And yet, there amidst all the change, was a place that had not changed at all. A place that had nurtured generations of Picards for more than a century. An old stone house with wide-plank floorboards and well-worn rugs that still offered a singular comfort he knew he could not, and would not ever, find anywhere else. Not that he needed to be there all the time, or even often. But he needed to know it was there.
The feeling it gave him was an old-fashioned one, perhaps even quaint, especially in an era when people seemed to pick up and move from one planet to another with so little provocation. And, given a choice, it was a feeling Jean-Luc Picard would not trade for anything else he had ever known.
Perhaps the only way he could truly understand the Teniran point of view would be to have all that taken away from him. In a way, then, it was a futile exercise to try to imagine how he would have reacted had he been in Arit’s place. But he had always believed simple survival to be a priority that could open up quite a few possibilities. Nonexistence, after all, is a bit of a dead end, he thought, with a touch of gallows humor, and he was relieved that Arit had made the choice he believed he would have made.
“If there’s a way to repair your engines, Commander La Forge will find it, Captain Arit,” Picard said softly, doing his best to support her decision to accept help from the Enterprise.
“And what if there is no way to repair them? What happens then?” She stopped at an oval observation window and gazed out at the planet.
Picard wondered what that placid world meant to her. Did she see it as a last chance for redemption? Or did it simply represent the last in a long line of dashed hopes? And one nagging question would not go away: why in blazes was she so resistant to revealing anything about how her people had been forced to this terminus?
He got up and joined her at the window. “You know,” he began cautiously, “we have very little in Federation data files about the Teniran Echelon.”
“It’s a big galaxy.”
“That’s true. But we both live in it, and like it or not, we are tangled in the same web of mysteries for the time being.”
She turned and glared at him, real pain in her eyes. “The same web? I don’t think so, Picard. What’s your stake here—a tiny ship and a handful of people? We’re fighting for our existence.”
“Which is what I have been saying all along,” he insisted. “If we understood your situation better, we might be able to offer some—”
“Our situation is ours, Picard,” she said, cutting him off. But the fire was gone from her voice. “If your Federation files on us are meager, maybe that is the way we wanted it. And maybe we still do.”
“But to what end, Arit? Why this shroud of secrecy around every detail of Teniran—”
The hiss of a door sliding open interrupted him in mid-sentence. He turned to see a Teniran child entering from an adjacent chamber, and he guessed by the resemblance that she was Arit’s daughter.
“Keela,” Arit scolded, “I told you to stay in your room.”
“I know, Mother. But I thought Captain Picard might like some tea.”
Picard couldn’t help but notice the formal precision of the little girl’s speech. Unlike some children who tried to imitate their elders, he believed Keela to be simply and naturally precocious. He smiled down at her. “We have not been officially introduced. I’m Captain Jean-Luc Picard.”
“Yes, from the Enterprise,” Keela said. “I knew that.”
“That’s right. And how did you know that, Keela?”
Arit chuckled and Picard realized it was probably the first time he’d seen her smile. “My daughter seems to know most of what’s going on here on the Glin-Kale.”
“Well, it is a pleasure to meet you, Keela.”
“You have a very pretty ship, Captain,” the little girl said.
“Thank you very much.”
“I would very much like to see it. Do you think that would be possible?”
Picard glanced at her mother, then back at Keela. “It might be—though I suppose that is up to your mother. We’ll see.”
Arit cleared her throat. “You offered the captain tea. Don’t you think you should set about making it?”
Keela’s head tilted in a gesture of exasperation so adult it nearly made Picard laugh. “It’s already made, Mother. I’ll go get it.” She turned and went back to the other room.
“Your daughter seems to be a very self-possessed young lady.”
“That she is,” Arit said with a sigh of maternal resignation. “Do you have children, Picard?”
“Uhh, no—no, I don’t,” he said with a self-conscious flicker in his eyes. “Why do you ask?”
