Nog risked another peek over his shoulder. The band of rats had edged closer, tails and the purple tendrils flailing. Nog felt queasy.

"Actually, Commander," O'Brien said, "I understand. You're just being sensible. If we never go out anywhere again, the probability of another situation like this arising will be much lower."

"Exactly. No hard feelings?"

"None," O'Brien said, but then was silent for a minute because he was busy waving his club at something that had approached. "I would be happy to shake your hand in acknowledgment of our newfound agreement."

"Maybe later."

"Right." O'Brien paused, trying to steady his breathing after having fought off his attacker. "Any chance we can make it down past your lot and regroup on deck two?"

Nog a.s.sessed. More tendrils had appeared, including a couple really big ones. "Doesn't look good. Any other ideas?"

"Just the one."

"Over the rail?"

O'Brien tugged the small grapple hook from the reel on his belt and freed a meter of cord. "Over the rail."

Nog glanced down into the abyss. Six decks below was a hatch back into the hangar, the very one they'd left less than an hour ago. "These were meant to be used in low or zero gravity," he said, tugging out his own grapple. "Any chance they'll hold?"

"Of course," O'Brien said brightly. "There is definitely an infinitesimally small chance that they'll hold. Or that the gravity will shut off while we're falling. Better chance of the latter, actually."

"Always the optimist," Nog said. "We'll have to climb the stairs again if we want to find Maxwell."

"One problem at a time, Commander," O'Brien replied, setting one foot on the rail.

"Understood," Nog said. "I agree with your recommendation, Chief." He placed one foot on the lower rung in the metal railing.

The tendrils and the undead rats both surged forward. Nog and O'Brien quickly wrapped their grapples around the railing. Tipping back, O'Brien said, "I've been looking around for a new activity. Something to get me out of the quarters. Don't know why I didn't think of BASE jumping." He fell back into the abyss.

Nog took a deep breath and tried hard not to think as he released his grip on the rail. "Can't imagine how you overlooked it."

Chapter 18.

Three Years Earlier Starfleet Penal Colony "Tell me about the gerbil, Ben."

"I've told you about the gerbil, Michael. I don't want to have to tell you again."

"Humor me," Doctor Clark said.

Maxwell sighed and stared at the lampshade. He was fond of the lampshade. As often as not, when he was lying on the couch he closed his eyes, but, on the occasions when he kept his eyes open, well, there was his friend the lampshade. The ceiling above was painted an uninteresting beige, though it was broken up by an interesting topography of cracks and ripples. The tropical air was not kind to paint, even in the climate-controlled inner sanctum of the director's office. Outside the office's single window, Maxwell heard the regular cheet-cheet of a fantail. "It was a gerbil," he murmured. "One of two."

"What were their names?"

"I don't remember," Maxwell said. "They weren't mine. They were cla.s.sroom pets-my sixth-grade cla.s.s. It was a very small school-a small town-so the whole cla.s.s was maybe twenty-five kids. Most of us-the kids, our families-lived in the same town our whole lives up until that point. We went to school together for years, so they were more like my family. You know?"

"No," Clark said. "Not really. My family moved a lot when I was young, and most of the schools were very large. It must have been pleasant."

"It was," Maxwell said. "Mostly. I didn't know anything else, so I don't really know how to compare it. Some good days, some bad."

"The bad day?"

Maxwell nodded. He had grown accustomed to not looking at the doctor when they had these kinds of conversations even though he could have with the slightest turn of his head. He liked listening to Clark's disembodied voice, sometimes even treating it like it was another voice inside his own head. "Yeah, I guess you could say that." He paused. "It was all my own doing, though."

"What was?"

"What happened to the gerbil. I was . . ." He hesitated, gathering his thoughts, then resumed. "I thought I knew a lot about gerbils. When the cla.s.s got them, when our teacher brought them in, I got very excited about them, about gerbils. I thought they were neat. My mother didn't really like to have pets in our house. It was too small, and she was away for days at a time sometimes. Sometimes cats would hang around for a few months-lots of fish, right?-but they were there for her, not me."

