BEN ZOMA HAD SELDOM seen his friend Picard look so red-faced with subdued anger. He couldn’t see the captain’s hands, but he imagined that Picard’s knuckles were white as they grasped the rests of his desk chair. Obviously, he had been set off by something the admiral had told him.

“So,” the first officer opened as he sat down in the chair McAteer had occupied, “what did our friend the admiral have to say that couldn’t have been said at a much greater distance and a good deal more succinctly?”

Picard told him.

Ben Zoma usually made light of the captain’s concerns. He didn’t make light of this one. “The bastard.”

“I shouldn’t have been surprised,” said Picard. “He has never made a secret of his disdain for me.”

Ben Zoma frowned. “You just didn’t know when he would pull the rug out. It was something we always figured would happen someday—just not today.”

Picard shook his head, no doubt wondering how he had come to this pass. “Perhaps my father was right when he advised me to remain on Earth and run the family vineyard. I understand that last year’s vintage, the thirty-two, was the best we ever produced.”

The first officer, too, had a father who had opposed his choice to serve in Starfleet. If anyone understood the captain’s situation, it was he.

“Don’t worry,” he said, searching for something comforting to say. “You’ll get through this.”

“And if I lose the Stargazer?” the captain asked, introducing an unwelcome dose of reality. “If McAteer pries me away from her?”

Ben Zoma felt his friend’s pain, and wished it were his instead. “That’s beyond your control at this point.”

Picard sat back in his seat, looking defeated already. “I was hoping you would assure me to the contrary, Gilaad.”

Ben Zoma smiled, but there wasn’t any mirth in it. “Believe me, I wish I could.”

Lieutenant Obal pushed around the green and orange food on his plate, only vaguely aware of the buzz of conversation around him. In the few months he had served on the Stargazer, he had spent some eminently enjoyable moments in the mess hall.

This wasn’t one of them.

“It’s disappointing,” Obal’s companion said unexpectedly.

Roused from his melancholy, the security officer looked across the table at Kastiigan, the ship’s science officer. A Kandilkari, Kastiigan had a long and striated face, with distinctive purple jowls hanging loosely from his jaw.

“What is?” Obal asked.

“Several weeks have passed since I arrived on this vessel,” said Kastiigan, “and in that time, various officers have been exposed to considerable danger. But I have not been one of them.”

Obal looked at him, more than a little surprised. “You wish to be placed in danger?”

The science officer nodded. “Very much so. I am a senior officer on this starship. I should be assuming as much of the risk as any other senior officer.”

The Binderian tilted his head. “That is…an unusual way of looking at it.”

Kastiigan didn’t appear to have heard him. He seemed too intent on his own thoughts. “I have made it clear to Captain Picard that I would like to be placed in jeopardy, but for some reason he seems unwilling to do so.”

“Perhaps he values your services too much to contemplate losing you,” Obal suggested.

The Kandilkari shook his head. “If that’s so, he has given me no indication of it.”

“Also,” the security officer observed, “science officers aren’t often exposed to perilous conditions. At least, not as often as other personnel.”

It was true. Science officers weren’t sent on the ship’s most dangerous missions because their skill sets weren’t often needed. When science officers were injured or killed on away assignments, it was because their vessel had encountered something unexpected—and ultimately harmful.

“Then perhaps I made a mistake when I became a science officer,” Kastiigan concluded. He didn’t sound very happy.

Of course, Obal wasn’t very happy these days either. But it had nothing to do with how often the captain had placed him in the line of fire.

Ensign Nikolas had been his best friend on the ship. Now that Nikolas had resigned from the fleet and left the Stargazer, life would never again be the same for Obal.

Paris and some of the other crewmen had already made attempts to fill the breach, and Obal greatly appreciated their kindness. But none of them was Nikolas.

Naturally, the Binderian didn’t mention any of that to Lieutenant Kastiigan. Considering the depth of the science officer’s anxiety, it seemed rude to Obal to mention his own.

So he just listened to Kastiigan, and nodded sympathetically, and kept his feelings about Nikolas to himself.

Just a few minutes longer, Picard assured himself, as he watched Admiral McAteer spoon the last bloodred dollop of cherries jubilee into his mouth.

It had been a most wearisome day.

The morning had been filled with section meetings, which McAteer had—of course—insisted on attending. First engineering, then sciences, then security, all the way down the line.

Each section head had been grilled up, down, and sideways until the admiral was satisfied with the answers he received, and then grilled some more. It had been neither pretty nor productive, in the captain’s estimate.

But all along, Picard had known that his section heads weren’t McAteer’s targets. The admiral’s only real target was the captain himself; whatever “problems” McAteer found on the Stargazer, they would be pinned on Picard and Picard alone.

