"Grab it, Picard."

Arit... where the h.e.l.l did she come from?

Taking care to limit his movements and not bring more soil cascading down, he obeyed and closed both hands around the st.u.r.dy tree branch extending down to him.

"Hold it tight."

He applied all his remaining strength to that grip, then felt himself being hauled out of his grave. The dirt around his legs tugged back as if fighting his release. Finally, he was pulled free and he used his knees to push himself away from the sinkhole. Arit, who'd been stretched out on her stomach, got to her feet and stepped back carefully until they were both back on solid ground.

Then they both collapsed, chests heaving from the strain of the rescue.

Hoisting himself up on one elbow, Picard spat out another mouthful of grit and tried to speak. But the best he could manage was a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "Thank you, Captain."

"We are even, Picard."

"Even? I-I don't understand."

"For the food," Arit said.

"Food? There was no price for that food."

"There's always a price."

"In that case, Captain Arit, our trade was hardly even. All I gave you was a meal. You ... you gave me my life."

Neither captain knew if they were truly on safe ground, nor if any aftershocks would come along to swallow them up. But they were too exhausted to move and they fell asleep where they lay.

And neither one heard the atonal, distant jangling that filled the air as a pair of twinkling splinters of light materialized, hovering a meter apart in the night sky above the ruined campsite. And even if they had, they would not have known that the two points of light, one a deep gold, the other an angry crimson, were speaking to each other, in a way no human could understand.

The golden one flared. :You should not have done this, Mog.: :I was only doing what we are meant to do, Ko-Shaping the World. They should not have been in the way.: :You knew they were here. You could have been more careful. This place did not have to be shaped at this moment,: the gold one said.

:And who is at fault, Ko? I am not. You should never have brought them here. These things should be destroyed.: :No! They must not be damaged. They are Life.: Now the crimson one spun furiously. :How dare you call them Life! They are not like us-they contaminate our World-they are not like us-they are not Life.: :You show your ignorance, Mog. Just because they are not like us does not mean they cannot be Life.: :Then why have we not seen them before? Tell me that, oh Brilliant One,: said Mog sarcastically. :Were they hiding in the rocks?: :They may have come from other than our World, Mog.: :That is blasphemy! There is NOTHING other than our World! This is all that exists.: :Is your mind really so small, Mog? How wondrous it must be to know everything there is to know. Do you know what lies in the darkness beyond what we can see? Many of us agree with me-many believe that much lies beyond the Great Darkness.: :You should not have brought these things here,: Mog repeated, his fiery shape spinning threateningly.

:That is not your decision,: Ko said. :This is my Communion-my vision will lead.: :The Elders may differ-especially now that you speak of demon worlds out in the Great Darkness. They are not pleased with what you did before the rest of us awoke from Interval-taking these two things from their containers-holding the other things and their small container inside our World-: :They are not THINGS!: Ko exploded. :They are Life, and I will prove it.: :How?: Mog challenged derisively. :They do not have the intelligence to speak to us.: :Maybe they speak differently. I will find out how to communicate with them, and I will PROVE that you are wrong, Mog.: :Very well. Because this is your Communion, I will give you two cycles, Ko. If you have not taught these things to speak by then, I will destroy them as the poisonous things they are, before they can taint our World any more than they already have.: :No!: Ko flared in protest. :Two cycles may not be enough.: :Two cycles is all you will get. A majority of the Elders support me. If you do not agree, you will be removed, Ko, and the things will be snuffed out NOW.: :Then I am forced to agree. But I WILL do what I say, Mog-just to prove you wrong. And now I say it will not even take me two cycles.: The confrontation ended when the crimson glimmer of energy flared forcefully and winked out. Left alone, the gold one dimmed and fluttered low over the sleeping bodies of Picard and Arit, like an impossibly tiny star fallen from the cosmos. Ko wondered what they really were. And she wondered if she had let Mog force her into a challenge she could not win.

Mog was right about one thing-to many of their population, Ko's ideas were blasphemy. The majority did believe without reservation that their World was everything; nothing else existed. The very thought that their faith might be wrong, or incomplete, terrified many. But not all.

It was true that they had never directly encountered anything that called their faith into question. But some had questioned it nonetheless, Ko among them.

We are of this place, said the Orthody, the canon of the faith. We cannot leave the World. We must remain here for all Communions to come. That is truth. So, then, why would the Creator bother to make other worlds? If we cannot go to them, they do not exist.

Ko found it hard to argue against the Orthody. But she still had her lingering doubts-there may be things of which we simply do not know ... if we do not ask questions, how will we ever know?

