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  Eventually Picard would attempt to take the ship onto a shuttle deck and allow Lieutenant Shubunkin to study it at close range. But that would be a last resort. For now the ship had a right to act in a way that made no sense to him. It was the nature of aliens to act in an alien manner. To see such things was another reason Picard had gone into space.

  The alien ship stopped hopping. Picard got the impression it was watching their approach, but that was only fancy. Even if those aboard really were watching the approach of the Enterprise, Picard had no way of knowing it. Then, so fast that it left a momentary smudge on the viewscreen, the ship was gone. Picard blinked at the empty field of stars.

  “Warp six,” Data said. “Heading one four seven mark four. Still no evidence of a warp engine. But the ship continues to broadcast its signal.”

  “Warp six, Mr. Crusher,” Riker said. “Take your heading from Mr. Data.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The stars flew to the edges of the viewscreen, always fed by more at the center. The Enterprise seemed to be flinging itself down an infinitely long tunnel that had sparks embedded in its obsidian walls.

  “Heading two seven six mark eight.”

  Wesley made the proper adjustment.

  The alien ship went to warp eight, dropped back to warp five, and changed its direction three more times.

  Counselor Troi yelped. A second later Data said, “The ship is gone.”

  “Explain,” said Picard.

  “Just gone, sir. It was there and then it was not.” Troi composed herself and smiled shyly. “I felt it leaving, sir.”

  “Felt it?” Riker said.

  Troi nodded. “A pressure I didn’t even know was there was suddenly gone.” She thought for a moment. “It tickled when it slipped away.”

  Picard frowned and glanced at Riker, who gave a tiny shrug.

  Data said, “The feelings that Counselor Troi describes closely approximate the event as seen by the sensors. The ship slipped away. But in a direction the sensors are not equipped to recognize and with which I am not familiar.”

  “Subspace?” Picard said. “Hyperspace?”

  “Unknown at this time, Captain.”

  “Can you make sense of this, Lieutenant Shubunkin?” Picard said.

  Shubunkin said, “No, sir. But I’m sure a few hours with the sensor log will—”

  Picard said, “All the facilities of the ship are open to you.”

  “Perhaps you would like Mr. Data to assist?” Riker said.

  “No, no. I just need a few hours alone with the raw data.” He smiled. “Small d.”

  Shubunkin left the bridge, and Captain Picard invited Data and Troi to join him in his ready room. They could tell him no more than what was already obvious: the signal was sent by aliens who could travel at warp speed without a warp drive; the aliens were human or they were not.

  “It is all very odd,” Picard said.

  Data and Troi could only agree.

  Shubunkin did not emerge from his stateroom for the rest of the day. And when he did appear at last, he still had no answers for Picard.

  The Enterprise patrolled the Omega Triangulae region for another week. Everyone was disappointed that no more inexplicable events occurred, though as Wesley commented, “The mystery we already have is a doozy.”

  Chapter One

  CAPTAIN WESLEY CRUSHER of the starship Enterprise brooded as he watched the Romulan captain on the main screen. Negotiations had not been going well and the diplomatic language had worn a little thin. Next to Crusher, Commander Riker was sweating heavily.

  Captain Arvak shook his head and said, “I am not convinced, Crusher, that the Federation is negotiating in good faith.”

  Crusher opened his hands in the universal gesture of friendship, and smiled. He said, “I assure you, Captain Arvak, that given a chance the Federation would be pleased to share the riches of Regan Three.”

  “Your assurances mean nothing,” Arvak said. “We have nothing more to discuss.” The screen went blank, and a moment later Mr. Worf sang out, “Three Romulan ships closing fast.”

  “Tactical, Mr. Worf,” Captain Crusher said calmly.

  On the main screen, Enterprise was a blue dot at the center of a three-dimensional grid. The Romulan vessels were red sparks closing fast.

  “Mr. Worf, sound red alert. Mr. Winston-Smyth, ahead full impulse.”

  The Klaxon sounded. Lights flashed. All decks reported in. Captain Crusher felt a hot adrenaline rush as he gripped the arms of his command chair. The Romulans were making it difficult for the Enterprise to escape without killing or being killed, but Crusher would do his best. He did not want three weeks of careful negotiations to go to waste.

