STAR TREK - TNG - 45 - Intellivore

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For the “Eastern Bloc”:
Andreas, Martin, Astraid, Melanie, Mark,
and all our other acquaintances in Germany and
Switzerland, aroundstammtischen here and there,
who think first ofRaumschiff Enterprise
before translating it into that slightly alien term,
Star Trek
Cogito, ergo sum.
—Descartes
Chapter One
JEAN-LUCPICARDwas out riding. The horse was not his usual mount, but a big bay gelding named
Rollo, a soft-mouthed, even-tempered creature. For this ride, the horse would have to be.
It was the third leg of his ride, now, the third day in the saddle, and his muscles were beginning to
complain at a strain to which they had become unaccustomed.Sloppy of me , he thought,to let myself
get so far out of trim .But we’re sorting that out now! As he reined in again, catching his breath at the
twinge in the thigh muscles, Rollo snorted softly: impatience. This was a horse that liked the hard climbs,
and would get impatient with a rider who couldn’t keep his pace.
“All right,” Picard said under his breath, amused. “All right, you beast; we’ll see who’s the first to call it
quits.” He shook the reins. Rollo tossed his head and started upward again.
The route was a familiar one, though it had been years since he’d rode it last. The first leg meant an
early-morning escape from St.-Veran—otherwise the unwelcome sounds of traffic and town life would
put the horse out of humor—and the initial, fairly steep climb up through the meadows outside town, to
the hiking trail that struck southeast, skirting the peak of Pointe des Marcellettes.
Once on the trail, things settled into the comfortable rhythm that Picard so relished. He could feel the
movement of the horse, and hear the sound of hoofbeats, his own breathing, the wind, and the rush of the
Aigue Blanche river paralleling the trail. Northward, the jagged crestline of Pic Traversier dominated the
view, its flanks shaggy with pines down to the valley level; and below that, the water meadows
surrounding the river course, bright with the violet and yellow of the spring pre-Alpine flowers, early
mallow, and wild vanilla orchid. Behind, if he had looked over his shoulder, Picard would have had no
trouble seeing the valleys and lesser peaks of the Hauts-Alpes falling away gradually through the bright
mist toward the central lowlands. But he didn’t look that way. His attention and anticipation were
directed toward the eastward road, where the trail zigzagged upward toward the border, and the clear
view ahead was shut away by the interlaced fingers of stone that reached down to the trail from one peak
or another of the Queyras range through which he traveled.
Picard rode on, too relaxed and happy even to smile. Every now and then the stillness was broken—a
rockfall, turned loose by expansion in the warming day, and skittering down the scree slope above the
red tile roofs of Marbre village; a little school of Alpine choughs wheeling overhead, stooping down at the
trail to dive-bomb the lone rider, so that Picard had to shout to scare them off, and Rollo tossed his head
and snorted in annoyance.
But such interruptions were few. The mist burned off, the wind died down; except for the crunch of
Rollo’s hooves on the scree and gravel of the trail, the silence grew intense in the heat of the bright blue
day.
Picard sighed in sheer pleasure at the completeness of that silence as he and Rollo rounded the spur of
Tête de Longet, and the view abruptly opened out northeastward, showing the narrow valley running
back and forth in the shadow of the jagged heart peaks of the Queyras. Here the trail ceased to be any
good for vehicles, and the only comment the maps would make about its quality further on was a laconic
“passage incertain.” Picard drew rein where the narrowing trail passed the old hikers’ hut under Pic de
Caramantran, and eyed the path above them with pleasure and anticipation. They had gained about two
thousand feet over the morning’s climb; the sun was still hot, but the air was growing cooler, and in
shadow it was cold enough to provoke shivers.
They climbed. Even the insanely hardy Alpine flowers gave up trying to grow here; the Arolla pines had
given up a thousand feet earlier. Everything in sight was scree tumble, sloped gravel, blinding patches and
streaks of snow, slick shining trickles of ice down gray- and brown-striped, crooked-layered limestone
and mica schist, and above it all, the inward-leaningaiguillette peaks—barren stone needles like the
newest, sharpest mountains on some moon. The sheer sterility of the scenery would have been
oppressive had it not been backed by that hard, brilliant blue sky, getting clearer all the time as the trail
wound on upward above the last of the mist.
