But try telling Melora that. The female was impossible to please lately. “Nice to see someone here’s paying attention,” she said with gross and deliberate unfairness. “We think they grow together into clusters so they can support more of an ecosystem, including taller trees, which let them catch more wind. As well as supplying more nutrients. Still, even with all that,” she went on to Aili, essentially ignoring him now that she’d successfully proven him ignorant of one minor bit of trivia, “they still have trouble finding enough food once they get too big. So eventually the new-formed polyps grow into bubbles, or maybe buds is a better word. The buds break off and form new floaters, and eventually all that’s left of the parent colony is a dead, hollow husk. Which, of course, has got its own little island ecosystem growing on top of it. And the whole cycle begins again.”

“That’s lovely,” Aili said. “What an amazing planet. Thanks for convincing us to come here, Melora.”

“My pleasure.”

Another swell sent the island racing skyward, leaving Xin’s stomach behind. He clung to the mossy growth on the ground beneath him until the ocean dropped him back down again. “Yes, thank you,” he grumbled, clambering to his feet— No, don’t bother helping me, oh, that’s right, you aren’t—and rubbing his sore back. “A veritable Endless Sky you’ve brought us to. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to camp to lie down.” At least the camp had its own gravity plating and inertial damping field. There he could ride out the swells and feel as steady as he did aboard Titan—so long as he didn’t open his eyes.

He had an agreeable nap, until he was awakened by Melora joining him in bed. They might not have been very fond of each other right now, but fortunately the lovely Elaysian understood that that was no reason to deny themselves the pleasures of the flesh. Indeed, their mutual annoyance with one another added a stimulating intensity to their physical passion. He rather hoped she wouldn’t stop being angry at him anytime soon. At least it would make things interesting until she finally left him.

Because it was inevitable that she would leave him, wasn’t it? They would have their fun and move on, just as always. Perhaps with somewhat more duration and intensity than most of his affairs, and to be cherished for that, but that was all.

But he found himself unexpectedly troubled by the prospect of its ending. So he stopped thinking of it and concentrated on the here and now, delivering a finely calibrated taunt on the subject of her pleasuring technique in order to goad the highly competitive Elaysian into proving him wrong….

Three hours later, the away team’s hydrophones in the deep sound channel picked up the contact signal agreed upon between Aili Lavena and the squales, coming from a location currently about thirty kilometers northeast of the main base. Aili wished the squales weren’t so wary of approach ing technology; she couldn’t swim that distance in a reasonable time, so she would have to don the hydration suit and ride in the scouter gig again.

The captain seemed distracted when he arrived in the shuttle half an hour later. “Is everything all right, sir?” Melora asked him as he headed toward the waiting gig and its Selkie pilot. This time it would be only Aili and the captain, since Ra-Havreii was currently working with Y’lira Modan on a linguistic analysis of the sounds made by the squales’ various helper species (on the theory that decoding a simpler form of the language might provide the foundation for a squale translation matrix) and Huilan had some kind of counseling emergency up on the ship. (Counselor Haaj wasn’t qualified as a diplomatic officer; with his confrontational manner, that would be a good way to start a few wars.)

Riker filled them in on the asteroid detection. “It turns out to be on a collision course with Droplet after all, about seven hours away. I’ve ordered Commander Vale to intercept and deflect it onto a safe trajectory.”

“Damn,” Melora said. “Should we be preparing for an evacuation?”

“It’s not that grave a risk. More an inconvenience. It’ll take a fair amount of power, cutting it this close, but nothing the ship and crew can’t handle.”

“Sir,” Ra-Havreii asked, “doesn’t the Prime Directive say we shouldn’t interfere in natural disasters?”

“Consider it a precaution to protect our own away teams. Besides, we’re in a delicate enough Prime Directive situation already without an asteroid impact complicating things.”

Aili could tell that Riker wasn’t happy to have been called away from the bridge—or to be away from his wife and child—at a time like this. As they boarded the gig, she said, “Captain, I really want to thank you for agreeing to help with this. I know it must be rough to be away from your family right now.”

He smiled. “It’s quite all right, Aili. Counselor Troi and I both understand the demands of duty.” Settling in, he started the gig’s induction motor, which gave off only a quiet hum to signal its activation as the craft sped forward. Aili appreciated that; she’d read horror stories of how the crude propulsion systems of industrial-era Earth and other worlds had polluted their oceans with constant, deafening noise, making life unbearable for their denizens.

“Besides,” Riker went on, “I’ll get to see plenty of my little girl once she’s born. After all, Deanna’s the diplomatic officer—aside from these last few months, she spends more time off the ship than I do.”

She smiled at him through her faceplate. “You seem excited about becoming a father.”

He chuckled. “Excited is one way of putting it. To be honest, I—” He broke off. Though Will Riker was a gregarious captain, there always remained a dividing line between a captain and his crew. “Let’s just say it’ll be a new experience for me.”

“Seems to me you’ve always been quick to embrace new experiences.” After a second, she felt her crests flush hot inside the hydration suit’s fins—that had come out with more innuendo than she’d intended. “Uh, sir.”

If he caught the implied double entendre, the captain gave no sign of it. “But you—how many children did you have again, Ensign?”

Her crests flushed deeper. “Uh, eight, sir. Three sons, five daughters.”