"He's insane," the telepath thought matter-of-factly. "And dangerous, too. He can set things aflame just by looking at them, so they don't dare let him out into the yard."

Erid wondered what it was like to visit the mind of a crazy person.

"Not pleasant," Paldul thought, surprising him. "At least, in Mollic's case, it's not. I've never visited the mind of any other mental patient, so I can't say that's true as a rule."

Erid frowned. "It must be nice to have a power like yours. You don't have to worry about it getting out of control. And you can exercise it without the guards trying to stun you."

There was another undercurrent of humor. "That's true. But it wasn't nice at all when the power first came to me. I kept hearing the thoughts of everyone around me, all the time and all at once. It took me a couple of days to learn to shut them out-to focus on hearing only what I wanted to hear."

"Two days," thought Erid.

He had had his power a lot longer than that, and he still hadn't learned to control it. But then, he didn't have the luxury of using his talent in public. He was forced to practice it in his cell at night, projecting tiny rays of energy over and over again until he was too tired to keep his eyes open.

"I envy you," he thought at Paldul.

The youth smiled. "The one I envy is Rahatan. He's the only one with the courage to stand up to our guards. In fact ..."

"What?" thought Erid.

"You'll see," Paldul told him, with just a hint of amus.e.m.e.nt.

Erid asked him for an explanation again, but there was no answer in his head. Paldul had gone away. With that realization came a great emptiness-a loneliness Erid had never felt before.

But then, he had never shared his thoughts with another Xhaldian.

Suddenly, he was jolted by a loud sound-a voice from directly above him. "Day's over," the prime guard bellowed. He was a tall, rangy man with a long, lined face. "Time for last meal."

Erid studied the wall on the opposite side of the yard. Sure enough, the shadow had climbed almost to the top of it. In half an hour or so, the sun would go down.

He started in the direction of the mess hall, telling himself it wasn't so bad they had to leave the yard. As much as he had eaten at second meal, his hunger was already beginning to gnaw at him.

"This is ridiculous!" someone cried out in a strident voice.

As the cry echoed from wall to wall, all eyes turned to its source. Erid was no exception.

What he saw was Rahatan. The transformed's gaze was fixed on the prime guard, his hands held out in a plea for reason.

"It's still light out," said Rahatan.

Erid was reminded of the thought Paldul had sent him moments earlier. The one I envy is Rahatan. He's the only one with the courage to stand up to our guards.

"That may be true," the prime guard allowed, "but it doesn't change anything. Rules are rules."

"There's no reason to rush us," Rahatan insisted. He took in some of the other transformed with a glance. "Am I right?"

His challenge was met by a rumble of a.s.sent. After all, none of the prisoners ever liked to leave the yard.

Denara looked up at the prime guard as well. "Would another few minutes really hurt?" she asked.

"It's little enough to ask," agreed Leyden.

The head guard raised his weapon and pointed it at Rahatan. "Don't make me use this," he said.

The youth smiled. "I'm not making you do anything." Seevyn came over to him. "This is unnecessary," she told Rahatan.

"I'll decide what's necessary," he returned, glancing at her.

"You'll just get yourself stunned," Seevyn insisted.

Rahatan chuckled. "Will I?" Then he looked to the head guard again. "Just leave us alone and there won't be any trouble."

The guard's eyes narrowed. "Trouble? Is that a threat?"

Rahatan shook his head. "A force of nature doesn't threaten. It acts without warning."

Suddenly, the high stone wall began to shudder under the guards' feet, loosening tiny pieces of mortar. Wide-eyed, uncertain of his footing, the prime guard thrust a hand out to support himself-almost dropping his stun weapon in the process.

"What's going on?" one of the other guards barked.

Erid knew the answer. He could see it in Rahatan's smile, in the way he held his hands out. So that was the newcomer's power, he thought.

Rahatan could move things-perhaps a great many things. But what he was moving at that moment was the earth beneath the fortress wall, causing the barrier to tremble and scare the life out of the guards.

"It's that one," the prime guard concluded at last. He pointed to Rahatan with his weapon. "He's doing it."

"And what if I am?" asked Rahatan, seemingly unconcerned.

The prime guard didn't answer. He just braced himself as best he could, took aim, and fired a stun blast. Nor was he the only one.

Rahatan didn't make a move to elude his fate. He stood there and accepted it-and before the eyes of everyone a.s.sembled, endured the indignity of the guards' barrage.

It made him shiver and twitch uncontrollably, then fall to his knees. His eyes rolled back in his head and his jaws worked furiously. Spittle ran from the corner of his mouth.

The ordeal lasted only a second or two. By the time the guards stopped firing, Rahatan had pitched forward and lost consciousness. He lay stretched out on the ground, paler than any living being had a right to be.

"Monsters!" bellowed Leyden, shaking his fists at the guards.

"What have you done to him?" Denara demanded.

Meanwhile, the shuddering of the walls had stopped. But despite that, the guards didn't look as if they felt very secure.

"Disperse!" cried their prime, aiming his rifle at Leyden and then at Denara. "Walk away!"

"Or what?" asked the youth with the luminous eyes. "Will you do to us what you did to him?"

