"Are you having any luck with it?"

"Not yet." Geordi adjusted a control and entered some numbers in the console. After a moment the pattern on the screen developed two sharp spikes where there had been a broader curve before. "But I've tried only about a dozen combinations so far."

"Carry on, Mr. La Forge." Picard turned away, measuring off the descent to his command chair with even strides. If he was going to spend the next couple of hours trying to figure out his next move, he might as well do it here on the bridge. That way, if anything happened, he would know immediately.

Two hours later the monotony of the planet rotating beneath the Enterprise finally began to lull Picard from the hyperalertness that had followed Selar's page. He was even starting to think he had misinterpreted the warning p.r.i.c.kle that had sent him to the bridge when he heard Geordi give a short grunt. The captain rose to his feet and circled back to the engineering console. "Find anything, Commander?"

"I think so. Just a minute." Geordi entered a correction into the console, checked the display for the results, and modified his settings yet again. The readout began flashing the words DATA MATCH and a set of coordinates. "We've got someone!" Geordi's voice was exultant.

"Beam the person up immediately," Picard ordered even as Geordi was relaying the coordinates and the jamming pattern to the transporter room. The environmental status report, the chirps of the various monitors, and the muted buzz of the lights filled the tense silence. The murmur of the air circulation system crescendoed until its oppressive hum echoed from every corner of the bridge. You never realize how many background sounds there are on this ship, Picard thought, until all the foreground noises disappear.

"Captain, we've beamed Lieutenant Worf aboard and he's fighting mad. Do you want his report now, or should he change into a dry uniform first?" came O'Brien's voice over the intercom. Picard raised an eyebrow, wondering if everyone on the ship was standing extra watches because they couldn't sleep.

Before Picard could answer, Worf's familiar growl ended the discussion. "I will tell the captain now of how disgracefully those creatures treated me. They have no honor whatsoever!"

"Send Mr. Worf to my ready room as soon as he's had a chance to see to his immediate needs." Picard started in that direction himself. He had just reached the door when the turbolift opened.

Worf was soaked to the skin, his uniform plastered to his body. Water dripped from his hair and from the points of his dark beard. Despite looking as though he had gone swimming in his clothes, the ends of his fingers were caked with mud, and patches of wet clay were plastered to his uniform. A murmur went around the bridge as everyone caught sight of him. The Klingon strode down the ramp to the ready room, apparently oblivious to the stir his appearance was causing.

Picard led Worf inside. "I could have waited for you to change," he said when the door closed behind them. "You will do me little good if you let yourself die of pneumonia."

"Begging the captain's pardon, but my first duty is to report the treachery of our hosts. You must recall anyone left on the planet before it is too late." Worf grasped the back of the chair Picard indicated but remained standing, dripping water on the floor. After a moment the captain sat anyway.

"We're aware of the problem." Picard studied Worf. Although the Klingon needed dry clothes soon, the captain guessed that he would get little cooperation from him until Worf had told his story. As a stopgap, he ordered hot tea for both of them so that the security chief could have something to counteract the chill of his unplanned swim. "Give me your report, Mr. Worf. Then I expect you to get some dry clothes and some hot food before doing anything else."

"Yes, Captain." Worf described his adventures in the succinct, pithy way that only a Klingon could master. His spa.r.s.e account of the attacks and his escapes left much to the imagination, but Picard had no trouble visualizing an entire society suddenly gone as crazy as the pilots that had attacked the Enterprise earlier. They had to find the rest of the away team and beam them up immediately.

"Thank you, Lieutenant." Picard noticed that Worf's tea was untouched. "Go change into a dry uniform while I see if Commander La Forge can use any of this information to aid in his search. And have someone take a look at your communicator. It isn't registering on the ship's sensors."

"Yes, Captain."

Picard was still mulling over Worf's report, trying to decide what it meant and how to confront Zelfreetrollan with the information, when the door buzzer interrupted his thoughts. "Come."

Data entered, pausing beside the table but not sitting. "Captain, Dr. Selar and I have determined several possible abnormalities in the Jaradan biochemistry. All are related to trace element deficiencies within the enzymatic structures. She is attempting to determine the precise biochemical function of these compounds in the Jaradan body while I run additional sensor scans of this solar system to ascertain if any of the suspected elements occur in amounts considerably below the expected norms."

