"What happened to them?" asked Picard.

"We killed them."

As his double stepped away from the transporter controls, his features seemed to melt, and an instant later Picard was looking at a facsimile of Commander Valak, right down to his uniform. It was the second time he had witnessed such a transformation, the first being when he saw one of them turn into an exact double of himself, but it still took him aback.

"Come."

They went out into the corridor and headed for the turbolift. Along their way, they pa.s.sed the prostrate forms of several dozen crew members of the Syrinx, simply lying on the deck where they had fallen.

"Are they dead?" Picard asked uneasily.

"No. Merely inactive."

The turbolift took them to the bridge of the warbird. As the doors opened and they stepped out, Lord Kazanak turned toward them, panic in his eyes. "Valak! Thank the G.o.ds you have returned! The human hostages have escaped, and there is something wrong aboard this ship! None of the sections are responding, and I am unable to raise our people on the Enterprise!" He saw Picard, and his features contorted. "You! You are responsible for this!"

"Much as I would like to claim that honor," said Picard, "I fear that I cannot. I a.s.sume I have the honor of addressing Lord Kazanak, the designer of this ship?" Picard stood before the Romulan, smiling, then sat down in the command throne. "Allow me to compliment you. This vessel is a truly brilliant piece of design."

Kazanak stared at Picard with astonishment, then turned back toward Valak's double. "What is the meaning of this, Valak? I demand an explanation!"

"Commander Valak is, at this very moment, our prisoner aboard the Enterprise,"came the reply, spoken in Romulan. "The Syrinx is no longer under your command."

"Have you lost your senses, Valak? What are you talking about?"

"You are not addressing Commander Valak, Lord Kazanak," said Picard. "Appearances can be deceiving, as I learned the hard way when I first came aboard your vessel. Look around you. Do you see any familiar faces?"

Kazanak looked from "Valak" to Picard and back again. Then the navigation officer turned around in his chair, and Kazanak found himself looking at his own face. His eyes bulged, and he gasped when he saw that the weapons and tactics officer standing behind his console had also turned into a double of himself. As he gazed wildly around the bridge, everywhere he looked, he saw his own face staring back at him.

"No!" he said. "No, this cannot be! It is not possible! It is a trick! How ..." He sagged against one of the consoles, his voice trailing off as his senses reeled in the face of the unacceptable reality confronting him.

"Your mission has ended, Lord Kazanak," said Picard. "You have found what you were seeking. You have discovered the secret of Hermeticus Two."

La Forge stopped and held up in his hand. The others came to a halt behind him, crowding in as close as the narrow confines of the maintenance tube would permit. They had reached the hatchway that opened out into the corridor leading to Ten-Forward, where the Romulans were holding more of their fellow crew members.

"All right," La Forge said softly. "There will be guards out in the corridor and probably inside Ten-Forward as well. We're going to take out the guards by the doors first, and we'll have to do it fast, before they can alert the ones inside. The second we step out of the hatch, they're bound to see us, so we've got to come out fast and come out shooting. Got it?"

The others nodded.

La Forge took a deep breath. "Okay. Phasers ready? Here goes."

He threw open the hatch and dived out into the corridor. He rolled and came up with his phaser, but just as he was about to fire, he froze. "What the h.e.l.l ... ?"

Lewis and the others had quickly followed him through the hatchway, but none of them had fired, either. There was nothing to shoot at. The Romulan guards were lying on the deck, motionless. Slowly, Geordi got up and exchanged puzzled glances with the others. They followed him as he cautiously approached the fallen guards.

"Cover me," he said softly as he knelt to check them.

"Are they dead?" asked Lewis.

La Forge shook his head. "No. Just unconscious."

"What the h.e.l.l happened?"

"I don't know." La Forge bit his lower lip nervously. "All right. We're going in. Watch yourselves."

The door to Ten-Forward slid open, and La Forge and the others came in fast, phasers held ready, but the Romulan guards inside were all unconscious on the floor, and their fellow crew members appeared to be unharmed.

"What in the name of ... ?" La Forge's voice trailed off.

"There is no need for concern, Geordi," a familiar voice said. "Everything is under control."

"Deanna?" he said. He stared as Troi came toward him, smiling. Ro and Data were there, too, as were two strangers dressed in long black robes. He frowned, still holding his weapon uncertainly. "Who are they?"

