STAR TREK - TNG - 40 - Possession

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Prologue
YOUNGSKEL WOKEwith a start, opening his eyes to the moonless black of Vulcan night. A
noise had roused him—a soft, subtle sound that had merged into his already-fading dream, a
sound that had been meant to warn him.
Just in time . . .
In the cool darkness—thin arms propping him into a sitting position, palms pressed hard against
his warm cot—Skel struggled to suppress a gasp. The desperate thought had not been his own.
In time for what?he asked its source silently .
In time to save your life.
A telepathic message? He furrowed his brow, concentrating, but the sense of it was gone, and as
he mindfully controlled his breathing, the panic slowly eased.
Look about you, Skel,he urged himself . Here you sit in your home, in the town of Rh’Iahr, peaceful as
all Vulcan towns are peaceful. You are in your own comfortable bed, surrounded by your own things,
and but two doors down the hall, your parents lie sleeping. . . .He was only ten years old, but a good
student, interested in the quantum sciences. His teachers said his emotional control was advanced
for someone his age, and he knew that brought honor to his parents .
Then why are you sitting up in your bed in terror?He was calmer, yes—but the unease persisted.
Perhaps he had had a nightmare; he had read of such possibilities. Vulcans rarely dreamed, and
nightmares, even among children, were uncommon .
No. He retrieved a few fragmented scenes from his dream. It had been a distinctly unstartling
review of activities at school. . . . Then why the fear?
Because I heard something. Or sensed something. Something—I cannot recognize. Something alien.
Something—evil.
His intense self-honesty demanded that he correct his own thought:Not sensed. Sense. Even now .
. .
Silently, he drew back the lightweight blanket that covered him and slipped from his bed, bare
feet padding across the cool floor. At the doorway, he paused, swiftly manipulating the door’s
control mechanism before the simple sensor detected him and opened it. Instead, the door slid
open a few centimeters, its well-cared-for mechanism making no sound at all. Skel peered through
the crack: beyond lay the expected wall, with its holographic display of his own childish artwork,
created at school, draped in the dark of night.
Yet the illogical feeling of terror—that despite the normal appearance of his surroundings,
something terribly abnormal hovered nearby—persisted. Skel pushed back a fringe of
brown-black hair away from one long pointed ear, which he pressed to the opening to listen.
There would be nothing, of course, except the softsound of his parents sleeping; thus reassured,
he would return to sleep. Yes, this was a logical way to handle a most illogical feeling.
A heartbeat of silence, and then—a sound, low and quiet, soft as a breath. Yet not a breath, for it
held an undercurrent of pain. It was a moan—a low, quiet moan.
One of his parents was sick—his mother, he decided, when the soft complaint came again. Skel’s
slanted brows furrowed with concern. Once, when the family was camping, his mother, T’Reth,
had fallen from a cliff; Skel had never forgotten the sight of her shattered forearm, pierced by
ivory bone, spattered with emerald blood. His father had splinted the fracture on-site, but no
sound ever escaped her ashen lips, though hours passed before they reached a healer.
If his mother had uttered this gentle murmur of pain, she must be gravely ill; no doubt his father
would be tending her. Skel could provide some service. He was not an infant, after all. He was
ten, and advanced in his emotional control. He would help his mother.
He moved to press the door controls, then pulled quickly away, prevented from touching them by
an internal force—an emotion, a sensation of such fear and revulsion that it shamed and
perplexed him. He was reacting like an infant, and yet—the emotion was so compelling that he
yielded to it and dropped his hand.
Soft, familiar footfalls emanated from the corridor, moving toward his parents’ bedroom; he
listened with a mixture of wild, unreasoning fear and a sense of relief This would be his father,
who no doubt had been moving about the house to summon the healers and tend to his mother’s
illness. Skel pressed a night-adapted eye to the crack. Perhaps the reassuring, normal sight of his
father would help Skel collect himself and shed these childish fears.
