Kerajem noted that if Picard had been offended by Jemmagar's studied rudeness, he was giving no sign of it. That was a relief. He and Picard came to the next man, one who seemed younger than the others. "Captain Picard, this is Klerran fes Dresnai, our minister for science and education."

Klerran grinned and extended his hand. "Don't let these others get to you before I do, Captain."

Picard smiled back. "I think that's more or less up to you, Minister Klerran." They shook.

The next minister was an older, slender man with a whiff of the diplomat about him. "Captain, allow me to introduce you to Terrestak zan Pettok, our minister for state."

"Welcome to our world, Captain Picard," Terrestak said politely. He shook Picard's hand with just the proper pressure for exactly the right length of time.

"Thank you for inviting us, Minister," Picard replied.

They came next to a much older man. "Captain, let me present Rikkadar zan Therrka, our finance minister-and my oldest friend."

"Greetings, Captain," Rikkadar said warmly as he shook Picard's hand. "May ours be a long and lasting friendship."

"Let us be sure to make it so, Minister Rikkadar."

Kerajem indicated another landing pad about fifty meters away. There were two large craft standing by. "I thought you might enjoy flying into the city by jethopper," the First said. "They may be a bit old-fashioned, but they travel slowly enough to give one a chance to appreciate the scenery."

"And I would appreciate the chance to see it," Picard said, looking toward the distant Kajja Kojja. "Those mountains to the east are really quite beautiful."

"Thank you, Captain," Kerajem said. "I was born there, as was Minister Rikkadar."

"Then I'll be certain to go see them," Picard said agreeably.

"I'll be happy to take you there myself, Captain, a little later during your visit with us," Kerajem told him. He gestured toward the waiting jethoppers. "Meanwhile, perhaps we'd all best get started for town."

"That suits us very well," Picard said.

Kerajem, Security Minister Jemmagar, and old Rikkadar were sitting with Captain Picard and the rest of the Enterprise party in a comfortably appointed lounge in the forward section of the lead jethopper. The other 'hopper, with the remainder of the Council of Ministers aboard, was following theirs into the capital.

Picard was looking out one of the panoramic pa.s.senger windows as the countryside rolled past and under them. "I see we're following a highway," he observed, smiling. "More fun than instrument flying any day. I suppose pilots are pilots, wherever they might be found."

Kerajem smiled back. "Highway One is the only road to and from the s.p.a.ceport," he said. "This is a regular run for me. I take it, then, that you yourself have flown something like this craft we're in, Captain."

"Yes," Picard said agreeably. "Yes, I have-something very much like it, anyway. I think they're great fun." The captain leaned back in his seat and put his fingertips together in the almost prayerful way he had whenever he was about to broach a difficult subject. "Kerajem, I hope we can discuss matters freely, when it comes time. There is a great deal we would like to know."

The First Among Equals nodded. "I think I can promise you that we will be at least as forthcoming as you, Captain. After all, trust begets trust."

"Indeed it does," Picard said, nodding. He looked out the window. "Kerajem, I hope you don't mind my asking you a rather direct question."

"Please do."

"The countryside here seems rather, well, bare," Picard said, gesturing toward the outside. "I see no towns and few structures of any sort. There seems to be no infrastructure-only that one highway below us, for example. That's not typical of the surrounding territory of the planetary capitals with which I am familiar, sir. Usually such areas are quite crowded."

"You find it curious?" Kerajem asked, genuinely puzzled. "I suppose I don't see anything strange about it. It's the way we do things. There are historical reasons for that, of course. There always are."

Picard was all attention. "I'd surely like to hear all about those reasons, Kerajem."

"Certainly," the First said. "We'll talk at Government House. I expect that we will find that we have much in common. After all, you've already-"

Jemmagar interrupted. "That's all very well," the minister for security said, "but I dare say that we had better not be the only party to this conversation who will be forthcoming. Kerajem, I tried to warn you-"

"I need no warning, Jemmagar," Kerajem said quietly, holding up a hand. "Captain, you must excuse the ... enthusiasm of my colleague. As you will surely understand, he is, shall we say, caught up in the moment. These are trying times, as you will surely understand, and the strain on all of us has been enormous."

"Of course," Picard said rea.s.suringly. Trying times? What the devil is he talking about? "I would a.s.sure Minister Jemmagar, and you, sir, that we are here to further mutual understanding and cooperation between our two peoples." The captain chuckled in his most sincere and diplomatic manner. "I a.s.sure you that we are as curious about you as you are about us."

"We need to know about the Krann," Jemmagar said bluntly.

"Come, come, Jemmagar," Rikkadar said wearily. "We haven't even arrived at Government House yet. Surely even you can wait that long."

"The Krann?" Picard asked. "Who are the Krann?" He looked at Data, who shook his head from side to side in a perfectly practiced manner.

"As if you didn't know," Jemmagar sneered. "Is this the kind of forthrightness we are to expect from the Federation of United Planets?"

