"What are you doing?"

"Setting up new parameters for the simulation," she said, still keying in commands. "Seeing that beam run smack into the supernova remnant got me thinking: We cast the net too wide."

"Explain," Tuvok said.

She made some minor adjustments via the interface as she answered him. "Well, instead of looking for all the systems that fall within a certain range of the beams, why not just look for the ones that actually intersect? In other words, ignore the near misses and just look for the direct hits. It's bound to yield fewer results, and if what we saw in the nebula's any indicator, they might be a lot more relevant."

"An interesting hypothesis. How long will it take to run the new simulation if you include all known galactic points?"

"Another hour," she said, "but I think it'll be worth it."

"Very well," he said. "Computer," Tuvok said, "platform." He felt the gentle tug of a tractor beam nudge him toward the circular platform below him and Pazlar. He could have navigated his way out of the zero-g environment with minimal difficulty, but because of his lack of recent experience with free fall, the effort might have taken him a few minutes, and he was eager to meet with the captain and continue his work. Allowing the computer to facilitate his exit from stellar cartography was both logical and expedient.

His feet touched down on the platform, and the tractor beam gradually released him into the low-gravity zone. He looked up at Pazlar, who hovered several meters above him. "Notify me when the results are ready for a.n.a.lysis," he said. "I will continue my research in science lab one after I've informed the captain of our discovery."

"Aye, sir," Pazlar said. Then she returned to her work, and Tuvok walked toward the exit. As the hatch to the corridor opened, he stole a look back at Pazlar, floating free in her faux heavens, manipulating millions of ersatz stars with waves of her hands, blissfully submerged in her labors.

As he departed into the corridor, Tuvok struggled once again to extinguish that same troubling spark of envy.

Dr. Shenti Yisec Eres Ree paced on taloned feet, awaiting his patient's arrival in sickbay. Delivering bad news had never been a pleasant experience for him, and he had found it was often best done as soon as possible and with little or no preamble. All the same, he despised the task. He had considered letting the matter lie until morning, rather than forcing himself to remain awake well into his regular sleep period. Then he had seen the report, realized its importance, and issued his urgent summons.

Caught up in his tests and his a.n.a.lysis, he had missed the scheduled hour for the crew's carnivores to dine in the mess hall. Hunger burned in his gut, so intensely that he could almost taste the raw meat and the fresh marrow he craved. Despite the lateness of the hour, he knew that he could still use the mess hall and eat as he liked, but he would miss the camaraderie of his fellow flesh-eaters. The omnivores and herbivores on t.i.tan had grown accustomed to witnessing the b.l.o.o.d.y feeding spectacle of carnivores playing with their food, though the majority of them remained discomfited by the idea of sitting in proximity to it while consuming their own meals.

Too bad, Ree decided. They'll just have to deal with it. A little bit of splatter never hurt anyone.

The door sighed open and Counselor Troi walked in, attired in civilian clothes. She was bleary-eyed from being woken up, and she appeared anxious, clenching her right hand into a fist and cupping it in her left hand. "You said it was urgent?"

"Yes, Counselor," Ree said. He turned and led her toward his private office. "Please come in and sit down."

She shook her head. "I'd rather stand."

"As you prefer." He continued inside his office and waited until she was inside before he closed the door for privacy. As it closed, it shifted from transparent to translucent, along with the windows that looked out on sickbay. "I've finished my tests. I'm sorry to say the news isn't good."

Laying a hand on her belly, she asked, "You know why this is happening?"

He bobbed his long, therapodian head in a rough imitation of a nod. "I do." He reached over to his desk and scooped up a data padd with his long, clawed fingers. "According to your medical history, sixteen years ago, on Stardate 42073, you became pregnant after contact with an unidentified alien being composed of energy. Hours later, you gave birth to a son."

Tears rolled from Troi's eyes. "Ian," she said.

"Yes." Reviewing her file, he continued, "The boy matured at a remarkable rate-approximately eight years in a single day. At the same time, a sample of plasma plague supposedly in stasis started to grow, its development accelerated by a field of Eichner radiation-the source of which was your son, Ian."

Troi covered her mouth as if to hold back a cry of alarm. Her eyes were shining with tears, and her voice was a throaty gasp through her fingers. "No, please don't tell me..."