"May I inquire which elements you will be looking for?"

"Certainly, Captain." Data clasped his hands behind his back and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, reminding Picard of a lecturer he had had at the Academy. He wondered if Data had also sat through Rohnert's deplorable lectures on military tactics in the pres.p.a.ce flight era.

"Our best extrapolations suggest iodine, barium, or one of the lanthanide series of rare-earth elements. It may not be easy to determine which element is actually causing the problem, since we expect these elements to occur only in extremely small amounts in any system. However, I have a few ideas that may help narrow the possibilities, once I get the appropriate geochemical information for this solar system."

"Make it so, Commander." Picard pushed himself to his feet and left the room with Data, wanting to observe the results of the scan for himself.

Worf, in a dry uniform, had joined Geordi at the engineering station and they were both hunched over the screen, debating the best way to speed up the search. "I still say we have a better chance if we start from the Governance Complex and then move outward to every major building in the area," Geordi said. "They were invited to attend functions with important dignitaries. We are most likely to find them if we concentrate our search around the primary structures."

"I disagree. The Jarada have connected their city with a network of tunnels leading in every direction." Worf straightened when he noticed Picard's approach. "If Dr. Crusher or Commander Riker encountered difficulties with their hosts, they are likely to have escaped into the tunnels, just as I did. They could be anywhere and moving in any direction, depending on the nature of the obstacles they encounter."

"What about Ms. Ishikawa and Ensign Tanaka?" Picard directed the question to Worf, even though he had stopped beside Geordi to study the display.

"Since we believe Ms. Ishikawa and Ensign Tanaka are some distance beyond the city limits, we will have to inst.i.tute a standard spiral search pattern centered on the city in order to locate them." Worf zoomed his display to show the area he was talking about. The amount of the territory to be searched was daunting when one considered the difficulty of locating two humans stranded without communicators. "At this time it would seem a better use of our resources to attempt to locate Dr. Crusher and Commander Riker."

"Make it so, Lieutenant." Picard left them to work out their search pattern and settled himself into his command chair. He had just found the correct position for maintaining alertness despite the late hour, when Data's voice broke the silence.

"Captain, I am picking up some unusual thermal readings about three hundred kilometers northwest of the city in an unpopulated sector."

Picard straightened in his seat, wondering what the android had found. "On screen, Mr. Data."

The reference image of deciduous woodlands mixed with scattered lakes and meadows, marked with various identification codes, appeared on the screen. Data adjusted the controls, overlaying the reference scan with his current readings. A gasp of dismay rippled through the bridge like the first breath of a storm. The forest was ablaze, with greedy scarlet and yellow tongues of flame devouring everything within reach. "Wildfire," someone murmured, his tone a mixture of awe and horror.

After a moment Picard regained control of his voice. "Is there anyone in the area, Mr. Data?"

The silence stretched while the android attempted to get the answer from the sensors. "It's difficult to say, Captain. Unraveling the thermal signature of the fire from all other readings is a challenging problem in combinatorial mathematics. I am detecting sporadic readings of several large life-forms, but I am unable to determine whether they are Jarada or if they are indigenous animal life."

Picard drew in a deep breath, debating the decision. "Can you scan them well enough to get a transporter lock, Mr. Data?"

"I believe so, Captain." Data replied.

Picard turned toward Worf. "Take a group of your men and meet our 'guests' in the transporter room. Set your phasers to heavy stun."

"Aye, Captain." The Klingon relayed the order and then marched into the turbolift. His face wore a fierce grin, as if the thought of turning the tables on a few Jarada pleased him.

"Why security?" Data asked, puzzled. He realized he was the only person on the bridge who had not followed the logic of Picard's order.

"Because, Mr. Data," Picard answered in a grim voice, "anyone who sets a forest fire is probably as crazy as those pilots down in sickbay. Relay the coordinates to the transporter room and tell them to begin transport at their convenience."

"Aye, sir. Relaying first set of coordinates now."

Picard leaned back in his chair, watching on the viewscreen as the fire devoured its surroundings. He hoped he was doing the right thing, rescuing any Jarada trapped down there. At the moment he needed answers and he needed bargaining chips to get his ship and his crew out of this confusing and potentially lethal situation.

