He bowed his head, conceding the fact. "What do you want?"

"I want you to come with us to the sh.e.l.l. Our Starfleet engineers want to know why darkmatter collection has increased sixteen-fold. They want to know why this is happening."

Zuka Juno snorted derisively. "They want to inspect our programming."

"Well it's high time somebody did, isn't it?" snapped Pazlar.

The two Elaysians-one young, one old; one wearing a Starfleet combadge and the other a violet crystal-stared stubbornly at each other. Finally Zuka Juno lifted his hands in resignation. "Do we have to go in that vehicle?"

"I've turned off the artificial gravity, and it will be fast." She moved back to allow the engineer to enter before her. Barclay floated toward the rear of the craft, almost banging his head on a fire extinguisher in the process. Melora situated the distinguished Elaysian near the front of the craft, then she hovered over the pilot's seat, checking the readouts.

"Hi!" said Reg with false cheer. "I'm Lieutenant Reginald Barclay."

The Elaysian regarded him with pale eyes. "Still planning on shooting us?"

"No," he answered sheepishly. "We don't have any weapons."

Pazlar quickly shut the hatch. "I'm sorry I had to lie back there, but this is important."

Zuka Juno sighed heavily. "Everything is important these days. There are crises everywhere, and n.o.body knows what to do. We are losing our homeworld to this foul growth! I don't really think inspecting a few lines of code will do much good."

"We're just looking for some answers," replied Melora. "We're not alone in this-the Enterprise crew can help us, if we only let them." She fired thrusters and slowly pulled away from the yellow cl.u.s.ter.

Barclay tried to sound nonchalant as he asked, "Um, when was the last time you were on the sh.e.l.l?"

"We were all there, the senior engineers, for a personnel review," answered the Elaysian. "Halfway through, the deformed crystal was reported for the first time. There were suddenly problems everywhere, and we postponed our meeting to calm the populace. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, it's nothing, really," answered Reg quickly. "I was just curious about when the programming of the sh.e.l.l was last changed."

The old Elaysian shook his head. "The programming has not been changed substantially since before I was born. We don't have any reason to change it."

"What about now?"

"I'm going with you, aren't I?" muttered Zuka Juno, grasping the violet crystal which hung from his neck. "I'd be very surprised if centuries-old programming caused all of this. It's the rift."

Melora shot Reg a glance, which seemed to signal that he shouldn't press for more answers now. They had done their job. Now they had to be patient and follow protocols. Barclay found a seat and tightened his lap belt until his skinny frame fit as snugly as possible. With a sigh, he leaned back in his chair, hoping he could sleep but not expecting more than a fitful doze.

Deanna Troi reclined gratefully in her bed, glad to get a moment's rest after the heady events of the day. It wasn't often she got to take over the bridge in the middle of a crisis, then spend hours flying in a wonderland. But even the incredible sights of Gemworld were almost anticlimactic after their dealings with the Exalted Ones and the Jeptah. It all added up to sensory overload. This was one night when she wouldn't have to dream, thought Troi. Her imagination couldn't possibly match the reality all around them.

Tomorrow she would have to deal with the emotional overload of losing seven crewmembers. She could comfort grieving friends and spouses, but the ongoing tension on the ship was proving to be more difficult to deal with. Although they seemed safe inside this metal coc.o.o.n surrounded by jewels, everyone knew it could crumble apart in an instant. The rift was too unpredictable and Gemworld too fragile-the sh.e.l.l didn't seem to be enough, with its arrogant programmers and arcane protocols. Every member of the crew knew that the Enterprise couldn't escape, and n.o.body could rescue them.

Deanna shook off her troubled thoughts and picked up a padd to do a little reading. But she found that she barely had the energy to focus her eyes, and she let the padd drop to her bed. Music, she thought, would be more soothing.

To her surprise, it wasn't a nice concerto she or dered up, but a sound effect. "Computer, put on a sound ... the ocean at the beach."

The cry of a seagull greeted her ear, and waves lapped gently at an unseen sh.o.r.e. With a rhythmic lull, the waves washed up and down the sand, and Troi could feel herself floating in a cradle on the tide. Since she had actually been floating that day, her body aided the illusion, and her muscles went as limp as a Lipul floating in its crystal. Real perception and dream perception intermingled, and she felt herself floating away though a dozen different substances-water, gelatinous ma.s.s, the crystal, the air, the sh.e.l.l, and even s.p.a.ce.

She thought it was the Lipuls' dreamships calling her, and she turned to look for them in the luminous starscape. But their ghostly, billowing sails were nowhere to be seen. Instead she felt the draw of a presence just outside the protective sh.e.l.l, something that was close but oddly far away. It terrified Deanna to think that she was alone-a fleet of one-but there was the attraction of the deep unknown, lying so close at hand.

