Star Trek - Imbalance Part 6

"Do you want to tell me this is another vreek'khat drill?" Riker asked, his tone colored with more than a little irony. In spite of the chill and the dampness, sweat trickled down his back.

"Yes, I would tell you that," Zarn answered in a perfectly level tone, "if it would get you to move faster."

"I see." From the clattering of their claws, the Jarada musicians were at least two levels below them. And they're the "senior citizens," Riker thought in disgust, realizing just how efficient Jaradan locomotion was. Above them, loud bangs echoed down the shaft, as though someone were taking a battering ram to the door where they had entered. Perhaps Zarn had good reason for his concern. Riker grunted and tried to move faster down the slick, uneven, sloping surface. "However, if you don't mind, I'd like to ask you again when I have more time to hear the answer."

"While it is not my intention to insult a distinguished visitor from another hive, if you do not travel faster than a youngling in its first sh.e.l.l, we will not have the luxury of discussing anything later." Zarn quickened his pace, moving a quarter turn ahead of Riker.

A loud thud, followed by a splintering sound, reverberated down the shaft. Without looking to see if Riker was keeping up, Zarn broke into a trot and disappeared around the curve of the ramp. Another loud crash and the screech of tortured wood chased the fleeing Jarada downward.

From the sound, Riker thought the door might withstand another dozen blows, but he knew he didn't want to meet whoever was trying so hard to get on his side of the barrier. He lengthened his stride, keeping to the middle of the ramp and putting his feet where the musicians had sc.r.a.ped away the slippery organic carpet with their claws. It was risky to hurry too much, but from the silence below him, Riker guessed that an exit lay only a few turns farther down. If he could reach that door soon enough, he would be safe.

Riker kept his footing for the first turn, although his feet and hands were sweating from the nervous tension. The second turn seemed easier, with less slime on the ramp. He guessed there was an entrance somewhere along the wall, letting drier air seep into the shaft, but he didn't see any markings to show him where it was. From several levels farther down, he heard the clatter of Zarn's claws against the stone. Above him the tortured wood of the door shrieked in protest as the attackers struck it again. Riker realized it was going to last only another minute or so.

Distracted by trying to interpret the sounds he was hearing, Riker did not see the thick mat of algae that crossed the ramp below the dry zone. His boot heel hit the slime and kept going. Landing on his seat, Riker shot down the slippery, wet ramp. His head cracked on the concrete, stunning him for a moment, and he continued to slide downward, picking up speed. Although the narrow ridges made the ramp's surface uneven, the coating of algae was like grease, giving him no purchase.

Riker pulled in his arms and legs to minimize his body profile and concentrated on controlling his descent. He tried to imagine that his body was a toboggan and the ramp was his track. Even so, he bounced between the outer wall and the center column, collecting more bruises with each ricochet. He rounded the last bend and crashed into the end wall, all the breath knocked from his body. Just then the upper door gave way with a wrenching groan that echoed and reechoed in the enclosed s.p.a.ce. A mult.i.tonal shriek of triumph from a horde of Jarada roared down the shaft.

A dawed hand gestured from the darkness beside him. "Quick. This way," Zarn whispered, his voice a single note instead of the usual chord.

Riker, stunned and battered by his precipitous descent and its equally sudden ending, struggled to get to his feet. His lungs gasped for air and his abused muscles refused to cooperate.

"Hurry," Zarn ordered, scurrying out to help Riker. "We must get the door closed before they discover where we went."

Realizing Zarn lacked the strength to pull him to his feet, Riker waved the insectoid away. The yells of their pursuers were growing louder by the second. He still felt too shaky to stand, so he struggled to his hands and knees and crawled after the Jarada. It was undignified, but it worked. He had barely cleared the opening when he heard Zarn tap in the command to close and lock the door. It slid into its frame, shutting out the cries from the Jarada charging after them.

The tunnel was dark and poorly lit, its tiled surfaces as damp and slimy as the ramp they had just left. Riker collapsed on the floor, desperately trying to regain his breath and his equilibrium before they resumed their flight. The stone beneath his body was cold and damp, and the chill worked its way quickly through his uniform.

