The policeman came up to them and thrust his face about ten centimeters from Data's nose. He looked angry. "All right, citizen," he said. "What did you see? Who put up that thing?"

"I do not know, sir," Data said politely. "My friend and I were out walking." He pointed down the boulevard in the direction from which they had come. "When we came around the corner two blocks down that way, the sign was already hanging over the boulevard. We saw no one who might have been responsible for its placement there."

The policeman looked closely and intimidatingly at Data. "You from around here, citizen?" he asked the android. "You talk funny."

"I am from a place not far from here, sir," Data said. "However, I have done some traveling."

"And you say you saw nothing."

"That is correct."

"What about you?" the policeman shot at Ro.

"I didn't see anything, sir."

The policeman sighed wearily. Suddenly, he seemed resigned. "Yeah, I know," he said. "Whoever put that thing up is long gone. Look, are you two sure you didn't see anyone or anything? There been a preacher around here?"

"No, sir," Ro said. "We haven't seen any preachers."

The policeman looked around on the sidewalk. "No, I guess not," he said after a moment. "I don't see any tracts scattered around. Usually people drop 'em as soon as the preachers or their cohorts hand them out. This time they just strung up the sign and beat it." He looked at the white heap in the gutter. "It's gigantic," he said, shaking his head. "What a waste of time and talent. I wonder how they managed to get it up there?"

"How do they ever?" Ro asked knowingly.

"You said it." The policeman unclipped and took in his hand a small device attached to the belt of his uniform. "Well, let me register your identification cards, you two, and you can be on your way."

"I have mine right here," said Ro as she reached for her belt buckle.

Suddenly there was a low, terrible growl all around them. The policeman looked quickly around the sky as the sound rose rapidly in pitch and volume to become the ear-splitting, soul-shaking alert of a siren, of a hundred sirens.

The entire city was howling.

"Air raid!" the policeman snapped at them. "Get out of here! Head for the nearest shelter!"

"Where is it?" Ro asked.

The policeman cursed and pointed half a block farther down the street. "The symbol's right there over that door, you idiots. Get going!" He hurried away, calling to his comrades, who were quickly climbing into their ground vehicles. "Wait for me!"

"Shelter or home base?" Ro asked Data.

"Let us conceal ourselves in that doorway for a moment," Data told her. "I wish to contact the ship."

They hurried over to the doorway and stepped inside its shade. The arrival of the police a few minutes before had effectively cleared the street, and the air raid alert would keep them from returning for a while. No one would see them.

Data tapped his belt buckle. "Data to Captain Picard."

"Picard here."

"Captain, is there any sign of a Krann attack on our location or anywhere in proximity to it?"

"No. No, there isn't. The reason for this alert is a mystery to us. We're reading no sign of any unusual Krann activity. Their lead ships continue on course for Nem Ma'ak Bratuna, but they are still a day away. What's going on, Mr. Data? We're noticing a great deal of sudden Lethantan military activity in your part of the continent. And are those air raid sirens I hear in the background?"

"Yes, sir, they are," Data said. "The Lethanta appear to believe that they are under attack."

"Captain, this is Ro. We had been stopped for routine questioning by a local security official when the sirens went off. The official clearly believed that an attack was imminent, and he ordered us to go to a shelter."

"How far away is this shelter, Ensign?"

"A few meters down the street from us, sir."

"What do you want to do, Mr. Data?"

"I believe we should go to the shelter and see what happens, Captain. We will not learn anything by returning to the ship at this time."

"I agree, sir," Ro said.

"Then go ahead. We'll keep a transporter lock on you and have you both out of there in an instant, if need be."

"Understood, Captain. Data out."

Together, Data and Ro hurried the short distance to the shelter entrance. It was fairly narrow and was obviously not intended to handle great numbers of people heading in or out at the same time. There was a red diamond-shaped sign centered over the entrance. There was a small bit of white lettering on it: HERE.

Data and Ro pa.s.sed through the doorway and into a small, bare lobby. The only light came from outside.

"This can't be it," Ro said, frowning. "It's wide open to the street."

"There is a stairway in that direction," Data said, pointing into the dimness at the back of the lobby. "It leads down." Seeing there was no one around, he took out his tricorder. "There are two people located in a confined area some ten meters below us. That must be the shelter."

Ro nodded. "That sounds more like what we're looking for, sir. I've been in a few of these things in my time." She took out her own tricorder. "There's a reinforced sh.e.l.l of metal and concrete surrounding the shelter on all sides, but it shouldn't interfere with our beaming out, if we need to. Shall I lead, Commander?"