If only I could see it as well as I can feel it. With her mind, she probed the emptiness of s.p.a.ce and found it wasn't empty. Inside the darkness was an even greater darkness, alive and roiling with attraction and energy. It didn't reveal itself, but it knew she was there, like a suitor waiting in the shadows for his beloved to sneak out of her house.

Suddenly her mind was flooded with incredible images of worlds and wonders that dwarfed the amazing things she had already seen. Fantastic creatures, planets, vistas, and anomalies danced and faded before her, and Troi felt as if she were plunging through the history of a thousand worlds. It was too much. She almost fled in terror to the realm of consciousness.

Before she could escape, the blackness enveloped her in soothing comfort, and the images stopped. She could feel the knowledge and wisdom of the ent.i.ty that enticed her. It seemed to say that she could cross the greatest barrier, and all the knowledge it possessed would be hers. She would be no mere humanoid anymore.

Troi had seen lights beckon to her before-on a runway or a starship-but she had never seen a beacon of darkness before. But there it loomed-a black gash where stars had never existed, where nothing existed except for this mysterious welcome. Transfixed, she drifted toward the gaping maw, hoping she could cross and see the ident.i.ty of her suitor. It wanted her so badly, and it was willing to give so much to get her.

On the way to the ultimate barrier, some inner voice told her that she had to look. She had to really look. Deanna had been fooled before, and she knew too much about the nature of attraction to believe her feelings alone. When she peered into the blackness, she fully expected to see a kindly face full of wisdom. Her mind opened, and she used whatever nascent abilities she had to see beyond the veil.

The images came again-only now they were beastly and horrible. Elaysians screamed as skin peeled off their faces; writhing Lipuls were skewered on dark spires; whole planets crumbled into black dust; and stars were obliterated from the night sky. Land and water burned, and knowledge was eclipsed by cruelty and degradation. The friendly face she expected to see was nothing but a monstrous, gaping mouth-anxious to swallow everything!

An unrelenting feeling of fear washed over Deanna, like the waves washing onto the sh.o.r.e. Her mind filled with the deaths, disease, and destruction she had witnessed in her eventful life. It was as if an unseen power were dredging up these memories, feeding on them, forcing her to look at the horrors already in her mind. This is you, was the message. We're alike!

"No!" shouted Troi, bolting upright in her bed. The darkness of her quarters seemed to engulf her, as if she couldn't escape from the black presence. A gash began to grow on the metallic bulkhead in front her; it lengthened and widened, and she saw swirls of blackness within. The swirls pulled her in like a whirlpool, drawing her out of her bed.

It's never going to leave my mind now that I've let it in! Troi turned to run, but the darkness and fear overwhelmed her, squeezing her mind and roaring in her ears until her senses shut down. Deanna Troi screamed back, and she just kept screaming as she smashed a row of picture frames with her clenched fists. She attacked the shelves and wall hangings, ripping and slashing her dearest belongings.

It's all closing in... . Coming to get me!

Chapter Ten.

THE DOOR TO SICKBAY WHOOSHED open, and Captain Picard strode briskly into the receiving room, where he nearly ran into Commander Riker, who was pacing with his head down. The first officer gave him a stricken look, then he composed himself and straightened to attention.

"Deanna is still with the doctor," he said, "and they won't let me see her."

"What happened?" grumbled the captain. He had been awakened from a deep sleep by the news that Commander Troi was in sickbay ... being held in restraints.

Riker heaved his broad shoulders in bewilderment. "She was found wandering the corridor in her nightclothes, screaming."

"Any idea what brought this on?" asked the captain.

"I haven't been able to talk to anyone," answered Riker with frustration. "They're all busy. When I last saw Deanna, she was headed to bed, like the doctor ordered."

The captain strode over to a broad window which offered a view of a trauma center with several beds, all of them occupied. None were occupied by Deanna Troi, however. Beyond this open area, there were doorways leading to private examination rooms and operating rooms. He saw medical personnel moving among the patients, and he wanted to bang on the window to demand their attention. But the captain refrained, knowing that he wasn't the master of this place. One of the workers finally noticed him, and she pressed a comm panel on the bulkhead and spoke to someone.

From one of the examination rooms, Dr. Beverly Crusher emerged, brushing back a strand of copper-colored hair. She looked harried and haggard, as if she hadn't followed her own advice to get some sleep. Perhaps Beverly had been woken from a peaceful slumber, too, thought Picard. When there was an emergency on the Enterprise, sleep was the first thing to suffer.

As she approached them, she managed the wisp of a smile. "h.e.l.lo, Jean-Luc, Will."