"Come. We must hurry," Zarn whispered, still with only a single note in his voice. "It won't take them long to figure out which door we used."

Riker s.h.i.+vered and pushed himself to a sitting position, his muscles shaking both from the temperature and the tension. His right shoulder protested, and he probed gently, finding a large tender spot that was already starting to swell. From the pull on his muscles he judged he had similar bruises on his hips and b.u.t.tocks. "What's the hurry?" he asked, as much for the information as to delay climbing to his feet.

"They are extremists. Xenophobes who don't want relations with your Federation. Do you not have this problem among your people?" Zarn started along the corridor, his claws tapping impatiently against the floor.

"We do." Riker pushed himself up on one knee, pausing when his head started spinning. Something in Zarn's manner told him the insectoid was lying, but Riker was not sure what rang false. The dank, moldy air clogged his lungs, making it hard to breathe and harder to concentrate. He clenched his fists, fighting the urge to bolt for the Enterprise without getting to the bottom of this mystery. "Why didn't you mention this to us before?"

"It is not right that they should oppose the will of the Hive. However, at the moment, they have us outnumbered. We must hurry before they find us."

Riker struggled to his feet, ignoring the protests of his bruised muscles. "I think Captain Picard will be very interested to hear this. We'll beam up to the s.h.i.+p and you can explain it to him." Through the door, Riker heard the high-pitched yells of their pursuers.

Zarn's claws tapped out an impatient jig. "We don't have time for that now. We must hurry."

Riker flipped over his sleeve and tapped his communicator. To his surprise, nothing happened. He hit it again, harder. The dampness in the tunnels shouldn't have affected it, and he didn't remember striking it against anything in his wild descent. However, the device wasn't working and, judging from the sounds on the other side of the door, his options were fast slipping away. He started after Zarn, surprised at how unsteady he felt.

Zarn set a mean pace, his four legs covering the ground with surprising ease. After a few minutes Riker was breathing hard and sweating from the exertion, despite the chilly air. The insectoid followed a twisting, circuitous path that soon had Riker completely disoriented. He was not sure whether the Jarada intended to confuse him or if the complicated route was needed to throw off their pursuers. Riker thought they were headed farther underground, but by the eighth or ninth odd-angled transition from one curving, sloping corridor to another, he was no longer sure where they were or in which direction they were traveling.

Finally, Zarn stopped beside a narrow door, the first Riker had seen since they left the ramp. The Jarada coded the door open and gestured for Riker to enter. "We can hide here for a while. No one would ever think to look in this place."

The room was long and narrow, almost a corridor, with the only light coming from a single feeble glowstrip in the far corner. Piles of trash were heaped along one of the long walls and the dank, mildewy smell was overpowering. Reluctantly, Riker limped inside and looked for a place to sit.

Zarn followed him in and keyed the door closed. "Forgive the poor accommodations, Riker-Commander. This place is never used now, and no one ever comes here."

Easing himself to the floor in the cleanest spot he could find, Riker studied his surroundings carefully. Glowstrips were s.p.a.ced along the wall behind him, their surfaces dull and inert. Even the one remaining strip was mottled and unsteady, as if the photoactive bacteria in it were dying too. Badly eroded lines etched the wall opposite him, intersecting here and there at blobs of decaying materials. After several minutes Riker realized the lines described a hexagonal pattern like the cells in a honeycomb. The moldering refuse on the floor was probably the remnants of material that had been attached to the wall. "What was this room used for?"

"It was one of the original hatching chambers." Zarn moved to Riker's side and folded his legs under him, the closest the insectoid could come to sitting. "When we first built on this planet, it was a very dry year. We have since come to discover that the ground in many places is damper than we thought and we have been forced to abandon most of our original tunnels. This is one of the worst areas, where we were unable to exclude the moisture from our living and working s.p.a.ces."