Chapter Nineteen.

"WILL!" CRUSHER GASPED, her blue eyes widening in surprise. "How did you get here?"

"That's a good question. I wish I could answer it." Riker limped over to a bench and painfully levered himself up to sit sidesaddle on its top, his swollen knee swung around to rest on the counter. "Right now, though, I'd settle for knowing why."

Crusher slid to her feet and adjusted the tricorder for human physiology. "I can guess part of the reason anyway. I've been demanding an a.s.sistant ever since I got here. It looks like you're it." She ran the tricorder over his body, frowning at the readings.

For a moment Riker tried to see himself through her eyes and realized how awful he must look. His uniform was caked with mud and slime and, despite the toughness of the fabric, ripped in a dozen places besides. He'd lost track of the number of sc.r.a.pes and bruises he'd collected and the nicks from Zarn's claws were starting to feel distinctly painful. A grin twisted the corners of his mouth as he pictured anyone in his present condition, even Wesley, being allowed near Crusher's neat, tidy lab on the Enterprise.

"What are you laughing at?" Worry sharpened her tone more than she had intended. "In your condition you ought to be in bed, at least until the swelling in that knee goes down." She turned toward Vish, who was trying to herd the other Jarada from the room. "Is there somewhere Commander Riker can wash off and get something clean to wear?"

Vish jumped, its claws skittering nervously on the tile floor. "Of course, Honored Bev-er-ly. There is a washing trough in the room where you treated your arm. Do you not remember how the way there was marked?"

Crusher sighed. "I'm afraid I don't. Would you please show us there again?"

"If that is your wish." The insectoid skittered between them and the door while Riker eased himself off the bench and back onto his feet. "Your time would be better spent in conducting the research you were brought here to do, rather than worrying about inconsequentials. There isn't much time left."

They left the laboratory and started down a corridor, with Vish dancing ahead impatiently and then backtracking to converse with Crusher. Riker's body had stiffened painfully during the ride to the complex, and he was barely able to match the slow pace Crusher was setting. "Truly, you should not spend this time polishing your a.s.sistant's carapace," Vish repeated as they turned into a side corridor. "You can worry about its esthetics after you have solved our problem."

"I'm not worried about esthetics," Crusher snapped, her temper starting to fray under the Jarada's chatter. "I'm worried about his ability to function at all in the condition he's in."

"In that case, we can throw this one out and get you one that works properly."

"No!" Riker and Crusher said in unison, their voices mixing like a Jarada's. After a moment Crusher continued without Riker, "I will take any others that you can locate, in addition to this one, but he will stay."

"Very well." In a human, Vish's tone would have been decidedly sulky. Riker wasn't sure how much of a human response he was projecting onto the Jarada, but he suspected that Vish's actions boded nothing good for them. He found himself wishing for Zarn, who had disappeared after they entered the complex. Vish's behavior was too irrational to rea.s.sure him about the Jarada's motives.

They rounded a final corner and Vish pushed open a plain wooden door. "Here is the place, Crusher-Doctor. I will bring you polishing cloths to dry your a.s.sistant's carapace and something to cover it with. But I beg of you to hurry with these inconsequential activities."

"I understand." Crusher's voice cracked with impatience. "I will use the time to inform my a.s.sistant of what I expect of him, if only you will quit hara.s.sing me!"

"It will be as you wish." Vish skittered away to fetch the promised towels while Crusher held the door aside for Riker.

He limped inside, feeling too drained to care what was happening. The room was small, with a low workbench and several shelves along one wall. Gla.s.s jars and small covered pots of various colors occupied most of the shelf s.p.a.ce. Crusher pointed to the low arched door in the back wall. "The washing trough is in there. I'm sorry about the lack of privacy, but it doesn't seem to be a concept the Jarada understand."

The washing trough was exactly what its name suggested-a sunken, elongated tub with water flowing in at one end and out the other. Riker wiggled his fingers in the water, surprised to find it was tepid and not the icy chill he had expected. He wouldn't want to spend a lot of time immersed, but he could at least get most of the grime off his body without suffering from hypothermia. The trough was a little small for a human, but again, he thought he could make do. He stripped and eased his body into the tub, wincing as the water touched the raw sc.r.a.pes on his legs.

