind.

Data looked up from the readout screen. "My mind is always on my work, Commander. You see, I have a multiphase memory core which allows me to-"

"I don't care," Riker heard himself bite back. "I'm really not interested."

Data's brows poked up over his nose. "Perhaps if I explained on a simpler level-"

His back cramping, Riker straightened and glared into Data's yellow eyes. "Would you mind?"

"Not at all, sir," the android responded amicably. "The concept behind my special multiphase brain capacity is-"

"That's not what I meant!"

"Isn't it, sir? It is what you said."

Geordi reached over and tugged on the android's sleeve. "Don't push the issue, Data. Mr. Riker wants reports exclusively on the disturbance and its source."

With a childish blink, Data said, "Oh. No sweat." He pivoted and bent once again over the screen. "The phenomenon's physical makeup is confusing to the pa.s.sive sensors. There is little for the sensors to focus upon because the ent.i.ty is out of phase as often as in. Ent.i.ty or mechanism, I cannot define it."

Standing between Riker and Geordi as they each bent over different computer access panels, Data indulged in an all-too-human frown at the graphics that danced at him there.

To his right, Riker furiously went on hammering the pressure points of the molecular microelectronics board. "Let's start by using the most obvious criterion of life," he suggested. "Are there any signs of organism? Skin? Bones? Cells? Anything?"

"Organism neither suggests nor precludes life, sir. I am partly organic, but also mechanical-"

"Don't take everything so literally, Data," Riker snapped. "I want a starting point. I'm not saying all lifeforms are organic. This is just a process of elimination. I know perfectly well that life isn't physical components alone. We can keep a body alive indefinitely, but that's not life. Not human life, anyway. Get back on those instruments and interpret what you read."

He tightened his left hand into a ball and felt the sweat squish in his palm. A tangible enemy was one thing; he could deal with that. But all this business of life and nonlife, this wrestling to grab a definition so they could know whether or not they were killing something when they fought to save their own skins ... I hate this. And I hate the position I'm in. Advise the captain? How? Help him fight this thing? How?

His hands might as well be strapped to his sides. As first officer, he might as well be nothing. First officer was the supreme go-fer of all time. Not a scientist, not a tactical expert, not a psychologist-nothing specific, and yet a little of everything, anything the captain needed him to be at the moment. What would it be the next time? Would he be ready? Frustration gnawed at him.

Picard ... d.a.m.n him. Figure out a way to fight the phenomenon. That's all. Easy. Yes, sir, right away, sir.

"These readings defy interpretation."

Data's voice grated across Riker's nerves. That tone of his, that take-it-or-leave-it tone ...

"But if I must verbalize, I would say the phenomenon is behaving in a pseudo-mechanical manner."

"Try to be specific, will you?" Riker barked, his tolerance straining.

"Always. It's made up of individual energy components, but it acts like neither a machine nor a being. It seems to be a living tool-something fabricated at so high a level of engineering that it's virtually a lifeform."

"Sounds familiar," Geordi grumbled.

Data glanced at him, his mouth open, but he still stung from Riker's demand and continued on that tack. "I'm reading high-potency disruptive energies. As soon as it finds us, it could rub us out."

Riker straightened sharply. "Stop doing that."

Data's eyes flickered as he raised his head. "Sir?"

"You're annoying the h.e.l.l out of me. You're distracting everyone with that kind of speech. Cut it out."

"Slang, sir. Colloquial terminol-"

"It's insulting."

"I ... beg your pardon? I am trying to be more human."

Data backed up against the panel as Riker closed in on him, and he could see that somehow he had infuriated the first officer.

"You're never going to be human," Riker ground out. "You're not human. You don't seem to get the difference between being human and mimicking humans. You can't be creative because you only see the affectation and none of the substance. You're missing life. Until you learn the difference, you'll always be a puppet."

"Sir-" Geordi appeared beside them. "He's only trying to-"

"I know what he's trying to do," Riker snapped.

They were all silent for a moment.

A look of deep injury crossed Data's face and he glanced at Geordi, then back to Riker. "I ... I am only attempting to improve myself ... to serve in the best-"

"Then serve," Riker blurted. "Put yourself to use in your true capacity. You're an android. Use that to its best advantage and quit trying to be something you're not. Give us something to work with if you can. Provide something for me to take back to the captain that'll help us out of this." He took a step even closer, an intimidating step that backed Data tighter against the panel. "If that ent.i.ty attacks again, I want you to give in to it. See if you can interface with it."

Data's pale brows drew tight over his nose, raised slightly in a delicate expression, proof-at least to Geordi-that somewhere under the voltage were feelings that could be hurt. In a near whisper, he responded, "I promise to try, sir." Unable to meet Riker's eyes, anymore, he slipped past Geordi and strode quickly toward the spectrometry lab. A breath of the door, and he was gone.

Riker watched him go, saw the tension in synthetic shoulders and the kind of stride a human walks when he's trying to keep from running. Burned into his memory were Data's android eyes tightened in that expression of humility and distress, an expression that said he hadn't meant to offend anyone. Riker leaned after the android as if drawn by sudden obligation. He might have taken a step.

Had Geordi not drawn his attention.

"If he gives into that kind of attack," the navigator said, "he'll be risking his life, Mr. Riker."

Gaining control over his voice, Riker quietly said, "I'm afraid that may be our best chance to save ourselves." He turned toward the monitors again, only to find himself blocked off as Geordi shouldered in front of him.

"So that's okay, then? Sacrifice Data because he's not alive?"

"Look, Geordi, I don't-"

"Are you telling me it isn't true that you always choose him for away missions because he's more expendable?"

Riker glared into the thin metallic visor and imagined the tension around LaForge's blind eyes. "As you were, Lieutenant."

"Would you try as hard to save his life as you tried to save mine on the bridge?"

"Man your post, mister!"

LaForge hesitated a telling moment, then stepped back, the muscles in his neck twitching, his arms like tree limbs at his sides. "Aye, sir. Anything you say."

Chapter Six.

THE GREAT WARRIOR prowled his technology's ramparts, slowly gaining a foothold. He smelled battle. He tasted the raw meat of challenge upon his tongue like blood and ripped flesh. He heard the howl in his mind, the song of warriors shrieking through his instincts, and he couldn't abide the price of peace. He knew, deep in his soul, that there would be trouble long before there was peace, and every fiber of his being prepared for it now, lest he be surprised later.

"Worf."

Only great effort blocked the growl of response and replaced it with a civilized word. "Yes?"

"The captain'll want a report when he gets back up here."

Worf turned to the supple feminine body and the storybook face over it. She looked like a girl who was dressed as a boy. A girl from the stories his adoptive human parents once told him, stories that never satisfied his hunger for adventure. Very young was he when his Starfleet parents gave up telling him stories of girls who dressed as boys to fool the churchgoers and replaced them with meatier tales by Bram Stoker, Melville, Dumas, Stervasney, and Kryo to satisfy their rare son. Those he could chew. Those made him howl.

"He will not be happy with what we have to say, Tasha," he told her, quieting his thunderous voice as they stood together on the upper deck, buffered from the bridge by the tactical station a few steps forward.

"I know," she agreed. Beneath the lemon cuff of her hair, clear gray eyes kinked at the prospect of facing Picard. "I've been doing a study and you're right. That thing's working a pattern all right, but the pattern does have some random movements in it. It must be designed to be unpredictable."

"Yes, I've seen it," was his husky ba.s.s agreement. "It's working out a search that's deliberately hard to evade. It gives us less than a fifty percent chance of escape."