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had committed the kidnapping with some purpose in mind—otherwise, he would have beamed away alone. But why? And why beam aboard a Klingon ship? The captain had informed him about the rattletrap of a Bird-of-Prey during the debriefing. For that matter, why destroy a star? The more Riker considered all the pieces to the Amargosa puzzle, the less sense they made.

Worf interrupted his reverie. “I have spoken to the Klingon High Council, sir. They identified the Bird-of- Prey as belonging to the Duras sisters.”

Riker drew back, then shook his head with amazement. “Lursa and B’Etor? This doesn’t make any sense. A renowned stellar physicist somehow uses a trilithium probe to destroy a star… kidnaps Geordi… and escapes with a pair of Klingon renegades. Why? What the hell’s going on?” Worf emitted a silent sigh. “I do not know, sir.” They rounded a corner and entered sickbay, where Crusher was just closing a panel at the back of Data’s skull. The android was sitting on a biobed, scanning himself with a tricorder. Riker caught Bevefiy’s gaze. “How is he?”

She swept an errant strand of auburn hair from her face, which wore a serious—but fortunately, Riker knew from past experience, not grim—expression. “It looks like a power surge fused the emotional chip into his neural net.”

Worf studied the android somberly. “Will that be a danger to him?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so; the chip still seems to be working.” She sighed with dissatisfaction and folded her arms in front of her chest; a faint crease deepened in the pale skin between her eyebrows. “I’d

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feel better ifI could take a closer look, but I can’t remove it without completely dismantling his cerebral conduit.”

Riker directed a smile at Data. “So. Looks like you’re stuck with emotions for a while. How do you feel?” Data glanced up from his tricorder, his brow furrowed, his golden eyes narrow with worry. “! am quite… preoccupied with concern about Geordi.”

“We all are, Data,” Riker said softly. “But we’re going to get him back.”

“I hope so, sir.” The android’s tone and expression remained anxious.

“Will…” Beverly took Riker aside and led him over to a wall monitor. “I checked into Dr. Soran’s background.” She pressed a control; a holo of Soran appeared, along with biographical data. “He’s an E1 Aurian, over three hundred years old. He lost his entire family when the Borg destroyed his world. Soran escaped with a handful of other refugees aboard a ship called the Lakul. The ship was destroyed by some kind of energy ribbon, but Soran and forty-six others were rescued by the Enterprise-B.”

Riker leaned forward with interest to study Soran’s face. When had the holo been taken? One hundred, two hundred years before? Soran looked almost exactly the same. He wore a slight, self-conscious smile—but the intensity Riker had seen on the face behind the disruptor was still there, too. He gazed back at Beverly as her words settled into his consciousness. “That was the mission where James Kirk was killed.”

She gave a single nod, then pressed a control on the monitor. “I checked the passenger manifest of the Lakul. Guess who else was on board?”

Riker shrugged—then did a double take as the doctor

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pressed another control, and a new image appeared on the screen: the smiling face of Guinan.

“Soran?” Guinan looked up with surprise. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”

Picard sat beside her in her quarters, which made him feel he was no longer on the Enterprise, but some mysterious, long-dead world. The bulkheads were swathed in intricately patterned gold fabric, the deck covered in tile; in a far comer, an archway led to a small shrine where candles burned before a stone carving of an enigmatic goddess.

Guinan herself sat, arms clasping knees to her chest, against a stack of pillows on an indigo settee. The distant candlelight played across her broad, dark features.

“Do you remember him?” Picard asked. Soran’s cryptic utterance made sense to him now; Soran had known about Robert and Ren6, just as Guinan herself could knowwif she wished. But Picard had forced himself to control his grief, to focus on the emergency at hand now; he could not help feeling personally responsible for the destruction of the Amargosa star. If he had simply refused Soran’s request to return to the observatory—

“The outcome would still be the same, Jean-Luc,” Guinan said softly. “He would have returned, with or without your permission.”

Picard glanced up, mildly startled at the interruption, then returned her small, knowing smile and repeated, “Do you remember him?”

“Oh, yes …. “The smile faded at once. She rose and began to move about, as if trying to escape memories. “Guinan,” he said, after a moment had passed in

silence. “It’s important that you tell me what you know. We think Soran’s developed a weaponma terrible weap-on. It might give him enough power tom”

“Soran doesn’t care about power or weapons,” she interrupted, her back still toward him. “All he cares about is getting back to the nexus.” “What’s the nexus?”

She moved across the room to a credenza and distract-edly fingered a small sculpture there. Picard could not see her face, but he could read in her shoulders the tension, the unwillingness, there. He heard her draw in a low, decisive breath.

“The energy ribbon that destroyed the Lakul isn’t just some random phenomenon traveling through space.” She spoke with sudden rapidity, as though afraid if she didn’t get the words out swiftly, they might never come. “It’s a doorway. It leads to another placerathe nexus. It doesn’t exist in our universe… and it doesn’t play by the same rules, either.” She straightened. “It’s a place I’ve tried very hard to forget.” “What happened to you?” Picard probed gently. She turned to him, her expression radiant at the memory. “It was like being inside… joy. As if joy were a real thing that I could wrap around myself. I’ve never been so content.” Her tone was hushed with awe.

He studied her in silence a moment, digesting the euphoria on her face, remembering the desperation on Soran’s. “But then you were beamed away …. “

Her features darkened with sudden anger. “I was pulled away. I didn’t want to leave. None of us did. All I could think about was getting back. I didn’t care what I had to do …. “