Chapter Eight

IN THE MAIN SHUTTLE BAY, Commander Riker watched as the Kreel disembarked from their beat-up shuttlecraft. By human standards, they had to be one of the homeliest races in the galaxy, he thought. The Kreel had gangly bodies with muscular upper torsos that didn’t look as if they could be supported by their spindly misshapen legs. They wore almost no clothes over their reddish skin, and coarse hair covered the most unlikely spots while exposing cracked sunburnt flesh that would be far more palatable hidden. Their heads looked to be all jaw and no neck, and strong sinewy arms acted as balancing poles. Instead of walking, the Kreel shuffled menacingly with a slight side-to-side rocking motion.

“Greetings!” Riker called with all the cheer he could muster. “I am Commander William T. Riker, first officer of the Enterprise. Welcome aboard.”

The delegation of six came to a disorganized stop, and all but one of the Kreel continued gaping about the immense shuttle bay. Two Kreel ignored him completely and shuffled over to inspect the Federation shuttlecraft they would soon be boarding, the Ericksen. Nevertheless, one of the Kreel made an ungainly bow.

“I am Kwalrak,” she cooed in a voice that was unmistakably feminine, even if matted black hair obscured any more obvious feminine characteristics. “First assistant to Admiral Ulree of the Kreel Empire.”

One of the visitors inspecting the personnel shuttle lifted an arm that was like a giant crane and waved lazily to Riker. “I am Ulree,” he growled. “There are no Klingons aboard, are there?”

Will paused thoughtfully before answering, “One of our bridge officers is a Klingon. But he has been assigned other duties today.”

“Cleaning the latrines!” laughed a third Kreel, and his fellows joined him in the uproarious joke.

Riker set his jaw firmly and endeavored to take command of the situation. “I regret that we have such little time to conduct a tour of the ship,” he said, “but if you wish to see more than this shuttle bay, please accompany me now.”

He strode off impatiently and was about to glance over his shoulder to see if the Kreel were following when he heard the telltale scuffling of their ungainly forms.

Wesley tried to sit still long enough for the Antarean to loosen his grasp, but he was afraid he would black out before that happened. “Say,” he croaked, struggling to give Grastow a friendly smile, “Dr. Costa said we should stay here, but he didn’t say you should strangle me!”

“You won’t try to escape?” Grastow asked suspiciously. His stranglehold loosened a little.

Wes shook his head emphatically. “No way,” he promised. “You think I want to chase a man with a phaser? I don’t care where he’s going. I’ll sit quietly . . . please!”

Looking unconvinced, the baby-faced Antarean finally released the ensign and strode to the door. He stationed himself with one broad shoulder in front of the exit and the other in front of the comm panel, then folded his arms and glowered expectantly at the teenager.

After coughing a few times, Wesley wiped his watery eyes and tried to compose himself. He rubbed his chest where skin poked through instead of the customary communicator badge. He felt naked without it. “You know,” said Wes, forcing a bravado to his voice he didn’t feel, “you could get into a lot of trouble for keeping me here against my will.”

Grastow shrugged, “What happens to me is not important. All that counts is Emil Costa, his happiness, and his safety.”

“He doesn’t seem very safe to me,” Wesley observed. “What is he so afraid of? What does Dr. Milu have to do with it?”

Grastow shook his head. “I don’t know. But it isn’t important that I know. Or that you know.”

Wes could tell it was pointless to argue. He shifted uneasily in his seat and scoured the room for anything that could help him out of this predicament. Grastow’s quarters were almost impersonally bare: rust-colored standard issue furnishings and a food slot. The lighting had been augmented with extra track lights, and Wesley surmised that Grastow liked, perhaps needed, lots of light. The sensor panel that controlled the lighting and other environmental settings was by the bed, which was barely a meter from Wesley. Grastow was at least four strides away. Although Grastow could protect the comm panel, he couldn’t guard every panel in the room, the teenager decided.

Closing his eyes and pretending to massage a stiff neck, the young ensign planned his moves in his head. Like a chess game, he took Grastow’s planned actions into account as well. First, a lunge for the sensor panel to plunge the room into darkness. Grastow, he felt, would come right after him, ignoring the door, and Wes would have to stay at the panel an extra split-second to open the door. Just in case, he needed something to slow Grastow down a step. The chair he was sitting in—he could drag it behind him, tip it over, and leave it in Grastow’s darkened path.