The afternoon had been even worse. McAteer had taken Picard, Ben Zoma, and Wu down to the observation lounge, and conducted a review of virtually every decision the command staff had made in the last couple of weeks—in other words, since the last subspace data packet received by Starfleet Command.

Neither the captain nor his officers had uttered a word of protest. They had answered all the admiral’s questions as if they had some sort of merit, following McAteer through exacting analyses of what were patently procedural minutiae.

Finally, they had sat down to dinner with the admiral—just Picard, Ben Zoma, and Greyhorse, because the other senior officers had work to do—and listened to him describe the high points of his career. There were a great many, apparently.

And through it all, Picard had felt compelled to pretend he wasn’t offended by McAteer—by the admiral’s opinion of him, by the admiral’s very presence here. He had been forced to act as if McAteer were welcome.

A most wearisome day indeed. And the captain expected more of the same the following morning.

“Have you made a decision,” he inquired hopefully, while McAteer wiped a bit of cherry debris from his chin, “as to the next stop on your tour?”

The admiral had indicated that he would be visiting several vessels, not just the Stargazer. After all, Arlen McAteer was nothing if not “hands-on.”

“I’ll be going to the Antares,” the admiral said, picking up his cloth napkin and wiping his mouth. “Captain Vayishra’s ship.”

Picard knew quite well whose ship it was. So did anyone else who had spent any time with McAteer. As far as the admiral was concerned, there was no finer commanding officer in the fleet than the much-decorated Vayishra.

“Shall I have my com officer contact the Antares,” Picard suggested, “and arrange a rendezvous?”

McAteer dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “That won’t be necessary. I don’t want to tie up an entire starship when a shuttle will do just fine.”

Picard frowned. If McAteer meant to take a shuttle, the captain would have to supply personnel to man it—not just a pilot, but a squad of security officers as well. This was, after all, a Starfleet admiral they would be transporting.

“You’re certain?” the captain asked, extending McAteer a chance to reconsider.

“Quite certain,” said the admiral, giving him little choice in the matter.

Picard looked up at the intercom grid hidden in the ceiling. “Mister Chang, this is the captain.”

“Chang here,” came the response.

“Prepare a personnel shuttle for Admiral McAteer and a security escort. The admiral will want to leave…” He turned to McAteer, leaving it to him to supply the rest of the information.

“Twelve hundred hours tomorrow,” said McAteer.

“Consider it done, sir,” said the shuttlebay officer. “Chang out.”

“Excellent,” said the admiral. “Oh, and Picard…?”

The captain turned to him. “Yes?”

“I’d like Paris to pilot the shuttle. That way I’ll know I’m in good hands.”

Cole Paris had distinguished himself as an excellent helm officer. However, Picard suspected that the ensign’s lineage, as the scion of an old Starfleet family, had as much to do with McAteer’s request as anything else.

The admiral seemed to like people whose families were associated with the fleet. Maybe that was how he had gotten friendly with Admiral Caber.

“Paris it is,” Picard assured the admiral. Anything to get you off this ship.

Phigus Simenon, chief engineer of the Stargazer, cast a critical eye over the console screen in front of him.

Normally, it played host to operating data on any number of ship’s systems, from warp drive to waste recycling. Or else it displayed some complicated set of calculations, which no one but Simenon would even consider following without the assistance of a computer.

But at the moment, the engineer’s screen was filled with something else—images of a half-dozen lizard-like creatures, their oversized golden eyes peering at him innocently from the safety of their artificial nest.

My children, he thought.

It didn’t sound right. It didn’t feel right. And yet, there they were, irrefutable proof that Simenon had indeed made a contribution to the future of his species.

Soon, the hatchlings would be removed from their nest and given to their mother to raise. Simenon hadn’t met her, but he had heard good things about her. She would be a fine parent. The children would be trained in the ways of Gnalish society and educated in accordance with their natural talents.

And Simenon? He would do what males of his species had always done. He would stay as far away as possible, minimizing the chances of his screwing everything up.

He recalled his own mother—a stern individual who had taken no guff from anyone, especially her off-spring. Now there was a parent. He still thought of her on occasion, though he would never have let any of his crewmates know that.

Simenon could just imagine the comments—especially from the humans aboard, who seemed to have a very different relationship with their mothers than his own people did. But then, what could one expect from a species that insisted on feeding its young with maternal secretions?

It made him shiver down to the tip of his scaly tail just thinking about it. He was still doing so when he noticed that he had unaccustomed company—in the large, blue form of Vigo, the Stargazer’s weapons officer.

Along with the captain, Ben Zoma, and Doctor Greyhorse, Vigo had earned Simenon’s undying gratitude by assisting him in a grueling ritual back on the Gnalish homeworld. It was that ritual that had ensured Simenon of the progeny pictured on his screen.

