Riker shot back, "This isn't about ship's business! We're talking about my wife's health, and maybe her life!"

"What if she collapses in the middle of a crisis situation? Have you thought about that?" He tried to turn away, but she kept after him, putting herself in front of him, hectoring him with increasing fury. "What if we're in combat, or handling an emergency, and she starts bleeding out? You think you'll be at your best when that happens? Think you'll stay focused on the mission when your baby's dying and taking her with it?"

He bellowed, "That's enough!" The force of his voice silenced Vale's harangue and made her take a step back. "I know what's at stake here, Chris-I don't need you to lecture me. Do I know my unborn child's going to die? Yes. Do I know that Deanna's risking her life by not ending the pregnancy? Yes. Am I going to let Dr. Ree force a solution on her? No." His face and ears felt feverishly warm. "If the doctor overrules me and makes the surgery compulsory, Deanna won't comply. If he declares me unfit for command, I'll refuse to step down. Then you can put me in the brig-and decide for yourself how you feel about terminating a woman's pregnancy against her will."

The captain and first officer regarded each other in a tense standoff for several seconds. Vale's eyes burned with resentment. She took a breath, calmed a bit, and seemed to be searching for the right words with which to reply.

Then a deep shudder of impact resonated through the deck and bulkheads, and a jolt of arrested motion hurled Riker to the deck as Vale slammed against the side of his desk. Darkness hiccupped in and out for a few seconds before settling on them. Outside the ready room's window, the slow pull of warp-distorted starlight had vanished, replaced by a static starfield. As the captain struggled back to his feet, dim emergency lights snapped on overhead and at regular intervals along the bottoms of the bulkheads. Vale clutched her ribs and had trouble straightening her posture. Riker asked, "You all right?"

"Just bruised," she said, and she glanced toward the door to the bridge. "I guess we ought to go see what happened."

"Might be a good idea," he said, patting her shoulder as he stepped past her.

She followed him and said, "You know we're not done talking about this, right?"

"I know," Riker said. "One thing at a time, though."

They stepped back onto the bridge, him first and her close behind, and found the gamma-shift team shaken and still out of sorts. Lieutenant Commander Fo Hachesa, the gamma-shift officer of the watch, was about to sit down in the center seat when he saw Riker and Vale. "Captain," said the trim, muscular Kobliad, "we've lost warp drive and main power."

"I've gathered that," Riker said. "What caused it?"

"The source of those energy bursts we've been tracking," Hachesa said, worry lines creasing on either side of his broad naso-cranial ridge. He nodded to the young Carda.s.sian officer at the ops console. "Ensign Dakal picked up a high-power sensor beam directed at us from the energy source. On the chance it might be a Borg early warning system, I had Lieutenant Rriarr raise shields." The golden-furred Caitian at the security console nodded in confirmation to the captain and first officer. Hachesa gestured to the other side of the bridge, where a Benzite engineering officer stood at an auxiliary companel. "Ensign Meldok is a.n.a.lyzing what hit us after we raised shields."

Riker nodded once to Meldok. "Ensign? Any damage?"

"Yes, sir," the Benzite replied, with seemingly misplaced enthusiasm. "A broad-spectrum, high-nutation sensor pulse caused degenerative feedback loops in our warp field and shield grid, collapsing both in point-zero-zero-four seconds. I am still running diagnostics on all systems, but preliminary results suggest serious damage to our subs.p.a.ce communications array and weapons grid, and main power is offline. There may also be coil failures in the warp nacelles."

Vale asked Rriarr, "Casualty report?"

"Minor injuries in engineering," Rriarr said.

The captain nodded. "Understood. Commander Hachesa, carry on with repairs and keep Commander Vale informed of your progress. Let me know as soon as we have warp speed."

"Aye, sir," Hachesa said.

Riker looked at Vale and gestured with a subtle tilt of his head that she should follow him. He led her off the bridge, into the turbolift. The doors closed and he said, "Deck Five."

"Deck Six," Vale added. As the turbolift began its descent, she quipped, "Hachesa finally got the hang of verbs, I see."

Riker grinned as he recalled the well-meaning Kobliad's propensity for mangled conjugations. "Took him long enough." He folded his arms and looked at his shoes. "I'll try and talk to Deanna. Tonight, if she's awake, in the morning if she's not. I can't promise she'll change her mind, but maybe we can find a compromise."

Vale nodded. "I'll ask Dr. Ree for more options."

They rode together in silence until the turbolift stopped, and the doors parted to reveal the Deck Five main corridor. Riker stepped out. Before the doors closed, Vale stepped between them to hold the lift. "Am I the only one who finds it hard to believe we just got our a.s.s kicked by a sensor beam?"

Riker c.o.c.ked his head. "What are you saying?"

"That I don't think what that beam did to us was an accident. Think about it: Someone or something goes to a lot of trouble to black out a whole star system. We start flying toward it, pelting it with sensor sweeps, and what happens? It knocks us out of warp, frags our weapons, and fries our comms. If you ask me, I'd say whatever's out there doesn't want to meet us, and it doesn't want us talking about it to anyone else."