Wesley’s heart began to hammer with anticipation, and he could feel the adrenaline churning uncomfortably in his stomach. He glanced at the big Antarean to see if he was at all suspicious, but Grastow was barely stifling a yawn. He was now leaning against the door rather than blocking it. Well, thought Wesley glumly, it’s now or never!

He bolted from the chair, giving it a wicked yank as he did. The chair hit the floor as his hands collided with the panel by the bed. His fingers flew over the panel, but the lights seemed to dim with the slowness of a sunset at the beach. He heard an unfamiliar curse as the Antarean lumbered after him. Wes was closing his eyes in anticipation of being throttled severely when the lights suddenly went out.

In pitch blackness with fear pounding between his ears, Wes stayed his post and was greeted by what sounded like a wounded elephant trying to run the hurdles. With a howl, Grastow toppled over the chair and crashed to the floor. Immediately, Wes felt a hand on his foot. He jerked away, while his fingers feverishly worked the panel, careful to keep the lights out while opening the door. The door whooshed open, and light from the corridor shafted across the room, revealing the Antarean sprawled across most of the floor. Wes leapt over him and landed between Grastow’s legs, which kicked blindly at the teenager, sending him tumbling out of the room.

In the corridor of deck 32, Wes staggered to his feet, realizing he had only a few seconds to guarantee his escape and continue his mission. He rushed to the nearest comm panel and pounded it furiously.

“Ensign Crusher,” he gulped, “to O’Brien! Come in, transporter room three!” He heard groaning and glanced behind him to see the Antarean crawling out of the cabin on all fours.

“O’Brien here,” came the laconic Irish lilt. “What can I do for you, lad?”

Breathlessly, Wesley ordered, “Beam me directly from these coordinates to the class-one cleanroom of the Mircrocontamination Project on deck 31!”

“Whoa now,” replied O’Brien. “You’re only one deck away. What’s the matter with the turbolift?”

Fire burning in his pink eyes, Grastow caught sight of Wesley and rose up from the floor to his full height.

“Do it now!” barked the ensign. “I’m on special assignment for Worf—it’s a matter of life and death!”

“Whose death?” O’Brien asked skeptically.

“Mine!” shrieked Wesley, as Grastow bore down on him. “Energize!”

The Antarean’s massive arms wrapped around whirling fragments of light, the phosphorescent residue of the transporter effect. Wesley Crusher himself was gone.

The ensign’s eyes were still screwed tightly shut, and he could almost feel Grastow’s hot breath on his neck. Nevertheless, the slight tingling in his being told him that he had transported, and he opened his eyes to find himself in the eerie pod room on deck 31. He was alone.

At his transporter controls, O’Brien tried to home in on Wesley’s communicator badge. He wanted a fuller explanation, and he wanted it now. But, oddly, Wesley’s badge was still on deck 32, while the readouts clearly indicated that the person had transported to deck 31. O’Brien shook his tousled red hair in complete puzzlement. If this was some kind of youthful prank, he would make sure that the young ensign ended up in the old doghouse.

Well, there was no way to contact him now. O’Brien was doubly mad at himself. First, he shouldn’t have performed a direct-beam without a full explanation. Direct-beaming was too energy inefficient for normal traffic, and the tactic was usually reserved for medical or security emergencies, such as transporting wounded crew members to sickbay. But worse, he had transported Wesley into a protected environment with no protective clothing! If he ever found out, Karn Milu would raise holy hell over that. The transporter operator was torn whether to tell anyone what he had just done, or to confront Wesley privately about it later. Maybe, just maybe, the lad had a plausible explanation for all this. He had mentioned something about being on assignment for Worf.

O’Brien did a quick scan of all the ship’s systems and decks and could find nothing wrong anywhere, despite the presence of the Kreel delegation on board. Finally, his sense of duty overwhelmed his fear of a dressing down, and he resolved to contact Worf. The boy had dropped his name, so let the Klingon deal with him.

Life and death, indeed!