He looked around for soap, but all he could find was a bucket of sand. No doubt the gritty stuff would work fine on the Jarada, but just now his skin didn't need any more abrasion. With a sigh Riker began working his fingers through his toes to remove the mud that had oozed into his boots. In the other room he heard Crusher talking to someone, but he didn't pay any attention until he heard her boots moving toward him.

A wadded ball of fabric sailed over his head and dropped into the water in front of him. "Here. A polishing cloth," she said. "There's some more behind you to dry off with, and a couple of sheets that will have to do for clothing." Her footsteps retreated into the other room and he heard her fussing with something on the workbench.

Riker unrolled the cloth, soaked it in the water, and began washing the rest of his body. "What's going on here anyway?" he asked, needing the answers as much as he needed anything else.

"I'am not entirely sure," her voice came back to him. "Vish told me that I was brought here to solve a form of planetwide insanity that's destroying their people. However, they expect me to do it with their equipment and their databases-and without contacting the Enterprise for help. What happened to you?"

He gave her a shortened version of his adventures, concentrating on the behavior of the Jarada he had met in hopes that she could find some clue in his descriptions. By the time he finished his story he was clean and dry, with one of the sheets tied around his waist like an Indian dhoti.

"Before you do anything more, let me take a look at your back," Crusher said as he started to drape the other sheet over his shoulders.

"Why? It's just a couple of cuts, isn't it?" Nevertheless, Riker tossed the sheet over his arm and joined her by the workbench.

Crusher activated her tricorder and scanned the cuts on his back. Each of the places where Zarn's claws had broken the skin was surrounded by a purplish-red welt, as though the wounds had been poisoned. By contrast, the deep gash on her arm was still painful and had spotted the bandage with blood, but when she eased the gauze aside, she saw no unusual discoloration. Either the ointment Vish had given her was the antidote for a toxin on the Jarada's claws, or Riker had gotten something into the cuts that had poisoned them.

Since none of the sc.r.a.pes on his legs showed any abnormal inflammation, Crusher decided on the first hypothesis. She worked the ointment, a pungent mixture of herbs in a tarry base, into each cut and then, for good measure, slathered it on every other wound she could find.

"How much of that stuff do I need?" Riker protested as she smeared it over a sc.r.a.pe on his swollen knee. "It smells horrible."

Crusher stood, wiping the excess off her fingers with a spare rag. Pointing the tricorder at the ointment, she ran a duplicate a.n.a.lysis on it before she capped the jar and returned it to the shelf. "It may smell horrible, but you've got several badly inflamed cuts on your back. Similar injuries on my arm show no signs of infection, so I'm not taking any chances. Until we get back to the ship, that ointment's the best game in town."

"Whatever you say, Doctor." Riker wrapped the second sheet around his upper body and tied it over one shoulder, toga-style. "What's our next move?"

"There's one set of experiments they showed me earlier that I would like to check again. Something about trace elements determining the colors of a plant's flowers. But after that-" Crusher shook her head in frustration, flipping her hair across her face like a red curtain. Raking it out of the way, she shrugged. "I've got tricorder readings on fairly normal to completely unbalanced Jarada, and I've recorded what their bioscanners reported for each individual. But if Vish thinks I can use their computers to make sense of the data, it needs to reconsider."

"Personally, I didn't think Vish was acting all that stable." Riker grimaced, remembering the ochre Jarada's impatient dance as it led them from the lab.

Crusher rubbed a muscle in her neck, frowning in thought. "You're right. In fact, Vish has been acting less and less normal since we got here. I think this insanity is beginning to affect its stability too."

"In that case, I suggest we check out those plants you want to study, then barricade ourselves in that lab with all the equipment. We may not be able to understand it well enough to get any science out of it, but I'm willing to bet we can find something that will attract the Enterprise's attention."

"As long as you're the one who's rewiring things. I'll have you know that I can use any device that comes with a halfway decent operator's manual, but I can't replace the codecard on a door lock." Crusher holstered her tricorder and poked her head into the hall, checking for Jarada. When she saw the corridor was deserted, she stepped through the door and motioned for Riker to follow.