  “We’re dead men,” Riker grumbled.

  Data called, “Five hundred thousand klicks and closing.”

  “Visual,” Captain Crusher said.

  The tactical display on the main screen dissolved into the view forward. The Romulan ships seemed to be right off Enterprise’s bow. Crusher knew the proximity of the Romulan ships was only an illusion, but he also knew they were too close for comfort.

  A spot on the center Romulan ship flashed and a photon torpedo whirled toward them.

  “Shields,” Crusher said.

  Enterprise rocked with the impact of the torpedo. The bridge lights dimmed momentarily.

  “Minor damage on deck six,” Worf said. “Shields still intact.”

  Data said, “Romulans now at sublight. Speed falling. Stabilizing at one-half impulse. Ten thousand klicks and closing.”

  “Tactical,” Crusher demanded. The blips representing the two flank vessels peeled off to either side while the center one came ahead under a barrage of phaser fire. Crusher knew what the Romulans had in mind. It was an old trick. While one ship kept him busy at his bow, the other two would close in on both sides, concentrating their fire on his warp nacelles, hoping to destroy the propulsion coils.

  “We must do something, Captain,” Riker said. He sounded desperate.

  “Wait, wait,” Crusher said. He never took his eyes off the tactical display. He said, “Mr. Winston-Smyth, on my command, full impulse power heading zero one five mark four.”

  Winston-Smyth glanced worriedly at Crusher but said, “Aye, sir,” and laid in the velocity.

  “Wait. Wait. Wait.” He cried, “Now, Mr. Winston-Smyth.”

  The tactical display showed Enterprise rising straight up. The Romulan ships were left scrambling among themselves. “Warp eight back to Federation space,” Crusher said steadily.

  Riker shook his head and said, “You’re a man of iron nerves, sir.”

  Crusher nodded and smiled sardonically. Though he had failed as a diplomat, he’d managed to escape from the Romulans without inflicting or sustaining damage. Considering the Romulans, that was a victory of sorts. Yet something was missing. The element of surprise, perhaps. It was always so predictable. Not like in the real universe. He shook his head and said, “Number One, you have the bridge.” He strode to the door and into his ready room, where he sat down at his desk and rested his chin on his fists.

  It wasn’t Guinan’s fault he wasn’t satisfied, or his mom’s either. Mom was swell, and Wesley liked her a lot. Still, she was a Starfleet officer mostly because she was a doctor, when it came to actually being a command officer—well, she’d never been to command school, and she did not have the experience Wesley felt he needed to call upon. He’d been a little nervous about going to Will Riker or anybody else on the bridge. They’d help him, of course, but he asked them enough questions. And they might think his request was out of line or, worse yet, silly.

  So he’d gone to Guinan.

  It was ship’s day, so Ten Forward was nearly empty. An off-duty couple spoke low in a corner. Guinan was behind the bar wiping it down with a purple rag the same color as her dress and hat. She smiled warmly when she saw him—she did everything warmly—and said, “Taking a study break?”

  “Sort of,” Wesley said. He sat dow
n and did not meet her eyes.

  “What’ll you have?” Guinan said.

  “A clear ether, please.”

  While Guinan spritzed soda into a tall glass, she said, “What’s wrong?”

  “What makes you think something is wrong?” Sometimes Guinan was so intuitive it was almost scary. He watched her build the drink. The food slot could have delivered it ready-made, but there was a need in the human soul to watch a recreational drink being prepared. Besides, the preparation gave both bartender and customer more time to talk, a friendly tradition that had survived for centuries on many planets.

  She set the tall glass before him. Red tendrils leaked into the clear liquid from a cherry speared with a green plastic spaceship in the shape of a dart. While Wesley chewed on the cherry, Guinan said, “You never take study breaks, Wesley. You’re more likely to study all night.”

  “Yeah, well,” he said and played with the little plastic spaceship.

  She continued wiping the bar.

  Wesley took a deep breath and said, “I don’t know if I’ll make a good officer.”