"How is she?" asked Riker with concern.

"Sedated. You can see her, but she's just sleeping." Crusher grimaced in frustration. "I tried to keep her awake-to ask her questions and find out what happened, but she wasn't responsive."

"Did she say anything at all?" asked Picard.

"Quite a bit, but none of it made any sense."

"Like what?"

Crusher looked pained as she replied, "Like something was trying to get her. Like there was a rip in the bulkhead in her quarters. She said something about 'it' being in her mind, but I don't know what 'it' is. I can tell you, there's no medical cause for her condition. With her symptoms, I would normally call in the ship's counselor, but she is the ship's counselor."

"What will she be like when she wakes up?" asked Riker.

The doctor shrugged wearily. "I honestly don't know. Maybe she'll be fine, or maybe she'll be like she was when they found her-screaming and incoherent."

"Do you know what she was doing?" asked Picard.

"From her dress, I'd say she was in bed. They found her in the corridor outside her quarters, and I guess her quarters were also in disarray."

"We can find out from the computer if there were any intruders in her quarters," said Picard, starting for the door. "Do you want to come, Number One?"

The first officer again looked stricken with worry. "If you don't mind, sir, I'd like to stay here ... in case she wakes up."

"She won't wake up for hours," said Crusher with a sympathetic smile. "I'll call you first, Will."

"Thank you." The first officer nodded to the captain, and the two of them strode briskly into the corridor.

Captain Picard sat at his desk in his ready room, and Commander Riker looked over his shoulder, grimly watching a security video log taken in Troi's quarters after the incident. On the log there was ample evidence of her rampage: overturned furniture, ruined artwork, smashed gla.s.s-her tidy quarters had become a disaster area.

Neither one of them could imagine Deanna doing this, but the commentary on the vidlog made it clear that there had been no intruders. They watched brief interviews with the two crewmembers who subdued her in the corridor, and both of them seemed genuinely alarmed by their encounter with the distraught counselor. Picard was tight lipped as he turned off the small viewscreen.

"No intruder," muttered Riker. "Nothing happened to her. She was asleep, then she woke up and went crazy."

The captain stroked his angular chin thoughtfully. "Or something happened to her while she was asleep. Something that wouldn't show up on any video log."

"A bad dream?" asked Riker skeptically.

"Don't forget," said Picard, "it was a dream that brought us here."

"Do you think the Lipuls did this to her?"

"I don't know. But if she doesn't recover soon, we're going to pay them a visit." Captain Picard rose from his desk, a worried look on his face. "Now I wish I had sent a security team with Pazlar and Barclay."

"But how can Pazlar be in danger? She's one of them."

"Panic can bring out the worst in anyone, and I'm afraid our hosts are near panic." Picard thought about the fear and anger he had seen on the faces of Tangre Bertoran and the other Jeptah. The rift didn't just threaten their planet-it threatened everything they believed in, everything they held to be true, especially the myth that the sh.e.l.l would protect them forever.

"We could send a security team," suggested Riker.

"No, it's better to keep a low profile. For now." The captain's jaw clenched. "But I won't hesitate to disturb the Lipuls if Counselor Troi doesn't recover."

"Thank you, sir," answered Riker with relief. "By the way, I've scheduled the service for our lost crewmembers at twenty-two hundred hours. Is that all right?"

"Fine," answered the captain. "I'll give the remarks."

The first officer nodded, but he gazed toward the door, still obviously distracted by his concern over Troi's condition.

"Go on to sickbay," said Picard softly. "I'll take the bridge."

"Thank you, sir." The big man bolted from the ready room, leaving Captain Picard alone with his own worries, which extended not only to his ship's counselor, but to several hundred crewmembers and a crumbling world of two billion souls.

Somehow the Elaysian senior engineer, Zuka Juno, managed to float in the c.o.c.kpit of the shuttlecraft while still looking heavy and pompous. Maybe it was the way the elder engineer crossed his arms and scowled continuously, thought Reg Barclay. On the other hand, Melora Pazlar managed to float like some ethereal being, even as she kept her hands firmly grounded on the controls.

Reg was sure that he floated as gracefully as he walked, ran, or did anything else physical, which wasn't too gracefully. The gangly lieutenant kept b.u.mping his head, elbows, and knees, even though he had the whole stern of the shuttlecraft to himself. He thought about sitting down again, but being weightless and sitting felt like the worst of both worlds. It seemed to make his stomach queasy, too, no matter how many hypos he took.

A violet crystal bobbed behind Zuka Juno's shoulder; it was attached to a lanyard coming from his neck. The shard both marked his rank and served as a security device for top-level access. It was the whole reason they had come, and Reg was somewhat alarmed about the lackadaisical way he wore it. What if it got lost?

