DEANNATROI SATin the command chair of theEnterprise, spending some time on the bridge while Will and Captain Picard went over duty rosters in his ready room. On this second day of their stay in the boneyard, the duties had become more demanding and more hazardous, and virtually every member of the crew was involved in the effort. They were occupied by shuttlecraft patrols, theEnterprise’ s own guard duty, and had three teams working with theJuno to learn the tricks of body retrieval from the mobile wrecks. On top of that, researchers all over the ship tried to bring themselves up to speed on the various elements they faced here.

While she was acting captain, Troi’s attention was on her crew and the viewscreen, but some part of her mind kept harking back to the Ontailians. Their tapered cruisers were spotted several times throughout her shift, but they never exchanged any greetings. Two of the Ontailian vessels were on regular patrol, according to Captain Leeden’s schedule, but the others engaged in business that was puzzling to the counselor. They buzzed back and forrth lazily, like honeybees looking for a flower in wasteland. Sometimes they ignored the scavengers they were supposed to be keeping at bay. Granted, theEnterprise could not respond to everything either, but the Ontailians were helpful only because of their numbers and sheer presence.

Since theEnterprise was constantly on the move, Troi had no opportunity to monitor the Ontailian ships for more than a few minutes around each encounter. Then the silvery slivers were off again to their mysterious purpose among the shipwrecks. She seldom had suspicious feelings about another Federation member, but the Ontailians seemed to be avoiding anything but the most cursory communication.

After warning a Pakled ship to back off and go home, Deanna ordered theEnterprise back to their primary security route. The energy ripples seemed to be relatively quiet tonight. The storm seemed distant, on the other side of the metal mountains. The boneyard was depressing, but also oddly beautiful in its display of the random way that nature reclaimed something built by mortals and reverted it to the primitive. The skewed wrecks reminded Troi of adventure stories her father had told her—of ruined temples overgrown by thick jungle vines.

The Ontailians didn’t seem to have much interest in the derelicts themselves, and they seldom docked with any spacecraft. Still they seemed to be searching for something.Are they treasure hunters? she wondered.Is that the secret, a buried treasure in this ships’ cemetery which only the Ontailians know about?

No matter how much reading she had done, Troi never learned much about the benign, slothlike beings. First contact had been made less than fifteen years ago, when it was discovered that a class-L planet with no humanoid life-forms was launching elegant spaceships. The Ontailians were always cordial, but they permitted no study of their culture, which appeared at a glance to be much more primitive than it was. Heavy gas clouds covered their homeworld, so not much could be learned without their cooperation.

Then the Cardassians had landed, and the Ontailians discovered that they were in the expansion plans of the Dominion. They requested immediate membership in the Federation. It wouldn’t have been granted so quickly without the saber of war hanging over all their heads. Maintenance of the Rashanar Battle Site was virtually the only project on which the Federation and the Ontailians cooperated. They had expressed no interest in studying other Federation worlds or being studied. They were still an enigma, if a friendly one.

At last, Will and Captain Picard emerged from the ready room, just off the bridge, and Deanna Troi rose to attention. She tried not to smile too broadly when Will winked at her. They were planning to slip off for an intimate breakfast. Captain Picard, on the other hand, looked grim and haggard, and she could sense his uneasiness. After the escapades of the day before, they were all on high alert.

“Status?” asked Picard.

“We had a discussion with a Pakled ship, which decided to move off,” she answered. “There are nine shuttlecraft and teams launched, three with theJuno. We’ve seen the usual traffic of Ontailian ships, and we’re on schedule, on primary route.”

“Very well,” answered the captain. “I believe both of you are on break now.”

Riker held out an isolinear chip and said, “I’ll post the new schedules and orders before I go.” The first officer strode to an auxiliary station.

After Will had moved off, Troi lowered her voice to ask, “How are you sleeping, sir?”

He gave her a wry glance. “Don’t tell me I’m under your scrutiny, too.”

“Always,” she answered with a charming smile. “Everyone on this ship is. I know you had a trying day, and I was hoping you were able to sleep it off.”

Picard gave her a wan smile. “Let’s say, I’m not quite at the point where this assignment allows me to sleep easily.”

“Captain Picard, large ship approaching,” said Vale, frowning at her tactical readouts. “We haven’t seen one of these before—it’s an Ontailian battle cruiser, theVuxhal.”