*   *   *

In the pod room, Wesley borrowed some sterile, dust-free gauze from a dispenser and held it over his mouth and nose. He didn’t want to set off alarms merely by breathing. At first, he had been surprised to find himself alone with the pods, knowing that Emil Costa and Karn Milu had arranged to meet there. But he had reached the room by the fastest possible method, he told himself, and they would have to take separate turbolifts to deck 31, walk through the manufacturing and research facilities, change into suits in the transition room, and take the lateral turbolift equipped with air showers and ultraviolet baths to reach this cleanroom. Therefore, he was crouching down behind the farthest pod in the back of the room, safely hidden, when the door opened.

A white-suited, helmeted figure entered. It could have been anybody, but Wesley surmised from the pronounced stoop and nervous shuffling that it was Emil Costa. The teenager gulped, remembering the distraught scientist was carrying a phaser, and he hunkered down even farther behind the last of the eight class-zero pods.

Emil anxiously prowled the room, stopping only to stare at pod number one for several minutes. What must he be thinking? Wesley wondered. His wife had died because of that contraption. The ensign ran his hands along the smooth, cold glass of the pod in front of him—its contents were a milky bluish gas which pulsed with tiny pinpoints of light, like a city in the fog. Wes couldn’t see its identifying screen, but he could guess that it was a simulation of some planet’s atmosphere. Maybe amino acids were playing in those murky swirls, or enzymes. Who knew? Vacuums, weightless states, anything was possible in the confines of a pod. For several days during his tutoring, he had worked with Emil in pod number six, watching the famous microbiologist induce mitosis in exotic single-celled animals. Emil Costa had seemed to enjoy playing God.

Now the scientist stood bent and forlorn, staring at the object of his lifelong partner’s death. How could Worf, or any of them, suspect Emil of killing Lynn? Couldn’t they see how broken he was? How fearful? He was giving up everything: career, friends, the project he had created, even the Enterprise. It was like he didn’t care anymore. Sometimes Lynn may have been a thorn in Emil’s side, but Wesley knew that she was the kind of thorn that stuck forever. She had always been a part of him, a part he was lost without.

Wes was almost moved to rise from his hiding place to comfort the old man, when the door opened and a stocky figure in a white suit entered. Immediately, the new arrival removed his helmet and wiped a hand over his bristling eyebrows and thick stand of graying hair. Though Wesley was expecting to see him, it was still a shock to see Dr. Karn Milu at this surreptitious meeting.

“Go ahead and take your helmet off,” said Milu to the old man. “There’s no one around to see us, and I don’t want the ship’s intercom to pick us up.”

With quivering hands, Emil Costa removed his helmet. “What about the monitors?” he asked.

The Betazoid waved a disdainful hand. “With all those meddling engineers crawling around here, we had to turn them off anyway. This is hardly a class-one cleanroom at the moment.”

“Yes,” nodded Emil, stealing another look at pod one. “Did you kill her?”

Karn Milu laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffed. “It was an accident. Considering Lynn’s mental state—a predictable accident, I’m afraid. We should have done more to prevent it.”

“She didn’t want me to tell you the origin of the submicrobe,” Emil croaked. “She knew it was wrong.”

“But she initially agreed!” exclaimed Milu angrily. “You both did. You can’t keep it a secret—an organism that is so small it is virtually undetectable but an organism that is impervious to all known agents and biofilters? The applications are unlimited, especially for weapons!”

The Betazoid’s tone of voice grew kindly, fatherly. “Emil,” he sighed, “in all our years of service to the Federation, we have never sought any personal gain. This is our last chance to retire wealthy men, instead of penniless icons.”

Looking confused, Emil ran a quivering hand over his close-cropped hair and muttered, “What good is money?”

“Not much good in the Federation,” Milu admitted. “But elsewhere, you could live out your final years as a king. Think of it, Emil,” he winked, “you could have a harem of Orion slave girls who would make you feel like a young man!”

Emil swallowed hard. “To whom would you sell it?” he croaked.

“The Ferengi have already expressed an interest,” answered the Betazoid. “There are factions within the Romulan Empire who would pay dearly. As we have discussed so many times, the Federation—with its open policies—would never be able to keep this discovery secret. It is best to profit now.”

Emil Costa wrung his hands indecisively. “I don’t know . . .” he rasped.

“Come now,” replied Karn Milu with a disarming smile. “I’m not asking you to get your hands dirty— I’ll handle all the arrangements. All you have to do is tell me the planet we were orbiting when you discovered the submicrobe. If your wife hadn’t been so thorough in her attack on your records, I might have been able to deduce it myself.”

