"Denied," Dax said. "I need you on the ship, a.n.a.lyzing the data we have in hand."

Disappointed, Ta.r.s.es replied, "Aye, sir. I just hope we haven't missed anything."

"Time is short, Doctor," said Dax. "And the perfect is the enemy of the good. Make do with what we've got-and do it fast."

Its hunger was all.

Radiant sh.e.l.ls of organic matter glowed in the empty s.p.a.ces that surrounded it. They appeared and vanished in bright curtains of energy, in columns of fire shot down from someplace far above this crude prison of thwarted desire. They skated the surface of the gravity well, clutching blinding sparks.

Temptations, one and all.

Streams of data moved faster than light, traveling between the sh.e.l.ls and the sky and their own glowing stones. There were fewer of the sh.e.l.ls now, and they continued to diminish in numbers.

Panic pushed the hunger in pursuit of a cl.u.s.ter of sh.e.l.ls. So little of its strength remained that even gravity, nature's most feeble instrument, threatened to overcome it and drag it down to its final dissipation in the silicon sea.

It risked everything to pierce the new stone: every iota of will, every drop of fear. Annihilation or escape-either would be better than limbo.

All that mattered now was the sky.

2168.

10.

The flight of the Columbia had lasted sixty-three days, and it had lasted just over twelve years.

The high-frequency overdrive whine of the impulse engines fell rapidly as a pinpoint of light on the bridge's main viewer brightened and grew larger. Captain Hernandez gripped the armrests of her chair as her ship shimmied around her, its inertial dampers struggling to compensate for the extreme stresses of rapid deceleration from relativistic velocity.

Lieutenant Brynn Mealia, the gamma-shift helmsman, declared in a soft Irish lilt, "Thirty seconds to orbit."

"Katrin," Hernandez said to Ensign Gunnarsdottir, the bridge engineering officer, "can we sh.o.r.e up the dampers?"

Gunnarsdottir started flipping switches and adjusting dials on her console. "Patching in emergency battery power, Captain."

Seconds later the ship's pa.s.sage became smoother, and Hernandez used the moments to lament the years that she had let pa.s.s by her ship, her crew, and herself. For weeks she had been imagining Earth spinning in a blur, its billions of people playing out the dramas of their lives while the crew of the Columbia pushed themselves beyond the normal boundaries of s.p.a.ce-time-cheating it, evading it, living in the past while the rest of the galaxy moved on without them. She had heard the grumblings of her crew grow increasingly bitter as the weeks had dragged past, and just a few days-months?-earlier she had heard one of the ship's MACO troopers jokingly refer to the Columbia as "the Flying Dutchman."

"Slowing to full impulse," Mealia said. "Three-quarters impulse...half...one-quarter impulse, Captain."

A lush blue-green sphere dominated the viewscreen. It looked like a pristine, uncolonized world, with no traces of habitation. Hernandez looked over her shoulder at Lieutenant el-Rashad, who was monitoring a sensor control station. "You're sure the energy readings from the planet are artificial?"

The thin, serious-looking second officer lifted his eyes from his console and said, "Positive, Captain." Thumbing a few switches, he added, "I can't lock in on the sources, but I can narrow it down and switch to a visual scan. Magnification to five hundred." On the viewscreen, at the edge of a greenish swath of richly forested planetary surface, she beheld what looked like a scintillating jewel.

Hernandez stood from her chair and studied the image on the screen. "Is that a city?"

"If not, it's the strangest rock formation I've ever seen," said Commander Fletcher, who was watching from beside the weapons console with Lieutenant Thayer. The first officer had a quizzical look on her face as she stared at the viewscreen. "Kalil, are we reading any life-forms at those coordinates?"

El-Rashad looked surprised by the question. "We're not reading anything at those coordinates, Commander. There's some kind of scattering field blocking our scans of the city."

Hernandez looked back at her bridge officers. "Thayer, can you compensate for that?"

Thayer poked at her console. "Negative, Captain." She patched in a new image on the main viewer: another brilliant speck on the surface. "We're seeing dozens of cities, spread around the planet. They're all extremely similar in ma.s.s and configuration...but we can't get precise readings, because they're all protected by scattering fields with an average radius of two hundred kilometers."

Every new report deepened Hernandez's curiosity, and for a moment the heartbreak of a dozen lost years was forgotten. "What about the other planets in the system?"