“I believe it is their flagship,” added Data from the ops console. “TheVuxhal has been away from this site for four weeks, getting repairs.”

The viewscreen showed a dramatic silver fin, which had to be fifty decks high but as narrow as a two-lane street. The warp nacelles were paired vertically on the top and bottom, and they blended in with the aesthetic lines of the vessel. As the sleek starship glided past them, they could see rows of impulse thrusters aligned vertically along the stern. They fired in a sequence that made the tail of the silver behemoth look like a flapping fin.

“Audio message coming in,” said Vale.

The tactical officer punched her panel, and a synthesized voice came over com link. “Honors be to theEnterprise, guardian of the sacred. We are theVuxhal, and we are here to resume our hallowed vigil over the bones of the sacred. With respect, we pass you now and enter the honored space.”

“Regards to theVuxhal from theStarship Enterprise,” said Picard simply. “Be cautious on your journey.Enterprise out.”

“Captain,” blurted Deanna Troi, “let me follow them.”

“What do you mean?” asked Picard. By that time, Riker had finished his task and had rejoined their conversation, and both men look puzzledly at the counselor.

“I’ve been watching them come and go, and I can’t figure out what half of their ships are doing,” she answered. “Plus there was the incident with the Ontailian ship that was destroyed, then never existed. I know they’re hiding something—let me find out what it is. I’ll be careful.”

The captain frowned. “Spying on our allies doesn’t sound like a very efficient use of our time. Even if we do have questions about them.”

“Captain, it can’t hurt just to see what they’re doing,” added Riker. “I’m off duty now, I’ll pilot her.”

“The shuttlepodWasp is back from maintenance and awaiting assignment,” said Deanna. “Please, sir.”

The captain said, “Go on, but think up a good cover story in case they catch you.”

With an adventurous grin, Riker nodded to his beloved, and the two of them dashed for the turbolift door.

“I found theVuxhal,” said Troi, studying her readouts at the secondary console of the shuttlepodWasp. There was only enough room for the two of them in the cramped cabin. “Bearing one hundred sixty-seven mark ninety-two.”

“Changing course,” replied Riker from the pilot’s seat beside her, “but I’m not going to make straight toward her. I’ll take an elliptical route. Maybe it won’t tip them off. Hey, this isn’t exactly how I thought we’d spend the morning.”

Deanna gave him a nervous smile, although now that they were out here among all this mammoth junk in a tiny tin can, she was beginning to think she had made a terrible mistake. One chunk of a bronze Cardassian ship came bouncing off a green hull and hurtled straight toward them. Will steered them to safety without batting an eyelash.

“Can you tell what they’re doing?” he asked.

Troi stared at her readouts and shook her head. “They’re cruising deeper into the boneyard. They just passed a level-four buoy, which is a lot deeper than theEnterprise would go. So what’s our cover story?”

“We’re inspecting level-four buoys,” answered Riker with a smile. “Are they headed toward the gravity sink?”

She shook her head. “No, they’re going to miss that. Wait a minute, they just changed course.”

“Do you think they spotted us?”

“We’re close enough to see them with the naked eye,” answered Troi, putting her finger against an upper corner of the viewport. In the distance glinted a silver triangle, looking like a sailboat among a harbor full of hulking gray freighters. “Shields are up?” she asked.

“You bet,” answered Will. “Why?”

“I’m getting some funny sensor readings,” she answered. “I know that’s typical, but I’m getting slush deuterium readings. They’ve slowed way down. Is there something wrong with theVuxhal’ s plasma vents?”

That was a rhetorical question, and she didn’t really expect Will to know much about the exotic craft. Riker never took his eyes off his controls as he answered, “She’s stopping near a Jem’Hadar battle cruiser in slow orbit. I’m going to cut our impulse engines and drift, which is a good idea if they’re venting plasma or deuterium. Maybe we’ll just look like a piece of wreckage to them.”

A moment later, it was oddly quiet inside the tiny manned pod as they drifted in the cover of the burnt and blistered hulk of a Cardassian warship. Every few seconds, rubble sizzled against their shields, and Troi jumped, startled.

“Calm down,” said Riker with a smile, putting his arm around her. “We’re not going to hit anything too big.”

