WU GAZED AT LIEUTENANT ULELO across the yellowish shimmer of the electromagnetic barrier that incarcerated him. He was sitting on the bed provided for his use, looking up at her.

If Wu had expected Ulelo to look repentant, he wasn’t. He didn’t even look worried, though he had to know that he was headed for a Federation penal colony.

But he didn’t look arrogant either. More than anything, he reminded the second officer of a small boy, caught up in something he didn’t quite understand.

A small boy, Wu reminded herself, who had put one over on all of them, betraying his crewmates and sending information on any number of key operating systems to some mysterious third party.

She glanced at Pierzynski, the security officer on duty, and nodded. In response, Pierzynski fingered a code into the touch-sensitive, metal-alloy plate set into the bulkhead next to Ulelo’s cell.

A moment later, the barrier was gone. Wu stepped inside the enclosure, which housed a chair in addition to the prisoner’s bed, and then glanced at Pierzynski again. Inputting another code, the security officer restored the barrier.

Wu sat down in the chair and waited a moment. She wanted to see if Ulelo had anything to say for himself—protests of innocence, that sort of thing.

He didn’t. He just looked at her.

“Well,” she said finally, in an attempt to loosen things up, “to tell you the truth, I never pictured us having a conversation here in the brig.”

Ulelo frowned a little, but didn’t say anything in response.

It was all right. Wu hadn’t expected him to confess right off the bat. Not after he had run a covert operation for months without so much as a bead of sweat.

“I’d like you to answer some questions,” she said. “If you cooperate, it may make a difference in your sentence.”

He remained silent.

Wu saw that she had her work cut out for her.

“Our logs indicate a series of transmissions over the last several weeks. You made those transmissions, yes?”

Ulelo nodded.

At least he’s not denying it. “Each transmission,” said the second officer, “contained technical specs on one or more of the Stargazer’s systems. This was information you initially collected in your personal files.”

Again, the prisoner nodded.

“And when you had enough to justify the risk, you sent it—right from your com station.”

Another nod. Wu was encouraged.

“What I find puzzling,” she said, “is that those transmissions weren’t sent to any set of coordinates twice. They were sent in what seems like every possible direction.”

Ulelo had no comment.

“What were you trying to accomplish?” she asked.

“I was following orders,” he said, surprising her.

Now we’re getting somewhere. “Whose orders?”

Ulelo fell silent again.

But Wu wasn’t going to give up so easily. “Lieutenant, you said you were following orders. I asked you whose they were.”

The com officer just stared at her.

“Was it the Ubarrak?” she ventured, groping in the dark.

He shook his head. “No.”

Good, Wu thought. If we can’t get a direct answer, maybe we can at least narrow it down.

“The Cardassians?”

Ulelo hesitated this time. But in the end, he answered in the negative again.

Wu searched his eyes. Did his hesitation mean something? Was it the Cardassians after all?

She didn’t let on about her suspicion. Why put the com officer on his guard? Maybe he would say something later that would nail it down for her.

“The Klingons?” she asked.

The Federation wasn’t at odds with the Empire these days. Still, one never knew….

“No,” said Ulelo, as easily as he had ruled out the Ubarrak. No hesitation at all that time.

There weren’t too many other possibilities. Of course, Ulelo could have been in cahoots with a party heretofore undiscovered by the Federation, but Wu couldn’t inquire about entities of which she was unaware.

Ulelo would have to volunteer that kind of information. And judging from the way their conversation was going, he wasn’t about to do that.

“What about the Aristaani?” she suggested.

It was a belligerent species, and one with which the Federation had butted heads on occasion. But to Wu’s knowledge, they weren’t the type to engage in espionage.

That made it all the more surprising when Ulelo said, “Yes.”

He said it freely, too—as if he had no compunctions about saying it. And yet he hadn’t been willing to mention the Aristaani when Wu had asked him an open-ended question.

She didn’t understand. Unless Ulelo was trying to deceive her, throw her off the trail…

But her instincts, and the look on his face, told her that he wasn’t doing that at all. He was telling her the truth. She would have bet on it.

“The Aristaani,” she said, just to be sure.

Ulelo nodded. “Yes.”

