"En garde," Picard announced, taking a step forward.

Riker held his ground, not even moving his point. That took discipline, the captain knew. A rare quality in beginners.

Not that he had any intention of rewarding it. Taking another step, Picard lunged-not so much a serious attack as a means of getting his opponent to move backward, and thereby make him more vulnerable.

But Riker must have seen through his strategy, because he didn't cooperate. Instead of retreating, he flipped the captain's blade to the side-not much really, just enough to make it miss him-and launched a countera.s.sault of his own.

It started out looking like a simple lunge, but it very quickly extended itself into a running attack. And it caught the more experienced man flatfooted. It was all Picard could do to swat at Riker's point, keeping it from finding its target, as he back-pedaled the length of the fencing strip.

As the captain recreated beyond the end line, his adversary made one last, desperate thrust-and came up just short. Another inch and he'd have scored a touch. And a brilliant touch at that, Picard mused.

"Bravo," he shouted, as both of them slowed down -the captain going backward, his first officer going forward. "I see you've been practicing behind my back."

Riker smiled through the mesh of his mask. "You make it sound dishonest," he laughed.

"It is," Picard rejoined. "But all's fair in love and fencing, I suppose."

As they took up their positions again, the captain found himself at a disadvantage. According to the rules, he had to begin again near the end line. If he retreated past it again, a touch would be counted against him automatically. But he'd be d.a.m.ned before he'd let that happen.

"En garde?" suggested Riker.

Picard nodded. "Indeed."

No sooner had the word left his mouth than he feinted-an attempt to move his opponent backward and give himself some breathing room. But as before, Riker wasn't buying it. He just stood there, refusing to budge an inch.

"There's no shame in retreat, Will," said the captain.

Riker chuckled. "None in being aggressive, either."

Without warning, the bigger man lunged. But this time, Picard was ready for him. Sweeping Riker's blade aside with a flourish, the captain brought his own back on line-just in time to plant his point in his first officer's unguarded chest.

"Alas!" barked Picard, for a brief second once more an arrogant young Frenchman in his master's fencing den.

Riker sighed as he took off his mask. His hair was plastered over his forehead. "Nice touch, sir."

Removing his own mask as well, Picard inclined his head slightly by way of acknowledgment. "Thank you, Will. But next time, it might pay for you to back off a little ... give me a false sense of security ... and then come at me."

His first officer nodded. "I'll remember that."

The captain tilted his head to indicate the replicator in the corner of the gymnasium. "Care to take a break?"

Riker looked as if he'd have liked to continue. But he said "Sure. Why not?" And tucking his mask beneath his sword arm, he followed his superior to the replicator.

"Tea," said Picard, as he approached the device.

"Earl Grey. Hot." He turned to his second-in-command. "And you, Will?"

"Mountain stream water. As cold as it'll get without freezing."

A moment later, the replicator complied with their requests. The captain removed the drinks, handed the frigid one to Riker and took a sip of his tea.

"So," he began, starting off with a feint, "how is Captain Scott faring? I trust you left him in good hands?"

"The best," said the first officer. "I've asked Geordi to take him under his wing."

"Good," Picard commented. "After all he's been through, he deserves whatever help we can give him."

Riker had fallen for the feint. Now it was time to move in-to pursue his ulterior motive in asking the younger man down here.

"Will, I had a visit in my ready room not so long ago. From Ensign Kane."

He saw Riker stiffen slightly at the mention of the man's name. "So that's why you've been avoiding me," he said. "And what did Kane have to say?"

"I think you know," said Picard, though he went on to supply the details anyway. "That you're being unfair with him. That you're denying him a chance to sharpen his skills. That you, for some reason, resent him."

The first officer met his gaze. "I do resent him," he conceded. "I resent him a lot." A pause. "But that's not why I'm treating him differently from the others. Ensign Kane has a lot to learn when it comes to respecting his superior officers."

The captain tried to read into Riker's statement. "Ambition is hardly a crime, Will. Otherwise, we'd both be guilty of it ourselves. And for that matter, so would every officer in the fleet."

"I'm not just talking about ambition, sir. I'm talking about arrogance. A lack of esteem for authority-for tradition."

Picard frowned. "A severe enough lack to put him at the bottom of the duty roster?"

"That's right," said his Number One. But he wasn't forthcoming with any details. And the captain wanted details.