Picard’s chest began to hurt. Behind him, Rollo was blowing hard. “Aha,” Picard said, between his own
gulps for air.“Now we see what you—really think of a good climb—” The trail was almost at a
forty-degree angle now and, above them, seemed simply to go straight up into the sky and stop.
Until they came to the top of it. Abruptly, almost unbelievably—so great was the contrast with the
surrounding terrain—they found themselves standing on a stony crest which spilled straight down into a
broad grassy terrace, almost perfectly flat. Picard led Rollo down into it, and the gelding made a satisfied
muttering noise down in his throat and immediately dropped his head to graze. “Glutton,” Picard said
softly, throwing the reins over Rollo’s head and letting them hang. He leaned against the horse’s side and
regarded the view from Belvedere la Cirque with a completely illogical satisfaction, as if he had created it.
Picard left Rollo where he was for the moment and walked slowly to the eastern side of the belvedere,
where it began to trend gently downhill before ending abruptly in its own set of cliffs. There, poised on
the very edge, he stood awhile, getting his breath back, and looked down into the great soft abyss of blue
air to the place below where four or five wrinkled little valleys met. Picard stood there in the sunny
silence, awed as always, and thought of how many others had come this way in their own times, on their
way to some pressing engagement: Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Napoleon . . .
Except that none of them had actually comehere at all.
It was all an illusion, of course. The air, so cold and dry and sweet it cut the lungs; the faint elusive scent
of vanilla orchid, even at such a height; the clink and creak of the tack of reins and saddle, the faint
grinding noise of Rollo’s teeth as he grazed, even Rollo himself as he paused in his grazing to look up and
snort softly at Picard, impatient with the sightseeing—all an illusion. All the triumph of science over an
empty room.
Unreal, Picard thought a little sadly, folding his arms, now that his breathing was comfortable again.Yet
—and the thought was almost rebellious, even cheerful—it’s easy enough to get caught in the old
question. Anyreality must be filtered through our own experience. I may say to myself, “This is
unreal: I’m in the holodeck, and a word from me will break the illusion.” But it feels no less real
than the last time I rode this way .
Picard sighed, amused; but the amusement had an edge of sorrow to it. The irony was inescapable:
holodeck technology, rather than helping solve questions about the nature of reality, had created many
more. Meanwhile, was therereally any danger in experiencing this morning sun, this air, as if itwere
physically real? Joy was rare enough, precious enough in life, as it was; why deny it to yourself because it
wasn’t “real”? Reality would intrude soon enough, and then—
—the softqueep from the commbadge buried inside the saddle pack. Picard’s slight, glad smile turned
wry. “Picard,” he said softly.
“Captain,” Riker’s voice said,“Marignano has just come out of warp and is on her way to the
rendezvous point.”
“Thank you, Number One,” Picard said. “My compliments to Captain Maisel. I’ll be along shortly. Any
news ofOraidhe yet?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“All right. Out.”
He stood there a few minutes more, looking across the blue lake of air toward Monte Viso’s splendor.
A black dot slid across the mountain face at about the twenty-five-hundred-meter level, below the peak,
its shadow sliding along in a matching course down on the snows. Picard peered at it, for there was
something odd about the shape, lumpy.
It had to come a little closer, veering past the face of Pointe de Marte, before he recognized it, and the
sight made him catch his breath. Big broad wings, flapping surprisingly and looking black against the
blazing white, except for faint pale patches on the shoulders—it was one of the Alpine eagles, the
“Imperial eagle” in fact, once rare in these skies. They had been hunted nearly to extinction in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; but with the aid of cloned and natural breeding stock, they had been
reintroduced in numbers late in the twenty-first century.Here at least , Picard thought, watching it in
admiration,is an old wrong almost put right .
The eagle went flapping low over the col, and immediately dipped down behind it, out of sight. At the
same time, something nudged Picard from behind, in the lower back. He turned to see Rollo giving him
an impatient look, and eyeing his jacket pocket.
Picard lifted an amused eyebrow and produced the last piece of carrot, letting the gelding finish it. Then,
“Computer,” he said. “End program.”
In a blink it was all gone: the wind, the burning blue, replaced by dark walls and bright gridlines burning
against them. “Store program Hauts-Alpes Two-A,” Picard said.