But the more she thought about it, the less she believed it. The Aristaani were even more bullheaded and battle-hungry than the Klingons. It had always been their practice to meet their enemies head-on.

So why change now? Wu wished she knew.

“Did the Aristaani tell you what they were planning to do with this information?”

Ulelo shook his head. “No.”

Of course not. That would have made Wu’s job too easy. “How did you come to work for them?”

The prisoner’s eyes seemed to glaze over for a moment. Then he said, “Work for whom?”

What is this, a game? “The Aristaani.”

A strange look came over Ulelo’s face. An almost frightened look. “I didn’t work for the Aristaani.”

“You just said you did,” Wu told him, feeling more than a hint of annoyance now.

The prisoner shook his head from side to side. “No,” he said, “not the Aristaani. The Andorians.”

“The Andorians…?” she echoed incredulously.

The Andorians were members of the Federation. Some of their people were serving on Federation starships. It seemed unlikely that they would go to such trouble to obtain technical information on the Stargazer.

Ulelo looked at her, his eyes full of innocence. “Yes.”

Anger tightened Wu’s jaw. “Do you know what you’re saying, Lieutenant?”

His eyes glazed over again, as if he were trying to see something far away. “No,” he whispered, “not the Andorians. Of course not. It was the Vulcans….”

Wu took a breath, then let it out. The Vulcans. As if that made any sense at all.

It was pretty clear that she wasn’t going to get anything out of Ulelo. What wasn’t clear was why. Was he just pretending to have lost his mind in order to stonewall her? Or was there something truly wrong with him?

One thing was certain: She wasn’t going to find out by remaining in the brig. Getting to her feet, she signaled to Pierzynski, who had been watching from the other side of the barrier.

The security officer let Wu out, then reactivated the forcefield. It hummed a little—or rather, its generators did—as the second officer paused to consider Ulelo again.

He looked peaceful once more, innocent, returning her scrutiny with the same mild interest he had shown earlier. It was as if they hadn’t had a conversation at all.

Wu regarded him a moment longer. Then she looked up at the intercom grid hidden in the ceiling and said, “Wu to Doctor Greyhorse.”

“This is Greyhorse,” came the reply.

“I’d like you to examine Ulelo,” Wu told him.

“You think there’s something wrong with him?” Greyhorse asked. He sounded skeptical.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “He seems confused at times. Muddled. Hardly the behavior of a man clever enough to do the things we’ve accused him of doing. I want to find out why.”

“All right,” said the doctor. “Bring him down to sickbay. I’ll put him through the ringer.”

“Thank you,” said the second officer. “Wu out.”

“It angers me,” said Gerda Asmund.

Her twin sister, Idun, who was sitting beside her at the Stargazer’s helm console, glanced at Gerda. “Ulelo?”

“Yes,” said Gerda, the muscles bunching in her jaw. “Ulelo.” She said the name as if it were rancid meat, as if she found each syllable more loathsome than the one before it.

Idun was angry as well. As someone who had been raised on Klingon virtues, she despised the notion of treachery. It made her skin crawl like a plate of serpent worms.

She remembered the stories her Klingon father had told them about those who betrayed kin and comrades. There was Lifdag, who—appalled by his brother Farrl’s treachery—not only killed Farrl but took his own life thereafter. And then there was Tupran, son of Tuprox, who opened the doors of his father’s house to its enemies—and ironically became their first victim.

Traitors were even worse than cowards, Idun’s father had said. Tradition said that cowards were to be shunned, but traitors had to be killed on sight.

Gerda made a sound of disgust. “Had I been the first to discover Ulelo’s deceit, I might not have been as patient or as restrained as Lieutenant Paxton.”

Idun felt the same way. Once Ulelo’s guilt became plain to her, it would have been difficult indeed not to go after him.

“But you didn’t know,” she reminded her sister. “You never even suspected that Ulelo had another agenda.” Which was why Gerda and Idun were as surprised as anyone when security showed up and took the com officer away.

“You’re right,” said Gerda, her voice husky with emotion. “I didn’t suspect Ulelo. I didn’t question his loyalty for a moment.” She turned to Idun, her eyes hard and fierce. “And that is precisely what angers me.”

