"A few more shakedown tests and it goes on-line," Santos told him. "They're estimating just a couple of weeks."

Ironic, thought Picard. If the array was switched on sooner-its power boosted slightly-it would probably detect the Gorn civilization. In fact, he could this very moment make the suggestion to power up the array ... invent a compelling enough reason that Travers would have to act on it immediately. Then, with defenses in place, the tragedy could be avoided. Santos and the other colonists wouldn't have to die.

Of course, the Prime Directive forbade it. And even putting the noninterference regulations aside, there were too many other reasons. If the ma.s.sacre were averted, Captain Kirk could not have settled the dispute with the Gorn captain in single combat. Picard would not have had the basis for his first encounter with the Gorn, and the upcoming summit might never take place. Instead, the Gorn might have resorted to a full-scale attack on the Federation as a first contact. The possibility for devastation and loss of life was incalculable.

No. Clearly, the captain would have to let history play itself out as it must. Santos and the others would have to perish, so that peace could eventually come from their tragedy. Intellectually, Picard understood the situation perfectly. The question was ... why did it feel so b.l.o.o.d.y wrong?

The doctor turned to him, delight illuminating her face, somehow making her green eyes seem even greener. "We're explorers, Dixon. And in two weeks we begin a whole new phase of human exploration. Luckily for you, you'll be here to see it."

The excitement in her voice seemed to ask for some response, or at least an affirmation of what she was feeling. But Picard could not find his voice, so he simply nodded.

Santos misinterpreted his silence. "Come," she said. "Let me show you the control room. Chief Engineer Hronsky will be busy, but I think he would like to meet you, especially if you have any technical skills."

She led him down the incline to a short, rectangular building-the only structure that was unmarked, the captain noticed. It was probably because no one could mistake it for anything else but what it was.

Inside, they walked down a short flight of stairs to the main floor of sensor controls. Picard could see that the stairs extended down even farther-like the other buildings on the outpost, the bulk of the s.p.a.ce was underground. The captain knew those lower floors held the matter-antimatter reactor that powered the sensor array.

The control center was a bustle of activity, with perhaps two dozen people working, in, under, and around various control panels-some of which were still being a.s.sembled.

No one seemed to pay them any attention as Dr. Santos led Picard through the maze of people and equipment. She stopped to ask a lieutenant where Hronsky was, and the young man shot the captain a quick, nervous glance before pointing to a two-meter-high catwalk at the back of the room.

Picard and the doctor made their way to the back of the room, where she started up the ladder to the catwalk, gesturing for the captain to follow. Up top, a husky man wearing a lieutenant commander's braids was giving instructions to two others. Santos approached the man and entered the conversation with a quick "Excuse me, Michael."

The lieutenant commander stopped the conversation with an uplifted hand. He favored the doctor with a harried smile beneath his dark, bushy brows.

"Yes, Julia?"

She indicated Picard. "Michael Hronsky, I would like you to meet our new guest, Captain Dixon Hill."

The man turned his attention to the captain. For a moment, Hronsky's face registered genuine surprise. "Captain Hill," he muttered.

"Michael, what's going on here? You and your men seem to be going full tilt," Santos noted.

Hronsky kept his eyes on Picard as he responded, "Uh, Julia ... could I have a word with you in private?"

Before the doctor could respond, the man addressed Picard directly. "Captain Hill, I'm sorry, but I need to speak with the doctor alone. One of my men will escort you outside."

An ensign who was standing beside Hronsky gestured for the captain to return back down the ladder. On the ground, the same ensign led Picard back through the control room-and then waited with him in uncomfortable silence until Santos emerged.

Her face was blank, which the captain now recognized as a sign that she was upset. As she got closer, he saw the subtle frown lines at the corners of her mouth.

"I'm sorry, Dixon. Apparently, the engineering staff is very busy. Perhaps we could see this part of the outpost at a later date."

She didn't say anything else on the subject, but she didn't need to. Hronsky's expression had told Picard everything he needed to know. He regarded the newcomer as Lieutenant Harold had at first: as a possibly dangerous intruder. Undoubtedly, Commodore Travers had spoken to him already.

What's more, the captain couldn't muster any indignation at the suspicion he was facing. He was a b.l.o.o.d.y intruder, wasn't he? One who was as dangerous to the Federation as the Gorn strike force that was probably already ama.s.sing outside the system.

What troubled Picard was the near-feverish activity inside the sensor-array control room. He didn't think the engineering crew looked like a team working ahead toward a two-week deadline, and that raised a number of questions.

Picard and the doctor walked back to the residence area in silence. She showed him to his door, 11-H, and pointed out Lieutenant Harold's temporary quarters next door.

"If there's anything you need," said Santos, "you can ask your computer terminal, Dixon. Or call Lieutenant Harold. Or call me."

The captain smiled. "Thank you. But I think, for now, I will just rest." Actually, with luck, he would be able to secure some supplies from the kitchen and then investigate the outpost stores on the lower level of the residence area. "Good-bye, Julia. Thank you for the tour."