“Stored,” said the computer.
Picard smiled slightly—for there was still the slightest scent of vanilla orchid in the air—and went back
out of the holodeck into the real world.
Captain’s log, stardate 48022.5. Pursuant to earlier orders from Starfleet Command, having relinquished
the “upper” Beta Quadrant patrol run to our relief,U.S.S. Constellation , we have finally arrived at our
designated rendezvous point near the former V843 Ophiuchi, now NGC4258.
Our new mission will involve us in several investigations which have been in progress for some time. This
part of space is chiefly notable for its closeness to the Great Rift between the Sagittarius and Orion arms
of the galaxy: it is a sparsely starred neighborhood, little investigated until the Federation assigned the
pure science vesselMarignano to do a current-civilization and archaeological survey, while also
examining various reported anomalies of stellar motion.
However, what should have been a quiet exploratory mission has been heating up somewhat. We have
been reassigned to assistMarignano , and another starship,Oraidhe , has been reassigned to this mission
as well. I have a feeling our purpose is to ride shotgun . . . and the kind of mission which requirestwo
starships of our class to do so, this far out in “the middle of nowhere,” is one that gives me pause . . .
Picard stood on the bridge, looking at the main viewscreen. History lay spread out there in broad bright
streamers and clouds of hot plasma, all burning gold and blue, the biggest bang that had been seen in
these parts for nearly twelve thousand years.
On Earth, it was the evening of October ninth of 1604 when the astronomers of southern Europe went
out to look with great interest at an unusually close conjunction of Jupiter and Mars. Altobelli took
himself up into the hills above Venice, Clavius to a rise above the pines of Rome, Brunowski to the
mountains near Prague, and they all waited for dark. It came, and Jupiter and Mars stood forth in the sky
as scheduled . . . but so did a third body, brighter than any star or planet in the sky, swiftly growing bright
enough to be seen even in full daylight. Clavius goggled; Altobelli stared; Brunowski ran back to his
house and wrote a letter to Johannes Kepler. Kepler studied the star nearly nonstop until March of 1606,
when it faded, and decided it was probably the same kind of thing as thenova stella or “new star” which
Tycho Brahe had described a few decades before in 1572. He wrote a long learned paper on the
“nova’, and the star was later often called “Kepler’s star” after him. Whether he ever sent Brunowski a
thank-you note, no one knows.
It was, of course, not just a common, garden variety nova, but a true supernova, only the fourth to be
observed over about a thousand years, the only one to happen inside the Milky Way.
Hanging there about a light-day from the epicenter of the ancient destruction—or rather, from the point
to which that center had drifted, over the course of twelve thousand years—Enterprisewas a gilded toy,
Picard reflected uneasily. He imagined how the ship must look from space, her bright side bronzed, her
shadowed side sheened a deep vibrant blue by the fainter but hotter filaments of the supernova remnant,
which was now flung over the equivalent of some four arc-minutes of sky, and seemed to fill everything
from zenith to nadir.
“Shields holding?” Picard said softly.
“Yes, Captain,” said Data, regarding the readouts on his station. “One-gigahertz flux density is holding
steady at nineteen; no sign of variation from the pulsar.”
“Good,” Picard said. The pulsar at the center of the fragment was a “billisecond” pulsar—revolving so
fast, and pulsing so swiftly, that it hardly deserved the name. Radio emissions and X rays did not
propagate from it in the usual rotary pulses, but instead seemed to come blasting out in an unbroken
stream, like water from a fire hose. Objects that so strenuously “pushed the envelope” of their basic
definition tended to make Picard a little nervous: you never knew when they might take it on themselves
to become something new and different, very abruptly, and with disastrous consequences.
“Visual onMarignano , Captain,” Worf said.
Picard sat down. “Let’s have a look.”
The screen flicked to another view, fuller of blue filaments than of golden. A little gilt shape swam closer
against the azure fire, decelerating from a sensible half impulse . . . for no one used warp technology while
close to a supernova remnant. Until the mechanisms that had produced the remnant in the first place were
better understood, stepping softly seemed wisest.
Marignanowas maybe half the size ofEnterprise , her primary hull narrower but her secondary hull as
big asEnterprise ’s and her nacelles as long. Picard remembered that theMarignano , like the other
“long-range” science vessels, was “overengined,” designed for long runs in space where there would be
no repair or refit facilities except what she carried herself.