"I'm sorry, Counselor," Ree said. "But you should know all the facts." He handed her the padd. She took it in one shaking hand and stared at it while he continued. "Research conducted a few years ago at the Vulcan Science Academy showed that sustained exposure to Eichner radiation can cause erratic mutations in mitochondrial DNA. For the purpose of their study, 'sustained' exposure was defined as anything longer than four hours. You gestated Ian for more than thirty-six hours."

She covered her face with her hands. "No," she said through a keening cry. Struggling for control, she said, "Dr. Pulaski said there were no complications. She said all my readings were as if I'd never been pregnant."

Ree bowed his head a moment. "Her exam was as accurate as it could have been," he said, looking up. "But she relied on hormonal data and basic cellular a.n.a.lysis. The damage occurred on a much deeper and more subtle level."

The counselor's stance became unsteady, so Ree took her gently by the shoulders and eased her into a chair beside his desk. She was all but imploding in front of him.

"Forgive me," he said. "There's more." The data padd started to fall from her hand, and he plucked it gingerly from her grasp. "The Eichner radiation caused subtle, random genetic defects in all of your unreleased ova."

Troi peeked out from behind her hands. "But you can fix that, can't you? Reconstruct the genetic sequence...?"

Where a human might have sighed, Ree stifled a low, rasping growl. "No, I can't," he said. "If it were a single, uniform mutation, I might have been able to extract an ovum, resequence its chromosomes, fertilize it in vitro, and reimplant it. But that's not what has happened here." He keyed up a screen of visual guides on the padd to ill.u.s.trate his point. "The damage to your ovaries hasn't resulted merely in corrupted genetic information. It's also led to lost information. It would have been extremely difficult to resequence a mutated ova without a healthy specimen as a template. I wouldn't know where to begin filling in the blanks of an incomplete chromosome."

The half-Betazoid woman bowed her head into her hands and wept. All that Ree could do was sit in silence and let her cry. Though he found the parasitic nature of mammalian pregnancy to be unnerving, he understood the profound sense of connection that it created between female mammals and their young. This would be so much easier if she were a Pahkwa-thanh, he thought sadly. Among his kind, when an egg failed to hatch, its mother would break it open and devour both young and yolk, to conserve resources and provide for the next offspring. So much simpler than stillbirth, he reasoned. Not to mention cathartic.

After a few minutes, Troi ceased her lamentations and calmed herself. Wiping tears from her reddened eyes, she asked, "What's my prognosis, then, Doctor?"

"That depends on the actions you take. Are you asking for my recommendation?"

"Yes, I am."

He scrolled to the final page of information on the padd and handed it back to Troi. "As your physician, I advise you to terminate your pregnancy immediately. The fetus is not viable, and if it's not removed, I predict its growth will rupture your uterine wall and cause a potentially fatal hemorrhage."

"When?"

"I'm not certain. It could be tomorrow, or next month."

Troi's expression was grave and distant. "What are the odds of this happening with my next pregnancy?"

Medical ethics compelled him to tell her the truth. "Almost certain," he said. "My medical opinion is that the odds of you and Captain Riker having a healthy offspring are negligible, and I would recommend you cease trying. Since the damage to your ova cannot be repaired..." He hesitated, and was sorry that he'd let the first half of the sentence leave his tongue. He felt as if he had failed her, though he knew that he had done everything he could.

"What?" prompted Troi. "Since it can't be repaired...what?"

Ree turned away a moment, then decided to finish what he'd started. "I'd recommend a radical hysterectomy, Counselor. To prevent further failed pregnancies, and to protect you from the risk of future oncological complications."

She looked stunned, as if he had just hammered her with a whack of his long, muscular tail. He waited for her to say something. Instead she turned her face away from him and blinked slowly a couple of times. Then she got up and moved to leave.

"Counselor," he said. "We should schedule your procedure before you go."

Troi ignored him. She got up and made her exit; his office door and windows reverted to their normal, transparent state as the portal slid open. She crossed sickbay at a hurried pace and was out the door without a look back at the concerned surgeon.

Her refusal of his medical advice put him in a precarious position. Ree had no doubt that Troi would have the support of the captain, and that Riker would obstruct any effort he might make to exert his medical authority for Troi's own good. Worse, he was appalled at the idea of performing a surgical procedure on a patient against her will. In his opinion it would be little different from a.s.sault, his good intentions notwithstanding.

On the other hand, his responsibilities as t.i.tan's chief medical officer were unambiguous and defined in stark terms by Starfleet regulations and the Starfleet Code of Military Justice. He could not, either by action or omission of action, allow personnel under his medical charge to bring themselves to harm or to death-and by law he was empowered to protect them, if need be, from themselves. The counselor's disregard for her own safety had made this his responsibility.