“Although something might hit us,” said Troi nervously. She contented herself with the fact that her pilot managed to keep one eye on his readouts even while he kept an arm around her shoulders. She wasn’t going to let him get too romantic, though, even if this was like a surreal carnival ride.

She checked her own sensor readings and frowned. “They’re launching a ship…or something.”

“Let’s see,” said Riker, pulling back his arm and working his controls. Now the Ontailian silver fin was magnified in the center of the small viewscreen overhead. A small pod was moving away from the Ontailian ship, obviously just ejected; it glinted in the sun as it tumbled gently. Suddenly theVuxhal unleashed a tractor beam, which caught the falling object and stopped its outward journey. The object bobbed in space two hundred meters or so beneath the heavy cruiser.

“Whatever they dropped, it’s even smaller than this shuttle,” said Riker. “Maybe they’re just laying buoys or probes. Or alarms. That’s not a bad idea, although I don’t think anyone would want that Jem’Hadar wreck.”

Troi shook her head and brushed back a strand of raven hair. “Again I sense they’re not doing this out of altruism. They’re hiding something…but maybe it’s so minor that it doesn’t make any difference.”

“In the long run,” mused Riker, “how can they make this place worse?”

Suddenly both their boards lit up, and they looked at one another in alarm. The Ontailian ship was putting out a distress signal, just as the smaller cruiser had the day before.

“All right,” said Riker, sitting back in his seat, “do we answer that?”

“I hope it’s not because they saw us,” said Troi, “although that would be a strange response.”

As Riker sifted through radio chatter and interference, their romantic little shuttlepod was no longer so silent. Finally he shook his head and said, “Ithink one of their ships is responding.”

As abruptly as it had started, the distress signal ended, and the sleek Ontailian ship fired thrusters and slowly glided off. It left the small pod behind, drifting among the clouds of space dust. Deanna and Will glanced at one another, neither able to offer a theory as to their ally’s behavior.

Once the Ontailians had moved out of sensor range, Riker rubbed his hands together and said, “Let’s check it out.” He started the impulse engine and streaked toward the object so quickly that Troi almost yelled at him to slow down. The Betazoid had a feeling that time was running out on this spy mission, and someone else could be coming.

As they drew closer to the mysterious pod left behind by the Ontailians, both of them let out a breath of disappointment, because it was unremarkable. It looked like a large octagonal storage barrel, painted in rather garish yellow stripes. There were no antennas, deflectors, or markings on it.

“They came a long way to dumpthat,” said Riker. “Can you get a sensor reading?”

“Only because we’re right next to it,” answered Troi. Her brow furrowed when she actually checked her readings, and she gripped Will’s arm. “Massive magnetic fields. I’m surprised we’re not sticking to that thing. It’s turned on, ready to go…for what?”

“What’s it made out of?” asked Will.

“Tritanium.” Deanna double-checked the readings, but they were strong and clear at this close range.

“That’s an exotic alloy for a garbage can.”

Riker suddenly looked stricken. “That’s no garbage can!” He began working his controls furiously.

“What is it, Will?”

He swatted at his board. “I can’t get a reading beyond the shielding, but the magnetic fields, the tritanium—that looks like an antimatter storage pod to me.”

“They’re dumping that inhere?” asked Troi, aghast. “What about the antimatter asteroid?” She felt a tingling on her neck, and she gazed out the viewport to see the kaleidoscope of junk all around them start to move. Within seconds, it was spinning, and the junk was crashing into everything else. When the shuttlepod began to spin, she realized they were in the middle of a vortex. Her instruments were failing, and so were her eyes.

She gripped her companion’s arm. “Will!”

“I’m trying to get out of here!” he rasped, struggling with the instrument panel. “Engines aren’t strong enough. I can’t compensate—we’re out of control!”

Suddenly the rubble in the vortex began to disappear, as if eaten away by a black rust from within, and Troi could swear that she saw the antimatter pod begin to rip apart at the seams. There were loud thuds as chunks of debris blasted through the failing shields to strike the helpless shuttlepod.

Certain they were going to die, Deanna gripped her mate. “I love you,Imzadi.”