Such inquiries were not welcome. But Ko felt they had to be made, and she had decided long ago that when her turn came to lead the Communion, she would not shrink from the task. Not that she'd had any idea how to go about testing the Orthody. After all, it was a physical fact that Ko and those like her were bound to their World. They could not escape it, could not explore beyond it.

And, as far as they knew, nothing from beyond the Great Darkness had ever come to them.

Until now. The long rest known as Interval had not yet been due to end, but something had intruded. Some force had jostled Ko awake early. And she had risen and seen the things she believed to be Life, moving about on her World.

But by the time she'd found them, they were already about to leave. She'd tried to speak to them, but they did not understand. Nor did she understand the sounds they made. But she was certain, beyond all doubts, that they were an answer to her questions. She desperately wanted-needed-to communicate with them, whatever they were. But how?

She hadn't wanted to hurt them, and could not voluntarily stop them. Sadly, she had been watching them go when the small container became ensnared by the larger container. And even though she had no common language with the live things, she had been astonished to feel the colors of hostility, the shades of danger. Ko considered that revelation to be certain proof that she and all these live things shared much despite being such different forms of life.

Then the second large container had arrived. The colors had darkened and she was afraid to wait any longer. With no time to think, Ko had acted on her first impulse-preserve the few in immediate danger! So she took the small container and put it in a place of safety.

From the beginning, her only desire had been to gain time to establish contact with these new Lives. She had to learn to understand them, to get them to understand her. What was so wrong with that? This was not some hypothetical debate. They were here-and Mog and his kind could no longer ignore the existence of something they had never known before.

But Mog and his faction could destroy them. And they would, unless Ko could accomplish what she'd set out to do ... to make this one dream real.

Chapter Eight.

"HEY, KEN-do you need some help?" Wesley Crusher leaned his lanky body out through the shuttle's side hatch, looking across the cavern to where Ken was busy collecting additional rock and mineral samples. Wes waited for a reply, then frowned when none came. He must have heard me ...

Then again, Ken Kolker had a way of getting so wrapped up in whatever he was doing that it was quite possible that a volcanic eruption might escape his notice until molten lava steamed past his toes. So Wes hopped down and walked over to where Ken squatted on one knee, carefully chipping a few small chunks out of a blue mineral vein running irregularly along the cave wall. "Anything I can help you with?"

"I heard you the first time," Kenny muttered without looking up.

"Oh. Well, is there?"

"No."

"You sure? I just thought-"

"If I wanted any help, I'd have said yes, now wouldn't I?" said Ken, with a distinctly chilly edge in his voice.

"Sure. I guess." Wes considered a retreat to the shuttle, but decided to press forward with small talk. He really had no idea what was bothering his friend. "Data and Gina should be back soon. Do you think they'll find a way out?"

Ken's eyes remained on his work. "How am I supposed to know?"

"Is there something wrong? If there is, we've obviously got plenty of time to talk about it."

"Nothing's wrong, Wesley."

"Are you sure?" Wes asked again, not really certain that persistence was his best choice.

Ken answered with a derisive snort as he glared up at Wesley. "You don't have a clue, do you?"

Wesley blinked in surprise at the current of sudden hostility running beneath Kenny's answer. "A clue about what?" His mental reflexes told him to back off, but his smattering of command training reminded him to resist that easier course. It didn't take a boy genius, or any other kind of genius for that matter, to grasp the fact that there was an obvious problem here, and it had to be dealt with.

Ken turned back to his rock chipping. "You know what I sometimes feel like calling you?"

"What?"

"Beemots."

A perplexed furrow wrinkled Wesley's brow. He had no idea what Kenny was talking about. "Beemots?"

"Yeah. B-M-O-T-S," Ken said, spelling out the letters. "Big Man on the Starship." Ken stood up and brushed the coating of dust off his knees.

Wes wasn't sure whether to be hurt or mad. Actually, he felt a little of both. "Why?"

"Because you're an ensign with a uniform."

Wesley's arms folded defensively across his chest. He felt an embarra.s.sed flush coloring his face. "Hey, I'm not the first person in history to receive a field commission."

"You are on this ship." Ken paused, as if weighing options-should he continue, or drop it here? He decided to go with a touch of deliberate nastiness. "Do you ever wonder if you got that field commission because your mother is buddy-buddy with Captain Picard?"

Wesley felt his concern for whatever was bugging Kenny getting crowded out by his own emotions, which skidded distinctly toward anger. But he made a deliberate effort to keep it out of his voice. "Is that what you think?"