Riker couldn't help himself. He grinned. "Then it shouldn't have messed with my ship-because now I'm really curious."

"You and the cat, sir." She smirked back at him.

He chuckled softly. "Go get some sleep. I get the feeling tomorrow's gonna be a very busy day."

2168.

13.

Veronica Fletcher popped her head around the corner from the foyer and said to Erika Hernandez, "We're ready, Captain."

Hernandez lifted her feet from a reasonable facsimile of an ottoman and got up from the wraparound sofa that bordered three sides of the penthouse suite's sunken main room. She climbed the few stairs in quick steps and pa.s.sed the open dining area. It was well stocked with fruits and a wide variety of faithfully recreated Earth foodstuffs. Before she left, she stole another look at the warm, natural light slanting through the suite's panoramic windows, which rose to great arches near the vaulted ceilings. As gilded prisons went, this one, intended for her and the rest of the landing party, was truly first-rate.

She joined Fletcher in the foyer and followed her out to the floor's central corridor, where a transparent pod waited for them in an alcove. They stepped inside. It began a swift descent, devoid of any sensation of movement, into a glowing shaft of pale, pulsing rings. In seconds they emerged into what seemed like thin air, dropping in a controlled manner toward a pool of water shimmering with rippled sunlight.

The towers of the city surrounded them, and through slivers between the platinum spires, Hernandez caught flashes of the jagged mountaintops in the west. Peach-colored clouds were pulled taut across the sky.

"It really is a beautiful city," Fletcher said.

Hernandez allowed herself a tired grin. "Nice place to visit. Wouldn't want to live here."

Their pod touched down on the surface of the water without so much as a ripple. The dancing sparkle of sunlight on wind-teased water transformed into a dull glow of reflected illumination on a solid, matte surface, and the pod itself sublimated and dissipated into the hot summer air.

Fletcher led the way across a sprawling plaza paved with white marble. Hulking granite sculptures and ma.s.sive, flowering topiaries depicted alien creatures unlike any the captain had ever seen before.

At its far end, flanked by densely grown trees, was a rectangular reflecting pool. Its surface was serene and black, and it cast razor-sharp reflections of everything in sight. At its farthest end, a tall, thick-trunked, droop-boughed tree stood on a low, wide island of earth, whose mossy sh.o.r.es reached to within a meter of the low wall that bordered the pool.

The rest of the landing party was gathered in a cl.u.s.ter on the miniature island in the shade of the tree, crouched like ancient primates wary of abandoning their arboreal redoubts.

Fletcher and Hernandez hopped across the narrow channel of water to the tree's island and slipped into the middle of the huddle. Hernandez folded her arms across her bent knees. "What did we learn?"

Before anyone else could speak, Major Foyle asked, "Captain, are we sure it's safe to talk here?"

"Why wouldn't it be, Major?"

He looked at the other MACOs and then replied, "What if we're being monitored?"

Fletcher fielded the question. "If the Caeliar want to listen in, I don't think it matters where we go in this city. Or on this planet, to be honest. With technology like theirs, I don't think we could stop them."

"Then maybe we shouldn't make plans verbally," Foyle said. "Maybe we should do it all in writing and destroy the notes."

Hernandez exhaled sharply. "They know about Earth, they've accessed the Columbia's computers, and they speak English without translation devices. I think they can probably read our writing. So let's just get on with it, shall we?"

"As you wish, Captain," said Foyle. "But I object to this unnecessary risk to our operational security."

"Noted," Hernandez said, hopeful that she'd heard the last of Foyle's paranoia. "You spoke up first, so why don't you make your report first? How's our access to the Caeliar's city?"

"Almost unlimited," Foyle said, and he nodded to Yacavino, his second-in-command, to continue.

"Our men had no trouble coming or going from our residence tower," Yacavino said. "The Caeliar admitted us without search or challenge to a variety of s.p.a.ces, both indoors and outdoors."

Hernandez nodded. "Good. At least we have mobility."

"Until they decide to take it away," injected Sergeant Pembleton. "All they have to do is turn off our see-through elevators and we'll be stuck in that four-star penitentiary."

"One problem at a time," the captain said. She looked to her first officer. "Veronica, what did you and Dr. Metzger find out about our hosts?"

Fletcher arched her eyebrows and frowned, as if she found her own report hard to believe. "They can change shapes."

Metzger added, "And they can turn into vapor or liquid."

"Change shapes?" Hernandez threw a quizzical look at Metzger and Fletcher. "Can you be more specific about that?"

The Columbia's middle-aged surgeon pushed her short, gray bangs from her forehead and replied, "I saw them get larger and smaller, change from bipeds to quadrupeds-one of them even seemed to think it was funny to mimic the two of us down to the last detail."

The first officer nodded. "It was impressive," she said. "And a bit troubling, to be honest."

