"Lovely," said Robinson.

Picard glanced at him. "Indeed. It was only after long years of chaos and unrestrained brutality that a strange, new caste emerged among the Abinarri. The data we had didn't tell us how or why, but it did say these people were known as the Lawmakers."

"Apt," said Bo'tex.

Dravvin rolled his eyes. "If rather obvious."

Picard continued. "The Lawmakers decided that their people were incorrigible. Unless an elaborate system of laws was inst.i.tuted, the Abinarri would simply destroy one another."

"And how were these laws to be enforced?" asked Flenarrh.

"At the point of a spear," Picard told him. "At least, at first. But after a while, the laws simply became the laws, and people obeyed them. Again, our information was incomplete on this point. But two things were clear to us: Chaos gave way to order, and civilization thrived."

"By all accounts," Bo'tex remarked, "a good thing."

The gecko blinked. No doubt, he thought so, too.

"In any case," Picard said, "the Abinarri came to understand the world around them as never before. They produced superior scientists and philosophers, painters and musicians ..."

"And writers?" the Captain of the Kalliope suggested.

"Those as well," said Picard. "But the Lawmakers who had eliminated the earliest obstacles to civilization and were therefore still venerated were needed less and less as time went on."

Robinson grunted. "No doubt, a difficult pill to swallow."

"So difficult," Picard noted, "that the Lawmakers refused to recognize the fact. Instead, in the grand tradition of self-perpetuating inst.i.tutions, they went on creating law after superfluous law. Before long, they had rendered the Abinarri system of justice nearly impossible to understand and even more impossible to apply."

The Captain of the Kalliope frowned. "I can only imagine what this did to personal freedoms."

"As you suggest," said Picard, "it trampled them. It ground them down, spit them out, and made people forget they ever existed. Finally, the time came when there were no Abinarri behaviors left to be prescribed, no Abinarri freedoms left to curtail or regulate."

"And?" Flenarrh asked, apparently sensing there was more.

"And," said Picard, "that was the day the Lawmakers looked up and gazed greedily at the heavens."

Robinson sighed. "It's an old story, I'm afraid. When you're finished oppressing your own people, you set your sights on oppressing others. On my world, we called it colonization."

"A good a.n.a.logy," Picard mused.

Dravvin eyed him. "I take it the Abinarri had begun to explore s.p.a.ce by that time?"

"Yes," said Picard, "though they had yet to make contact with other self-aware species. Under sudden pressure from the Lawmakers, their stellar expansion program was drastically accelerated. All Abinarri resources and technologies came to be focused on the n.o.ble effort to find sentient beings on distant worlds."

Robinson chuckled mirthlessly in his great, white beard. "So they could impart the beneficial Rule of Law to the infidel."

Picard nodded. "And that is what they did. They found any number of civilizations, conquered them, and imposed their statutes on them. Where Abinarri statutes didn't seem to apply, the Lawmakers were only too happy to make up new ones."

"How interesting," said Flenarrh.

"Yes," Dravvin replied sardonically. "Especially for all those species the Abinarri were generous enough to subjugate. Those people must have found the situation extremely interesting."

Picard looked at the Rythrian. It was only natural that he should make such a comment. His people had labored under an off-world tyrant for nearly a decade in the early part of the twenty-fourth century.

"At any rate," said Picard, "that is the way matters had proceeded in that universe for well over two hundred years. The Abinarri had taken control of world after world, star system after star system, all for the purpose of spreading their gospel of Law. And no one had had the wherewithal to stand against them."

"Until you came along," said Bo'tex.

Picard shook his head. "We only succeeded in winning a skirmish. The Abinarri barely felt our pa.s.sage."

Suddenly, Hompaq made their table shudder with a thunderous blow. Everyone looked at her.

"I have heard enough about these Abinarri," she said. "If they are inferior warriors, as your account suggests, they are beneath my notice." She leaned forward, her lips pulling back ferociously from her teeth. "Tell me instead about the h.o.a.rd of Dujonian."