“She is hailing us, Captain,” Worf said.
Picard smiled slightly. “Put her on.”
The viewscreen flicked to a bridge view. Though stations were manned, the center seat was empty. The
usual murmur of operations being handled could be heard, but over it all, a lively, slightly raspy voice was
saying, “—on, I want that report. It should have been here five minutes ago.”
The voice’s owner leaned into pickup for the viewscreen. “Hello, Jean-Luc!”
Picard smiled. It was always that way with her: you might not have seen Ileen Maisel for five years, or
ten, but she would infallibly pick up the conversation in a tone of voice that suggested you had last
spoken about a day ago.
“Hello, Ileen,” he said, wondering, as he looked at her, whether those roving tendencies of hers, and the
matching tendencies of mind, were what kept her looking so young. She looked much as she had when
their paths last crossed, five years ago, a woman of medium height, slender but with a sturdy look about
her. Tightly curled, shortish salt-and-pepper hair, heavier on the pepper than the salt. Vivid blue-gray
eyes and a big cheerful grin, a mobile, expressive face. That was Ileen—that, and a powerfully projected
sense of purpose and speed: she had things to do, and was not going to let the universe hold her up.
“You’re late,” she said, plopping herself down in her center chair and stealing a peek at the padd she
was holding. “I thought you were going to be here seventeen standard hours ago.”
Picard cleared his throat and shot a somewhat concealed look of amusement at Riker, who simply
blinked, refusing to rise to the bait. The rendezvous, as was usual procedure when such huge distances
were involved, had not been set for a specific time, but for a “rendezvous envelope” between a given
stardate and another. “That was theearliest we could have made it,” Picard said. “And doubtless you
were here early, the way you go charging around the place. Have you heard anything fromOraidhe?”
“Not a squeak since day before yesterday, but we’ve still got a day’s worth of envelope,” Captain
Maisel said. “I swear, Clif would be late for his own funeral.”
“Exaggeration,” Picard said gently. “But Starfleet was a little elliptical about the details of this mission,
and I take it you want us to get on with something urgent.”
“Everythingis urgent,” Ileen said, giving Picard a look that suggested she was astonished to have to tell
him so. “But, yeah, there are some sensitive aspects to this, and the sooner we’re on our way, the
better.”
“You wouldn’t consider giving us a little jump on the mission briefing, would you, Captain?” Riker said.
“What, before Clif gets here?” Maisel said. “That would be most improper, Commander. Is dinner
included in that offer?”
Riker chuckled; this time it was he who gave Picard the sidelong glance. Picard, straightfaced, said, “I
wouldn’t like to make you work on an empty stomach, Ileen. Shall we say two hours from now?”
“You’re on,” she said. “I want to do a little polishing on my data, anyway. Later—”
And she was gone, leaving them looking once more at the torn golden veils of Kepler’s Star, and at
Marignano , settling in to station-keep beside them.
“Social, isn’t she?” Riker said.
“In passing, absolutely,” Picard said, getting up again. “But her heart is out in the empty places; eventhis
far out is too far in for her, I think. In the old days onPathfinder , she used to complain that we ‘never
got out of Earth’s backyard.’ ”
“Not a problem she has now, I take it.”
Picard shook his head. “Not at all. Well, I confess I’m curious to hear the specifics of this operation.
Starfleet said little more than that it might be long-term: we’re to evaluate and decide how best to
cooperate withMarignano when the situation becomes clear.”
“I’ll have a buffet set up in one of the briefing rooms,” Riker said, getting up to go see to it.
There was a soft chirp from one of the panels. Worf listened briefly, then said, “Captain,Oraidhe has
just come out of warp on the other side of Kepler’s Star. Captain Clif has sent a greeting and says he will
be available to meet with you, and they will be here in about ninety minutes.”
Picard nodded. “Acknowledge the message with thanks.”
The captain turned toward his first officer.
“Go on, Number One; roll out the red carpet. Both these ships have come a long way, and we have a
reputation for hospitality to maintain . . .”
Two hours later, the red carpet was out with a vengeance. The briefing room was full of department
heads and bridge staff, a tidy buffet, and a slightly unusual feature: three captains.