The shorter teen frowned as he formulated a careful answer, delivered with a shrug. "No, I guess not. You're too nice a guy, and I know you earned what you got. But that doesn't mean I'm not jealous."

"Jealous? Of what?" Wesley shook his head, trying to understand.

"Ask Gina."

"Gina? What does this have to do with her? Are you saying she's jealous of me?"

Ken snickered. "You really don't get it, do you? You know, Crusher, for a smart guy, you can be awfully dense sometimes."

"I never said I couldn't be. How about giving me a hint."

"Everybody sees how Gina looks at you."

"How she looks at me? Is that what this is about? Gina and I are just friends."

"Oh, sure you are."

"We are," Wes insisted.

"But she notices you ... constantly. The only way she'd ever notice me is if I singlehandedly got us out of here."

"Maybe that's the way out, Commander," Gina called back over her shoulder. She marched several strides ahead of Data, deeper down a narrow pa.s.sage splitting off the main tunnel. "Can't we at least try?"

Her android escort scanned ahead into the darkness with both his flashlight and tricorder. "I am afraid this branch ends just like the others did, Gina. Besides, we have been searching for almost two hours. It is time we turned back. You will need to rest."

"But I'm not tired, Commander. Pleeeease?" she begged as she turned back to him, her stance a mixture of adolescent petulance and adult urgency.

"It is possible that we will find an exit to the surface-and we shall continue our search. But not here, and not now. It is time to return to the shuttle," he said, more firmly this time.

Gina's shoulders slumped. "Yes, sir."

Wesley Crusher sat by himself, hunched in the shuttle c.o.c.kpit, staring at the pilot's console but not really seeing it. He'd left Kenny outside in the cave and come back to the ship to try to make some sense of their conversation. Is that how everybody sees me, or just Kenny?

"Wesley?"

The sound of Deanna Troi's voice behind him caught him by surprise and he sat up abruptly, managing to ram his kneecap into the console-"Owww!"-as he turned to see her standing in the midship hatchway.

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to startle you. But you looked like a young man with something serious on his mind. Is it anything you want to talk about?"

"It's nothing. I'm okay," he said with a halfhearted shrug. Then he winced and rubbed his throbbing knee. "At least I was," he added, an ironic trace of a smile curling one corner of his mouth.

"Are you sure you don't want to talk? It appears that all my previously scheduled appointments have been canceled for today."

He laughed in spite of his reflective mood, but the laugh faded quickly, replaced by a sigh. Counselor Troi leaned against the other c.o.c.kpit couch. Then he told her what Ken had said to him.

"Which bothers you more," she asked, "the part about Ken being jealous of your being an ensign, or the part about Gina?"

"The field commission part I understand, and I can deal with that. When the captain made me an ensign, I figured if I didn't flaunt the uniform, and if I worked hard, none of the other kids would mind. I really don't think anybody does, and I don't think Ken does either. I think that was just his way of getting into the other thing."

"Gina."

He nodded. "I just don't get it, Deanna. I never thought girls thought I was anything special."

"What did you think?"

"What do you mean?"

"How did you see yourself?"

Wesley's long eyelashes fluttered in embarra.s.sment. "I don't know. Kind of a bookworm, I guess. I always felt kind of uncomfortable around girls-I never knew what to say. I always wished I could be more like Commander Riker."

Troi smiled slightly. "He does have a way with women. But how do you know you don't have your own natural way?"

"Me? I don't think so. I always thought I was too thin ... and ... I was never the best at sports. And I'm not exactly the life of the party. It's not that I'm down on myself-I know I've got my share of good qualities, and I'm not surprised when a girl likes me. But I can't understand why anyone would think that girls're falling all over me."

Counselor Troi slipped into the other c.o.c.kpit seat, then swiveled to face Wesley. "Everything is relative. Has it occurred to you that perhaps Ken looks up to you the way you look up to Commander Riker?"

His eyes widened in disbelief. "You're kidding, right?"

She chuckled. "No, I'm not. You and Ken seem to share a problem that is quite common and perfectly natural for people your age."

"Insecurity, right?"

"I thought I was the counselor here," she quipped. "Look, Wesley, feelings of insecurity are nothing to be ashamed of, as long as they are kept in perspective. It is entirely natural for young people to worry about what others think of them."

"Even Betazoids?"

"Why shouldn't we?"

"Because you're empathic. You'd know what other people thought of you."

She nodded. "Exactly-and there were lots of times when I would have preferred not knowing. There still are." Troi leaned closer to him, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush. "Can I tell you a secret?"