Riker ran his finger over the rough tiles, feeling the film of dampness that clung to them. The floor here lacked the brilliant glazes and elaborate mosaics that characterized the other Jaradan floors he had seen. "If your people wish, the Federation has many techniques for dealing with this type of problem. We would be more than willing to a.s.sist you in reclaiming these tunnels."

"That is an interesting proposal, and I am sure the Council of Elders will be happy to discuss it."

The tone of Zarn's voice caught Riker's attention. The words themselves seemed encouraging, but Riker sensed the Jarada was withholding something. He s.h.i.+vered with an unwelcome premonition that more things were wrong on BelMinor than he already knew. Forcing that thought away, Riker reached for his communicator and again tried to call the Enterprise.

"I do not think your communications device will work here," Zarn said as he watched Riker try for the third time. "There is something in the rocks in this area that blocks out the signals."

Riker scowled, thinking the excuse was a little too convenient. Still, the communicator was not working and he lacked the means to test it. Zarn's explanation was barely plausible, and certainly no more unlikely than the idea that he had managed to break the nearly indestructible device on his rapid slide down the ramp. Whatever the explanation, he now lacked any way of contacting the s.h.i.+p. He would have to rely on Zarn to guide him back to the Governance Complex, where he could rendezvous with the rest of the away team when they returned from their excursions.

"I believe we must stay here for some time." Although Zarn kept his voice low, he had returned to his usual mult.i.tonal mode. "I did not hear the alarms to signal the guardians, so we must wait until we are sure all our attackers have been captured. In these tunnels, I fear that will not be accomplished soon."

Again Riker had the feeling that Zarn was not telling him everything, but he did not know how to get the full story from the Jarada. If diplomacy was the creative art of telling only what you wanted known, then Zarn was possibly the greatest diplomat Riker had ever met. Somehow the Jarada had told him so little that Riker did not even know what questions to ask in order to uncover Zarn's duplicity or his omissions.

The effort of trying to outguess his companion, combined with the bad air in the room and his reaction to the day's events, hit Riker all at once. He felt as though he had just run a marathon, and his body was so wrung out that he could not keep his eyes open. Locking his arms around his legs, he lowered his head to his knees, hoping that Zarn would think he was just resting. For some reason, it was important not to let the Jarada know how tired he was. Even so, he was soon fast asleep.

A light, repeated tapping on his shoulder finally wakened Riker. He stirred, trying to remember where he was. The surface beneath him was cold and hard, and dampness had soaked into his uniform. Finally the smell, dank and moldy, registered and memory returned.

He had slipped from his sitting position while he slept and was now lying on his side, curled up against the cold. A s.h.i.+ver ran through his body, and then another, as awareness of the temperature returned along with wakefulness. Riker tried to lever himself upright, but the bruised muscles in his shoulder had stiffened while he slept. Waves of pain washed through him and the arm collapsed. For a moment he just lay there, willing his body to respond to his orders.

"It is time to go now, Riker-Commander. I am sure the bad ones are no longer here." Zarn's claws chittered against the rough tiles as the Jarada started toward the door.

How does he know that? Riker thought. He pushed himself off the floor again, moving more slowly this time and gauging the effect of each movement on his battered muscles. The chill and the inactivity had taken its toll, making him feel as though he were a hundred years old. In truth, he supposed, the cold had probably reduced the swelling of his bruises, but that did not make it easier for him to start moving again.

It was a struggle, but finally he made it, sweating from the exertion despite the icy leadenness of his limbs. The cold and stiffness, at least, would go away when they began walking. Zarn was doing an impatient tap dance by the door, but Riker ignored the Jarada while he stretched some of the kinks from his muscles. If they had to move fast, he wanted to be ready. Besides, although Zarn was calling the shots here, Riker was reluctant to let him know how completely he was at the insectoid's mercy.

"Will you please hurry?" With a visible effort Zarn slowed his jigging and looked toward Riker. In the weak light his eyes glowed a pale green. "There's no one in the nearby corridors, and I can get you to safety before there is any more trouble."