Picard invited his bridge crew and senior officers to attend, mostly for social purposes. The serious
briefing would not be until the next afternoon—all three ships were taking a day to rotate their senior
crew onto alpha shift, for convenience’s sake.
Ileen Maisel had come over with her bridge crew, including another officer Picard knew, Storennan
Grace, a short, stony-skinned Centaurrin who had also been onStargazer with them. She introduced her
science officer, a cheerful young woman named Frances Pickup, and her exec, tall, lanky Paul McGrady.
As always seemed to happen at these occasions, some of Ileen’s crew turned out to know some of the
Enterprise people: Pickup turned out to have taken some classes with Troi, years before, and another of
Ileen’s people, her senior conn officer Kil Colgan, had once had a broken arm set by Dr. Crusher.
Then, a little later, in the midst of a welter of “Do you knows” and “Have you seens,” in came Captain
Gohod Clif. Picard stood to greet him, very glad indeed to meet him physically at last; he knew him from
reputation, and from the occasional conversation when the paths of their starships had crossed during
missions. Clif shook Picard’s hand cordially. He was a big, tall, handsome man, broad across the
shoulders and fair-complected, the characteristic skin dappling of a Trill host paler on him than usual,
vanishing up into a shock of silver-blond hair.
“It’s been a year or two, hasn’t it?” said Picard. “During our last refit.”
“That’s right: I was in for a yearly debriefing.” Clif’s voice was big, to match the rest of him. “After that,
they sent me over to Eleven Lacerti, that civil war . . . then the usual patrol duty. I was glad to come out
this way. Looks like things are quieter.”
Ileen, who had wandered over to join them, looked at Clif with an amused expression. “I wouldn’t bet
on it,” she said. “You wouldn’t be here otherwise. But we’ll be getting to that. Lobster, Clif?”
Clif introduced his science officer, Tamastara, a handsome slender Orynchid lady completely covered in
soft gray fur; and his exec, Elen Miraitis, an Andorian. They got talking to theEnterprise andMarignano
crew members, and the three captains took themselves off to one side of the room to eat and small-talk
for a while. Picard mentioned Pentarus V, and the events surrounding thePhoenix incident on the
borders of Cardassian space, and was privately glad that Wolf 359 was now far enough in the past not
to come up automatically as a topic of conversation. Clif had been nearly at the other side of Federation
space for half the year, and had spent three of the last six months getting back to “inner” space, before
being sent off out this way a month previously to meetMarignano . He and Picard amused themselves
for a couple of minutes playing an informal version of the “who’s been out farthest” game, as if they were
a couple of Earth-born cadets bragging about who’d first been to the moon. Ileen watched them with a
tolerant smile while they calculated light-years and parsecs in their heads. Clif won by a hair, AX Arae
being a bare twelve parsecs farther than 1020 Octantis, Picard’s farthest distance reached by normal
means. He stopped himself just short of mentioning extragalactic distances.Those were accidental , he
thought wryly,and it doesn’t seem fair to brag . . .
“And you, Ileen,” Clif said. “I saw you last—where?”
“It’s got to be sixteen years ago now,” she said, sitting down again; she had been up getting another
glass of wine. “I was sorry to hear about Rael, by the way.”
Clif nodded, looking just a touch sad. “I got your note. It was much appreciated.” He paused for a
moment, then smiled, only half-convincingly, as he did a brisk search for a less painful topic. “Well,
you’ve certainly taken the grand tour since then.”
“Yes,” she said. “A long time out here at the empty end of things. About two years, alone, on this
segment of the investigative sequence.” She waved at the map showing on the screen, on which
Marignano ’s course for the last few standard years was plotted: a long, leisurely, waving line,
wandering through the huge volume of space at the fringes of the Sagittarius Arm. Picard, used to much
less casual and easygoing course sequences, looked at it with mild envy.
“That’s an investigative sequence?” Clif said, bemused. “It looks more like an inebriated stagger.”
Ileen laughed. “You spent too long running the inner-system routes, Clif; you’re too used to straight lines.
We just slouch along looking at stars and planets and nebulae and things, checking to see if there’s
anything interesting that no one else has seen; and if one of the science staff convinces me that we need to
go back the way we came, we do it.”