Emil’s spine suddenly stiffened. “I’m glad she did it!” he declared. “Maybe we haven’t always been as honest as we should have been, but selling out the Federation is something we’ve never done!”

Karn Milu was no longer smiling. “I’ve risked a lot for this deal,” he snapped. “Just tell me the name of the planet, and I will see that you are well taken care of for the rest of your life.”

Wesley sat on his haunches, so wracked with anticipation that he didn’t realize he was choking himself with the strip of gauze until his sudden intake of breath.

The two scientists whirled in his direction. “Who’s there?” growled Karn Milu.

Sheepishly, Wesley rose to his feet. “Uh, hello,” he stammered. “Don’t tell him, Dr. Costa.”

“What are you doing, Wesley?” wailed Emil. “I wouldn’t have told him!”

But Karn Milu was taking no chances. He strode purposefully toward the young ensign and gripped him by his neck. Wesley was too stunned and too surprised at the Betazoid’s incredible strength to struggle. Before he knew what was happening, Karn Milu was dragging him toward pod number one. Slapping at his chest where his communicator badge should have been, Wes encountered nothing but a hole and his own skin.

“Open the pod!” Milu ordered Emil Costa.

Emil hesitated for a second, then sighed reluctantly and initiated the sequence which opened the double-sealed hatch. Head bowed, the old man turned away.

“No!” Wesley screamed, but the stocky Betazoid pinned his arms to his sides and stuffed him inside the air-tight container. In the cramped confines, the boy’s head struck a solid mass of tubing, and he was dazed while the scientists sealed the pod.

When he came to his senses, both men were gone. Wesley screamed and pounded on the smooth convex walls, but not even a whimper could be heard outside the class-zero unit. With horror, the boy realized they could have killed him easily by programming the pod for a vacuum. But they had let him live . . .

At least until the air ran out.

Had Deanna Troi been in a happier frame of mind, she might have enjoyed watching the farce playing out in front of her. But now it was just a distraction that was keeping both Guinan and Will Riker from talking to her. Commander Riker had shown dubious judgment in bringing six strapping Kreel into the Ten-Forward Room. And once they had found out there was all the free synthehol you could drink, they had refused to leave.

“Admiral Ulree,” Riker said forcefully, “unless we leave this place immediately, we will miss our estimated departure time.”

“That’s why they call it estimated,” Ulree laughed, downing another synthehol in three gulps. “We’ve got lots of time.” He wiped his crooked mouth, pushed his tumbler toward Guinan, and sneered, “Keep it coming.”

The proprietress frowned good-naturedly and shook a finger at the hulking figure. “You’re just being a glutton,” she accused him. “Why don’t you go with Commander Riker, and I’ll give you a rain check when you come back to the Enterprise.”

“Rain check?” asked Ulree.

“I’ll owe you one,” she explained. “Or as many as you want.”

“I’ll take them now!” Ulree declared, pounding his glass on the counter. His fellows did the same. “You never know what may happen later, so we had better drink up now.”

Guinan appealed to Riker for help, and the first officer scowled and motioned to her to refill their glasses. No matter how much synthehol they drank and how inebriated they felt, they should be able to shake off the effects of the Ferengi product. It had always been proven safe. But for Kreel? Will wondered if they possessed enough self-control.

“Why can’t you be hospitable?” asked the female Kreel, Kwalrak, who boldly sidled up to Will and rubbed a hairy shoulder against his.

Will almost recoiled, but he decided to try to make an ally among the unruly band. “You know,” he smiled charmingly, “you’ve just used up the time we had allotted for your visits to Engineering and Weaponry. I thought you wanted to learn about us?”

The leathery female shrugged and wrapped a gangly arm around his. “We do want to learn about you,” she purred, fixing him with large bloodshot eyes. “We want to learn everything there is to know. But there’s so much more than gadgetry to share between our races. Tell me, Riker, what do you think about joining with the Kreel?”

Will considered whether to acknowledge this bald double entendre or not, and he decided that, under the circumstances, a little deviousness might be forgiven. “There will be more time for getting to know one another aboard the shuttlecraft,” he whispered, cocking a seductive eyebrow toward the door. “Federation shuttlecraft have very private accommodations. Can’t you get Admiral Ulree and his party to move faster?”