“No particular reason. Just that adults don’t always know quite what to make of Keela, and you seem quite comfortable with her.”
“A recently developed skill, I assure you. I’d never had much exposure to young people—until I took command of the Enterprise. We have families aboard. I suppose that four years of chance encounters with children on my ship have actually taught me something,” he said, a self-deprecating smile playing across his lips.
A moment later, Keela returned, carefully balancing a tray carrying three ceramic cups and the teapot. As she reached the desk, Picard’s communicator chirped and they heard Geordi’s voice.
“La Forge to Captain Picard.”
“Picard here. Have you completed your evaluation, Commander?”
“Yes, sir. We managed to stabilize the magnetic containment fields in their power core, so there’s no immediate danger of destruction. But I’ve gotta tell you, these engines are being held together with spit and chewing gum.”
“The Teniran phrase,” said Picard, “is ‘threads and wishes,’ I believe.”
“Okay,” Geordi said ruefully, “then they’re hanging by a thread.”
“And will you be able to provide the stitch in time, so to speak?”
“I think so, sir. But I can’t say they’ll be as good as new. If these engines were cats, they’d be on their ninth life.”
“But you can restore them to operating condition?”
“I’d say eighty-percent probability, sir. And if we do get ’em up and running, then I’d urge the Tenirans—in no uncertain terms—to head for the nearest fully equipped repair base for a total overhaul. Other than that, we’re ready to get started. Awaiting your orders.”
“Make it so, Mr. La Forge.” He paused. “And, excellent work.”
“Thanks, Captain, but I think I’d hold the applause until we actually get things fixed down here.”
“Hey . . . Gina . . .”
At the tentative sound of Wesley Crusher’s voice, she looked up from the cave floor where she’d been sitting alongside the shuttlecraft, leaning back against the engine nacelle. She held her small drawing pad in her lap and Wes could see she’d been sketching a charcoal of their cavern prison, artwork as bleak as her mood. “Mind if I sit down?” he asked.
She shrugged. “If you want to sit on cold, damp rock, be my guest. Has Data come back yet?”
Wes shook his head. “At least that means he hasn’t given up.”
“It also means he hasn’t found Kenny yet.” She gnawed on her lower lip and stared at the ground. “Data should’ve let me go with him.”
“What difference would it make for two people to cover the same ground as he can by himself?”
“What they really should’ve done is let me go off and search by myself. Then we could’ve covered twice as much tunnel in the same amount of time.”
“You knew they wouldn’t let you go alone. Just what we need—two kids lost in this maze of tunnels.”
She gave him a belligerent glare. “Me? Get lost in a cave? In what century?”
“That’s not the point,” Wesley said gently.
“Oh, yeah?” she flared. “Then what is the point?”
He started to say something, then swallowed it, finishing up with a helpless shrug. “I . . . I don’t know, Gina.”
“
Ohhh, Wesley,” she moaned, her shoulders slumping. “I had no idea he liked me. Do you really think he did this to impress me? I can’t believe anybody would do anything that dumb . . . and I can’t believe how guilty I’m gonna feel for the rest of my life if anything happens to him.”
“You shouldn’t feel guilty. It’s not your fault.”
Gina’s head snapped up and she frowned at him. “You’re right. I shouldn’t feel guilty. I didn’t make him do this. I didn’t twist his arm and say ‘Go be a hero!’ Did I say that? Did I even hint at anything like that? Damn right, I didn’t!”
She waited for Wesley to react to her anger, and she wanted him to tell her over and over how it wasn’t her fault, no matter what happened. Instead, he seemed distracted by something over her shoulder, up in a deep, dark corner of the cavern. She turned to find out what could be more important than making her feel better.
There it was—a tiny golden spark, glittering in the gloom. They both rose slowly to their feet and took a couple of hesitant steps toward it. The sparkle edged toward them, then stopped and hovered. Gina flipped to a fresh page in her pad and began sketching furiously. She and Wesley spoke in hushed voices.