 

There were three of them in the captain’s ready room—Wu, Greyhorse, and Picard himself.

The doctor, who didn’t come to see the captain there very often—didn’t leave his office very often, for that matter—looked cramped and constrained. It wasn’t just that the plastiform chair was too small to accommodate his bulk. It seemed that the whole room was too small for him.

“You have examined Ulelo,” said Picard, already regretting that he hadn’t called this meeting in the roomier precincts of Greyhorse’s sickbay.

“I have indeed,” said the medical officer. “Actually, I gave Ulelo a routine checkup just the other day and found nothing of concern. But at Commander Wu’s request, I ran an expanded battery of tests on him—including anything I could think of that seemed at all relevant to Ulelo’s situation.”

“And?” the captain asked.

“By all physical standards,” said the chief medical officer, “Ulelo is the picture of health. No chemical imbalances, no blockages, no evidence of injury. In short, nothing that would result in aberrational behavior.”

Picard shifted in his seat. “Then—”

Greyhorse held up a peremptory hand, disregarding the difference in their ranks. “I also conducted a test that wasn’t strictly medical. I asked Ulelo some yes-or-no questions—and monitored his nervous system when he answered.”

“A lie-detector test,” Wu noted.

“Precisely,” said Greyhorse. “I began by asking Ulelo about the Klingons, since they came up in the course of your conversation with him. Without hesitation, he identified the Klingons as our enemies. And yet, when I asked him about the Klingons a few minutes later, he said just as unhesitatingly that they were our allies.”

The doctor turned to Picard. “Like Commander Wu, I found myself wondering if Ulelo was up to something. But his readouts showed that he wasn’t lying. At the time he made those statements, he actually believed them.”

“So his problem is a psychological one,” Picard concluded.

“Evidently,” said Greyhorse. “The funny thing is that Ulelo is absolutely lucid in most respects, especially those that pertain to his work as a communications officer. But when it comes to other parts of his life, he seems lost.”

He shrugged his mountainous shoulders. “I wasn’t trained to be a counselor. However, I would say Ulelo is schizophrenic—out of touch with certain aspects of our reality.”

The captain looked at him, taking a moment to absorb the implications, which were considerable. “If that is so, then his periodic data transmissions…?”

“Were harmless,” said the medical officer. “Exercises in fantasy, sent to no one. Or rather, no one who exists outside the precincts of Ulelo’s mind.”

“Harmless,” Picard repeated.

“If you ask me,” said Greyhorse, “yes.”

Picard nodded. “Thank you, Doctor.” He turned to Wu. “I will make arrangements to get the lieutenant to an appropriate facility for more complete diagnosis and treatment. But while he is on the Stargazer, I would like him kept in the brig—just in case.”

Wu agreed that that would be the wisest course of action, Greyhorse’s observations notwithstanding. Then the captain adjourned the meeting.

After Picard watched his officers depart, Greyhorse more eagerly than Wu, he sat in his desk chair for a moment. After all that, he told himself.

For Ulelo’s treachery to be identified as a symptom of a damaged psyche…it was shocking. Almost as shocking, in fact, as finding out about the lieutenant’s transgression in the first place.

And yet, it was rather a relief, wasn’t it? They would all breathe easier knowing that Ulelo’s confederates were waking dreams, and nothing more.

 

Ensign Jiterica surveyed her new appearance in the mirror that hung from her closet door.

Until now, she hadn’t made much use of either the closet or the reflective surface. But then, her only garment had been her containment suit, one specially retrofitted with her unusual set of needs in mind.

Jiterica’s species, the Nizhrak’a, had evolved in the atmosphere of a gas giant in the Sonada Sin system. Had she still been there, she could have expanded to her full volume and flowed naturally from wind to fierce, ragged wind. But on a starship, made for beings much more dense and compact than herself, she had to operate in a severely condensed form.

Hence, the stiff, bulky suit that Jiterica had endured almost every moment of every day. It had been perhaps the most difficult part of her adjustment to life on the Stargazer, and that was saying something.

But she hadn’t imagined that she had any alternative. She could either wear the suit or surrender any hope of functioning as an officer in Starfleet.

Until now.