He watched until a figure emerged from the shadows: his father, just as he had known. Skel
dampened the surge of intense, irrational relief he felt as he watched the older Vulcan turn the
corner of the hallway as if coming from the meditation room. His hands appeared first: they
grasped a large heavy object of gleaming metal that took Skel some seconds to recognize as a
lirpa,an ancient ceremonial weapon that had belonged to his mother’s ancestors .
The sight made no sense to the bewildered boy’s eyes; of all things, his father should have carried
a medikit to tend to his suffering wife. But as his father passed near Skel’s door and turned to
reenter the room he shared with his wife, his face became clearly visible—providing Skel with an
even more disturbing sight. For the elder Vulcan—a gentle, serene man devoted to the study of
logic—was. . .
Smiling?
Smiling? His father?
No, not smiling.Skel recoiled from the sight, scarcely daring to breathe. He had seen humans and
Andorians smile, and this was not a smile—but a leer. A grimace. An expression, he knew from his
studies of other cultures, of pure sadistic evil .
As he stepped back from the door, he closed his eyes; yet the horrifying image of his father’s face
remained. It was an image, Skel knew, that would remain forever imprinted on his memory.
In that instant, such terror consumed him that Skel grew convinced he was still
dreaming—trapped in a nightmare, and all his logic, all his training could do nothing to dam the
flood of fear and anguish that engulfed him.
Another sound: his mother’s soft low moan from the bedroom. But this time, it rose shrilly into a
scream—a scream which made him want to clap his hands over his sensitive ears.
“Run! Skel, run!”
He froze, too horrified to believe such a warning,until it pierced not only his ears, but also his
mind, as his mother T’Reth cried out to him with her dying thoughts. The sound of her mental
screams throbbed in his head, drowning out the terrible, real sound of her strangled shrieks.
RUN! RUN, MY CHILD, RUN! DO NOT RETURN. RUN AND HIDE! NOW! RUN FOR YOUR
LIFE! AND NEVER, EVER LOOK INTO ANY VULCAN’S EYES!
The terrible voices would not stop—not the one in his head, not the one in his ears.
RUN! RUN! RUN!
All his carefully honed Vulcan discipline fled as Skel became what his ancient ancestors had been
before the Reformation. Like a wild animal, he bolted for his window, opening it wide to the cool
night air of the desert, and leapt from the low-built dwelling in sheer, animalistic panic.
He obeyed the voice, and ran and ran and ran, over the soft, cold sand toward the distant black
mountains. His short legs pumped frantically with all his youthful energy, until, more than a
kilometer away from his own house—his house where logic and rational thought had once
reigned—he slammed into an immovable object, and looked up to see. . .
His father’s leering face.
The elder Vulcan’s eyes were wide, demented, and blazing with bizarre emotions as he clamped
powerful hands around his son’s head, forcing Skel to stare up, open-eyed, at that terrible visage.
The voice inside the child shrilled louder, DO NOT LOOK INTO HIS EYES. NEVER INTO HIS
EYES!
As Skel’s father roughly pulled the boy’s small face toward his, the child fought with all his
strength to look away, to escape those imprisoning hands. But the crazed countenance of his
father loomed closer, closer, until there was nothing left for Skel to do but disobey the terrifying,
commanding voice in his mind. The boyblinked, and against his will, he stared up into those once
familiar golden-brown eyes, eyes once serene that now burned with murderous rage. . .
And found the face he confronted was his own.
The Vulcan, Skel, sat bolt upright in his bed, panting heavily as if he’d been running. For a flickering
second, the nightmare’s grip persisted and he stared fearful into the darkness, expecting to see his
father’s hideously leering face.
But no one stared back at him in the intense Vulcan darkness; there was no one, nothing at all before
him except his own hands, raised as if to ward off danger. With unutterable relief, he studied them. They
were the broad large hands of a middle-age Vulcan male—slightly lined and laced with prominent veins,
fingers spread wide.