"Uninhabited, Captain," said el-Rashad. "No evidence of colonization or exploration."

Thinking ahead, Hernandez asked, "How's the air down there?"

"Breathable," said el-Rashad. "Maybe a bit on the thick side for most of us."

Hernandez pondered the top-down image of the city on the viewscreen for a moment longer, captivated by its symmetry and its mystery. Then she returned to her chair and sat down. "Kiona, can you detect any sign of patrol ships in this system, or defensive batteries on the planet?"

"Nothing of the kind, Captain," Thayer replied.

The captain was intrigued. She wondered aloud in Fletcher's direction, "Odd, don't you think? This close to both Romulan and Klingon s.p.a.ce, and the planet has no obvious defenses."

"Just because they aren't obvious doesn't mean they don't exist," Fletcher said.

"True," Hernandez said. She looked to the communications officer. "Sidra, can we hail them on a regular radio frequency?"

Ensign Valerian shook her head. "I've been trying for a couple of minutes now. No response so far." She looked up from her console and added with a note of seemingly misplaced optimism, "It's possible there's no one down there."

Thayer replied, "Then why are all the scattering fields still active?"

"Good question, Lieutenant," Hernandez said. "And it begs another one: Can we find a way through them?"

El-Rashad checked his readings, tossed a few switches, and said, "If we were on the surface, we could walk through. They block signals, but they aren't harmful."

"Captain," Thayer cut in. "One of the scattering fields is contracting." She used an override switch to change the image on the main viewer. "A city near the equator seems to be reducing its field radius in response to our scans."

The captain was on her feet. "Current radius?"

"Still shrinking," Thayer said. "Thirty kilometers. Twenty." She adjusted some settings and added, "Holding at fifteen kilometers, sir."

Fletcher flashed a crooked grin at Hernandez. "Walking distance. If you ask me, that looks like an invitation."

"Agreed," Hernandez said. "a.s.semble a landing party and fire up the transporter, Commander. We're going down there."

Less than an hour after he had beamed down into the heart of a tropical rainforest along the planet's sunbaked equator, Major Foyle's camouflage fatigues were soaked with sweat.

His second-in-command, Lieutenant Yacavino, and his senior noncom, Sergeant Pembleton, who had beamed down with him, also had become drenched in their own perspiration. Like the major, they were victims of the hot, soupy air in the densely overgrown tropical forest. Privates Crichlow, Mazzetti, and Steinhauer had beamed down ten minutes behind them, after chief engineer Graylock had reset the Columbia's temperamental transporter, and their uniforms were beginning to cling to them, as well.

The six MACOs had deployed in pairs, with each of the decimated company's leaders escorted by a private. Pembleton was on point, along with Mazzetti. Foyle and Crichlow stayed several meters behind them, on their left flank, moving parallel with Yacavino and Steinhauer, who were on Pembleton's right flank. For this mission they had traded in their standard gray-ice camouflage for dark-green forest patterns.

Foyle stepped over tangled vines and thick fallen branches while gazing down the barrel of his phase rifle, which he braced against his shoulder. A bright, sawing tinnitus of insect noise enveloped him, and shafts of intense light slashed through the sultry afternoon mists drifting down from the jungle's canopy. Thorned plants tugged at his fatigues, and underfoot the ground gave way to mud.

Something snapped in the underbrush ahead of Pembleton, who raised his fist to halt the team. Then he opened his hand and lowered it, palm down. Foyle and the others kneeled slowly, all but disappearing into the thick, waist-high fronds and ferns. Crichlow kept his rifle steady with one hand; with the other, the gawky Englishman pulled his hand scanner from his equipment belt and thumbed it open to its "on" position. A few quick inputs by Crichlow set the device for silent operation, and he began a slow sweep of the area around the landing party.

A flash of fur and motion. The creature was tiny, smaller than a squirrel, and it was very fast as it skittered up the trunk of a tree that put Earth's most magnificent redwoods to shame. Foyle watched the little beast skitter away into the leaves, and then he looked at Crichlow, who nodded in confirmation. Satisfied, the major looked ahead to Pembleton and twirled his raised index finger twice, then pointed forward. The sergeant acknowledged the order, stood, lifted his weapon, and advanced through a narrow pa.s.s into a shadowy thicket, followed closely by Mazzetti. Foyle and the rest of his team moved forward as well, continuing on their patrol of the beam-in site's outer perimeter.