"You never made friends with any of the cats?"

Maxwell considered. "Maybe? A couple? But they were usually mostly feral, so it wasn't like they were sleeping on the foot of my bed. Outdoor cats."

"Okay. The gerbils?"

"Right. I did what I always did when I got excited about something: I looked up all the information I could find and read everything. The day after the gerbils arrived, I had learned everything about them." Smiling despite himself, Maxwell said, "Ask me about gerbils. Ask me anything."

Clark chuckled. "All right. Binomial nomenclature?

"Ah," Maxwell began. "That's actually a more complicated question than you would expect. There are many, many species of gerbils. You probably mean the domesticated or Mongolian gerbil, which would be Meriones unguiculatus. Also sometimes called the Mongolian jird. Don't ask me what a jird is. My knowledge is deep, but not quite that deep."

"Understood."

"Domesticated in the mid-twentieth century. Originally used as lab animals, until someone decided they were cute. Became quite popular for a while, though a large percentage of the world population died out in the Eugenics Wars due to the decimation of their homeland and general lack of pet stores."

"Of course."

"Interesting side note: gerbils are persona non grata in New Zealand. Or maybe that would be Rodentia non grata. My Latin isn't that good."

"Compet.i.tion with native species?"

"Indeed."

"Very impressive," Clark said. "So you were an expert."

"And enjoyed proclaiming it," Maxwell replied. "And I was humored because, well, because they humored me."

"You were popular," Clark offered. "And respected. The other children recognized your qualities."

Maxwell squirmed on the couch. "Sure," he said. "Nothing to do with how unbelievably, obnoxiously self-a.s.sured I could be."

"Of course not." He leaned a bit closer. Maxwell heard Clark's suit jacket rustle, and the doctor's voice become just a bit louder and more insistent. "And you're digressing, Ben. What happened?"

"Not digressing," Maxwell said. "Very simple: I was careless."

"How?"

Maxwell's eyes felt itchy. There was something in the air, something the filters weren't catching, so he rubbed his eyes in long, slow, satisfying arcs. When he was finished, the room was blurry and his eyes were warm. "We didn't have a cage," he explained. "But we had an aquarium. A big one. I'm not sure why. Maybe it belonged to my teacher? Anyway, it was big and gave the gerbils plenty of room. When they were awake, they'd bounce around inside it like . . . like gerbils. I loved watching them. But they were good jumpers and we worried-I worried-that they would jump out of the aquarium, so we decided we needed a lid."

"That seems reasonable," Clark said. "What kind of lid?" He asked the question in the tone he used when he knew Maxwell might require a little a.s.sistance, a little bit of lead-in.

"The only thing we had to hand was a piece of transparent aluminum. I'm not sure where it came from, but it was a little too small to comfortably cover the top of the tank. So we kind of angled it across the top."

"Curious choice," Clark said. "There must have been something better available."

"Probably. But our teacher, he was a 'you guys figure out how you want to do this' sort of guy. Believed in leaving us to our own devices."

"How did that work out?"

"Not well," Maxwell admitted. He soldiered on with the tale. "It was my turn to feed them, and I was feeling all very full of myself, very knowledgeable."

"You were knowledgeable."

Maxwell shrugged. "Maybe. But sometimes being knowledgeable isn't enough. I have a very clear picture in my mind of this moment: reaching over to pick up the cover and set it aside."

"Okay. And then what happened?"

"I didn't set it aside."

"No?"

"No. I b.u.mped it. It fell into the aquarium and landed on one of the gerbil's backs. I recall that detail very distinctly. I could see it-the gerbil-through the aluminum and I could see his back. Flattened out."

"What did you do?"

"I ran out of the room," Maxwell said. "And hid in the boys' lavatory."