“Wes, what do you think it is? An insect, maybe? Like a fire-fly or something?”
“I have no idea . . . but I’d love to find out.” He backed off toward the shuttle. “Keep an eye on it—I’m going to get a tricorder.”
Sidling over to the shuttle so he wouldn’t have to turn his back completely, he rapped gently on the hull next to the open hatch. “Deanna,” he called in a loud whisper, “hand me a tricorder.”
Counselor Troi appeared and handed the device down to him. “Wesley, is something wrong?”
“No. There’s this . . . this sparkle that just appeared and I wanted to take some . . .” He looked away from Gina and toward Troi for just an instant and when he looked back, he saw that Gina had stopped drawing and just stood there, her shoulders slouched in disappointment. “. . . some readings. Damn!”
Wes rushed back over to her, with Troi trailing behind.
“Gina, what happened to it?” he asked.
“It just sort of . . . winked out.”
Troi stepped around to face them. “What winked out?”
Gina handed her the sketchpad and Troi gazed at the hasty drawing. Wesley had used the word sparkle, and that’s exactly what Gina had drawn.
Troi returned the pad. “What did it do?”
“Nothing much,” said Wesley.
“It just popped in,” Gina added, “hung there for a minute like a Christmas star, and then it was gone.”
Troi’s dark eyes scanned the cavern as she concentrated all her empathic powers, trying to sense even the slightest presence of life-energy. Wesley and Gina watched her silently. After a few moments, she shook her head. “I’m not getting anything.”
“If it comes back,” Wesley said, “maybe we’ll get a better chance to study it.”
“Wes, weren’t you working on the communications system?” asked Gina.
“Yes, and I think I’m finally making some progress.”
“Then why don’t you and Counselor Troi work on that, and I’ll stay outside the shuttle and keep watch for any more sparkly things.”
Wes nodded. “Okay. That sounds like a good idea.”
“Just make sure you stay close to the shuttle,” Troi said firmly. “Don’t wander off.”
“I won’t . . . I’ll be right around the ship.”
Gina waited until they’d gone back inside, leaving her alone. Then she circled the shuttlecraft, pivoting slowly, searching. Finally satisfied that there weren’t any of the little glittering light points present, she tiptoed directly to one of the tunnels leading away from the main cavern and disappeared into the darkness.
For the next hour or so, Counselor Troi busied herself in the Onizuka’s aft cabin with updates on her evaluations of the young away-team members, while Wesley struggled under the cockpit consoles to restore some minimal function to the shuttle’s severely damaged communications system.
But Troi knew she was just filling time. These evaluations were not exactly a high priority. Once they made it back to the Enterprise, she’d have plenty of opportunity to complete these file entries. And if they wound up stranded here, then the evaluations would obviously be of no consequence.
She thought of the Enterprise, and all the efforts that she knew were being expended to find the missing shuttlecraft and its crew. Troi had witnessed enough search missions to know how resourceful her shipmates could be when the lives of colleagues hung in the balance. They would be doing everything possible to retrieve the away team, and quite likely delving into the impossible as well.
But Deanna also knew all too well that even the best efforts did not always yield the desired results. And at the same time as she tried to concentrate on the probability that they would be rescued, she knew she also had to prepare herself for the possibility that they would not.
Up from, as Wesley rerouted surviving circuitry inside the communications module, he considered the concept of being missing. We’re not missing, he mused. We know where we are . . . but if the Enterprise doesn’t find us, and we survive this, then we’ll be marooned here. To them, we’ll be missing forever, even though we’re still alive. He did not like that eerie idea at all.
The side hatch slid open and both Wesley and Deanna looked up as Data climbed in. Alone.
Troi’s lips thinned to a grim line. “You didn’t find him.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No, I did not,” Data said in a voice that made it hard to believe this android did not have genuine human feelings.