"The United Federation of Planets, sir," Data corrected him.

"Whatever," Jemmagar snapped.

Picard cleared his throat. "Kerajem," he said, "I a.s.sure you that we have never heard of anyone called the Krann. We are the first Federation vessel ever to enter this region of the galaxy. Everything and everyone here is new to us."

Troi was having trouble pinning down the apprehension behind Jemmagar's studied rudeness. There seemed to be no reason for it, and certainly neither the captain nor anyone else from the Enterprise had offered Jemmagar any offense. Suddenly the counselor caught the slimmest glimmer of the root of Jemmagar's fear. It was shared by all the Lethanta. The wellspring of this particular fear lay far down in the dungeons that are built and strengthened in early childhood, where the myths and legends dwell forever even after one has forgotten all about them. They live on without tending. These deepest dungeons represented territory Troi had explored many, many times in psychotherapy, both as therapist and patient. Whatever the fear was, it was big, it had power, and each one of the Lethanta was gripped by it.

The counselor wondered if that fear had a name. Could it be the Krann, perhaps? But who could they be-?

Troi had a sudden thought. "Captain," she said, "perhaps Minister Jemmagar is referring to whomever is responsible for the present condition of 30452 FAS Three and Four."

"Why, yes," Picard said, seizing upon the notion. "Kerajem, just before we came here, we visited a star system eighty-seven light-years away. We know your people once lived on the third planet of that system-"

Picard was surprised to see Kerajem's eyes suddenly grow wide. The two ministers sitting with him looked stunned. "You know this thing for a fact?" Kerajem whispered. He had grown pale. "How? How is it possible?"

Picard looked at Troi. Her face mirrored something of the awe felt by the Lethanta. "Captain," she said very quietly, "they did not know this before now. This is very important to them."

"Of course." Picard took a moment to search for the right words. "Kerajem," he said, "we have means available to thoroughly examine a biological form."

"Please," Kerajem said. "Tell us about the planet in that other system, Captain. Why do you believe we came from there?"

"More to the point, can you prove it?" Jemmagar rasped.

"Are you certain you want him to?" Rikkadar said.

"I want the truth," Jemmagar insisted.

"All I can do is tell you how we happened to go there, and what we found when we arrived," Picard said. "To begin with, we are in this sector on a mission to extend the database of the Federation Astrophysical Survey-that is, we are finding out all we can about this sector of s.p.a.ce and everything in it. We visited a nearby star that we have since listed as 30452 FAS on our charts, hence Commander Troi's reference to that designation."

"Captain, didn't you say that this star was eighty-seven light-years from here?" Rikkadar asked.

"Yes, Minister Rikkadar. Yes, I did."

"The concept of 'nearby' has changed since this morning," Kerajem said wryly. "Please continue, Captain Picard."

"We found the third planet of that system in a particularly severe state. Our findings were that, some six thousand years ago, the planet was bombarded from s.p.a.ce, possibly from orbit, by someone using high-yield nuclear weapons designed to eradicate all life upon it with hard radiation."

"Doomsday weapons," Klerran hazarded.

"Yes," Worf said. "Some cultures have called them that. Such weapons are specialized nuclear devices that are jacketed with a substance-sometimes cobalt-that pulverizes when exposed to the detonation of the parent device. The substance turns highly radioactive and disperses throughout the ecosystem of the target area. The radioactive agent has a very long half-life. The many such devices dropped on the planet in question were clearly intended to sterilize it."

"But they didn't succeed in ridding that world of all life," Rikkadar guessed.

"Not entirely," Data told him. "Some lower lifeforms did survive the bombardment. The planetary biosphere is stabilizing, but extremely slowly."

"There are no people there, however," Rikkadar said.

"No, sir," Data confirmed. "There are no people there."

"So how do you know what you say you know?" Kerajem asked.

"We a.n.a.lyzed those lower lifeforms quite thoroughly," Picard told him. "Our studies showed that those lifeforms, and you, evolved from the very same source."

"So we are really from the third planet of that star?" Klerran asked in wonder.

Picard paused, then carefully continued. "That is what we believe."

Rikkadar's eyes were wide and shining with tears. "The homeworld," the old man breathed. "That third planet must have been the homeworld."

"I wouldn't want to draw any rash conclusions from this story," Kerajem said.

"It is just as the ancients wrote," Rikkadar continued, not hearing him. "'The homeworld was cleansed by fire and storm in payment for sin, and few escaped.'"

"There must be some other explanation," Jemmagar said uncertainly. "There must be."

"Can we have been so wrong?" Rikkadar said, almost to himself. "Can we have been so desperately wrong about everything?"

Picard sneaked a look at Troi, who shrugged just enough for him to see. She looked as puzzled as he.

"We will speak more of this later," Kerajem said distractedly. He looked out the window and saw that they were flying over the capital city. "I see we're approaching Government House," the First Among Equals said. "We hope you and your officers will feel at home, Captain."