All unintentionally, he had called her by her first name. The doctor seemed pleased by it.

"There's more tomorrow, if you feel up to it," she told him.

"I'm looking forward to it," Picard a.s.sured her. As she turned to leave, he entered his quarters and shut the door behind him. A quick scan told him the room was comfortable, relatively s.p.a.cious ... and occupied.

Lieutenant Harold jumped up. He'd been sitting at the small desk that held the computer terminal.

"Uh, Mr. Hill ... sorry to intrude, but I wanted to talk to you."

"That's fine," Picard replied. "What can I do for you, Lieutenant?" He gestured for Harold to take a seat and then took one himself at the small all-purpose table near the desk.

The younger man frowned. "Well, sir, I wanted to ask you about merchant s.p.a.ce service."

The captain looked at Harold askance. "Are you interested in a career change?"

"Well, not exactly," said the lieutenant. "I'm just curious about what it would be like." He looked uncomfortable, as if the mere idea of leaving Starfleet were traitorous.

"There isn't a lot of ... excitement on this outpost, is there?" Picard asked.

Harold responded to the understanding tone and relaxed a bit. "Well, it's very interesting, from a scientific point of view. We'll be collecting a lot of data when the sensor array goes on-line. But I'm not much of a scientist. When I joined Starfleet, I was hoping to do some genuine exploring. Not that what we're doing here isn't important," he added hastily. "But I'm not sure it's for me."

The captain knew all too well what the lieutenant was feeling. "Have you tried to apply for starship service?"

Harold actually smiled. "About twice a month since I graduated." He shrugged. "But there aren't a lot of openings."

Of course, Picard thought. In this time, there were only twelve heavy-cruiser-cla.s.s starships in service. Thus, there were less than five thousand of the coveted positions on board the vessels that were at the forefront of s.p.a.ce exploration. In his own era, he knew, there was substantially more opportunity. But by then, the Federation had grown as well, so the compet.i.tion was still heavy for positions on a starship.

If Starfleet Academy had denied his second application, Picard probably would have ended up on a merchant ship. If he had been posted for a few years on a starbase, with no hope of a position on a starship, he suspected he would have moved to commercial flight as well.

"I suspect that you might find serving on a freighter to be just as mundane," he said finally.

Harold grunted. "Excuse me, sir, but it's s.p.a.ce."

"True," the captain concurred. "But you're actually closer to the frontier where you are now."

"Mr. Hill," said the lieutenant, "I joined Starfleet to see what's out there. To make first contacts. To be a part of something. So far, I've served with only humans. In my entire Starfleet career, I have met two Vulcans and one Tellarite. When I was a kid, I looked at the stars and decided I was going to meet the people who lived on them. If a job in the commercial sector is what I need to do, then that's what I will do."

Picard would have liked to a.s.sure Harold that staying in Starfleet was the answer, but he knew it wasn't true. An officer might very well spend his entire career on various outposts. Finally, the captain told him what he could about merchant service. He'd known more than one merchant commander in his time, so he was able to draw a fairly accurate picture.

In the end, Picard knew his advice probably wouldn't have much effect. Lieutenant Harold's life would be shaped and nearly ended by an attack that was a mere two days away. In fact, the captain had no way of knowing if his arrival had somehow subtly altered history so that, this time, Matthew Harold might not survive.

Unfortunately, even if history followed its course, Picard's study of the ma.s.sacre hadn't told him what happened to the lieutenant later. Without knowing what the future held, Picard could only hope that Harold's first "first contact" would not destroy all of his youthful idealism.

Chapter Five.

"OKAY, DATA, hit it," Geordi said from underneath the open circuit panel.

"Affirmative," came the android's response, from across the control room.

Sliding out from under the console, the chief engineer took his place next to Data, Barclay, and O'Connor, who were all huddled around the monitor-the same one that had been working before the power surge. Expecting another disappointment, Geordi was surprised to see static crackle across the screen. A moment later a shaky picture jumped, faded, and then finally planted itself firmly on the monitor. The image was of a star system that La Forge didn't recognize but was thrilled to see nonetheless.

"Excellent," he said, smiling broadly. "Excellent work, everyone."

This was the first piece of equipment that they had been able to get functioning with the station's own power. Using Barclay and O'Connor's diagnostic program, Data and Geordi had been able to trace the monitor's power circuits. The problem with those circuits was that like much of the station's circuitry, the power pathways had been built into the panels, walls, and bulkheads themselves.

As a result, tracing them was extremely difficult. The task was made tougher still by the fact that many of the circuits had been damaged by the power surge.

In the case of this one monitor, at least, they had been able to use jumpers to circ.u.mvent the damaged circuitry. With its power supply again intact, the screen was able to access the huge subs.p.a.ce sensor network that, like the circuitry, seemed to be built into the structure of the station. Of course, with so little juice available, neither the monitor nor the sensors should ever have functioned.