The lieutenant said very little, hoping that the two Elaysians would talk to each other and he could eavesdrop. But an icy silence had fallen over the shuttlecraft and her occupants; it was evident that Zuka Juno considered this interruption to be a waste of time. Mutant, malformed crystals were threatening their food supply, their housing, and every other form of infrastructure on Gemworld-and humoring two minor Starfleet officers must have seemed like a low priority. Barclay wondered how helpful the senior engineer would be once they got back to the sh.e.l.l and its mysterious programming room.

"The sh.e.l.l is in sight," reported Pazlar.

Reg looked up from his troubled thoughts, and he instantly banged his shin on a protruding shelf. Stifling a cry of pain, he gazed out the window at the rapidly approaching bands of gray silhouetted against the pale blue sky. Even Zuka Juno looked up from his pouting long enough to observe the immense sh.e.l.l. What a triumph of engineering and determination it was, thought Reg, a paean to the will to survive.

Then again, he had spent several hours on the sh.e.l.l, and he had spotted the patches, seals, welds, solders, and kludges-the spit and sh.e.l.lac that was holding the thing together. The repairs were impressive, too, but also troubling. There was no "plan B," no backup system. Nothing but the Sacred Protector kept the fragile planet intact, and it had started failing in its job.

They closed quickly on the Ninth Processing Gate, but there were no crowds of Elaysians and Alpusta to greet them and secure the shuttlecraft. The nourishment strands still pulsed with life, and the forcefields sparkled like dew on a transparent leaf. An occasional worker soared from the kidney-shaped opening and flew off, but overall the place felt deserted. Reg imagined that travel had gotten difficult for the average denizen on Gemworld, and maybe people had returned home to be with their families. By now, some of them had to be thinking that these were the last days for their ancient civilization.

They braced themselves in order to stop their own momentum when the shuttlecraft stopped. With Melora's help, Barclay exited from the shuttlecraft without incident, and he watched as Melora tethered their craft. Holding her hand, he floated confidently into the sh.e.l.l. Once the staff realized that a senior engineer was in their midst, workers emerged from circular corridors all around them, and they soon had a sizable escort. They were whisked through the corridors in an officious manner. Reg got a little queasy from all the bouncing off the walls and sharp turns. He worried that the hyposprays for s.p.a.ce sickness weren't working.

Reg tried to look for markings and details in the corridors, so that maybe he could find his way out on his own. But it was hopeless. Without any up or down, he was unable to get his bearings and was soon lost in the cylindrical pa.s.sageways.

No true believers from the Jeptah stopped them this time. They were taken immediately to the ancient programming room, where crystal shards were inserted into the living crystal to unleash programs that had been written and optimized centuries ago.

The Elaysian technician in the room shrunk back from Zuka Juno's withering gaze; she tagged up on the wall and shot out of the room, leaving the three of them alone.

The senior engineer ignored Reg and Melora as he made his preparations. First he laboriously studied page after page of readouts on the monitoring station. Zuka Juno seemed to know his way around the instruments, which gave Barclay some hope that they would be successful in finding a cause for all the problems.

The V-shaped ridges on the Elaysian's forehead deepened as he read. Reg figured he was learning about the darkmatter collection shooting sky-high, along with the fractal overproduction. When Juno glanced up and saw the Starfleet officers staring at him, he scowled and turned his back to them.

Melora wasn't as shy as Reg, so she asked pointblank, "Are they right about the fractal program running in an endless loop?"

"I can't say for sure," bl.u.s.tered the Elaysian. "Something has stimulated production of crystal-inferior crystal, at that. But the program is designed to compensate for changes in operating conditions, and that rift is a large change. Perhaps these cycles will end on their own, once the rift is dealt with."

"But what if it's causing it?" asked Reg.

The senior engineer shot him a disdainful look. "What you suggest is quite impossible. I think I know this machinery better than you, Lieutenant."

"We are going to look at the code, aren't we?" asked Melora, deflecting his anger away from Reg.

"I suppose." With a scowl, Zuka Juno twisted gracefully in midair, caught a handle, and pulled himself along the curved wall to the top row of tiny drawers. Without looking, his hands crept across the small drawers and clicking relays to a panel made from blood-red crystal. The surface of this nondescript little nook looked chipped and aged, and he ran his hands over it with loving tenderness.

After a moment of silent communion, Zuka Juno gripped the violet shard floating around his neck and brought it to his lips for a kiss. Then he opened the drawer and shoved it into the glowing red crystal. A miraculous light burst forth, filling the room with twinkling rainbows and dancing sparks of gold. Had there been any gravity, Reg's jaw would have dropped open.