The suit Jiterica had just put on was considerably more streamlined and lightweight than the other one, and considerably easier to manipulate. It made her look more like the other crewmen on board—the female crewmen in particular.

“What do you think?” asked Simenon, who was standing behind her in his lab coat, his arms folded across his chest.

“It’s…wonderful,” she said.

Before, the Nizhrak’s artificial voice had been tinny, unnatural. Even she had been able to hear that after a while. Now the speech sounds she made were virtually indistinguishable from those made by humanoid throats.

“Good,” said Simenon, who had designed and manufactured the new suit with the help of a replicator. “And I take it the forcefield is doing its job?”

“Perfectly,” she told him. Or at least, as well as the forcefield in her other suit.

“Try sitting,” he said.

Jiterica moved to her bed and sat down. It was a considerably less arduous task than it had been before. But then, her suit was nearly as flexible as living epidermis—or so Simenon had assured her.

She looked at herself in the mirror again. It might have been one of the Asmunds sitting there in the suit, or Urajel, or Commander Wu. That’s how well proportioned and at ease she looked.

Paris would be pleased when he returned.

But he would also be disturbed, as Jiterica was, by the situation surrounding Lieutenant Ulelo. News about him had spread through the Stargazer like a ripple of ionic wind on her homeworld, tearing at the bonds of trust and community that had been forged on the ship, making chaos of calm.

Fortunately, Ulelo’s actions had been identified as the product of an unbalanced mind, attempts to connect to someone or something that never existed. The Stargazer wasn’t in any danger.

However, it bothered Jiterica that Ulelo was something other than what he had seemed. Among her people, there was no such thing as subterfuge or deception, no possibility of treachery or betrayal.

Obviously, she reflected, I still have a lot to learn about humanoids.

 

Picard was standing by the single observation port in his ready room, taking in the beauty of the stars that were rushing past, when his weapons officer paid him an unexpected visit.

“Mister Vigo,” he said, as the Pandrilite’s impressive form was revealed on the threshold.

“Sir,” said Vigo.

Normally he was a cheerful soul, his spirits remarkably difficult to dampen. But not at the moment. His face was as stern as Picard had ever seen it.

“You appear to have something on your mind,” the captain observed.

“I didn’t want to disturb you,” he said, “while you were dealing with Lieutenant Ulelo, and the implications of what he had done. But now that we know he’s harmless…”

“Yes?” said Picard.

Vigo’s nostrils flared. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “About Ejanix. About the things he did…and said.”

Ejanix had been a Pandrilite, like Vigo. In fact, he had been Vigo’s mentor back on their homeworld.

In those days, Ejanix was known as a brilliant theoretician—brilliant enough to be invited to teach at Starfleet Academy, where he continued to distinguish himself. But his crowning achievements were to come on Wayland Prime, where Starfleet had established a think tank for weapons development.

His particular focus was on phaser technology—improving its range, its accuracy, its energy efficiency. It had seemed he was making progress on Wayland Prime, turning in the caliber of work everyone expected of him.

But he betrayed Starfleet and his colleagues by opening the installation to a band of Pandrilite terrorists, intending to help finance a revolution by selling Starfleet’s weapons research. And he would have succeeded had it not been for Vigo.

Eventually, Ejanix saw the error of his ways, and died heroically at the hands of his rebel allies. But that didn’t erase the fact of his treachery—not in Picard’s mind, and certainly not when it came to the official record.

“Go on,” said the captain.

Vigo’s gaze hardened. “I don’t condone his treachery, you understand. Not for a minute.”

The weapons officer fell into silence then. But Picard didn’t make a move to fill it. Clearly, Vigo had more to say.

“And yet,” he continued at last, “I feel it’s a mistake to dismiss what he told me about Pandril.”

The captain was intrigued. “And what, exactly, did he tell you about Pandril?”

Vigo heaved a sigh—an extravagant gesture, given his massive size and physique. “He said that Pandrilite society is out of balance—that the Lesser Castes are oppressed by the Elevated Castes, to which my family belongs. And that our governing council, when presented with evidence of this imbalance, looks the other way.”

Picard hadn’t heard any of this before. Obviously, Vigo had been keeping it to himself—and letting it fester like an untreated wound. “Is that why Ejanix decided to betray Starfleet?”