"As you like."

When they were halfway down the stairs, they heard a heavy rumbling behind them. Data hurried back upstairs just far enough to be able to see what was happening.

A heavy blast door was descending from a hidden pocket located above the entryway. The grayish light from the street above disappeared, leaving them only a small scattering of artificial light that managed to find its way up the winding stairway from the shelter below them.

"Hey!" came a rough female voice. "Is there still somebody up there?"

"Yes," Data called. "There are two of us. We will be down there directly."

"Well, hurry the h.e.l.l up, then," the voice complained. "I want to close this d.a.m.n hatch, and we haven't got all d.a.m.n day."

Chapter Twelve.

"I'M JUST ASTONISHED," Riker said finally. "As they used to say down in the Big Easy, this joint is jumpin'. You wouldn't think there was a war on."

Whatever holiday celebration Riker and Troi had stumbled upon was continuing unabated. The happy crowds in the corridor had grown substantially since their arrival. Everyone seemed to be buying something. Some of the Krann were absolutely loaded down with sacks and packages.

"Ever see those old films?" Troi asked. "The ones with a lot of holiday shopping in them? Miracle on Tenth Avenue, or something like that. This reminds me of that. Shopping was part of the religious ritual, wasn't it?"

"You think all this is somehow religious? It doesn't seem that way to me."

"I don't know," said Troi. "Probably not, as the usual symbology is absent. They all seem to be celebrating something, though, and it's a major celebration."

Riker and Troi had been walking along the arcade for more than three hours, taking their time and looking at everything worth noticing. No one had challenged them. They were now about halfway around the nine-kilometer concourse from Rosco's clothing stall. They now knew that Rosco's was only one of literally thousands of shops, restaurants, and other kinds of outlets of various sizes that lined both sides of the promenade.

"I certainly wouldn't have expected to find entrepreneurial capitalism here," Troi remarked. "I thought a closed society would have chosen another way-communal economics, perhaps."

"Not a chance, Deanna. These people would give the Ferengi a run for their gold-plated latinum."

"They surely would. To tell you the truth, I was expecting to find the Krann living like ants in a colony."

"We've been making a big mistake," Riker said after a moment. "We've been looking at things the wrong way. Deanna, we have a planetary bias."

"What do you mean?"

"We're biased by our own environment and experiences, Deanna. We think people have to live on planets. We've been seeing the Krann only as wanderers, as rootless transients. We've been thinking that Krann society must have been affected in any number of bad ways by their ceaseless traveling. We forgot that the Krann live here. They're used to being transients-except that they don't think of themselves as that. The Fleet is their planet, moving through s.p.a.ce on a steady course, just as any of our worlds does. The only difference is, they get to pick the course they take."

"That part may not mean very much," Troi cautioned. "The Krann usually take generations to get where they're going; and a journey that lasts for generations is not at all voluntary for the descendants of those who began the trip. It may be that even at the outset of a star trip, the destination is picked by the leadership, and everyone else finds themselves forced to go along."

"Good point," Riker allowed. "That makes this mode of living even more planetlike, if you look at it in a certain way." He thought about it for a moment as they walked on. "This race boasts a population of three billion people," he finally said. "The Krann live scattered among a hundred and sixty thousand s.p.a.cecraft of every imaginable configuration. That represents a lot more geographical diversity than you're likely to find on any given planet."

"It's like a Dyson sphere without the sphere," Troi realized. "Over time, the Krann have created their own vast planet out of this collection of ships. In a way, they've terraformed s.p.a.ce itself by wrapping metal around it. It's amazing." She shook her head in disbelief. "We've never met anyone else who lives like this. I'm not sure we've ever met anyone else who could. We have a lot to learn from these people."

"I hope they give us the time," said Riker. "If we can't talk the Krann out of attacking the Lethanta, the war could destroy much of the Krann fleet. Maybe all of it. As we used to say in Alaska, the Lethanta are armed for bear, and we don't know everything we need to know about them, either."

"There are a great many bears out here, Will-a hundred and sixty thousand ships filled with more than three billion people, bent on murdering a race of two billion that possesses its own unique history and culture. All we have to do is figure out how to stop the Krann from trying to destroy the Lethanta."

"Yeah," Riker said, a touch wearily. "That's all we have to do, and we haven't done much about finding out how." He looked around. "Wait a minute. Are you hungry?"

"Now that you mention it, yes. Did you want to return to the ship?"