Deanna turned and beckoned them forward. "Geordi, allow me to introduce Commander Morgan Llewellyn and Dr. Giorgi Vishinski, of the starship Independence."

The flames from the burning shuttlecraft had been extinguished, but the mist from the fire-control system still hovered like a low fog over the deck of the shuttle bay, mingling with the smoke. Riker stood slightly bent over, breathing hard, blood streaming from his broken nose and one eye puffed almost completely shut. His entire upper body was battered and bruised from Korak's powerful blows, and it hurt when he breathed.

The Romulan wasn't in much better shape. He limped as he circled Riker warily, and his left wrist hung at a strange angle, broken where Riker had snapped it. Blood covered his mouth, bubbling as he breathed heavily, but Korak was not about to quit. He refused to allow himself to be bested by this human while his own people watched, and he wore a look of homicidal fury as he moved around unsteadily, watching for an opening.

The two combatants were almost evenly matched. Korak had the advantage in strength, and though Riker was quicker, the Romulan had easily been able to absorb most of his blows. Korak's blows, when they got through, had done more damage, and Riker was able to continue only by sheer force of will.

What saved Riker was his skill at aikido, which enabled him to turn Korak's own considerable strength against him. The Romulan seemed baffled by the unfamiliar martial art, and though he had managed to land some damaging blows, Riker had tossed him around with motions that seemed deceptively simple and effortless, all the while taunting him and egging him on, knowing that Korak's greatest weakness was his temper. The Romulan was simply unable to accept that a human could be a match for him, and his frustration and fury at not being able to finish Riker off kept mounting until he was almost blind with rage.

The spectators on both sides watched silently and tensely. No one yelled encouragement. They all knew the battle was in deadly earnest, and they watched with rapt fascination as the two combatants fought, neither able to gain the upper hand. Even with his wrist broken, Korak kept on coming, pounding away with his one good arm and smashing at Riker with his left elbow and forearm. He seemed almost impervious to pain, but he was moving much more slowly now, hampered by his limp. Riker had snapped a kick into his leg that would have shattered a human kneecap, but amazingly, the Romulan was still on his feet.

"What's the matter, Korak?" Riker said, swallowing hard and breathing heavily as he fought exhaustion. "Getting tired?"

With a snarl of rage, Korak came at him again, and Riker caught hold of his right wrist, then sidestepped and made a tight circle, using Korak's own momentum to flip him over. He held on as Korak fell and was rewarded by the sharp sound of Korak's right wrist snapping. The Romulan cried out and landed hard. He tried to get back up, but collapsed when neither wrist would support him. He remained on his knees, arms crossed in front of his chest, unable to continue. He screamed with impotent rage.

"Shoot!" he shouted to his warriors, no longer caring if he was caught in their fire. "Kill him!"

Worf and the others quickly raised their weapons, but there was no response from the Romulans. The Enterprise crew could hardly see through the undulating mist and smoke.

"Shoot, curse your souls!" Korak screamed again. "Kill him!"

"There will be no more killing, Korak," said Picard, coming out of the swirling mist where the Romulans had stood.

"Captain!" said Riker, gazing at him with astonishment as Worf and the others came toward them, equally amazed to see him.

"I am all right, Number One," Picard said. "And so are all the others. The Syrinx has been neutralized, and the Enterprise is ours once more."

"But ... how ... ?"

"That, Number One, is going to take a good deal of explaining. And I do not yet possess all the answers. However, the first thing we need to do is get you to sickbay and let Dr. Crusher have a look at you." He glanced down at Korak, still on his knees and staring at him uncomprehendingly. "And him as well. Mr. Worf, a.s.sist Subcommander Korak to sickbay."

"With pleasure, sir." Worf glanced at Riker and nodded. "Well fought, Commander."

"Thanks," Riker said weakly.

"Come with me." Worf bent down to help Korak up.

"Take your filthy Klingon hands off me! Kill me and have done with it! I do not deserve to live!"

"You won't hear any argument from me," Worf said. "Now will you stand up, or must I carry you?"

Reluctantly Korak allowed Worf to help him to his feet and then moved off with him, his head bowed with shame.

As Picard led Riker and the others out of the shuttle bay, they saw the other Romulans sprawled out on the deck, motionless.

"Are they dead?" Riker asked.

"No," Picard replied. "Merely inactive."

Riker frowned. "Inactive?"

Picard smiled. "A borrowed term, Number One."