It was easy to get disoriented in a forest such as this; Foyle had seen it happen even to experienced soldiers. He had recommended to Pembleton that he use a hand scanner to verify that he was maintaining a consistent five-hundred-meter radius from the beam-in site, a clearing that at this distance was not the least bit visible through the claustrophobic press of trees, lichen, and hanging vines. Pembleton had refused the suggestion, preferring to trust his own instincts.

As much as Foyle had faith in his sergeant, he believed even more strongly in taking precautions. Consequently, he had Steinhauer monitoring their position with a hand scanner; if Pembleton wandered more than twenty meters outside of the radius, it was Steinhauer's job to alert Foyle. They had been walking for nearly an hour, covering almost three and a half kilometers of linear distance, and Steinhauer had not yet found any cause to speak up. So far, so good, mused Foyle.

He squinted as he pa.s.sed through a shaft of bright light that had speared its way through the ceiling of boughs to the lush vegetation at his feet. Much of the forest remained shrouded in viridian twilight. He and his men waded the shallow green underbrush, scouting for natural hazards and predators that might lie between the rest of the landing party and the ma.s.sive urban center the flight crew had detected, approximately fifteen-point-two kilometers to the west.

Ahead of the major, Pembleton and Mazzetti stood at the base of a colossal tree and waved the other two pairs toward them. As soon as the six men had regrouped, Pembleton pointed at a pair of crossed sticks stuck in the ground beside a gnarled, meter-tall root. Foyle recognized the twigs instantly; the sergeant had planted them there to mark the starting point of their perimeter patrol. "Full circle," Pembleton said. "Perimeter's clear, Major. Site secure for beam-in."

"Very good," Foyle said. "Take us back to the clearing. We'll set up a tight perimeter there and signal the ship."

"Yes, Major," replied Pembleton, who made a quick survey of the area to get his bearings and led the landing party through a sea of green leaves with nothing resembling a trail.

The hike back to the clearing was slow going, and not only because of the heat, the humidity, the uphill terrain, and the need to circ.u.mnavigate ma.s.sive arboreal obstacles. More than two months of combating radiation effects caused by the Columbia's near-light journey had taken a heavy toll on the crew, in the form of chronic mild radiation sickness and severe fatigue.

A climb like this never would've bothered me before, Foyle ruminated. I guess it's true what my grandfather used to say: "It's not the years, it's the mileage."

Minutes later, as the MACOs emerged from the tree line and entered the forest glade, Foyle pulled his communicator from his equipment belt and flipped it open. "Foyle to Columbia."

Hernandez answered, "This is Columbia. Go ahead, Major."

"Site secure," he said. "You can beam down when ready."

"Glad to hear it. Any last-minute advice?"

"Yes," he said. "Make sure everyone packs a full canteen."

The twelve-person landing party moved single file through the humbling grandeur of the primeval forest, which was composed of trees wider in circ.u.mference and taller than any that Hernandez had ever seen before. The forest canopy was an unbroken ceiling of green nearly two hundred meters overhead, thick enough to block all but hints of the planet's searing daylight.

Hernandez was the second person in the formation. Pembleton walked ahead of her, serving as the point man on the long march to the alien city. Behind her was her first officer, Fletcher. Then followed Major Foyle, Private Crichlow, chief engineer Graylock, Lieutenant Thayer, Private Mazzetti, Lieutenant Valerian, Dr. Johanna Metzger, Private Steinhauer, and the MACOs' second-in-command, Lieutenant Yacavino.

Rivulets of sweat trickled between Hernandez's shoulder blades and down her spine under her uniform as she looked back at Fletcher. "How old do you think these trees are?"

Fletcher retrieved a hand scanner from her belt and made a quick sweep of the forest. The soft whirring sound of the device made Pembleton look back and scowl at them, though he apparently respected the privileges of rank too much to say anything. Then Fletcher closed the scanner and said, "Some of them might be as old as fourteen thousand years. There are carbon deposits from old forest fires that probably cleared away a lot of smaller, competing trees several millennia ago."

"It's a botanist's dream," Hernandez said. "But I can't figure out why the forest floor is so overgrown when it gets barely any light. What's feeding all this greenery?"