Riker moved toward the door, testing his legs as he went. Aches and twinges greeted every motion, and he certainly would not want to go into hand-to-hand combat against a Klingon or a Vulcan-but he decided he could manage. In any case, he would be glad to see the last of this smelly, damp room. "How do you know that no one's around?" he asked as he reached the door.

"I don't sense anyone. They're not there." Zarn tapped the code into the door and it swished open. He walked out into the corridor without even looking to see if it was occupied.

"Sense? How?" Riker glanced both ways before he followed Zarn out of the room, even though he knew that anyone waiting in ambush would already be alerted to their presence.

"We of the Hive are always aware of each other, to a greater or lesser extent. Don't you always know what is happening with the others of your hive?" Without waiting for an answer, Zarn started down the corridor at a rapid pace.

At first Riker had to struggle to keep up with his guide. His battered body protested at the speed, and he wondered at Zarn's hurry. After fifteen minutes of twists and turns, of ducking around corners and down short ramps, he felt better. The exercise was working out the soreness, loosening up his muscles, and dispelling the chill that had penetrated to his bones.

He began to take more notice of his surroundings, trying to orient himself and to figure out where they were heading. The walls and floors lost their dampness, suggesting they were moving into the drier, inhabited parts of the complex. This impression was reinforced by the glowstrips, which were brighter and more closely s.p.a.ced. However, they saw no one and Riker concluded that Zarn was going out of his way to avoid any encounters.

They had been moving for almost half an hour, with Zarn setting a pace that left Riker with no breath for asking questions. He wondered if it wasn't deliberate, since the number of riddles that demanded his attention multiplied with each step. Was Zarn's explanation for the attack, that the a.s.sailants were xenophobes, correct-or was there some other reason for the event? Why was Zarn trying so hard to avoid meeting anyone? Was it truly to avoid danger, or was his guide kidnapping him? If the circuitous route they were traveling was deliberately planned to take him away from the area where the Enterprise could find him, was Zarn acting with or against government orders? And, finally, how was Riker to determine the true answers to his questions, when he had no accurate way of deciding when the Jarada was lying to him?

They turned onto a ramp that spiraled upward at a steep angle. An intense floral odor a.s.saulted Riker, as concentrated as though someone had crammed a hundred square kilometers of jungle blossoms into the volume of a turbolift car. The suffocating fragrance made his head spin and he paused to catch his breath. A turn and a half above him, he heard Zarn stop too. The Jarada's hand-claws clicked against a door panel. Hoping they had reached the end of their tunnel odyssey, Riker started up the ramp. Zarn's claws. .h.i.t the controls harder, and Riker realized that he had not heard a door open in response to the command.

He rounded the curve in time to see Zarn drop his hand from the control pad. Vrel'keth brefteev! the Jarada muttered, his voice thick with a nasty buzz. From the tone, Riker did not need a translation. Sweating sounded remarkably similar in every language in the galaxy.

Zarn started up the ramp again, his movements stiff and jerky from anger. Two turns higher, they came to another door and Zarn tried to open it. This time the barrier slid aside on command, sending a suffocating wave of floral perfume down the shaft. Beckoning to Riker, Zarn moved into the corridor beyond.

Riker stepped through the door and slammed into an oppressive wall of heat and humidity. The temperature was at least twenty-five degrees Celsius warmer than the tunnels through which they had been dodging, and the humidity now approached a hundred percent. Combined with the overwhelming floral reek, Riker felt as though someone had dumped a ton of Tribbles on him. Sweat sprang out on his forehead and poured down his back. He struggled to breathe, to drag the thick air into his lungs and extract oxygen from it. His head felt as though it had been detached from his shoulders and was floating away, making for the Enterprise by itself.

"Come. Hurry," Zarn whispered, gesturing impatiently. "I shouldn't have brought you here."

With a supreme effort Riker forced his legs to move. The heat sapped his energy and sent thoughts of sleep tumbling through his head. Zarn's form swam in and out of focus-one moment hard and sharp, as dangerous as his current predicament, the next moment fuzzy and dreamlike, a phantasmagorical monster from a children's story. Fighting his disorientation, Riker kept moving, following his Jarada guide even though he was no longer sure of where he was or if he even dared trust the insectoid. In his curiously detached state, nothing seemed to matter, and it was easiest to follow Zarn because that was what the insectoid had told him to do.