"As you know," he told Riker, "I graduated from the Academy with Darrin Kane's father. I've known the ensign since he was a boy-"

"Perhaps not as well as you think, sir." The first officer's cheeks had darkened by a shade. He took a second or two to compose himself before speaking again. "Captain ... when I agreed to become first officer of this ship, it was with the understanding that I believed pa.s.sionately in certain things. Now, you can scrutinize the way I'm handling Ensign Kane or you can trust me to do my job. But if it's the former..."

Riker didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.

Picard eyed him. "You feel that strongly about it, do you?"

"I do, sir." He stood hi s ground-just as he had on the fencing strip.

It was up to the captain to allow him that position or to try to move him-at the risk of losing him. Ultimately, it came down to this Should he move him? Was it or was it not his job to intervene?

Picard made his decision. "You do what you think is best," he told his first officer. "As far as I'm concerned, the matter is closed."

Riker looked appreciative. "Thank you, sir."

"Ensign Kane ..."

At first, Kane thought he was merely caught in the throes of a nightmare. Riker's voice seemed to boom across a dark and foreboding landscape, starting landslides and making tall crags quake. And no matter where he ran or how he tried to hide, he couldn't escape it.

"Ensign Kane..."

It was like thunder, cascading down from a steel-gray nest of roiling storm clouds ... huge, deafening, crushing him beneath its weight...

"Ensign Kane!"

Kane shot upright. He looked around, his throat dry and hot with fear.

He was in his cabin, he realized. His cabin on the Enterprise, not the nightmare world of his imaginings. And that voice ... it was Riker, all right. The real Riker. But why would ...?

And then he caught sight of the chronometer on his desk, and he had his answer. He was ten minutes late for his shift-and still in bed. Tearing aside his blanket, he swung his bare feet out onto the floor.

d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n ...

"Aye, sir. This is Kane. I've overslept, sir."

"Really?" said Riker's intercom voice. "I'd never have guessed."

Darting across the room to his chest of drawers, the ensign pulled out a fresh uniform. His heart was pounding a staccato beat on his rib cage.

"I'm sorry, Commander," he spat out. "I don't know how it happened. I thought I asked the computer for a wake-up call..."

"You didn't," Riker pointed out. "I checked."

Kane cursed as he pulled on his red-and-black garb. That did it. Bad enough Riker hated him; now he'd given him an excuse. The more black marks the first officer could put on his record, the easier it would be to keep him down.

Of course, it wouldn't have occurred in the first place if he'd gotten to bed at a reasonable time. But he'd been so furious at his a.s.signment to babysit the old man that he'd stayed up in Ten-Forward until the wee hours... tossing down the synthehol and thinking of ways to get even.

"It won't happen again, sir, I a.s.sure you. I'll be down to the cargo hold in just a couple of minutes." The ensign hated the idea of having to kowtow to Riker ... Of having to make nice. He detested it. But the man held Kane's fate in his hands; there was no way around it.

"Don't bother," the first officer told him.

Kane had been pulling on one of his pants legs; he stopped in mid-tug. "I beg your pardon, sir?"

"I said don't bother. You won't be going to the cargo hold today."

A smile spread over the ensign's face. Don't tell me he's finally had his talk with Picard, he mused. Don't tell me I'm finally going to get what's coming to me...!

"Where will I be going, then ... sir?" He pulled his pants leg up the rest of the way, but he was no longer in quite so much of a hurry.

He could almost hear Riker saying the bridge. In fact, he was so sure he'd be hearing those two wonderful, long-overdue words that he almost missed the words Riker did utter.

"Main shuttlebay. Deck Four."

"What... ?" The ensign didn't mean to blurt it out. But he did, and loud enough for it to be heard over the intercom system.

"Main shuttlebay," Riker repeated. "Something wrong with your hearing, Ensign?"

"No ... nothing, sir."

"Believe me," Riker added, "I wouldn't take you off your regular duty unless there was a good reason. But Coburn just had an attack of appendicitis and someone needs to replace him." A pause. "Don't worry. It'll just be for a while. When Coburn's well again, you can resume your normal schedule."

In the silence that followed, Kane just stood there. Then he pounded his fist on the top of his dresser-so hard that the synthetic material shivered. The nightmare wasn't over, he thought. It was just beginning.

Scott knew he was supposed to rest, but he couldn't have stayed in his suite much longer without losing his mind. He felt the need to get out... to see a bit more of this gargantuan ship and what she had to offer. And while the holodeck sounded interesting, that wasn't the kind of thing he needed. Not right now, anyway.