The fact that his patient was the captain's wife made the situation rather more incendiary than he was accustomed to, however. If he was going to make a stand, he would need to make certain he wouldn't be standing alone.

He sealed the door of his office and reset the windows to their frosted privacy mode. Then he used the companel on his desk to open a secure, person-to-person channel to the one individual he most needed to be certain he could trust.

"Ree to Commander Vale."

The first officer answered moments later. "Yes, Doctor?"

"We need to talk. In private."

Tuvok didn't need to look up from his work to know who had just entered the science lab behind him. Heavy, rapid footfalls and a faint hint of an obscure Risan cologne had told him who it was. "Good evening, Mister Keru."

"Pazlar says you two found something," said the Trill chief of security.

"Her report may have been premature," Tuvok said. "I am still conducting my a.n.a.lysis."

Keru sidled up to Tuvok and eyed the starmaps on several adjacent monitors. "Tuvok, you've definitely got something here. Fill me in-I want to know whatever you can tell me about this."

It was clear to Tuvok that Keru would not be willing to wait for his official report at the start of the next shift. He suppressed a surge of negative emotions and pointed out details as he spoke. "Lieutenant Commander Pazlar suggested that we narrow our investigation to those energy pulses that directly intersect known star systems. As she suspected, very few systems satisfy that criterion." He began augmenting the images on the screens with ill.u.s.trative overlays. "The first, which led us to this method, is a remnant of the supernova that created the Azure Nebula. So far, we've identified three others." Pointing from each monitor to the next, he continued, "An uncharted system in the Delta Quadrant. A periphery system in globular cl.u.s.ter Messier 80. And an unnamed system in the Gamma Quadrant."

"What about the other energy pulses?" Keru asked. "There had to be dozens of them."

"If we a.s.sume that each one is targeted at a specific star or planet, then the remaining pulses appear to be focused on subjects outside of our galaxy."

A dubious look creased Keru's brow. "What if we have a.s.sumed wrong? What if the pulses are pa.s.sageways that open in deep s.p.a.ce, away from prying eyes?"

"Then we would need to modify our research accordingly."

Keru narrowed his eyes and lowered his chin, signaling his apparent displeasure with Tuvok's answer. "All right, then," he said. "Let's examine the facts in hand. Have you uncovered any connections between these four locations?"

"I have found no direct connections," Tuvok replied.

Displaying the interrogatory style that had served him so well as a security officer, Keru asked, "What about indirect connections? Or suspicious coincidences?"

"I had hoped to conduct a more thorough investigation before sharing my initial discoveries," Tuvok said, "in part because I am not yet convinced that they are relevant, to either the phenomenon ahead of us, or to the crisis currently unfolding within the Federation."

His attention fully engaged, Keru pushed, "So you did find some kind of link?"

"Possibly," Tuvok said. He changed the images on one of the monitors. "The beam intersection in the Gamma Quadrant falls inside a star system where, eight years ago, the Starship Defiant discovered the wreckage of the Earth ship Columbia."

"I read about that," Keru said. "It went missing right before the Earth-Romulan war."

"Correct," Tuvok said, and he pointed at the monitor showing the first intersection point. "They vanished in 2156, while traveling from the Onias Sector with a convoy near this supernova remnant, which at that time was a main-sequence star."

Visibly intrigued, Keru asked, "When did it supernova?"

"In 2168," Tuvok said. "Which is most unusual, because main-sequence stars typically expand and cool for billions of years before such an event."

Now the security chief looked puzzled. "And what's the connection between that and the beams. .h.i.tting those points now?"

"I do not know," Tuvok replied.

Keru was animated with enthusiasm for the mystery. "Is it possible these beams had something to do with how the Columbia got to the Gamma Quadrant? Could Columbia have made it out here, only to get tossed all the way across the galaxy?"

"Anything is possible, Mister Keru," Tuvok said. "Sensor readings made by Defiant indicated that the Columbia's hull had been subjected to extreme subspatial stresses before it crashed. Consequently, the Starfleet vessel Aventine was dispatched over a week ago to recover the wreck for a.n.a.lysis."

The burly, bearded Trill leaned over Tuvok's shoulder to skim the mission reports about the downed Columbia. "Those subatomic fractures in the hull are pretty intense," he said. "Any theories on what could've done that?"