Part of Riker's mind observed his actions, cataloging his surroundings and his peculiar reactions to the heavy odors. Unlike the parts of the complex he had seen before, broad archways opened off this corridor, giving him a clear view of the rooms beyond. Through one opening he glimpsed the yin and yang of two Jarada locked together in rut. As they pa.s.sed, the white female sank her teeth into the ebony male's throat.

The male's final shriek was cut off by the crunching sounds of the female's teeth shearing through his exoskeleton, but even after death his body continued to convulse beneath hers. Farther along, a female with an obscenely distended abdomen was sprawled beside a wall covered with hexagonal cells. Pale gold attendants stroked her thorax, encouraging the contractions that rippled her softened and leathery exoskeleton. Slowly, with each pulse accompanied by a high-pitched whistle of pain, she expelled the eggs from her ovipositor.

The attendants lifted them into the waiting cells and sealed them inside, their movements taut and jerky. Seeing the attendants' tension, Riker knew that the queen was dying, that this agonizing labor was as unnatural for the Jarada as it was normal for humans.

"Hurry!" Zarn spat out. "We haven't much time before the guardians discover us."

The urgency in Zarn's voice made Riker realize that the lack of a challenge had been bothering him. Even in his strangely drugged state, he knew that the Jarada would not wish anyone to see what happened in these chambers. What the penalty for his intrusion was, he did not wish to find out. Sobered enough by that thought to be worried for the first time, Riker broke into a jog. Zarn increased his pace, maintaining his lead.

As they turned a corner, a loud, high-pitched chord roared from the walls. From three directions came the sound of ma.s.sed foot-claws chattering against the tiled flooring. Riker tried to estimate how many guardians were approaching, but without actually counting them he could not begin to guess their number. With a deep certainty he knew he did not want to see these Jarada, did not want to discover what his punishment would be for witnessing the deepest secrets of their race.

"Vrel'keth brefteev!" Zarn growled viciously. He dashed to the end of the corridor and pounded a code into the door's control panel. The mechanism was slow to respond, starting and then cycling back shut. Zarn had to repeat the sequence before it registered properly on the lock. By the time Riker had caught up with him, the door was sliding open.

Zarn gestured for Riker to enter first. The shaft was dark and its walls gleamed suspiciously in the band of light from the corridor. A gust of stale, mold-scented air washed over him. Riker took a hesitant step forward, uncertain of what lay ahead but reluctant to be caught by the approaching guardians. The next thing he knew, Zarn kicked him in the pressure points on both calves. Predictably, his legs buckled and he landed on his seat. Before he could react, Zarn shoved him. Riker shot forward, gaining speed on the algae-slick surface of the disused ramp. Once more he was tobogganing into the darkness, unguided and out of control.

Chapter Ten.

THE GROUNDCAR DUCKED AND WEAVED, tossing Crusher back and forth against the safety harness. The pillows that filled out the Jaradan contours to roughly human shape were not anch.o.r.ed to the seat, and they s.h.i.+fted with each violent lurch. Grimly, the doctor braced herself against the side of the car, hoping the restraints would keep her from serious injury. They had been designed for the lighter Jarada and she wasn't sure how much extra stress they could withstand.

Wesley could have calculated it instantly, could have told her how many sharp turns and violent lurches the fastenings could withstand before they parted from their anchors and let her go flying against the far wall. She was glad Wesley was not around to tell her that, glad he was away at Starfleet Academy, where he would hear nothing of this adventure until she was safely back aboard the Enterprise. Then she could tell him the story with the proper humor and self-deprecation to let him know she had not really been in danger, that it had been an exciting but completely harmless little adventure to liven an otherwise dull week.