And these were his quarters at the Vulcan Science Academy, the same quarters he had slept in for the
last twenty-five standard years. Skel immediately lowered his hands and reigned in his dream-induced
panic, slowing, his heart rate, lowering his blood pressure, coming back to the present. He was no longer
a child of ten prone to irrational night terrors, but a scientist of ninety, a master of physics, a respected
researcher. Automatically, he assumed his normal meditative position—cross-legged, spine straight—but
could not achieve the passive state he needed to quiet his mind.
Finally, his comm beeped softly in the dark room. He sighed.
It was embarrassing enough to suffer a relapse of his emotion-laden nightmares; to rouse others because
of his psychic emanations was humiliating.
He composed himself, then fingered a control on the comm console. “Yes, Healer T’Son.”
The screen filled with the placid face of his personal physician, every jet-colored hair of her elegant braid
perfectly in place, her clothing as professional and crisp as if it were two hours past sunrise, not three
hours before it. “Skel, I sensed your dream. Are you well?”
She had worked with him for years to rid him of these nightmares. They were mentally linked; there was
no logic in being evasive.
“I am . . . managing. It was particularly vivid. It has been years since the images were so strong. But I
am all right now. Thank you for calling me.”
“I am your healer,” she reminded him—a gentle chide that it was not logical to thank someone for doing
their job. “You have been working long hard hours. Your sleep patterns have been disrupted. You have
neglected your nutritional requirements. And you are striving to complete a difficult task before the
Federation’s TechnoFair. These factors, no doubt, have triggered the resurgence of your dreams.”
She was gently trying to tell him he was too concerned about his work and the upcoming deadline. She
was reminding him that it was unseemly for a Vulcan to feel such emotional pressure. She would have
been correct, too—for most Vulcans. But in Skel’s lifetime, the unpredictable return of his childhood
fears often presaged danger, either for him or for those near him. It was as if his mother’s mindtouch
could reach beyond the grave and still protect him, even though her katra had been lost, loosed upon the
wind. Healer T’Son found no logic in this explanation, preferring to focus on more rational explanations
when his dreams resumed. Her steady reliance on reason and science helped Skel through the chaos of
his nightmares. With T’Son’s help the dreams had become rare. Which made it even more disturbing to
Skel that they should recurnow .
As if she understood his mixed feelings about his problem, she reminded him, “I understand how your
history might affect your regard for your work. And I understand how important it is to you. Because of
your special circumstances, we must take extra care to ensure your health.”
Yourmentalhealth is what she meant, but she was too polite to say that.
“Of course, you are correct, Healer,” he agreed, feeling calmer. It always astonished him how merely
talking to her could reassure him. It was one of the reasons she insisted they link telepathically. She did
not feel that she could be as effective hearing about the dreams hours after they had occurred. It had
been a good choice of therapy. T’Son had been a great help to him over the years.
“Remember, Skel, you are not the only Vulcan that lived through the madness. There were many
affected—the survivors all have difficulties. That is why healers share our knowledge of these
experiences, to help our patients restore the balance in their lives, and regain their logic and stability.”
“Yes, of course, Healer. I will remember.” How could he forget? As a young man, he’d spent years
talking with groups of others like himself and their healers, trying to recover from the terrible memories,
the horrifying experiences. The memory of his mother’s screams, her savage, sadistic murder at his
father’s hands—his father, who had been the gentlest, most logical of men. His father had never
recovered from the responsibility of his actions after the madness was cured. He had died young, broken
by guilt.
“Please, come by my office before you begin work this morning, Skel,” T’Son said calmly.
He stiffened, anticipating her request.
“It is best if we meld,” she told him, “so that I can try to remove the most difficult dream memories.
Many healers believe this prevents the same dream from recurring repetitively.”
He swallowed, but said with the same calm as she, “I will do that, Healer. In your office, before I go to
my laboratory.”
“Try to sleep, Skel. You have not rested enough over the past few days. If you can’t sleep, take one of
the herbal sedatives I’ve given you.”
“Yes, Healer,” he promised.