“Yes,” said Vigo. “He felt there was no way within the system to obtain justice for the Lesser Castes.”

“However,” the captain noted, “that may only have been Ejanix’s perception. The truth may be a different matter entirely.”

The lieutenant looked contemplative for a moment. “Ejanix told me that I had been away from Pandril for too long, or I would have seen the Lesser Castes’ oppression for myself. He suggested that I rectify the oversight.”

Picard wasn’t happy to hear that. “Rectify it how?” he asked. “By giving up your position on the Stargazer and returning to Pandril? What are we talking about?”

“A leave of absence.” Vigo looked at his superior beseechingly. “An indefinite leave of absence.”

“I see,” said the captain. He leaned back in his chair to ponder the idea. “And what if you find that the situation on Pandril is as Ejanix said?”

“Then those in the upper castes should be made aware of it—preferably by a member of their own caste. And if I must be the one to tell them, I accept that responsibility.”

Picard frowned. It was clear that Vigo had given the matter a good deal of thought, and that his decision hadn’t been an easy one.

He didn’t like the idea of losing his senior weapons officer—especially when the sector was so unsettled. However, if anyone had earned his understanding, it was Vigo.

“I will grant you such a leave,” the captain said, “if that is what you really want.”

“It is,” said Vigo. “But,” he was quick to add, “I don’t want to leave you understaffed.”

Picard smiled. “It is not as if I will not miss your expertise, Lieutenant. However, we do have other experienced weapons officers. I am certain that we will get by, if returning to Pandril is that important to you.”

Vigo nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

“You are welcome,” said Picard.

He had long ago made it a policy never to stand in the way of his crew. If Vigo had a personal mission to carry out, the captain would do everything in his power to facilitate it.

He just hoped he wouldn’t have occasion to regret it.

 

Ben Zoma had been counting the hours until his shuttle got within transporter range of the Antares and he could say good-bye to the erstwhile Arlen McAteer.

The first officer had met men inclined toward criticism before, but he had never met anyone inclined toward so much criticism. It seemed that whatever minute detail Ben Zoma or his security officers took care of, there was a better way to handle it—and McAteer was generous enough to share it with them.

Ben Zoma had a hard time believing it was completely a matter of duty. It seemed to him that McAteer was practicing for the moment when he would put Picard in front of a competency hearing—a proceeding in which the admiral would not only present the case for Picard’s demotion, but also rule on it.

But that was the way of it in such hearings. Expediency ruled. If justice was served, it was strictly a coincidence.

Ben Zoma glanced for what might have been the thousandth time at the chronometer set into the shuttle’s helm console. One hour and ten minutes until they could drop off McAteer and head for home.

Normally, he wouldn’t have been in any hurry to contact their rendezvous partner. But in this case, he couldn’t wait. “Hail the Antares,” he told Garner, who was now riding shotgun.

“Aye, sir,” she said.

The admiral turned to Ramirez, the lovely, dark-haired security officer who had wound up next to him, and said, “Too bad you won’t have the opportunity to spend some time with Captain Vayishra. I think you’d learn a few things.”

Feeling the sting of implied criticism, Ben Zoma leaned forward from his seat in the rear. “I’ve learned quite a bit from Captain Picard, sir.”

McAteer cast a steely glance in Ben Zoma’s direction. “I’m sure you have, Commander.”

But the admiral wasn’t saying whether what Ben Zoma had learned was good or bad. His teeth grinding together, the first officer toyed with the notion of a response—until he saw the expression of surprise on Garner’s face.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

Garner turned to look back at him. “I’m afraid there’s no answer, sir.”

“No answer?” McAteer echoed. “Are you sure, Lieutenant?”

Garner nodded. “I am, sir.”

Ben Zoma frowned. The Antares should have been well within communications range by now. If she wasn’t, there was no way she was going to make the rendezvous in time.

Of course, starships experienced communications glitches from time to time—and for all kinds of reasons, ranging from the mechanical to the celestial. Sometimes the problem was as simple as a crossed circuit.

It was inconvenient, but it happened. No reason to be concerned, Ben Zoma reflected.

“Keep trying,” he told Garner.

The lieutenant assured him that she would do that.