She tried to rehea.r.s.e the letter to her son, tried to focus her mind on describing the events in the proper light, but somehow the exercise didn't work. Her palms were sweaty with fear, and if she let up on her control for one second, she knew that hysteria would overwhelm her. This was the cla.s.sic example of a situation where you called your s.h.i.+p to be beamed back aboard, leaving the work of unsnarling everything to the captain-and her communicator wasn't working.

Get a hold on yourself, Beverly. Maybe it was just the car's armor; maybe the plates were too thick for the signal to penetrate them. She knew that wasn't likely, but it was at least possible and it gave her a small grain of hope. When they escaped their attackers and Vish raised the armor, everything would be all right. Things would be just fine then and she would be able to contact the s.h.i.+p.

She kept repeating that thought to herself, over and over, in the long minutes that the car twisted and dodged through what sounded like the mine fields she had seen in ancient flat-screen entertainments. This situation-being blind and isolated and alone with an alien who suddenly wasn't talking to her-was not something she had imagined in her worst nightmares. s.h.i.+p's doctors were virtually never cut off from the rest of their crewmates.

Finally, the car left their attackers behind. Vish was still hunched over the control panel, its ochre body screening the status boards from Crusher's view. She wasn't sure she could make any sense of the panels, but it would give her a feeling of security to think she knew where they were going, like the virtual reality of the star fields on the s.h.i.+p's viewscreens. "What's happening?" she asked, hoping Vish would answer.

The Jarada did not move, did not acknowledge Crusher's question with so much as a twitch of its antennae. Clenching her fists to fight off the panic of being unable to affect-much less control-her surroundings, Crusher forced herself to take several deep breaths. When she felt calmer, she adjusted the cus.h.i.+ons and settled herself in her seat, braced for a ride of indeterminate length.

After half an hour the car slowed from its breakneck speed and turned sharply to the left. To judge by the jolting and bouncing when they picked up speed, they were on an unpaved road seamed with ruts and pitted with potholes. Crusher hoped that Vish would lower the s.h.i.+elds so she could see where they were, but the Jarada still was not responding to her questions.

She felt more and more as though she were being kidnapped, but could see no reason for the abduction. Nothing Crusher had seen so far on Bel-Major pointed to problems that anyone would use terrorism to solve. Except for whoever had dropped the bombs on the groundcar, Jarada society seemed peaceful, orderly, and lacking the stresses that normally caused such disruptions. Nothing made much sense.

Crusher chased the problem around in her head, not reaching any conclusions except that she was missing several major pieces of the puzzle. Something in their information about the Jarada, or at least these particular Jarada, was so totally wrong as to make nonsense of everything else they knew. Captain Picard had thought the negotiations were going too easily, and the events of the last hour were proving his instincts correct.

She remembered discussing her own uneasiness with Troi earlier and wondered what had triggered her doubts. Something subtle, certainly, or Troi would have perceived it with her empathic abilities. The more she thought about it, the more Crusher remembered the clues that revealed how nervous all the humans had been, the little gestures and phrases that said how unsettling they found the Jarada even though Troi had not detected anything from their hosts in the way she normally sensed duplicity in strangers.

In most situations Crusher would have dismissed the away team's uneasiness as premission jitters or latent xenophobia, which affected everybody once in a while, no matter how hard they fought it. Still, reviewing their discussion last night, she spotted what they had all overlooked at the time-when as experienced a group as theirs all were on edge, something was wrong. Subliminally, they had recognized a problem, but no one had been able to articulate their perceptions as more than vague uneasiness. Given their mission, Picard would need much stronger evidence before he took any action that might destroy the trust he was trying to build.

I guess you've got that evidence now, Jean-Luc, she thought, forcing herself to relax against the seat. She wasn't sure how long it would take for the Enterprise to discover her predicament, but she knew it would mean the end of their mission. Meanwhile, she might as well use her time to collect whatever information she could. Anything she learned would help them sort out the situation later. She hadn't heard any explosions for some time, which probably meant she wasn't in any immediate danger. Certainly, if Vish had wanted to hurt her, the Jarada could have turned her over to the attackers. That meant Vish wanted her alive, at least for a while, and that gave her time to observe and to plan.