"Lavatory?"

"Rest room. The boys' rest room."

"And you stayed there?" Clark asked. "No one came to find you?"

"No, they did," Maxwell said. He folded his arms across his chest, knowing he was probably telling the doctor all kinds of things with his body language. "Eventually. My friend Chuck. He found me."

"And?"

"And what?"

"What did he say?"

"He said the gerbil wasn't dead, that they lifted the aluminum off him, and he started moving around."

Clark must have uncrossed and then recrossed his legs, because Maxwell heard a lot of rustling. "Then I'm confused," he said. "The gerbil didn't die?"

"No," Maxwell said. "Not right away. But the crack to the head or the spine or whatever must have done something bad. By the time I got back to the cla.s.sroom, expecting him to be alive and, I don't know-forgiving me?-he was jumping all around in the aquarium like he couldn't stop. My teacher took out the second one because he was so alarmed. The injured one just jumped around maniacally until he died. Or so I a.s.sume."

"Why a.s.sume?"

"It was late in the day. It was a Friday. The bell rang and we all went home."

"You couldn't stay?"

"I don't know," Maxwell said, trying to recall how he felt that day. "Maybe. I don't really recall much else about that day. I just know that when we came to school on Monday, there was only one gerbil. And a piece of wire mesh over the top of the aquarium."

Clark was quiet for a minute, letting the story settle in. Finally, he asked, "Did you tell your mother about what happened?"

"No," Maxwell said. "That time of year she would have been out to sea for two or three days at a time. I probably didn't see her again until Sunday night or Monday. I don't remember exactly. I know I never told her about it."

"Anyone else?"

"You mean besides you?"

"Yes."

Maxwell considered and then recalled, "Yes. My son. I told him a version of the story back when he was on the Rutledge with me. Well, the whole family. He kept asking for a pet, some kind of pet. 'Something small,' he used to say, believing, I think, that if it was small, it would be less trouble. Our quarters were small, even the captain's quarters. Not like Galaxy-cla.s.s quarters."

"So, your son asked you for a pet and you told him the story of how you killed a gerbil when you were his age?" There was only a slight note of incredulity in Clark's voice.

"No!" Maxwell said, exasperated. "I told him how there was a gerbil that I had known who was killed because his cage got jostled, and that aboard a starship, that kind of thing could happen all the time. It was too risky, I said."

"And what did Carlo say?" Maxwell was always impressed how Clark could remember the names of people from his stories. Of course, he thought, that's probably something they trained him to do.

"He said he understood," Maxwell explained. "He said it probably would be better to wait until we were living planetside."

"And did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Get him a pet." Maxwell paused for a long time before answering, so long that Clark asked, "Ben?"

"What?" Maxwell replied, speaking in a low tone. "Oh. Sorry. Yes. We did. I was just trying to remember its name. His name. The dog. We got a dog. A little mutt. He was s.h.a.ggy. Smelled kind of bad when he got wet. Adored Carlo. Sofia was a little scared of him because the dog would protect Carlo from any perceived threat, including his sister when she got mad at her brother."

"That's . . . well, strangely sweet," Clark said softly.

"Yes," Maxwell said, the word coming out more like a wet breath than a word. "It was. Worried Maria a little, but the dog didn't have a mean bone in its body. I wish I could remember its name . . ."

"It'll come back," Clark began.

"We didn't find its body," Maxwell continued, unprompted. "I looked through the debris of the house, but never found it. I figure the b.a.s.t.a.r.d Carda.s.sians probably vaporized it with their G.o.dd.a.m.ned disruptors." He felt his fists clenching and couldn't stop himself. "Those . . ." He thought the word but didn't say it. Years of training as a captain made it practically impossible for Maxwell to say certain words. "Killing a little dog . . . that . . ." He unclenched his hands and held them up to look at his palms. There were tiny, crescent-shaped wounds there, four on each hand.