She nodded, and the screen went dark.
He stared at the blank screen a long moment, knowing sleep was impossible for him now. He should
take the sedative. He should do as she suggested. It was the logical choice.
But he could not shake the sense of danger the dream had evoked. He moved to his dresser, removed
his night clothes, and donned his normal attire. There would be few in the laboratory at this hour. While
the Vulcan Science Academy normally employed few security devices, the work he was doing was
always tightly secured and restricted. He could check the security system and all the forcefields. It would
only take a moment. Perhaps, having reassured himself, he could then sleep. It was not logical, but he
would do it anyway, for he had learned as a child that reassurance was the most efficient strategy for
dealing with irrational fear.
Then he would be rested before he went to T’Son’s office. Before he had to meld.
As he left the living quarters and moved silently through the nearly empty stone hallways of the Vulcan
Science Academy, he tried not to think about the upcoming appointment. It was illogical to dislike the
meld—dislike of anything was illogical by its very nature. Nevertheless, he hated melding after his
nightmares. It brought all the terrifying images to the surface and made him relive them again, even
though, afterward, he rarely suffered from the exact same images.
It just meant his memories—his mother’s warning—had to take different paths to break through to his
dreams.
The sensors turned the lights on in his lab as he entered it. All seemed as it had been when he left but a
few hours before. He swallowed and forced his mind to be calm. He reminded himself the lab was often
disturbing to him after a dream. Even the healer recognized that there was a certain logic in that.
He walked over to the containment area and checked the computer console that managed his
experimental subjects. The multiple forcefields were all in place, under complex codes that only he and
two others knew. Everything was as he had left it. He stared at the console. No, not quite everything.
A telltale was out. His fingers flew over the controls. A routine cell replacement was necessary. In fact,
the telltale had already been reported and a security maintenance worker had taken tricorder readings,
no doubt to effect the correct repair. It was a minor matter—not enough for him to have been notified.
Could his dream have been triggered by something so trivial? T’Son would dismiss this as coincidence,
and no doubt, she would be right.
Skel noted that the maintenance worker had not left an identifying code. That was contrary to
regulations, and he would have to look into it. This area was off-limits to all but the most experienced
technicians, as it was too risky to have insufficiently trained workers in this laboratory. Perhaps the senior
technician had been on a more significant emergency. He would check into it. He was rigid about
security; the very nature of the project demanded it.
He moved away from the console, going now to the observation port where he could view his subjects
as they lay passively behind multiple Vulcan forcefields.
Such innocent-looking things they were, these elliptical containers small enough to be held in the palm.
They always reminded Skel of a beautiful creature he had once seen while visiting a Terran beach—an
oyster, for though they were onyx in color, there was a prismatic, mother-of-pearl sheen to them, glints of
metallic blue, green, and rose that shifted constantly like a tide. Even after a lifetime of studying them,
Skel found it hard to believe such simple, elegant objects held such a terrible force; in truth, these two
small objects contained a peculiarly vicious disease, a murderous madness that had infected the cities of
Vulcan eighty years before. The disease had been cured, but its legacy remained. Survivors, like Skel
and his father, had been forced to continue with their lives despite the horrible consequences of the
disease. Many of them, like Skel’s father, never fully recovered. Many, like Skel, were still recovering.
Part of Skel’s therapy had been to assume the work of his predecessor twenty-five years ago. And in
spite of well-supported research and some of the finest minds of the Vulcan Science Academy, little had
been learned of these objects—objects that generated their own impenetrable forcefields without any
perceivable power source or mechanism. Though, lately, Skel believed he might have unlocked one
secret of the fields. It was a discovery he wanted to share with other Federation scientists. Together, they
might harness this advanced technology to serve the Federation as a defensive protection against more
aggressive species such as the Romulans.
It had been driving him for years, the need to derive something, anything, positive from these terrible
alien artifacts. He blinked wearily as he stared at the beautiful, deadly containers. He would have years to
study them yet, learn of their origins, determine who their creators were. Years. But not if he did not
sleep.