The groundcar slowed again and began climbing a steep incline, its engines laboring from the strain. After a short distance it slewed around a sharp hairpin turn and continued to climb. Five switchbacks later, Crusher was glad the armor plates still covered the windows. She was no judge of how far they had traveled, but from the tightness of the bends and the straining of the car's engine, she knew they were fairly high up a steep mountain. Again she wished for the safety of the Enterprise, for the security of the thick bulkheads and the multiple layers of force s.h.i.+elds that protected the s.h.i.+p. Planets were inherently dangerous, and traveling mountain roads in underpowered vehicles ranked just below refereeing Klingon war games on Crusher's list of activities she expected to shorten her life expectancy to zero.

To pa.s.s the time, Crusher tried to remember the briefing on BelMinor's geography. There had been something about a mountain range-to the south and east of the city, she thought-but she couldn't bring up any details. Given her ignorance of the speeds and directions they had traveled, she could be almost anywhere on the planet.

After four more switchbacks, two of which they negotiated by backing and taking a second run at the turn, the road leveled off. Crusher hoped they had reached the top, but that left her wondering what would happen next. She thought about asking Vish, but decided she would rather let the Jarada pilot the car, if that was what it was doing. Since the armor still covered the windows, they could be traveling along the edge of a cliff, for all she knew. Under the circ.u.mstances, distracting the driver did not seem prudent.

They traveled for fifteen more minutes, but encountered no more sharp curves or steep inclines. Despite her previous resolutions, Crusher was almost ready to demand an explanation from Vish when, unexpectedly, the surface beneath their tires went smooth. A paved road? On the top of a mountain? The doctor's first thought was that she had taken leave of her senses, that the whole trip was an elaborate simulator hoax and that her wild imaginings were all paranoid fantasies.

The groundcar rolled to a stop. From behind them Crusher heard a loud thump, like the sound of the shuttlebay doors seating themselves against their seals. Vish tapped a pad on the control panel and leaned back in its seat, giving a low hum that reminded the doctor of nothing so much as a sigh of relief. The s.h.i.+elds slid away from the windows, giving Crusher her first view of their surroundings. They were in a large, poorly lit cavern that extended deep into the mountain. Several other groundcars of various sizes were parked near them, but most of the area was empty.

Vish removed two small b.u.t.tons from the base of its antennae and turned to face Crusher. "Please forgive the manner of our bringing you here. As you saw, there are those who do not believe in the wisdom of deciding that your people should be allowed into this place."

"You mean, this was where we were coming all along?" Crusher inhaled sharply, fighting to keep from screaming at the Jarada for putting her through the hair-raising ride when they could have transported so much more easily. "Why didn't we just use the transporter to get here? I could have survived without the tour of the city."

Straightening itself to its full height, Vish gave Crusher a stare that she guessed would have paralyzed a graduate student or made a junior researcher quiver in its exoskeleton. "We do not permit transporters to operate within a seventy belevi radius of this complex. That translates to"-the Jarada c.o.c.ked its head to one side, its antennae bobbing, as it did the calculation-"about fifty of your kilometers. Our work is too sensitive for us to risk giving marauders easy access to our facilities."

"Marauders? Do you expect attackers even near your scientific facilities?" Crusher s.h.i.+vered at this new aspect of Jaradan life. They knew so little of these people-and most of their information was clearly wrong. Nothing in any report had suggested that violence directed against scientists, or against any other segment of their society, was a problem for BelMinor's Jaradan population.

Vish released its safety harness and leaned over to unfasten Crusher's. "So many questions. Come inside and we will answer them all." The Jarada opened the car door and stepped out, waiting for Crusher. Reluctantly, although she was not sure why, she climbed out of the vehicle and followed the insectoid.

They crossed the cavern to the near wall and Vish tapped a coded pattern into the door panel. The door opened and Crusher noticed that it looked thick enough to withstand a direct phaser hit from the Enterprise's main batteries. She s.h.i.+vered, wondering what sort of a.s.sault force they feared would attack the facility.