"Borrowed from whom?" asked Riker, now utterly confused.

"From a friend, Mr. Riker. From a friend."

They gathered around the conference table in the briefing room aboard the Enterprise. Riker, battered and bruised, with several fractured ribs, sat gingerly in his chair beside Deanna Troi, next to whom sat Ro Laren. On Laren's right was Data, with Geordi La Forge sitting next to him, and across from them sat Dr. Beverly Crusher, Worf, and Picard. Also at the table were the two men from the Independence, Llewellyn and Vishinski.

"Our friends from the ark asked that we proceed without them," said Llewellyn. "They sensed certain inhibitions among some of you, resulting from their being telepaths and felt that you would be able to ask your questions more freely in their absence."

The crew members of the Enterprise glanced around at one another.

"We have nothing to hide," Picard said. "And I was hoping that they would be present. I feel that we have a great deal to discuss."

Llewellyn smiled. "Forgive me, Captain, I did not mean to imply that any of you had anything to hide. It's just that living with us, they have learned that non-telepathic races feel a certain natural discomfort about others having complete access to all their thoughts. It took us many years to become accustomed to it ourselves. Counselor Troi, as an empath, perhaps you will understand. They sensed a quite understandable apprehension among many of you and felt that, at least initially, you would be more comfortable speaking with us."

"Who are they?" asked Riker.

"We call them ambimorphs," Vishinski said. "Their own name for themselves is unp.r.o.nounceable. Even after all our years among them, none of us have learned to speak their language. They do not actually speak it among themselves, for that matter. They have a highly complex and symbolic written language, but their communication among themselves is totally nonverbal."

"Shape-changers," La Forge said. "And telepathic, too."

"If you are thinking that they would make formidable enemies," Llewellyn said, "you are quite correct. They would. If we had to go up against them, we wouldn't stand a chance."

"From what I have seen, I find that point difficult to argue," agreed Picard.

La Forge glanced at Llewellyn. "I ... uh ... see what you meant about those inhibitions." He hesitated. "Were you reading my mind?"

Llewellyn smiled. "No, Mr. La Forge, I am not telepathic, though living with the ambimorphs for as long as we have has increased our intuitive perceptions considerably. And if I may antic.i.p.ate the next question, which you may or may not be able to bring yourselves to ask: no, I am not one of them masquerading as a human, though they could easily have accomplished that. You will have to take my word that I am who I claim to be, however. The ambimorphs' ability to transform themselves is such that even the most sophisticated medical scanners would be unable to detect them."

"Where do they come from?" asked Worf.

"We know only that they are from a distant star system," Vishinski replied. "As you have seen, their ship is multigenerational, and their life span is far greater than our own."

"The ark has been here for over thirty years, Commander," Picard said. "Exactly what do they want here?"

"Some of you already know part of the story," Llewellyn said, glancing at Ro, Troi, Data, and Crusher. "Their mission is essentially similar to yours." He smiled. "Perhaps I should say ours. After all this time I sometimes find it difficult to recall that I am still a Starfleet officer."

"So then they came in search of other intelligent beings?" Picard said.

"Yes," Lewellyn replied, "and they found several species at war with one another. When they first arrived in this sector, the Federation was still at war with the Klingon Empire and the Romulans were the wild card in the conflict. Now the Federation and the Klingons are allies, but the Romulans remain as warlike and unpredictable as ever. The situation was extremely unstable back then, and in many ways it still is. The ambimorphs had no idea what to make of it."

"They had long since evolved beyond the need for violence," added Vishinski, "and they did not really understand what was going on or why. So instead of making contact with any of the warring species, they decided to wait until they learned more, primarily by monitoring communications at long range to get a better sense of the situation and the partic.i.p.ants."

"Only you wound up making contact with them first," said Riker.

Llewellyn nodded. "We had discovered a small planetary body that wasn't on any of the charts, and when we investigated, our experience was much the same as yours. We discovered that it was not a small planet at all, but an interstellar ark, and we sent away teams down to investigate. That gave the ambimorphs their first opportunity to observe humans up close, and they proceeded cautiously. They tested us. They interfered with our communications, decoyed a number of other landing parties down, and watched us stumble around, trying to figure out what the h.e.l.l was going on. All the time, they were around us, watching and waiting to see what we would do, how we would react to the situation. They particularly wanted to know if we would react violently."