He signaled the sensors to dampen the lights, watching the glow his subjects radiated on their own. As
he did, he heard the warning clearly, unmistakably in his mind:
RUN! RUN, MY CHILD, RUN! NOW! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!
Wearily, he shut his eyes. Would the memory of T’Reth’s voice finally drive him mad?
Mother, please! You are gone, your katra scattered to the winds. Do not torture my sleep, my
waking hours. There is no logic to your warning. There is no danger here. There is only your son,
an aging scientist worrying about his own deadlines and the inexorable march of time.
The frantic voice faded to a whisper and was gone. Skel was turning to leave the lab and return to his
bed when his sensitive hearing detected the slightest of sounds—a faint rustle of cloth.
Freezing in place, he fought the urge to flee as his heart rate accelerated and his body prepared for
conflict. Who would be here, in his laboratory, at this hour—hiding? There was nothing of value here.
Nothing but . . .
His eyes moved back to the alien containers. Certainly, no one would be so foolish as to attempt to—
The thought was interrupted by sound and sensation: the sound of a light footstep, so swift that Skel had
no time to turn and face its perpetrator, and the sensation of something hard, cold, and metal being
shoved against his lumbar spine.
A weapon, he knew immediately, though his experience with weapons was limited. From the feel of its
muzzle against his back, he judged it to be a phaser; from the diminutive height of the individual wielding
it, he judged his visitor to be of Ferengi origin.
“Master Scientist Skel,” came a faintly high-pitched, nasal voice which confirmed the Vulcan’s
hypothesis, “this is an honor. Your assistance would be most appreciated.”
“Who are you?” Skel asked, studying the distance between his left hand and the computer’s emergency
response button, and contemplating whether he would be able to reach it before his visitor fired the
weapon.
“Consider me . . . your business partner. There are things you will share with me that will profit us both.”
The weapon dug deeper into Skel’s back.
“If you leave now,” Skel said, modulating his voice into the calmest, most emotionless tones, “you will be
able to successfully make your escape. No damage has been done. I give you this opportunity.”
“There are opportunities unlimited in this room,” the intruder hissed. “And you will give them all to me.”
“I will not assist you,” Skel informed the stranger. He had never meant anything more sincerely in his life.
He had already faced a greater fear than most sentient beings would ever know. There was nothing this
intruder could to do coerce his cooperation.
“Oh, you will, Master Scientist. You will assist me in all that I wish . . .”
Skel felt the power of the blast envelop him, felt his body lose control, felt himself falling like a stone to
the floor. And then, blessedly, he felt nothing at all.
Chapter One
SHIP’SCOUNSELORDEANNATROIstood uneasily in Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s ready room. She’d
placed herself almost directly between the captain, who was seated behind his desk, and the chief
medical officer, Dr. Beverly Crusher, who stood, arms crossed, several meters away.
“Doctor,” Picard insisted, in his clipped, most precise tone, “you have yet to answer the singular
question: Why?” His hazel eyes were narrowed disapprovingly not at his medical officer, but at a report
on his computer screen—an autopsy report.
“I’ve told you why, Captain,” Crusher said wearily; beneath the exhaustion was a clear undercurrent of
anger. “You’re just not listening.”
Deanna winced, inundated by waves of powerful emotion from these two strong-minded people, but, of
course, that was why she, a half-Betazoid, was here: to sense their conflict and help resolve it. However,
this time, she doubted whether she had any answers. Death and the raw anger and grief it evoked were,
of all things, most difficult to explain.
“It was anaccident,” Beverly explained again, in a tone so exasperated it bordered on insubordination.
She ran a careless palm over her pale forehead as if to soothe the thoughts there, in the process sweeping
back a lock of copper hair. “Crewman Janice Ito either forgot—or deliberately disregarded—safety
regulations when she went into the power fluctuation in the plasma stream. She went alone, with minimum
equipment. No power neutralizers, no safety shields. Just herself, a handful of tools, and a tricorder. She
wasn’t experienced in working in such a small place with major power conduits, and the shock killed her
instantly.”