  “Is it important that you know right now? Seems to me you have your hands full going to school and serving on the bridge.”

  Wesley shrugged. It was important. If he wouldn’t make a good officer, a good commander, he might as well leave the Enterprise and Starfleet altogether. He sipped his clear ether. It was cold and sweet.

  “So it’s important,” Guinan said. “Captain Picard has already given you more responsibility than he would entrust to the average kid your age. You seem to be doing pretty well with it.”

  Wesley shrugged again. “That’s not command,” he said. “That’s just delegated authority.”

  “Oh,” Guinan said and nodded as if she understood. Maybe she did.

  “I want command. Life-and-death decisions that have to be made in a split second. I need to test myself against a starship in crisis.”

  “I see.” She added more seltzer to Wesley’s glass. He watched the fizz bubble and jump. She said, “How do cadets test themselves against starships in crisis without killing anybody?”

  “Starfleet sets up scenarios in a holoroom at the Academy.”

  Guinan smiled and raised her eyebrows.

  Wesley was suddenly excited. “The holodeck, of course.”

  Guinan nodded.

  “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “You were too close to the problem. You were looking for a real solution, when in this case fantasy will do just as well.”

  “Right, right. Do you think the holodeck has a command training program?”

  “One way to find out.”

  He thanked Guinan and left Ten Forward without finishing his drink. The turbolift took him to deck eleven where the holodeck computer told him that various training programs and subroutines were available. Wesley made his selection and entered.

  He started his training in the holodeck version of Picard’s ready room and set himself problems involving real-time ship-related decisions: Should a particular crew member be promoted? What is the proper discipline for a particular infraction? What is the proper diplomatic maneuver to use when dealing with an angry or recalcitrant alien dignitary?

  Wesley did not get a perfect score on any of the problems, but his rating was always in the green, or acceptable, range. According to the computer, nobody ever got a perfect score. One could approach perfection but never reach it.

  Then he’d summoned up the bridge of the Enterprise on the holodeck, manned as it really was manned, except that he was the captain instead of Picard. He had tried his negotiating skills with Klingon renegades and Ferengi and was now testing them against Romulans. It was like playing a swift game of 3-D chess with the computer.

  Wesley had studied the famous encounters with the Klingons, the Ferengi, and the Romulans. He had the same data the computer had, so the tactics of the adversaries were predictable within a certain range. It was the predictability that bothered Wesley. The Starfleet charge, “to boldly go where no one has gone before,” meant that predictability would be the exception rather than the rule.

  The ready room was so quiet and he was thinking so hard that the pleasant female voice of the computer made him jump when it said, “Lieutenant Shubunkin is waiting for you outside the holodeck.”

  “Uh-oh,” Wesley said. “Stop program.”

  Since he was alone, the only thing that showed Wesley the computer had complied was that the spiny fish in the tank across the room seemed to freeze.

  The computer said, “Do you wish this program saved?”

  Wesley considered his alternatives. He had learned pretty much all he could from challenging the computer. It was fun, but it was basically a game for kids. He’d have to dig a little deeper, maybe design his own aliens. If he wanted Romulans again, he could have them. Their characteristics were in the computer’s permanent memory. Wesley stood up and called out, “Cancel program and admit Lieutenant Shubunkin.”

  Without a sound the captain’s ready room wavered and disappeared, leaving Wesley at one side of a big room that was featureless but for a doorway and the grid markings on all six interior surfaces. The doors slid open, and Lieutenant Shubunkin strode in. Angrily he said, “We had an appointment.”

  “Yes, sir. I just lost track of the time.”

  “Not a healthy characteristic in an ensign,” Shubunkin said. “Evidently Dr. Crusher is experiencing the same difficulty.”

  “What difficulty is that?”

  Dr. Crusher stepped into the room. She planted her fists deep in the pockets of her smock and looked at Shubunkin with her eyebrows up, daring him to accuse her of anything at all. Wesley generally wilted when his mom looked at him that way, and evidently Dr. Crusher’s hard, clear gaze had the same effect on Lieutenant Shubunkin. He said, “I am merely eager to begin.”