At another time, that mystery would have fascinated Geordi. Now it was simply an annoyance. If the alien technology refused to obey the laws of physics as he understood them, how would his team ever get the equipment working well enough to find and retrieve the captain?

As the rest of them watched, the android manipulated the controls on the forward panel. While he worked, the scene on the monitor shifted from one star system to another. Geordi came up behind him. "How are you doing that, Data?"

"I do not believe I am doing it," Data responded. "As before, there seems to be no correlation between the controls here and the images presented on the monitor. Certainly, there is no direct or quantifiable correlation."

The android ceased his manipulations and the monitor held an image for a moment-then shifted to another system. "It's random?" Barclay asked from the rear.

"Possibly," Data reported. "At any rate, it does not follow any pattern that I can discern."

"Could any of these have been the captain's destination?" O'Connor asked next.

"Possibly," Data said again, taking his tricorder and scanning with it. "There seem to be memory banks built into the system, but they are empty,"

"Wiped clean by the power surge," Geordi remarked. "We'll have to count on Commander Riker to come up with some coordinates. But even so, that means we'll have to be able to retrieve the captain once the Enterprise determines his position. And we don't have the slightest idea of how this equipment works."

"Sir," Barclay said tentatively, "what if we gave up trying to understand the underlying principles here, and just concentrated on finding the operational parameters of the equipment?"

The lieutenant was right, of course. Geordi had spent hours trying to determine why things functioned here, and had come up empty-handed. The monitor was their first success, and it had only arrived when they stopped trying to figure out why it worked and concentrated on simply getting it powered up.

The chief engineer nodded. "Okay, so what do we know so far about the station's operational parameters?" He asked the question of the group at large.

Data spoke first. "We know that the entire station functions as a subs.p.a.ce field coil. We also know that the station has a number of nodes, such as the one in this immediate area, that further focus the larger subs.p.a.ce field-apparently, for purposes of transport."

"And we can a.s.sume," O'Connor added, "that this equipment somehow controls this node."

"All right," Geordi said, "then our objective should be to trace the power circuits to each of the controls in the room. When we get them all functioning, we can figure out what they do."

It made sense. It was a plan of action and it gave them something to do, rather than buck up against theoretical problems that were-if not unsolvable-at least virtually impossible to figure out in a matter of days.

"Okay, let's get to work," the chief engineer told his team.

When the lights flickered a moment later, Geordi jumped. Directing his VISOR to the ceiling panels, he watched them brighten momentarily before returning to their customary low level of illumination.

Each of the four away-team members had his or her tricorder out and was scanning. Data was finished first.

"Definitely a power surge," he announced, just as Geordi's own tricorder confirmed the finding. "A much milder variety than the ones that occurred before the captain's disappearance."

"Did we do this by hooking up the power here?" Geordi asked.

"I do not think so," the android replied. "I suspect that the initial disturbance created by our transporters may have rendered the power generators unstable."

"So we're looking at bigger and bigger surges until the station is enveloped again and ..." The chief engineer let his voice trail off.

Data didn't respond, and for a moment the team was silent. Geordi had expected this danger, but had hoped it wouldn't come until after they had finished their work-or at least made some serious progress.

"How long?" he asked.

"It is difficult to say," the android responded. "I do not think it is safe to forecast a steady increase in these power surges. A random element seemed to be at work last time and will almost certainly be at work this time as well. However, given the relatively small magnitude of the surge, I would say several hours at least. Perhaps more, but we should be prepared to evacuate quickly."

d.a.m.n, Geordi thought. He touched his communicator, which was tapped into their portable subs.p.a.ce radio.

"La Forge to Enterprise."

A moment later, he heard the crisp reply "Riker here."

"Commander, we have a problem," the engineer said evenly.

"Incoming communication from Lieutenant Commander La Forge," advised the Klingon.

"Patch it into my communicator," the first officer said, tapping his Starfleet insignia. "Riker here."

"Commander, we have a problem," Geordi told him.

Somehow Riker wasn't surprised. So far, this mission had been nothing but problems. After three days, the ship had surveyed twenty-two systems and eliminated thirty-eight others with long-range scans. More than one-third of the search was complete, but they had turned up no sign of the captain, and less than two days remained to them.

"What have you got, Geordi?" Riker asked.

"We've just experienced a small power surge on the station, sir. It was very slight, but it's now clear the station is unstable."

"Are you in any danger at the moment?" the first officer asked. He quickly did the calculations in his head. At top speed, the station was almost a day away.

"No, sir. Don't worry about us. Even if the worst happens, we should have enough warning to evacuate. We've rigged all the doors in the area and the airlock with independent power sources and controls. Before we have another surge like the one that caught the captain, we'll be well out of the way."

"Any estimate of how long that'll be?"

"Hard to say, Commander. Data figures we have several hours at least, but it could be longer. I'm sorry, but the power increases don't seem to follow a regular pattern."