"I am quite sure we will, Kerajem," Picard replied, and he tried very hard to sound as if he meant it.

The Enterprise bridge routine had settled back into something approaching deadly dull. Will Riker was in the command chair. As per Picard's orders, he was maintaining yellow alert status, but everything that needed to be done about that had long since been done.

Ensign Ro was handling both Ops and Flight Control in Data's absence. Aside from a visual and systems check every ten minutes, Ro was letting the automatics do their job of maintaining standard orbit. She was much busier doing something else. Sector by sector, almost cubic meter by cubic meter, Ro was directing the ship's sensors in an almost unimaginably thorough and dogged sweep of the Ma'ak Indawe system. She was determined to find the source of the warp-field blips that had originally attracted their attention.

There was still no sign of what might have caused them. Instead, she found something else.

"Commander?" Ro called. "I have been going through recent sensor logs. Fifty-three minutes ago, we picked up a brief energy blip of some sort. I'm working on an a.n.a.lysis."

Commander Riker rose from the center seat. "Where away?" he asked as he walked forward.

"Well outsystem from here, sir," Ro said as her fingers flew across the Ops panel. "Somewhere just inside the orbit of planet five. I'm trying to narrow it down. I can already tell you the latest blip had nothing to do with warp-field generation, though. This is something else, something in another spectrum entirely."

Riker stood behind Ro and leaned forward a bit to look over her shoulder at the Ops display. "Nothing out of the ordinary there now," he said. "Let's get a visual of the area in question."

"Yes, sir." Ro rapidly hit a series of controls, and the real-time view of Nem Ma'ak Bratuna from orbit swam dizzily and was quickly replaced by a static starfield. "That's full magnification, Commander."

Riker looked intently at the viewscreen. There was nothing to be seen there.

"Commander," Ro said, "the a.n.a.lysis of the energy blip has just been completed." She paused for a moment and then tapped another rapid series of commands, never taking her eyes off the panel. "The sensors say the phenomenon in question was a tightly contained pocket exposure of cla.s.s-M environmental conditions for a duration of one point three seconds. I am already running the sensor diagnostics, Commander, because that sounds like nonsense."

"I agree," Riker said, walking back into the command area and reseating himself. "There's nothing out there to support cla.s.s-M conditions. Maintain yellow alert, Ensign."

"Yes, sir," Ro replied. A moment later, she said, "Commander, you're not going to like this. The sensor diagnostic programs have completed running. All systems read nominal."

Riker exhaled. "You're right," he said, scratching his chin. "I don't like it. Not a bit. It doesn't make sense."

"Sir?" Ro said, swiveling around to look at Riker. "If I may?"

"Yes, Ensign?"

"There's one profile I can think of that fits these readings."

"And what is that?"

"Temporary breach of a cloaking device, sir, as reported by U.S.S. Nemesis during its confrontation with Romulan warbird Night Raven. Sometime around stardate 42400, I believe."

"The 'open door' phenomenon," Riker said, remembering. "The Romulan ship briefly lost hull integrity due to a coolant line blowout along its inner hull. Night Raven's cloaking device could not compensate quickly enough for the suddenly changed physical condition of the ship. Sensors aboard Nemesis picked up the resulting exposure of cla.s.s-M environmental conditions inside the warbird."

"As I recall, Commander," Ro said, "the 'open door' lasted for about a second, until the Romulan cloaking device could compensate. We may be seeing something like that here, sir."

The commander looked at the viewscreen for a long moment. There seemed to be absolutely nothing there.

"Keep a close watch on that sector, Ensign," Riker said thoughtfully. "The captain is still in transit to the local government's headquarters. I'll call him."

Chapter Six.

THE DOORS TO THE MAIN CONFERENCE ROOM at Government House swung open, and the Council of Ministers entered, closely followed by the party of four from the Enterprise. Kerajem and the seven ministers took their places in front of seats that ran along one side of a large, highly polished oblong table. The table looked to Picard to have been made-no, to have been crafted-from a rich, reddish brown heartwood, something like mahogany. Such high-quality wood might be as common as charcoal here-Picard doubted that, but it might be so-but the craftsmanship evident in the making of this table bespoke an uncommonly high order of skill. People who were capable of doing this kind of work were to be reckoned with. Technology was gadgets; this was civilization.

Picard took his place at the center of the other side of the table, opposite Kerajem's seat, and Data and Troi stood to his left and right, respectively. Worf stood next to Troi.

As Picard stood there, waiting for some sort of signal to be seated, he almost absently ran a finger along the intricately carved filigree that ran all the way around the rounded rim of the table. If the Lethanta were trying to make an impression on him with this thing, they had succeeded.

Kerajem had been watching him. "We're proud of our craftsmanship here, Captain," the First Among Equals said. "This conference table used to belong to the-the previous ruling cla.s.s here. They used it for banquets, usually. It's several hundred years old."