Wes sat on the cockpit deck, his head bowed. “I guess Gina is pretty depressed, huh?”
Data cocked his head questioningly. “Depressed about what, Wesley?”
“About your not finding Kenny.”
“But how would she know? I did not tell her.”
“You mean she didn’t meet you outside the shuttle when you got back?” Wes asked, bewildered by Data’s statement.
“No, she did not. I assumed that she was in the shuttle with you, but I see that is not the case.”
“But we left her outside to keep watch,” Troi began.
“She did it,” Wesley muttered as he stood, shaking his head in anger and frustration. “I don’t believe this—she really did it.”
“Did what, Wesley?” Data asked.
Troi knew. “She went to look for Ken, didn’t she?”
Wes answered with a wordless nod and a hollow look in his eyes. “She wanted to go search when you did, Commander,” he finally said to Data. “She blamed herself for Kenny’s running off—she really wanted to help find him.”
“An intriguingly human reaction,” Data said, “and one which adds a distinct complication to our predicament . . . we must now find both of them in addition to finding a way out of this place.”
Chapter Eleven
THE GLIN-KALE COASTED AROUND Domarus Four in its powerless orbit while Geordi La Forge and his engineering team continued their engine resuscitation work. Knowing how he’d feel if the situation had been reversed, Geordi had felt more than a little uncomfortable invading somebody else’s engine room. The Teniran chief engineer, Naladi, had greeted the Enterprise team of four with open suspicion when they’d first come aboard. But orders were orders, and the word from Captain Arit on the bridge had been precise—let them work.
Naladi had actually shooed most of his own staff out of the engine bay, as if he wanted as few witnesses to his shame as possible. But Geordi had made every effort to ask questions of the Tenirans, and to brief them every step of the way, so they not only knew what was being done but also felt a part of the process. He was banking on all the tinkering to bring about a phenomenon he’d seen often enough before—a sort of universal brotherhood of engineers.
His faith paid off. Within an hour, Geordi and Naladi found themselves working side by side.
&nb
sp; Meanwhile, Picard and Captain Arit had returned to the bridge to find First Officer Jevlin and the Teniran command crew mesmerized by a sight both captains had come to be wary of—the viewscreen image of uncountable ribbons of color doing a frenzied dance just off the Glin-Kale’s bow. The light from the tumble of colors flickered through the entire bridge.
Despite the unsettling experiences he’d already had, Picard found himself drawn toward the viewer. “Absolutely fascinating,” he murmured.
“I could do with somewhat less fascination in my life,” Arit said dryly as she stopped a pace behind Picard.
He turned back toward her. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about what it might mean?”
“Curiosity is a luxury I can’t really afford right now, Picard.”
He sensed a touch of envy in her voice, as if she wished she could feel what he did. “Then you’ve got more self-control than I do. Ever since childhood, I have found it very, very difficult to resist the lure of a riddle or a puzzle, the challenge to know the unknown.” The dancing colors from outside the ship reflected in his eyes.
“Unfortunately, the unknown is all too often unwelcome,” Arit pointed out, tension etched into taut lines around her mouth.
“Then why explore?”
“Even in the best of times, we Tenirans have never really been explorers. And since these are far from the best of times for us, now we just want a safe place to call home.”
The exit hatch creaked and opened . . . halfway. Geordi and his three propulsion experts—two women and a man—squeezed through and came onto the bridge.
“I could try fixing that,” La Forge offered, thumbing back at the reluctant hatch.
“We’ll deal with it,” Jevlin said curtly.
Picard moved over to intercede. “Your report, Commander La Forge?”
“Well, sir, we did the best we could. You’ve got a crack engineering team down there, Captain Arit. Between their familiarity with your propulsion systems and our technology, we managed to get things patched together. She won’t set any speed or endurance records, but she’ll get where you’re going—as long as you’re not going too far.”
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