From her Earth history, she would have expected to find such a door on a secret weapons research facility, dating from the Eugenics Wars. Here, though, the occurrence was disturbing. Zelfreetrollan had invited her to visit a medical research facility, not a manufacturing plant for biological weapons. Either she had been given deliberate misinformation about the work done here, or the role of scientific researchers in Jaradan society had been grossly misrepresented. Or something even worse is going on. She s.h.i.+vered, not liking any of the possibilities.

Inside, the complex consisted of broad, well-lit corridors and large, well-equipped laboratory s.p.a.ces. Vish led Crusher around, introducing her to the researchers and explaining the various projects. At first Crusher tried to keep the different individuals straight, but soon she lost track. Everyone she met was small, though most of them were taller than Vish, and all had large heads. All were various shades of ochre and tan, but the shadings were so subtle that Crusher knew it would take her weeks to keep the differences straight. Each gave off the faint scent of sage or oregano or some other cooking spice Crusher could never remember even when she was reading the label for it. And, Heaven help her, most of the names began with "Zelbrek-k'vel," and despite the invitation to address them informally, she had trouble sorting the individual names from the first three, which she knew meant "worker of the scientific caste of the hive Zel."

Many of the projects she was shown centered around Vish's favorite topic, the role of nutrition on Jaradan development. Other groups were working on plant biology, on genetically engineering imported plant species to survive BelMinor's radiation, and on exploring the effects of that radiation on the Jarada. The researchers were all friendly, eager to show her their work and excited when she made comments on what they were doing.

As the afternoon wore on, Crusher became more and more puzzled. Nothing she saw justified the secrecy with which she had been brought to the facility nor the elaborate security precautions that guarded the researchers. She began watching the Jarada around her, looking for anything abnormal, trying to spot any differences that separated these people from each other or from any other Jarada she had met.

The first clue presented itself as she was listening to a young researcher discuss its studies into the link between breveen genetics and nutrition. It was showing her a series of gla.s.s tanks, each containing plants with different colored flowers. "We've isolated the genes that control every blossom color except one. The most common color for breveen on our homeworld is a pale lavender, which we have been unable to produce in any of our tests."

The Jarada paused, its eyes s.h.i.+fting color as it focused on various parts of the room. After a moment it gave its head a couple of sharp jerks and returned to its explanation. "Reproducing the pale lavender flower, which is the most common shade on our homeworld, has proved impossible in all our tests. Since all the colors are determined by the genetics, with the expression of the genes being controlled by the effect of certain trace elements on enzyme function, and since even the first-generation plants display this problem ..."

When the young researcher paused again, its head twitching violently, every Jarada in the room began running toward it. Even so, they were not fast enough. With a falsetto shriek it launched itself at Crusher, its claws slas.h.i.+ng toward her eyes. She threw her arm across her face and retreated until a lab bench hit her legs. The Jarada raked its claws against her arm, ripping her uniform and gouging deeply into her flesh. Crusher jerked backward and overbalanced, landing across the bench in a crash of breaking gla.s.sware and smashed experiments.

The other Jarada overwhelmed the young researcher and hauled it away. It continued to twitch and to shriek, its behavior reminding Crusher of her brief stint as a young intern on the mental wards after the Kadreelan plague so many years ago. For most victims the plague killed swiftly and horribly, but a few people survived with their mental faculties ravaged. Crusher shuddered at the memory of what it had been like when the sudden and unexpected influx of incurably insane, triple what anyone had dealt with in over a century, had stretched the Federation's resources beyond their capacity.

Slowly, Crusher pushed herself upright, trying to avoid cutting herself further on the broken gla.s.s. The claw gouges on her forearm were bleeding freely and her back felt as though slivers of gla.s.s had cut through her uniform in several places. She ought to be furious, she thought, but couldn't summon the emotion. The attack had been too sudden. Her hosts had recognized the symptoms, had known what was going to happen, but even for them, things had happened too quickly.