Clearly, the guards didn't want to fire at anyone else. Their expressions were proof of that. But the cries of the transformed had begun to sound too much like a rebellion.

Then a handful of them began to move in the direction of the prime guard-or more accurately, the wall beneath his feet. Leyden and Denara and the man with the luminous eyes were among them. Corba might have advanced with them too, but she had paused to kneel at Rahatan's side.

"Stay back!" the prime guard yelled sharply, glaring at Leyden and Denara and the others.

His admonition had no effect. The transformed kept coming.

When Leyden reached the wall, he hit it with the heel of his hand. Amazingly, the stone and mortar cracked under the blow, giving him a handhold. With the heel of his other hand, Leyden smashed another hole in the wall.

To Erid, at least, the transformed's intention was clear. Making hand-and footholds as he went, he was going to climb the barrier. Leyden could never do it quickly enough to actually reach the prime guard, but that didn't seem to discourage him in the least.

"Stop him!" cried the prime guard.

With that, he and his men unleashed another barrage. No doubt, it would have wracked Leyden as it had Rahatan, except Denara advanced to the strong man's side.

Erid had never seen her activate her shielding until that moment. He hadn't known she could extend it to protect someone else. But as he looked on, that was just what she appeared to do.

The stun barrage should have subdued Leyden. It should have sent him crashing to the ground.

But thanks to Denara, it didn't. Together, the two of them withstood volley after volley from the guards. Leyden even got a chance to take a couple more pieces out of the wall.

In time, however, Denara's shielding seemed to weaken. The stun blasts began to get through. Leyden cried out as if in agony and went lurching away from her. And once he was no longer under Denara's protection, he was as vulnerable as any of them.

In a moment or two, he was writhing and convulsing like a fish out of water. In another, he was on the ground, spent and senseless.

But the guards weren't finished. After all, Denara had defied them as well. They kept up their barrage until she, too, began to stagger. She cursed them through clenched teeth, dropping to one knee.

Then her shielding gave way and the stun fire got to her. For a moment, the woman convulsed so badly it was agony for Erid to watch. Then, mercifully, she too lost consciousness.

The guards looked around, wary of the other prisoners. But the yard was quiet-ominously so. No one moved. No one even breathed, it seemed.

In the wake of the battle-for that was what it had been, without question-the prime guard wiped his brow with the back of his hand. Then he indicated Rahatan, Leyden, and Denara with a gesture.

"Pick them up and put them in cells," he told his men. "And lock them so they can't get out."

Some of the guards descended from the battlements and entered the yard, their weapons at the ready. None of the transformed moved to stop them as they carried out the prime guard's orders.

It was only after they had disappeared with Rahatan, Leyden, and Denara that the remaining prisoners began to exchange glances. Erid found himself studying Corba's face.

He saw pain in her eyes. And hatred.

He couldn't help wondering what she saw in his.

Chapter Eight.

AS GEORDI ENTERED sickbay, tricorder in hand, Nightcrawler was already standing there waiting for him.

Not far away, Colossus-whose real name was Piotr-was lying full-length on a biobed while Dr. Crusher ran some routine scans on him. But the doctor's responsibility began and ended with medical anomalies.

It was the chief engineer's job to put the X-Men's abilities under a microscope. Figuratively speaking, of course.

As he caught sight of Geordi, Nightcrawler held his hands out. "So what can I do for you?" he asked congenially.

Clearly, he was the blithe spirit of the group. The engineer had always appreciated people like that.

"What I want to see," Geordi explained, "is how your teleportation ability works. For instance, if it's anything like our transporters."

"And how do they work?" asked Nightcrawler.

"Basically," said the engineer, "they convert matter to energy, then send it from one place to another along a sort of guide beam. When the energy reaches the second location, it's converted back into matter."

The mutant dismissed the idea with a wave of his three-fingered hand. "My teleportation ability works nothing like that."

"How do you know?" Geordi asked.

"Professor Xavier has explained it to me."

The engineer looked at him. "And he would be ... ?"

"The mutant who saved my life from an angry mob," said Nightcrawler, "and recruited me into the X-Men. A brilliant geneticist and perhaps the most powerful telepath on Earth."

Geordi nodded. "Okay. And what did Professor Xavier tell you about your teleportation talent?"

"What happens," the mutant replied, "is I enter an entirely separate dimension. Somehow, though I have no awareness of it, I travel through that other dimension. Then I come out again in my own dimension, an equivalent distance from where I started."

The engineer smiled. "An intriguing theory. Still, I'd like to check it out for myself ... if you have no objections."

"None," the mutant told him.

Geordi finished calibrating his tricorder. "This'll just take a second ..."

"Just say the word," Nightcrawler advised him.

Finally, he looked up. "All set."

A moment later, there was a soft pop, and the teleporter was gone. In his place, there was a puff of smoke and a burning smell.

Almost instantly, Nightcrawler was back again-but this time, he was on the other side of the room, his lips pulled back in a grin. "Miss me?" he asked the engineer.

Geordi chuckled, then consulted his tricorder. "How about that?"

"How about what?"

"You were gone, all right. For a fraction of a second, it was as if you didn't exist."

"At least, not in this dimension," Nightcrawler noted.