“Nice work if you can get it,” said Picard, with a wry smile.
She leaned back in her seat, crossing her legs comfortably. “It is,” Maisel said.
She reached out to get a cracker from a nearby tray. “Now, while we’re doing our long-term studies,
there’s plenty of opportunity to look into other matters in this neighborhood as well. This might be a fairly
empty part of space nowadays, but it wasn’t once, as I think you both have heard.”
Picard nodded; this lay within his area of expertise. “I haven’t looked into it in all that much detail,”
Picard said, “but there are supposed to be a surprising number of so-called vacated planets around here.
Worlds that were inhabited once, by sentient species, but which those species seem to have simply
moved away from.”
“Or died out,” Clif said. “Sometimes under odd circumstances. Species that otherwise seemed perfectly
robust, civilizations that were peaceful, or at least stable . . . just gone, suddenly. Not overnight, but too
quickly, in light of what records or other traces they might have left.”
“The so-called planetaryMarie Celeste phenomenon,” Picard said. It was a proposition that had
haunted his dreams, some nights.How does a whole civilization just disappear like that? One ship,
five ships or ten, in the dangerous vastness of space, yes. But whole worlds . . . ?
Ileen nodded, looking a touch cranky, as if the vanished planets were a personal affront. “That’s right.
Well, all we’ve had to go on, until we started these surveys five years ago, were rumors about a lot of
these species. Now, slowly, we’re beginning to amass some data, as we’ve started to work on the
archaeological side of our studies.” She looked sideways at Picard, grinning, as he suddenly straightened
in his seat. “Yes, Ithought that would get your attention. Some of these ‘missing’ or vacated worlds turn
out, after all, to have suffered the planetary equivalent of ‘natural deaths.’ You remember all those rumors
about the Disarrui?”
“A little ‘pocket empire,’ ” Picard said, nodding; he had done some research into them, a couple of
years back. “They were based around Eighteen Sixty-five Serpens, I think. Star-capable, and very active
traders, a couple of thousand years ago—”
“That’s right,” Ileen said. “And then all of a sudden,poof! They were gone, no one could figure out
where. Well, thepoof was real enough, as it turns out, but rumors of something suspicious about their
demise turn out to have been exaggerated. We managed to track down the original Disarrui home
system—it was one of those that suffered from abnormal drift, and that drift, unfortunately, took them
into the path of a large gravitationally affiliated association of post-planetary-formation debris.”
“A meteor,” Picard said immediately, horror and interest intermingled. “A big one.”
“About the size of Earth’s moon,” Ileen said, “if the fracture signatures in the planet’s remains are to be
trusted, and I think they are—there was almost no time for tidal effects. Well, the planet was completely
destroyed. The ancillary planets in nearby systems weren’t harmed; but unfortunately the Disarrui, as far
as we can tell from records left in those systems, were one of those species who have a ‘geobond’ to the
homeworld, an empathic or maybe telepathic connection to the physical structure of the planet itself.
When their homeworld was destroyed, the Disarrui couldn’t survive the blow; they all died as well—just
withered away over the course of a century or two. Their remaining worlds have been pretty conclusively
plundered, over time, but there were enough clues to make clear what happened.”
Picard shook his head sadly. “Grave robbers,” he murmured, frowning.
“There’s a lot of that up here,” Ileen said. “But still, not as much as you might think. The area has a
reputation, it seems, for being a little strange. Those ‘vanished worlds’—” She made a vague,
“disappearing” gesture with her fingers. “No one knew quite what to make of them, even a couple
hundred years ago. No one who was routinely in this part of space had drift analysis technology that was
advanced enough to predict correctly where things had gone. So legends started springing up. Old lost
races, hiding their whole star systems from the curious or the rapacious. Incredibly rich species,
incredibly wise ones. Sometimes, incredibly dangerous ones . . . species whose worlds it was literally
death to find. There was never any evidence for most of these . . . but the legends linger.”
“I suppose,” Clif said, leaning back in his chair and stretching, “you have to explain mysterious losses
somehow. Who really enjoys acknowledging accident, or stupidity, for what they are?”
“Still,” Picard said, “among a great number of species—our own included—there’s a delight in mystery,
in the unexplained that lurks out past the edges of the maps.”