Picard looked up from the report at last and gave a terse shake of his head, as if casting off the very
notion that such a thing could occur. “What happened to hertraining? Where was the senior officer
working with her? How could an intelligent twenty-year-old ensign, in the top ten percent of her
Academy class, do something so damnedstupid?”
Beverly straightened, bristling—every bit as angered as the captain, Troi knew, by the needless death;
perhaps more so, since she had fought vainly in sickbay to resuscitate the young woman. And Beverly’s
frustration and grief were about to well over and cause her to say something she would later regret.
What isstupidhere, Captain, is your refusal to listen .
Troi smoothly intruded, before Crusher had the chance to give the thought utterance. “I believe, sir,”
Deanna said calmly, “that that’s why it’s called an ‘accident.’ ”
Picard turned his scowl on her. “This is theStarship Enterprise, the flagship of the Federation. We’re
not supposed to have ‘accidents’—especially not senseless, fatal accidents with promising young
officers.”
He rose, straightening his uniform, his actions as taut and precise as his speech, and stepped around his
desk. “I will tell you this: there will not be another. I’m ordering a complete shakedown of the crew. I
want training sessions reviewed, new officer orientation reevaluated, emergency procedures reconfigured,
and the entire drill process reassessed. And when that’s done, we’ll do it all again!”
Deanna drew a slow, even breath, allowing herself to sense the others’ feelings while still maintaining her
own inner calm. “Captain . . .” she began gently. “All of that is well-considered, and may even prevent
some future tragedy. However, in light of the fact that we’re on a tight schedule, the timing of extensive
drills could be a problem.”
Picard simmered a moment, his lips drawing into a tight thin line as he gave her a sharp glance, then he
looked away, down, and sighed, surrendering slightly.“That damned thing!” he grumbled.
This was not the time to remind him that he had eagerly volunteered the ship and her crew for“that
damned thing”—a heavily scheduled transport assignment to support the Universal TechnoFair. The
Enterprise had been picking up and transporting a major contingent of Federation scientists for at least a
week now, and there were still several more stops on the schedule. The TechnoFair would not wait for
them—no matter what had happened on board.
“Right now,” Deanna continued, in her consummately conciliatory counselor’s tone, “both of you need to
come to grips with this tragedy. You’re both blaming yourselves for something only one person could
have prevented—Ensign Ito, who violated procedure and risked herself unnecessarily.”
She glanced from Picard to Crusher, but neither officer met her gaze; instead, they each glowered at
separate, far-distant points as they pondered her words. There was still anger, yes, but Deanna sensed it
weakening. Wisely, she kept quiet until, at last, Crusher broke the silence.
“Janice’s Academy roommate is on board,” Beverly said, her voice strained, her eyes still focused on an
unadorned patch of bulkhead. “She told me that Janice had made some technical blunder right after she’d
been assigned here. The senior officer, Lieutenant Singh, handled it properly, but it was the first major
error Janice had made in her career. She’d been golden at the Academy—completely unused to failure.
Her roommate thinks that she was determined to make up for the perceived screwup, especially in light
of our preparations to pick up those scientists. So she took too many risks.”
Crusher paused and drew a breath; her gaze seemed to turn inward, toward a painful memory. “I had
her in sickbay in seconds. We used everything, did everything possible, but I couldn’t stabilize her. She’d
suffered so much brain damage . . .”
Deanna herself drew a breath, steadying herself at the wave of sorrow, defeat, and failure that emanated
from her friend. She regretted Beverly’s suffering; at the same time, she admired the compassion that
made her such a good doctor.
“The worst thing about it is,” Beverly continued, her voice near breaking, “one of the scientists already
on board—a surgeon, Dr. Ellis—has developed a technique for replacing damaged brain cells with
synthetic tissue. It’s still experimental, but . . . with his technique, it’s theoretically possible to stabilize a
damaged brain until the victim’s own cells can be cloned and specialized. Had I known he was on board,
had I known of his work—it would’ve been a risk worth taking . . .” She lowered her face in a gesture of
utter defeat.