"The sculptures," said Deanna. "I sensed something when I touched one of them, but it was only a vague impression, and then it was gone."

"Or telepathically blocked," Picard said. "So what we took to be artful arrangements of lights and sculptures were actually a number of them standing around among the streetlights and mimicking their form?"

"Actually the lights and sculptures are arranged in groups to create an aesthetic blend of light and shadow," said Vishinski. "However, it was a simple matter for the ambimorphs merely to 'add' a sculpture or two here and there, so they could monitor you from up close."

"Eventually they began to show themselves to us," Llewellyn said, "in humanoid form, though at a distance, again to see what we would do. And some of them came aboard our ship after posing as landing parties and getting themselves beamed up. Being telepaths, the deception was simple for them to carry off. All they required was proximity to an away team and a telepathic scan would do the rest. However, they never intended to take over our ship. I guess you might say they were just hedging their bets, placing themselves in position to neutralize us quickly if we suddenly turned hostile. And it also enabled them to make sure no messages were sent out to Starfleet."

"What happened to cause the entire crew to beam down, and why did four of your people attempt escape in a shuttlecraft?" Picard asked.

"We actually had no choice but to beam down the entire crew," replied Llewellyn. "When the ambimorphs finally made contact with us, after satisfying themselves that we weren't a savage species, they were warm and welcoming. Unfortunately, by that time, we had already been exposed."

"You see," Vishinski said, "with their ability to alter their own molecular structure, their bodies automatically compensated for any germs we might have carried that could threaten them. In essence, they have the most perfect immune systems in the universe. It never occurred to them that we were not so lucky."

"The crew of the Independence contracted a disease from the ambimorphs," said Dr. Crusher. "A virus caused by bacteria they apparently brought with them from their homeworld. They were naturally immune to it, but they were carriers."

"The virus spread with unbelievable speed," Vishinski said. "Our medical technology simply couldn't cope with it. We lost almost half our crew before the ambimorphs could put a stop to it."

"So then that's what the ambimorph meant when he said 'we killed them,'" said Picard.

Llewellyn nodded. "They were shocked and absolutely devastated," he said. "They still carry the guilt. It's a source of great pain to them, even though it was completely unintentional on their part."

"Then that explains the quarantine." Picard frowned. "So we've all been exposed?"

"No, you need have no worry on that count," replied Vishinski. "Once the ambimorphs realized what was happening, they were able to isolate the virus with my help and then destroy it within themselves."

"Unfortunately, they could do nothing for those who had already been infected," added Llewellyn, "and that included most of the crew. Many had already died, and some were hopelessly ill, but for the rest of us, they were able to come up with a treatment using antibodies they created for us in their own systems."

"It took time, however," said Vishinski. "I was charting virgin medical territory, and they were dealing with a completely alien morphology. The initial cell treatments killed the virus, but they also killed the members of our crew who volunteered to act as test subjects. Eventually the ambimorphs were able to manufacture antibodies that our systems could tolerate. The treatment does not const.i.tute a cure, but it does hold the virus in stasis. However, we do require periodic treatments."

"So that's why none of you can ever leave," said Dr. Crusher. "Perhaps you no longer need to depend on the ambimorphs creating the cell lines for your treatments. In the past thirty years we've made significant advances in protein engineering. There's a chance we could duplicate the treatments."

"Perhaps, but that's not the only reason we stay here," said Llewellyn. "Our children all grew up aboard the ark, and many of them were born there. I even have grandchildren now who grew up with the ambimorphs. Except for us, the children have never known human society. Life aboard the ark is the only existence they know, and it's a good life. The ark is home for them, and they wouldn't want to leave. Even if they did, they'd never really fit in with human society. Aside from that, this has been a truly incredible opportunity for us. As the ambimorphs have studied us, so we have studied them. They're a unique species, highly advanced, and the most incredibly adaptable life-form we've ever encountered."

"Their ability to transform themselves, to alter their own molecular structure at will, makes them the ultimate survivors," said Vishinski. "It's fortunate for us that they are nonaggressive, for they could easily become the most dominant species in the universe. They have settled countless worlds, but always with an acute awareness of ecological balance. They look for a niche, then adapt themselves to fit in."

"Fascinating," said Picard. "However, one question remains unanswered. What of the shuttlecraft from the Independence that was found drifting in s.p.a.ce with four dead men aboard?"