  “So begin,” Dr. Crusher said and shrugged in Wesley’s direction, making Wesley smile.

  “Computer,” Shubunkin said.

  “Ready.”

  “Run read-only program ‘Baldwin.’ ”

  Immediately the three of them were standing in the middle of an alien jungle. Chattering, squealing, and feral noises with no earthly name came from all around. Lumps of polished wood as big as houses were caught in nets of vines that hummed as the light, spicy wind blew through them. Twirling things sailed among tangles of trees with thin trunks that rose to incredible heights. Wesley could not see the sky because of the patchwork of leaves overhead.

  “Hot, isn’t it?” he said as he pulled his collar away from his neck with a finger. He, Dr. Crusher, and Lieutenant Shubunkin sat down on crystalline rocks that thrust from among the dead brown leaves like giants’ teeth.

  The only things that spoiled the perfect illusion were the standard English words floating in midair and the dramatic music. The words said, “Omniology presents ‘The Alien Universe of Eric Baldwin.’ ”

  Baldwin was an exologist, an expert on alien cultures and their artifacts. He was a tall wiry man with the face of a benign demon. According to the documentary, he had escaped death many times, usually either just before or just after making an important discovery. An entire wing of the North American Museum of Extraterrestrial Biology was named after him.

  As the program continued, the crystal rocks they were sitting on became toadstools, rock outcroppings, coral reefs, and finally, merely chairs. Along the way Baldwin was threatened by angry natives, kidnapped by pirates and smugglers of both the water and space variety, twisted through weird dimensions by alien artifacts, and pursued by rival exologists. Each time he was threatened with death or worse, he managed to narrowly escape, using an impressive combination of creativity and physical strength. The documentary ended, leaving Dr. Crusher, Wesley, and Shubunkin standing on the blank holodeck. Dr. Crusher said, “A very impressive career.”

  “Captain Picard says he’s the single most important exologist in the Federation.”

  “The captain should know,” Dr.
Crusher said. “They went to school together.”

  Shubunkin said, “Perhaps. But there are other exologists . . .”

  He allowed the observation to dangle, but neither Wesley nor Dr. Crusher took hold of it. Personally, Wesley suspected that Lieutenant Shubunkin was just jealous. Dr. Crusher only said, “You may be right,” thanked him for running the documentary, and went back to sickbay, still visibly pining for Eric Baldwin.

  After the door had knitted itself shut with a pneumatic sigh, Lieutenant Shubunkin and Ensign Crusher watched it as if they thought it might open again. Shubunkin said, “On my planet, if someone says ‘You may be right,’ that is what they mean. I think your mother means something else.”

  “You may be right,” Wesley said, and immediately wished he hadn’t. He went on quickly, “I’d like to ask you a question.”

  “Proceed.”

  Wesley took a deep breath and said, “I want to design some aliens I can practice my diplomatic skills on.” Wesley didn’t want to admit his self-doubts about his command abilities. Not to Shubunkin, anyway.

  Shubunkin said, “By aliens, I assume you mean nonhumans.”

  “Of course.”

  Wesley could see why most of the bridge crew had difficulty getting along with Shubunkin. Even Counselor Troi, who could get along with anybody, found him a little abrasive. The guy knew his stuff, but he was too ready to show it off. Wesley took a deep breath and said, “Yes, sir. I mean nonhumans.”

  “The Enterprise computers hold a detailed description of every encounter between races since the founding of the Federation. Surely by using those descriptions, the computer can design something that will satisfy you.”

  “Actually, sir, I was looking for something a little more unusual.”

  Shubunkin nodded and said, “You want more interesting aliens. Faster, less predictable aliens.”

  “Right. Absolutely.”

  Shubunkin stroked his chin. He said, “The Borders scale might be of use.”

  “Borders scale?”

  “It’s a complex scale of social, intellectual, and emotional values. Among other things, six different kinds of creativity are listed, as well as honor, courage, mercy, fierceness, ruthlessness, arrogance, and mental and physical speed. Hundreds of categories. I believe Borders even created a subsection concerning sense of humor. Her scale is a useful tool when trying to quantify similarities and differences between races.”