“True enough,” Ileen said.
Clif looked thoughtful as he sipped his own wine. “Ah, but mystery is so often accompanied by danger.
Without any major force present to provide protection,” he said, “such scattered settlements, strewn over
hundreds of light-years and far away from the normal trade lanes, can’t be very safe.”
“They’re not,” Ileen said. “There’s piracy out this way, a fair amount of it. Not just raiders who come
looking for undefended newly settled planets, or lightly armed colony ships in transit, but more of your
grave robbers, Jean-Luc—all kinds of opportunists, drawn by all these sketchy legends of vacated
planets left full of ancient treasures ripe for the looting. So—” Ileen stretched, smiled. “To ‘pull our
weight,’Marignano does a fair amount of convoy work in this sector—escorting trading ships coming
through, colony vessels, you name it.”
“Must be interesting,” Clif said.
Ileen gave him a look suggesting what he could do with his definition ofinteresting . “I can’t tell you how
many times I’ve had to break off a line of investigation into somethingreally interesting to go escort some
goddamn warp-driven shopping center. That’s why our course keeps sprouting those little curly bits, here
and there.” She waved at the screen. “However, doing that work enables me to do myreal work, so I’m
satisfied.”
“I take it, though,” said Picard, “that things have been getting too hot for a pure science vessel’s
armaments to handle.”
Ileen looked rueful. “Afraid so. We’ve been here long enough to make some judgments about how
many ships ‘ought’ to go missing in a given period. A baseline estimate, anyway. Well, over the past year
I’ve been noticing that baseline edging up a little, and then over the last three months, we lost three ships,
two merchants and a colonization vessel, bang, bang, bang, one after the other. That made me twitchy,
and I had words with Starfleet about it. Too many ships were becoming statistics . . . and I’d sooner we
didn’t become one, too. Something else started, though, which may have tipped them over the edge as
regards doing something—though I would have thought the ship disappearances would have been
enough. I mentioned that there’s a fair amount of archaeological work going on out this way. There are
usually about ten digs going on at any one time, and keeping an eye on them all has always been difficult.
Well, in the past six months, four digs, all very remote from one another, have been attacked and
plundered. Sometimes with loss of life: the dig at Sixteen-sixteen Ophiuchi Six was not only stripped
bare, but the raiders killed Saeo Uristilaen.”
“Heavens about us,” Clif said softly.
“Ileen, I hadn’t heard,” Picard said softly. “And after all that groundbreaking work on the Infarret . . .”
“He’ll never finish it now,” Ileen said sadly.
“Do they have any idea who did this?”
“We. No. We got the distress call from the survivors, all right, but by the time we got there, the trail was
cold. Ion-trail residues in the area had been wiped out by the local solar wind—the damn star’s too
active for its own good anyway, which may have also been the reason why the Infarret aren’t still around.
We did some cursory searching, but we knew it would do no good, and finally, so did Starfleet. I just
wish they would have realized this increase of local piracy was a problem before Uristilaen had to
convince them of it by dying.”
The three captains looked grimly at one another.All of us , Picard thought,have been in situations
where we warned Starfleet that something bad was about to happen, and they wouldn’t believe us
until it did, and then it was too late, the damage done .
“So,” Ileen said. “We have to finish the investigation surrounding the Infarret dig. It’ll take a while to get
over there from way over here, of course. But meantime, we three ships are to begin aggressively
patrolling this sector of space, visiting all local digs and making it plain to anyone out there who’s
watching that the level of protection has been stepped up considerably. Starfleet puts a lot of credence in
the idea that the simple added presence of your two ships here will cut in on the number of attacks on
both archaeological digs and transient ships.”
Clif nodded. “We’ll be patrolling together at first?”
“For a good while,” Ileen said. “The sight of our three ships in company will give people pause, it’s true .
摘要：

Forthe“EasternBloc”:Andreas,Martin,Astraid,Melanie,Mark,andallourotheracquaintancesinGermanyandSwitzerland,aroundstammtischenhereandthere,whothinkfirstofRaumschiffEnterprisebeforetranslatingitintothatslightlyalienterm,StarTrekCogito,ergosum.—DescartesChapterOneJEAN-LUCPICARDwasoutriding.Thehorsewasn...

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