He grunted something and reached for her, just as the pod was turned upside down and yanked from the melee at incredible speed. Troi blinked her eyes open, certain the little craft ought to be in pieces; in the corner of the viewscreen, she saw the triangular Ontailian cruiser backing away from them. A shaft of light withdrew with them, and she wondered if it was a tractor beam. The vortex was all but gone, and so was any trace of the antimatter storage pod, if that’s what it was. With a blip, the Ontailian ship was also gone.

“Did they just leave at warp speed?” asked Riker, sounding amazed that anybody would try such a thing. “Or maybe they’re cloaked.”

“Will,” breathed Deanna, “they just saved our lives.”

Riker cleared his throat and smoothed back his ruffled hair. “And they didn’t want to wait around to be thanked. What about their pod?”

“It’s gone,” answered Troi quietly. “The dust has been kicked up, but otherwise there’s just the Jem’Hadar wreck. Do you think they knew we were spying on them?”

Riker entered commands on his console and breathed a sigh of relief. “Like you say, they knew we were here. We’ve got full impulse and full navigation again, so we can get home. I don’t suppose there’s anything worthwhile on the sensor logs?”

Troi consulted her scientific readings and shook her head glumly. “It’s like the usual gibberish we get this far in. You know, Will, they’re going to deny this happened, and we haven’t got any proof.”

“Yeah, but at least we’re alive,” he said with a grin. “Next time, let’s have that quiet romantic breakfast instead.”

Captain Jill Leeden leaned back in her chair in her ready room on theJuno. “I don’t care what you say, Commander Riker,” she began, “the Ontailian command center claims that there was no pod—antimatter or otherwise—and that they saved your shuttle from destruction.”

“Yes, they did,” agreed Riker. “We’d be dead without them. Then again, do they have any explanation for what we encountered? Or whatthey were doing there?”

Leeden shook her head and looked at the other twoEnterprise crew members who were visting theJuno, Captain Picard and Counselor Troi. Deanna felt sorry for the skipper of theJuno, because she could tell that Leeden was under tremendous pressure to hold together that which could not be held together. Order was not going to be imposed on the Rashanar Battle Site.

“It was reported there were Ontailian prisoners on that Jem’Hadar ship,” explained Leeden. “They have long wanted to recover the bodies, but it’s a likely ship to be booby-trapped. Not only that, but a Kreel ship blew up in that same area four months ago. Commander Riker, you once asked me how the scavengers died…well, one of the ways almost took you.”

“I’m not demanding anything further be done,” Riker said, “and I’m grateful for their timely rescue. But Captain Leeden, you should know that the Ontailians are engaged in secret operations here.”

“Since the beginning, the Ontailians have been the ones most intent upon recovering bodies, and I’ve never had a problem with them. All of us are going to get spooked by the weird anomalies out there, but we’ve stuck together. Now you show up and, after two short days in the boneyard, tell me that they are working against us?” asked Leeden, exasperated.

Riker started to reply, but Captain Picard grabbed his subordinate’s arm and stepped forward. “Captain Leeden,” he said, “you have admitted that you don’t know a lot about what is going on here. There are mysteries and oddities here, and we want to shed some light on them. There are rational explanations for the gravity sink, the wild antimatter, the Ontailians’ actions, and we should go find them. We may fail, but we can no longer take ‘oh, it’s haunted’ as an explanation.”

“If that is what you believe, then I guess we have no more to talk about.” Captain Leeden rose to her feet. “If you decide to pursue a reckless course, I wouldn’t count on being rescued every time.”

“We’ll still perform our agreed-upon security duties,” Picard assured her. “Good-bye, Captain Leeden.”

She pressed a panel and opened the door for her visitors, and security officers snapped to attention on the other side. Leeden said softly, “Picard, I wish you luck in explaining these phenomena, but don’t trust your eyes or your sensors.”

Troi led the way out. Neither Riker nor Picard had much to say as they strolled down the corridor, and it was a silent walk to the transporter room, accompanied by security officers.

When they finally stepped off the transporter platform and back onto theEnterprise, Captain Picard managed a wan smile. “Number One,” he remarked dryly, “when you said you were going to arrange a meeting between Counselor Troi and Captain Leeden, I didn’t think you would go to such lengths.”

“I can see why Will wanted me to meet her,” said Troi. “Her stress levels are very high. So is her determination. She thinks she’s right, and she’s certain she has told us the truth.”

“Then let’s hope she’s wrong,” replied Picard.