The same for Ten-Forward-whatever that was-and the gymnasium. He hadn't exercised for seventy-five years; it wouldn't kill him to put it off a little longer.

What he really wanted to see were some machines. Machines that harnessed energy and machines that used it... machines that made things go and made things stop ... machines without which this wonder of a starship couldn't have hoped to function. That's what he yearned for. That's what made his pulse rush, and always had.

On the other hand, he knew he wasn't authorized to see such things. He was supposed to be resting, not fiddling. Apparently, they didn't know him very well. Telling Montgomery Scott not to do something was tantamount to an open invitation.

On the other hand, he wanted to remain close to home-close to his quarters on Deck Seven. That way, if he was apprehended somewhere he shouldn't be, he could always claim he'd just gotten a little lost.

Of course, his first choice of a destination would have been the engine room. But there would be too many people there now, what with everyone engaged in a.n.a.lyzing the Dyson Sphere. Better to choose a less populated place, where he could lose himself for a while.

A place like Shuttlebay One. If he couldn't get his hands on the engines that drove the Enterprise-not yet, anyway-poring over a shuttle would be the next best thing.

As he left his quarters, Scott walked down the corridor as if there were no reason for him not to. People glanced at his sling, but if they recognized him by it, they didn't let on. When he reached the turbolift station, the doors opened for him and he got on.

So far so good, he told himself. "Shuttlebay One," he told the computer, just the way he'd seen Commander La Forge do it on their way down to sickbay.

He'd barely completed the command, it seemed, before the doors opened again at his destination. He nodded his head in admiration. The lifts on his Enterprise had never been that quick or that smooth.

Emerging into the corridor, he looked both ways ... and found Shuttlebay One just a few meters to his left. Again, he made his way in that direction as if he were just another cog in the great, twenty-fourth-century machine. And again, no one stopped him to say otherwise.

The shuttlebay entrance was just as accommodating. It yawned wide at his approach, unveiling a veritable feast for his engineer's eyes a s.p.a.ce as big as an entire deck on the Jenolen, stocked with nearly two dozen shuttlecraft-some large and some small, gleaming in the overhead illumination like a herd of heavenly beasts.

"d.a.m.n," he said. He couldn't help but grin at the sight of them.

Crossing the large, open s.p.a.ce in the center of the facility, he put his hand out and caressed the metal skin of the nearest vehicle. It was unexpectedly warm to the touch.

What's more, it was a lot more streamlined than the shuttles of Scott's day, with their sharp corners and boxy designs. The machine before him was so sleek, its lines so clean and pleasing to the eye, that it seemed almost unnatural for it to be standing still. It should have been gliding through s.p.a.ce, plummeting through the upper atmosphere of some planet the way a rare pearl falls through still water.

Scott read the name on its flank, rendered in a graceful, flowing hand. The name was Christopher. He grunted happily. That would be Sean Jeffrey Christopher, the man who headed the first successful Earth-t.i.tan probe in the early part of the twenty-first century-and the son of Captain John Christopher, who was very briefly an unintended and temporally inconvenient guest of the Enterprise.

But had it not been for Scott, who found a way to return Christopher to his timeline minutes before he encountered the Enterprise, there would have been no Sean Jeffrey Christopher-and quite possibly, no United Federation of Planets. For if the expedition to Saturn's satellite had failed, Earth's s.p.a.ce program may have never have developed into the organization known as Starfleet. And if Starfleet didn't exist, how could there ever have been a Federation?

Hearing the shuffle of feet on the deck behind him, Scott turned-and saw a familiar face. It was the ensign who'd shown him to his quarters the day before. The one who'd been so polite.

What was his name? Crane? No, something else ...

He snapped his fingers. "Kane."

The ensign nodded, looking at him warily. "That's right, sir." He paused. "Uh, are you authorized to be here?"

Scott winked at him. "To tell the truth, laddie, I'm not authorized to scratch my nose on this ship. But the way I look at it, ye cannae sit in yer room and count the rivets in the bulkheads when there's a whole new world right outside yer door. If ye catch my meaning."

The ensign frowned. "Kane to security," he said, never taking his eyes off the older man. "I've got an intruder in the main shuttlebay by the name of Captain Scott. I think he needs an escort back to his quarters."

Scott felt as if he'd been stabbed in the back. "Now that," he told the ensign, "was nae necessary. Nae necessary at all."

Kane shrugged. "I've got enough problems of my own without going out on a limb for an unauthorized visitor." His mouth quirked into something like a grin, if a bitter one! "If you catch my meaning."