“Beverly . . .” Deanna moved to stand beside her friend and put a gentle hand on her arm in support.
“There’s no way you could keep track of all the people we’ve been picking up this last week. It’s easy
to think this doctor might have helped Janice, but there was more than brain damage involved.”
Crusher nodded slowly, but her expression remained grim. Even so, Troi sensed the transformation of
pure outrage into grief, mixed with the first glimmerings of acceptance—and so she again remained silent
for a moment, until Picard sighed, and said, “I had to speak to her parents. Of all the responsibilities that
I dread, this is the worst”—he gestured at his computer terminal—“to send my regrets to the parents of
that promising young officer.” He turned away from the two women to look out at the moving backdrop
of stars, his hands clasped tightly behind his back, as if to hold in the surge of emotion.
Deanna felt it all the same. “The entire crew mourns Janice’s death,” she reminded him softly. “Her body
has already been shipped home. But perhaps a memorial service might help those of us still on board to
cope with our own sorrow.”
Picard turned and nodded quickly. “Of course. Of course. Deanna, may I ask you to organize it?”
“Certainly, Captain.”
“And, Doctor,” he said, his tone conciliatory, “please don’t blame yourself. You did everything medically
possible. She could have had no better care.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you,” Crusher replied, managing a wan smile to match the captain’s.
Picard dismissed her with a nod.
Crusher left, and the instant the doors closed over her, Deanna took a step closer to the captain.
“You’re taking this very hard, sir. As hard as Dr. Crusher. As hard as Lieutenant Singh, Ensign Ito’s
senior officer. As hard as Commander La Forge, the chief engineer—”
“Shouldn’t we be?” he interrupted sharply, meeting her gaze. “She was her parents’ only child—the
pride of their life. It’s an inconsolable loss. Not all deaths are needless; some serve an important purpose.
But this . . .” He shook his head.
“I understand your anger, Captain. And your guilt. If Ensign Ito had come to speak to the ship’s
counselor about her perceived failure, perhaps her foolhardy act could have been circumvented. If I had
talked to her, maybe . . .”
Picard drew back in mild surprise at this revelation; his expression softened. “You’re right, Counselor.
The death of a crew member affects everyone.”
Troi did not quite smile. “Yes, sir. And I know you don’t really regret involving us in the TechnoFair
transport. You’ve been one of its greatest supporters.”
He nodded. “Itis an innovative idea, gathering so many of the galaxy’s renowned scientists together in
one place for the express purpose of promoting the free exchange of ideas. But I’m afraid this tragedy
has taken much of the joy out of it for me. Perhaps if I hadn’t pushed the crew to such spit-and-polish . .
.” He trailed off as she cocked her head to one side, ready to remind him that there was nothing they
could do to change what had happened.
“I thought,” she suggested, “we might have a small service in Ten Forward.”
He considered it. “That’s sensible.” The after-duty lounge had already been emptied of all furniture in
preparation for the TechnoFair displays.
“Then, after the service, we can allow our guest researchers to set up their demonstrations, as we had
originally planned?”
Picard sighed in reluctant acquiescence. “We must. It’s the only way the crew will get to see any of the
exhibits, since we’ll be too busy ferrying to attend the Fair itself. And . . . life does go on in spite of
tragedy, doesn’t it?”
摘要：

PrologueYOUNGSKELWOKEwithastart,openinghiseyestothemoonlessblackofVulcannight.Anoisehadrousedhim—asoft,subtlesoundthathadmergedintohisalready-fadingdream,asoundthathadbeenmeanttowarnhim.Justintime...Inthecooldarkness—thinarmsproppinghimintoasittingposition,palmspressedhardagainsthiswarmcot—Skelstrug...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：170 页 大小：519.02KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-20

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