He picked up the bundle that held his wet uniform and limped after her. The textured tile floor was cold against the soles of his feet. For no good reason Riker shivered, wishing his socks and boots had not been too wet to wear. Even more than the rest of his strange costume, his bare feet made him feel vulnerable. As they walked, he continued their conversation. "When it comes to electronics, I have to admit that I flunked the course-twice. I kept cross-circuiting my experiments so that they never worked the way they were supposed to."

"And you're telling me this to build my confidence?" The twinkle in Crusher's eye belied the skepticism in her voice.

"Actually, yes." He paused while she shot him an outraged glare. "If you really want to know, I'm hoping my old skills are still working. If we just tell ourselves we're trying to reconfigure the medical scanners for human operation, I should have a functioning emergency beacon in no time."

Crusher snorted with laughter. Usually she spotted Riker's tall tales before he could spring the last line. For some reason, it made her feel better to know that his sense of the inappropriate was still functioning at peak efficiency.

After returning to the medical lab the doctor paused, searching her memory. She had been taken from the lab where she had been attacked directly to the room they had just left. At the time she had been too distracted to consciously memorize the route, so she had to think a moment, recalling the turns and cross-corridors by kinesthesis rather than by visual clues. The complex seemed deserted, and they met no one on their way to the botany lab.

When they got to the right hallway, Crusher tried three doors before she found the one she wanted. The room was unchanged, with broken gla.s.sware and crushed plants still marking the place where the young researcher had attacked her. Glancing at Riker's bare feet, Crusher told him to wait near the door. She pulled out the tricorder and began walking along each aisle, recording the characteristics of each group of plants.

"What are you looking for?" Riker asked. From where he stood he could see the rows of gla.s.s tanks, each containing low bushes covered with different-colored blossoms, but could not tell why these particular plants were significant.

"These are all the same plant. Genetically identical. In most plants the color difference would be caused by variations in the genetic coding for the flower pigments."

"You're saying these plants don't have different genes for the different colors?" Riker shook his head, wondering if the insanity was affecting Crusher as well. Somehow the connection between these plants and their current predicament seemed extremely tenuous.

"Apparently not." Crusher shifted her tricorder to scan the next row, walking back toward Riker as she did. "Vish told me there was a link between the trace elements in the soil and the color of the flowers. What caught my attention was the fact that they had not been able to reproduce the color Vish said was the most common on their homeworld."

"Oh." Suddenly Riker felt the light go on in his head. "You think there's a connection between a trace element deficiency and their insanity."

"I'm sure of it. The crazy Jarada that I examined have readings that are well outside the parameters for the rest of their race. Unfortunately, if we're dealing with a biochemical imbalance, I have to guess where the deficiency is because I don't have any completely normal Jarada to compare my readings with. I wish we knew more about them."

Riker snorted. "From what I've seen, I'm afraid I know a little more than I would like. So far they haven't exactly been the most relaxing people I've ever been around."

"Yes, there is that." Crusher snapped the tricorder closed and returned it to its holster. Pausing by the counter with the smashed containers, she separated several broken stems from the tangle of crushed plants. "If you tuck these in with your uniform, they should keep well enough for me to do some cell workups when we get back to the ship."

"If you say so." Riker slipped the shoots into his bundle. "Is that all you needed here?"

Crusher nodded. "Let's get back to the other lab and try to get a signal to the ship before someone decides to check on us."

They retraced their steps, still meeting no one. Riker felt a p.r.i.c.kle of uneasiness dance along his spine. He didn't know how many Jarada worked in this complex, but if humans had designed it, there would have been hundreds of people here. The solitude made him wonder where all the Jarada were. Had the facility ever been fully staffed or had something happened to the researchers after they were a.s.signed here? Either set of possibilities was further proof of how things were deteriorating for the Jarada on this planet.

When they reached the lab, Riker began studying the equipment. To his surprise, the examination field for the bioscanner had an adjustable focus and could be adapted for what he had in mind. It took him two hours to reorient the components and to rip out the safety regulators, but in the end he had a device that could throw a signal far enough for the Enterprise's sensors to detect it. Crossing his fingers and hoping the ship would find them before the Jarada realized what he had done, Riker activated his beacon.

Chapter Twenty.