Picard smiled. "Rest a.s.sured, Captain Hompaq, the h.o.a.rd was still very much on our minds and even more so on the minds of our crew."

"But did you find it?" the Caxtonian asked.

"A fair question," Dravvin judged.

"You'll learn that soon enough," Picard told him. "After all, we're coming to the most important part of the story."

The Tale WORF AND I could have continued to study the Abinarri all day. However, our rest period was over before we knew it. I replaced Thadoc at the helm and Worf took back the tactical station from Dunwoody.

As I got myself settled, I found the stars sailing by me as they did when I was on the bridge of the Enterprise. I found myself thinking about my Starfleet crew, wondering how things were going for them.

I had no doubt they were doing fine without me. My executive officer was more than capable of running a starship on his own, and the rest of my staff was seasoned as well.

Still, I dwelled on each one of them. I couldn't help it. I was, after all, their captain.

One of them in particular kept turning up in my thoughts. His name was Data and he was my second officer. He was also an android that is, an artificial being created in the mold of a man who was discovered by Starfleet on a world called Omicron Theta in the year 2338.

Data was the superior of any human in almost every way one could name. For one thing, he was eminently more durable than any man or woman. For another, he could survive indefinitely without food or air.

Data could exercise superhuman strength and incredible quickness when the need arose. His mind could race at computer-like speeds. But since the day I met him, he had aspired to only one thing the single aspect of the human condition denied to him.

In short, he wished to experience emotions. Human emotions.

For a long time, it seemed such an experience was beyond Data's reach. Then it came to light that his creator, Dr. Noonien Soong, had manufactured a positronic chip that would grant the android his fondest wish.

By inserting the chip into his brain, the android could know love, rage, happiness, jealousy the gamut of human feelings. However, as great opportunities often do, this one came with a terribly steep price.

As you can imagine, a human overcome by emotion might injure his or her companion. But an android overcome in such a way would almost certainly kill that companion. And so it would be with Data.

All too aware of this danger, he chose not to insert the emotion chip his legacy and only route to real happiness. Instead, he placed it in a safe place in his quarters on the EnterpriseD.

Perhaps one day, Data would incorporate the chip into his positronic matrix and discover what it was like to be a human being the joys and the sorrows, the delights and the disappointments, the pride and the pain. But for the time being, he took his responsibilities to others more seriously than his hopes and dreams.

It was a brave decision. I believed that at the time Data made it, and I believed it still as I sat there on the bridge of the warbird with Abby Brant at my side.

I hoped that, under similar circ.u.mstances, I would have the courage and the wisdom to make the right choice as it seemed to me Data had.

Putting the android aside for the moment, I checked my Romulan instrument panel. I found we were on the brink of the system we had made our destination. Its outermost planets were almost in our grasp.

Abby had noticed, too. "Slow to warp factor one," she told me.

"Aye," I replied, and did as she said.

She then asked Thadoc to set a course for the sixth planet from the sun. It was one of the two spheres we had noticed earlier that appeared capable of supporting life.

At warp one, which was equivalent to the speed of light, it would take us another couple of hours to reach the sixth planet. Still, it was prudent not to go in any faster.

One never knew what sorts of complex gravitic relationships one might find in an uncharted solar system, especially one with seventeen planets whirling around it. And as comfortable as I now felt at the helm of the warbird, it was still an alien vessel, with eccentricities that might manifest themselves at the most inopportune times.

As it happened, the time pa.s.sed quickly for me, at least. The deeper we delved into the system, the more I was able to learn about the various bodies that comprised it.

For instance, the smallest worlds were either the closest to their sun or the farthest away from it a common configuration. However, what was far from common was the size of the planets in the middle distance.

In most cases, the largest world in a system is no more than thirty times the size of its smallest sister planet. As captains of s.p.a.cegoing vessels, you are no doubt aware of this.

In this system, two worlds both of them gas giants drastically exceeded the traditional proportion. The ninth planet from the sun was almost two hundred times the ma.s.s of the first planet and the tenth planet was an incredible seven times as ma.s.sive as the ninth.