"That's an understatement," Hernandez said. "They can impersonate us?"

Fletcher waved her hand. "Not our behavior, just our appearance and voices. They don't seem to have any sense of personalities."

"Thank heaven for small mercies," Foyle quipped. He added, "Though what worries me is their ability to levitate."

Around the huddle, several heads nodded, and Hernandez's was among them. "Do we know how they do it?"

"Yes, sir," Fletcher said. "Catoms."

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

Graylock cut in, "Claytronic atoms-also called programmable matter. They're like nanomachines, but more complex, and a lot more powerful. Bonded together, they operate on a human scale instead of a microscopic one. They can change their density, energy levels, a whole range of properties. Teams in j.a.pan and the United States made a few prototypes about ninety years ago. Proof-of-concept models. It was all very primitive, never made it out of the lab. It was supposed to change telepresence, but it was sc.r.a.pped after the last world war."

Hernandez asked, "And this is the same thing?"

"Nein," Graylock said, stifling a laugh. "What we had was a spark. This is a supernova. They can change their ma.s.s, their state, anything-all on a whim."

That made the captain think. "What's their power source?"

Graylock shook his head. "They wouldn't say. I'd guess it's an energy field generated at a remote facility."

"Let's make identifying that energy source a priority," Hernandez said. She looked to Foyle. "Did you or your men find any access to the underground regions of the city?"

"No," Foyle said. "On the surface we moved freely. But there's no sign of any way into the guts of this thing. Of course, we've had only a few days to search. It's a big place."

"True." The captain turned to her communications specialist. "Sidra, what's your take on Caeliar culture?"

Valerian pondered the question a moment. "Complicated," she said. "They don't seem to mind answering questions, which helps. A lot of the public s.p.a.ces I've seen have been dedicated to the arts-mostly music and singing, but also some dance and visual performance art. They used to have narrative arts like theater and literature, but they fell out of favor a long time ago."

Fletcher asked, "How long?"

"Maybe a few thousand years," Valerian said. "They also don't seem to have anything resembling economics, and there's no agricultural production or animal husbandry that I could find."

"What about politics?" asked Hernandez.

The Scottish woman shrugged. "They have a ruling body here in Axion called a Quorum, with members from each of their cities, but they're all picked by lottery. I'm not sure how often they hold lotteries, but no one campaigns for it."

A balmy breeze carried the scent of green things and flowers in bloom, but made no ripples on the reflecting pool. Hernandez wondered if she was the only one who noticed. She turned her attention back to Valerian. "What else? What are their habits? We know they're pacifists; what else do they believe?"

"They hold art and science in the same esteem," Valerian said. "All the ones I talked to are both artists and scientists. One who makes mosaics in the plaza is also an astronomer; one who composed a symphony I heard is also a physicist."

Crichlow, a MACO from Liverpool, said, "They're also really polite. And they all seem to know who we are-I mean, these blokes knew me by name. Caught me by surprise, it did."

"Me, too," Pembleton said.

"One of them asked me to try sculpting," Graylock added. "Said I should nurture my creativity. But when I asked to learn more about their sciences, he lost interest in my artsy side."

"Our loss, I'm sure," Hernandez said with a grin. "Kiona, did you see anything we could use to send a subs.p.a.ce message back to Earth, or even just a signal up to the ship?"

Thayer shook her head. "Nothing. I tried using my hand scanner in case the scattering field didn't extend inside the city itself, but I think the Caeliar drained its power cell. It's been dead since yesterday."

"Everybody check your gear," Hernandez said. "Weapons, hand scanners, all of it. Quickly."

Hernandez inspected her own equipment while the rest of the landing party did likewise. A minute later, everyone looked up and around with the same fl.u.s.tered, dumbfounded expression. Her inquiry was almost rhetorical: "All drained?" Everyone nodded.

Fletcher tucked her hand scanner back into its belt pouch. "Captain," she said, "it's been almost three days since we contacted the ship. If we don't signal them by 1600 today-"

"I know," Hernandez said. "They have orders to break orbit." She gazed in dismay at the gleaming city. "Except they can't, because the Caeliar are holding them here." She sighed. "I guess all we can do is hope El-Rashad follows orders and doesn't try to send down a rescue team." With one hand she started smoothing out a patch of dirt in the middle of the huddle. "So much for fact-finding. Let's start working on-"

"One more thing, Captain," Major Foyle said. "It might interest you to know that the Caeliar never sleep."

That news silenced the group.

The captain blinked once, slowly. "Never?"

"a.s.suming they told me the truth," Foyle replied. "I figured they were being so helpful that I might as well ask how much sleep they needed and how often. That's when they told me."

"Well, that's wonderful news," Hernandez said with soft sarcasm. "For a moment there, I was afraid our escape would be too easy. Thanks for setting me at ease on that point."

Foyle dipped his chin, a half nod. "You're quite welcome."

"Now, let's start talking about-"