Kwalrak lowered her triangular head as much as her thick neck would allow. “Let me see what I can do,” she smiled coyly.

She approached Ulree and his cronies and spoke to them sternly in a low voice. In a matter of moments, the Kreel were yelling at one another, creating a cacophony rarely heard aboard the Enterprise. Kwalrak apparently held her own, shouting down their every objection point by point. Still, Riker was almost certain they would come to blows, until Kwalrak nodded decisively and motioned toward the door.

Ulree shrugged, finished his drink, and skulked out, followed by the others. Passing Riker, he could be heard to mutter, “Just because she’s beautiful, she thinks she runs things.”

Glumly, Deanna Troi watched them leave, certain now that she wouldn’t have a chance to discuss the Lynn Costa case with Will Riker for close to an hour. Disappointed, she sought out Guinan, who was collecting the empty glasses left by the Kreel.

“Guinan,” she sighed, “Emil Costa is leaving the ship, and we can’t prove a thing. Have we been wrong? Have we overlooked something? Or worse, was I right originally to consider suicide? If that’s the case, then I should have done much more to save Lynn Costa’s life.” Deanna snorted derisively, adding, “I thought a sabbatical away from the ship would solve all their problems. I failed her miserably.”

“No,” said Guinan warmly, taking the Betazoid’s youthful hands in her older, darker hands. “Not knowing the full story cannot be called failure. Sometimes the mystery is revealed to us a piece at a time, or never fully revealed to us. You must be patient, Deanna, you and Worf both.”

“Yes,” Deanna absently agreed. But she didn’t really believe it, or feel like being patient. She stared out the window at the stars beyond, now appearing to hold perfectly still as the Enterprise kept station behind the slow-moving asteroid called Kayran Rock. She wondered if anything more would ever be revealed to them.

Lieutenant Worf quickened his step as he approached the almost hidden entrance to the cleanrooms on deck 31. He was still shaking his head over the cryptic message from the transporter operator, O’Brien. Why in Khitomer was Wesley Crusher direct-beaming to the pod room? And without his communicator badge? Worf had asked Wesley Crusher to keep an eye on Emil Costa, plain and simple, not presume he had the run of the ship. If Emil Costa had taken one last trip to his workplace before leaving the Enterprise, what of it? Maybe he was sentimental.

There was little enough time left, Worf thought disgruntledly, to spend it chasing down teenage ensigns. Then O’Brien’s words, “life and death,” crossed his mind. To Worf, Ensign Crusher was inexperienced, naive, and sometimes overconfident, but he was never frivolous.

He stopped at the voice-activated door and barked, “Worf requesting entrance.”

“Lieutenant Worf not cleared for this facility,” the computer replied politely but firmly.

Worf bristled for a moment, then growled, “Security override, level one.”

Now the door opened, and Worf shouldered his way through. Maybe Wesley had had the right idea, directbeaming through this place. He jogged down the empty corridor between the gigantic darkened rooms devoted to research and manufacturing, with their ghostly shapes and robotic arms, through the class-one-thousand corridor and the first air showers, between rows of smaller laboratories, where white-suited denizens plied their alchemic and medicinal crafts. None of them paid him any heed as he jogged past them, his strength and alertness intensifying with each step.

He reached the door marked TRANSITION ROOM 3, CLASS 1000, and skidded to a stop. “Worf,” he growled. “Security override. Open immediately.”

The door flashed open, and he was in the round transition room, with its racks of white garments, neatly stacked helmets, showers, lockers, and changing stalls. Worf didn’t know why, but the hackles on his back were rising in alert. He drew his phaser and made his way quickly toward the turbolift marked MICROCONTAMINATION.

He heard the racks of jumpsuits and coats rustling, but he was a split-second too slow as he whirled on his heel and was struck by the phaser beam. It ripped through his body like an electric charge, deadening nerve endings as it went, and he suppressed a howl. But the wound was low, on his thigh, and the charge didn’t reach all the way to his brain. Worf collapsed to his stomach and tried to roll away, but most of his coordination was gone.

He got off one wild shot into the rack of garments when a second beam struck him in the shoulder. His head exploded in a single blast of pain before everything went blank.