I couldn't help speculating. After all, when gas giants of that size collide, as the proximity of these two suggested they might someday, the greater one has a chance to grow heavy enough to begin fusion.

If that happened, it would be reborn not as a planet, but as a star, blazing within the formerly ordered bounds of an existing solar system. The term for it was super-Jovian planet ignition. Its result? Cataclysmic, in the case of systems with populated worlds.

First, the clash of the two gas giants would create new gravitic relationships. Other planets would be realigned, perhaps crash into each other or be drawn into their new sun. And those events, of course, would give rise to still further changes.

Second, whatever life may have existed on planets proximate to the new sun would be destroyed. Either they would be baked to death or perish from an excess of ultraviolet radiation.

This gave me yet another reason to glance over my shoulder at Worf every so often, it being his job to conduct long-range scans of the solar system. I wished to know if there were sentient life-forms on the planets we had made our destinations and to estimate their chances of survival in the event of a super-Jovian planet ignition.

Not because I thought we would be able to help them. That would be an impossibility, since the ignition would take place eons hence if at all. I simply had a need to know.

It was the same impulse that had compelled me to explore s.p.a.ce in the first place. I longed to know things about distant places. No doubt, you have all felt the same way at one time or another.

It is, after all, why we are what we are.

Finally, Worf looked up from his console but not to report on the planet to which we were headed. "I have located a vessel," he said.

Abby looked at him. "A vessel?"

The Klingon nodded his s.h.a.ggy head. "It is of Orion manufacture."

I could see the excitement in Abby's face. And the urgency. More than likely, this was the vessel of the mercenaries who had abducted her brother.

"Where is it?" she asked.

"In orbit," he replied, checking his instruments again. "Around the fourth planet from the sun."

She didn't hesitate. "Set a new course, Mr. Thadoc."

"Aye, Captain," came the reply.

Abby turned to me. "Take her in, Picard. Full impulse."

"Full impulse," I acknowledged.

We found ourselves approaching the fourth planet in the system. It was small, mountainous, and mostly barren, with but a single small ocean. Still, it was what we in Starfleet would have called a Cla.s.s M world one that possessed an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere not unlike Earth's and was generally suitable for human habitation.

Soon, Worf was able to tell us something new. "Sensors show humanoid life-forms aboard the vessel. Twenty-two of them in all. However ..." He looked up first at me, and then at Abby. "None of them resemble any species known to the Federation."

Abby frowned, no doubt wondering what to make of the information. Unfortunately, I was unable to help her.

Up to that point, we believed Richard Brant had been kidnapped by mercenaries from our universe. Nor could we rule that out, given the presence here of an Orion s.p.a.cecraft.

Now it seemed possible that Brant's abductors had been denizens of this universe either working on their own or in concert with the mercenaries we suspected earlier. The plot was thickening.

Abruptly, Worf spoke up again. "Captain Brant, I am receiving a message for you. Eyes only."

Abby's eyes narrowed. "For me? From the ship?"

The Klingon shook his head from side to side. "From the fourth planet. Do you wish to view it in private?"

She considered her options for a moment. "No," she said at last, "I'll take it at the captain's chair."

"Acknowledged," Worf replied. He did what he had to in order to send the message along.

Abby took the captain's seat and turned to one of the monitors in her armrests. For a moment or two, her expression remained wary and uncertain. Then it began to change.

Abby's mouth quirked at one corner. Then, slowly and subtly, a smile began to spread across her face. It was a beautiful smile, too all the more so for its rarity.

"What is it?" I asked from my position at the helm.

She didn't answer my question.

"Captain?" said Thadoc.

Finally, Abby looked up. "We're beaming down," she said evenly.

"Who is?" asked her helmsman.

She thought about it but only for a moment. "I am," she replied. Abby turned to me, still beaming. "Picard, too."

"I am?" I said.

I wished I knew what she had in mind. But then, I hadn't seen her monitor or the message on it.