At first, the engineer suspected that his colleague had come to challenge him to a game of sharash’di, a complex and apparently habit-forming conceit that Vigo had acquired as a gift from another crewman. Then Simenon saw the expression on Vigo’s face, and doubted that he had come about a game.

The engineer swiveled in his chair. “What’s the matter?”

Vigo grunted softly. “Is it that obvious that I’m troubled?”

“No more obvious than, say, a supernova.”

The weapons officer pulled up a chair and sat facing Simenon. “I need to ask you a question,” he said.

It wasn’t often that crewmates came to the engineer for advice. He just wasn’t the type to lend a sympathetic ear. But he gave Vigo’s question his full attention.

It wasn’t until Vigo was done speaking, and Simenon had seen the light of determinaton in his friend’s eyes, that he realized something about the answer he was about to utter….

It was the same as the one already lodged in Vigo’s heart.

Hundreds of years earlier, when horse-drawn stagecoaches carried passengers across the middle band of North America called the United States, the man charged with protecting the stagecoach would sit next to the driver.

In his arms, he would cradle a primitive projectile weapon known as a shotgun. Hence, the derivation of the term “shotgun seat,” which referred to the place next to the driver, or pilot, or helmsman of a particular vehicle.

It was this seat that Ben Zoma claimed as soon as he entered the Livingston, a sleek, warp-capable personnel shuttle designed to accommodate a crew of two and six passengers—maximum.

Not that the first officer was so hungry for a view of the stars, which was so eminently available through the vessel’s forward observation port. In this case, it was purely a secondary consideration.

It was more a matter of his avoiding Admiral McAteer. By sitting next to the shuttle’s primary pilot—Ensign Paris, in this case—Ben Zoma could be certain he wouldn’t have to listen to the admiral for the entire trip.

Of course, Paris would eventually turn the helm over to someone else, and Ben Zoma would have to do the same with the shotgun seat. But for the first shift, at least, he knew he would be safe from McAteer’s commentary.

“Thanks,” he told Chang, the officer in charge of the ship’s shuttle deck.

“Don’t mention it,” said Chang, sticking his head in after Ben Zoma and taking a critical look around. “I just wish my people would be a little neater sometimes.”

The first officer inspected the interior of the shuttle. As far as he could tell, it was spotless. He turned to Chang and said, “You’re kidding, right?”

Chang looked deadly serious as he regarded Ben Zoma. Then, unexpectedly, he cracked a smile. “Commander, the Livingston is the one we always keep clean.”

Ben Zoma had to laugh. “And they say I never take anything seriously.”

“The problem,” said Chang, “is I take everything seriously. If I didn’t laugh about it, I’d go insane.”

“Pardon me, Lieutenant,” said an all-too-familiar voice, “I’d like to board.”

Chang cast a glance over his shoulder, then stepped back from the hatch. “Of course, sir.”

A moment later, McAteer slid into the Livingston. He was halfway inside before he noticed that Ben Zoma had preceded him.

“Well,” said the admiral, “we are punctual.”

“Yes sir, we are,” said Ben Zoma.

Fortunately, they didn’t have to prolong the conversation, because the rest of the crew arrived in the next few moments. In addition to Paris, it included Chen, Ramirez, Horombo, and Garner—all experienced security officers.

Not that Ben Zoma expected to need them. They were ferrying an admiral from one starship to another, not smuggling tribbles across the heart of the Klingon Empire. However, protocol called for the largest escort possible where such a high-ranking officer was involved, and unless McAteer said otherwise, they were all going to have to pile in.

Before they closed the hatch, Picard appeared. “Bon voyage,” he told McAteer, maintaining an air of cordiality. “And please, say hello to Captain Vayishra for me.”

If the admiral took note of the sarcasm, he gave no indication of it. “I’ll do that. Thank you for the hospitality, Picard. And,” he added, “good luck.”

His back to McAteer, Ben Zoma made a face. Good luck was the last thing the admiral wanted for Picard.

The captain took a last look around inside the shuttle, briefly meeting his first officer’s gaze. Then he nodded to Paris, who used his controls to swing the hatch closed.

Once Picard had withdrawn, the ensign activated the Livingston’s thrusters to lift the craft off the deck and bring her about. In a matter of seconds, he and Ben Zoma were facing in the direction of the bay doors. Then the doors parted, revealing the star-pricked blackness of the void.

A semipermeable, transparent barrier kept the air in the bay from rushing out. However, it wouldn’t keep the shuttle from doing so. Moving forward, the Livingston approached the barrier and the slice of space beyond it.

Then, as smoothly as a bird taking to the sky, the shuttle slid through the aperture. The vast sea of space opened before them, lonely and mysterious.

And they were off.