"Maybe they don't rely on photosynthesis," Fletcher said. "Or maybe they have a symbiotic relationship with the trees."

From the back of the line, Ensign Valerian asked with rhetorical sarcasm, "Are we there yet?"

"People," Foyle interjected, "it'd be safer for all of us if we didn't talk."

Dr. Metzger replied, "Safe from what? There's no sign anyone even knows we're here."

The stern-faced MACO commander directed his answer to the group. "When in doubt, always a.s.sume you're being watched."

"Just do as he says, folks," Hernandez said. "Keeping us alive till we make contact is the major's job. Let him do it."

She ignored the unintelligible grumbles from Valerian and Metzger and resumed her focus on Pembleton's back. He had stressed to her the importance not only of following his path, but of making the effort to step exactly where he'd stepped, both for her safety and to help conceal the landing party's numbers in case they were tracked. The same instructions had been pa.s.sed to all her personnel, and so everyone concentrated on the monotony of walking in someone else's footprints.

After a sweltering and-in Hernandez's opinion-interminable stretch of hiking, Sergeant Pembleton stopped and raised his fist, halting the group. It was their first break since the march had begun. He waved everyone to a relaxed crouch. While the group settled and sank into the concealing fronds, Pembleton leaned his phase rifle against a tree trunk. Then he removed his hard-sh.e.l.l backpack, opened it, and took out a canteen. He took a drink and pa.s.sed it to Hernandez. "One swallow," he said, "then pa.s.s it to the next person."

She looked at the wet ring around the mouth of the canteen. "Why can't I just drink from my own?"

"Only two kinds of canteen are quiet on a march," he said. "Full ones and empty ones. If you take just a few swigs from one, it'll swish while you walk, or give you away when you're trying to hide. But if we all drink from one canteen until it's empty, that won't happen."

Unable to fault his reasoning, she took a mouthful of water from the canteen and pa.s.sed it to Fletcher, who helped herself to a drink. Person by person, it was handed back along the line.

Fletcher wiped a sheen of perspiration from her brow and said in a low voice to Hernandez, "Y'know what I'm gonna do when we get home? Buy a vineyard in Napa Valley."

That was certainly news to Hernandez. "A vineyard? Really?"

"Yeah," said the vivacious New Zealander. "I bet I can drink enough wine to make myself rich."

Still suspicious, Hernandez asked, "How can you afford to buy a winery? Last time we were on leave, you couldn't afford to pick up a round of drinks."

"Well," Fletcher said with a shrug, "I figure I've got twelve years of back pay coming to me when we get home. And since a Romulan ambush put us in this mess, I figure I'm ent.i.tled to twelve years of combat bonuses, too."

Hernandez chuckled. "I knew if anyone could find the silver lining to this mess, it'd be you."

Foyle tapped Fletcher's shoulder. When she turned her head toward him, he handed her the now-empty canteen. She pa.s.sed it forward to Hernandez, who returned it to Pembleton.

He tucked the canteen inside his pack. Then he closed the pack and put it back on. As he stood and grabbed his rifle, he said, "Everybody up. We're moving out."

"Sergeant," Hernandez said, "what's our ETA to the city?"

"About six hours, if we can keep this pace. It'll be hard in this heat."

Fletcher said over the captain's shoulder, "Maybe we should wait for nightfall. Might be cooler then."

"It'll also be pitch-dark in this forest," Pembleton said. "That won't hurt our ability to navigate, but it will make us more vulnerable to predators. The best thing we can do is keep going until we at least get clear of the trees."

"And how long will that take?" asked Hernandez.

"Four hours and forty minutes," Pembleton said. "That'll put us at the edge of the gra.s.slands that lead to the city."

"All right, then," Hernandez said. "Let's get going."

Pembleton adjusted his grip on his rifle and advanced through the waist-high waving greenery that dominated the relatively narrow gaps between the giant trees. Hernandez fell in behind him, watching the ground for signs of where he had placed his feet with each step. The muted shuffle of people walking seemed to be swallowed up by the steady drone of insect noise and the soft scratching of wind-rustled foliage.

Every few minutes, Hernandez stole a look backward to make certain the entire landing party was still accounted for, even though it was Lieutenant Yacavino's job, as the rear guard, to make certain no one went missing. After a while, she stopped looking back and kept herself focused on their destination.