"No. Don't have to. How do you feel about crashing a party?"

"A party? Where?"

"Down that way a bit," he answered, pointing. "See the crowd? It's spilling out of one of the shops near that intersection. That must be one of the restaurants."

"It looks like a party, all right," Troi admitted. "We've pa.s.sed a few today, but this is the biggest we've seen so far."

"That crowd looks big enough to get lost in, and I don't think anyone is going to ask us for our ID, either. Come on."

"Do we just walk in?"

"Watch me." Riker took Troi by the hand and led her into the periphery of the crowd around the restaurant. The facility was a small, brightly lit place that was packed to the rafters with happy people of all ages. They were cooking something inside. It smelled good.

The party inside had spilled out onto the concourse, where it continued unabated. Many of the partygoers seemed to know each other, and the mood was relaxed and convivial. Pa.s.sersby took a look as they walked by the restaurant, many of them waved, and almost all of them smiled. Some tapped the area over their hearts once-twice-thrice, using the first two fingers of their right hands. It was a private sort of gesture, quickly and almost furtively done. Riker noted it and filed it away for later investigation.

Many of the Krann attending the party were dressed in the same kind of dark clothing that he and Troi were wearing. Riker a.s.sumed that those particu lar Krann had come straight to the party from their duty shifts.

"I'll be right back," Troi said.

"Good hunting." Now part of the crowd, Riker looked around un.o.btrusively. A woman across the way gave him an interested look, which he returned with a smile, a shrug, and a tilt of his head toward Troi, who was heading inside the restaurant. The woman gave Riker a slight, somewhat sad smile and turned away.

Riker found what he was looking for a few steps away. An informally dressed young Krann male was talking a mile a minute to a small knot of males and females. Everyone was laughing. Riker inserted himself into the cl.u.s.ter of listeners and, when the next laugh came, he joined in heartily.

"Ah!" cried the male who was the center of attention. "New blood! I take it, shipmate, that you're a friend of the happy couple?"

"That I am," Riker said with gusto. "What a great day this is!"

"It is indeed!" the male cried. "And that calls for another drink!" There was a rousing chorus of agreement. "Here you go," he said to Riker, handing him two empty pitchers. "These are for you, my friend-you and your good spouse, that is." The group with him laughed good-naturedly.

Riker smiled. "I see," he said. "Any preferences?"

"Sure," someone else said, pointing at the two big pitchers. "Just get those refilled. That'll do it!" More laughter.

"That's fine, Bitt, but what are the rest of us going to drink?" the first male said, and everyone laughed again.

"See you later," Riker said. Pitchers in hand, Riker threaded his way through the crowd and into the crowded restaurant. He saw that it was not quite a restaurant. It was more like a bistro, one of those dark, tavernlike places that were still popular in some nation-states on Earth and on worlds colonized by Earth humans. This one had two hundred people crowded into a s.p.a.ce that could hold perhaps fifty comfortably. Everyone was jabbering and the resulting noise level was rather incredible. There was soft music coming from somewhere, but it was nearly impossible to hear. Riker probably would not have noticed it at all had he not pa.s.sed right by a hidden speaker placed in a wall next to the entryway.

There was a young female standing near the door. Her expression was one of expectation and willingness to help. Riker guessed that she was a worker a.s.signed to the bistro. He raised the two pitchers and gave her a help-me look. She smiled. "Do you need those refilled?" she asked.

"Actually, they belong to a person named Bitt, who's standing in that group right over there." He pointed. "Could you-?"

"Of course." She took the pitchers and began threading her way through the crowd toward something that Riker thought looked very much like a bar.

"I'm back," Troi said, coming up beside him.

"Did you have a chance to check in?" Riker asked.

"No. There were others there with me."

Riker nodded. "We're not in any particular hurry. We'll try later."

Troi knew there was no chance they could be overheard above the babble surrounding them. "Did you notice that no one in that group outside did any bowing when we met them?" she asked Riker. "Now that's a first."

"Sure is. I'm still sorting out who bows to whom and when. I've just put 'drunken b.u.ms at parties' on the Don't Bow list."

"Drunkenness may have nothing to do with it,"Troi said, taking him seriously. "Perhaps the usual rules of protocol are suspended at affairs like these-whatever this affair is, I mean."

"Maybe," Riker said. "We'll just keep feeling our way along. We've been doing all right so far. By the way, I see something interesting over there."

"Helps to be tall. I can't see a thing above standard chest level. What is it?"