"There are some hypotheses," Tuvok said. "Including a few that bear p.r.o.nounced similarities to the phenomenon we are now moving to investigate."

Keru nodded. "I'll bet." He folded his arms and leaned back from the bank of computer screens. "So, what about that beam intersection in the Delta Quadrant? Is it inside Borg s.p.a.ce?"

"Not as such," Tuvok said. "But it falls very close to the known limits of their conquered territory. It would take them only a matter of weeks to reach it without the benefit of their transwarp network."

"Then this is a whole lot of coincidences," Keru said. "A mysterious power source with an energy profile that resembles transwarp, shooting beams that point at Federation s.p.a.ce, Borg s.p.a.ce, and a planet in the Gamma Quadrant where an old Earth ship has been sitting for nearly two centuries."

Tuvok arched one eyebrow to convey his incredulity. "I understand your zeal to draw links between the phenomenon and the recent Borg incursions into Federation s.p.a.ce. However, I fail to see the relevance, if any, of the disappearance and rediscovery of a twenty-second-century Earth starship."

A crooked grimace tugged at Keru's mouth, though it was hard to see his expression behind his beard. "Yeah," he said, "I'm drawing a blank on that, too. I feel like that ship has to fit into this somehow-that it's not just a random fluke that it's sitting on a planet with one of these beams pointed at it. But I'll be d.a.m.ned if I can see the connection."

Tuvok sighed softly. "Indeed."

Riker's eyelids fluttered and drooped with fatigue. Catching himself sinking into sleep, he jolted awake at his desk with a shudder. It was late, almost 0400, and his body craved sleep.

He took another sip from his third mug of half-sweet raktajino and savored the tingle of its caffeine infusing his bloodstream. Then he realized that he'd started drifting off again-he'd been dreaming of himself enjoying the Klingon coffee. He shuddered awake and sipped his now-tepid beverage for real.

His ready room's door signal chimed. Wiping the itch of exhaustion from his eyes, he said, "Come in."

The door opened and Christine Vale entered. He recalled the awkwardness of their last private meeting, several hours earlier, and he straightened his posture as she approached.

"Sorry to bother you so late," she said, "but since we're both up, I decided not to put this off."

That didn't sound good. "Put what off?"

Vale sat down in one of the chairs on the other side of his desk. "I just met with Dr. Ree. He's worried about Deanna."

Suspicion edged into Riker's voice, despite his efforts to remain calm. "I know about his concerns. Why is he discussing my wife's medical condition with you?"

"Because you and Deanna have made this into a crew-safety issue," Vale said. "Regulations require him to intervene-and they give him the authority to do so."

"I still don't see what-"

"And if he makes it an order, I'm required to enforce it," Vale cut in. "Whether you like it or not."

He was out of his chair and pacing like a caged animal. "Dammit, Chris, we talked about this a few hours ago. I'm not letting him force her to terminate her pregnancy."

She remained calm and seated. "It'd be best for everyone if it didn't come to that. If she doesn't have the procedure now, she'll need to have it when she becomes incapacitated. Except then there's a chance she'll die." Vale got up and stepped into Riker's path, disrupting his frantic back-and-forth. "Why let it come to that? Can't you talk to her?"

"No," Riker admitted. "I can't." He sighed. "I don't know what to say, and she wouldn't want to hear it if I did." Faced with the hopelessness of the situation, he turned away to gaze out the ready room's window. "She's not stupid, Chris-and she's not crazy. She knows her life's in danger, but that's not enough to change her mind." He stared at his dim reflection and realized it made him look the same as he felt-like he was only half there, half the man he used to be. "Our first miscarriage hit her so hard," he continued. "I think she just can't stand the idea of losing another baby."

Vale nodded. "I understand, Will. I really do. But if she's in that much distress, should she still be on active duty? And if her grief, or her depression, or whatever she's struggling with...if it's so overwhelming that she can't take action to save her own life, is she really fit to be making medical decisions?"

"Maybe not," Riker said. He turned from the window to face Vale. "But I am."

The first officer steeled her gaze. "Are you, sir? Do you really think you can be completely objective about this?"

"I don't need to be objective," Riker said. "I'm in command, and I'm not letting Ree force this on her."

"I see," Vale said, her temper starting to show. "This is exactly the kind of conflict of interest I was worried about when you told me your wife would be part of your command team. You promised me that your personal feelings wouldn't get in the way when it came to ship's business. But the first time there's a tug-of-war between what she wants and what the regs demand, the book goes out the window, doesn't it?"