“Negative,”Cethente said. “The bilitrium would amplify that even worse than the phasers and quantum torpedoes. It’s particularly effective at concentrating and blue-shifting the gamma-ray energy of an antimatter reaction. No, thank you,”it went on, apparently speaking to Kershul now, though it was hard to tell without a head it could turn. “It would have no more effect on me than the radiation.”

“But Tasanee may be on to something with the shuttles,” Keru said. “What if we use them to push on the asteroid? No energy beams to destabilize it further, just sheer brute force. Could their engines push it far enough to miss Droplet?”

“There’s a problem there,” Crandall said. “The energy surge fried the hangar bay’s force field and power systems. We can’t open the doors, and we’d lose a fair chunk of atmosphere if we did. And we’d need radiation suits to work in the hangar under these conditions—it would slow repairs.”

“What about the captain’s skiff?” Keru said. “Is the La Roccain working order?”

Crandall checked a console. “Some system damage, mostly to sensors, com arrays, transporters. But it was powered down, so its main systems are still intact. It would need a few swapouts, but it could be ready to go in…two hours?”

“I want it sooner, Crandall. Top priority along with shields. That skiff may be all we’ve got.” Vale sighed. “What about communications? Can we use the shuttles’ systems to contact our teams at Droplet, let them know what’s happened?”

“Not through this interference,” Kuu’iut said.

“But they have a shuttle monitoring us optically from orbit,”Cethente chimed. “They should have observed the event by now, and should be able to determine fairly soon that the asteroid’s course has not materially changed.”

“Will they be all right?” Panyarachun asked.

“Probably, as long as they stay far enough from the impact site,” Vale said. “But I can’t say the same for the squales. They may be in for major loss of life if we can’t fix this.”

Keru moved in closer and spoke softly. “Chris…technically the Prime Directive says not to interfere in natural disasters on pre-warp planets. And impacts like this proba bly happen on Droplet more often than on most worlds. We didn’t cause this, and we may even have made it worse.”

“Maybe, Ranul. But we’ve already disrupted their lives enough without meaning to. Besides, we’re already committed. If we stop now, then hundreds, maybe thousands of squales could die because of our choice to stop. That’s as bad as if we’d chucked the asteroid at them ourselves.”

“I can accept that,” Keru said. Then he leaned still closer. “Just between you, me, and the warp core, I think it’s crazy to let people die because we’re afraid of damaging their culture. I’m always happy to find a loophole around that part of the Directive.”

“No comment,” Vale said, though her smile belied it. “But there’s more. Theory says our people should be safe so long as they keep their distance. But theory’s only as good as the data plugged into it. We didn’t know about that bilitrium and anicium. This system keeps throwing surprises at us.” Her gaze turned outward. “Who knows what else we might have overlooked?”

DROPLET

Ensign Lavena had actually managed, after hours of cajoling, to persuade the senior members of the squale pod (for that seemed to be their basic social unit) to approach close enough to the scouter gig that they could meet Riker and converse with him directly, with Aili interpreting between English and Selkie. Normally Riker’s combadge translator could do that; without a translation matrix for squale, it would default to the language of the next nearest indi vidual, Lavena. But Aili had recommended against that, for the squales would be uneasy with a technological mediator. He had the gig’s systems and all their equipment powered down or on standby.

Even so, the squales had approached only reluctantly, the chromatophores in their skin blushing a mottled blue, camouflaging themselves in an instinctive fear reaction. Aili had done a fine job reassuring them, but some deep-rooted anxiety remained. Riker tried to imagine how inanimate matter would seem to beings who had never encountered stone or metal. It was hard to understand why their reaction was so extreme. Even living things had inert components, such as the shells of the floater polyps and the local arthropods. He would have thought that at least a few of the squales might show enough curiosity to want a closer look, but Lavena couldn’t coax them to come closer than a few meters. In the name of diplomacy, Riker finally stripped down to swim briefs and paddled out from the gig a short distance, trailing a length of line behind him so he wouldn’t be separated from it by a powerful swell or other unexpected event. Even on a leash, it was not normally a wise idea to leave a boat untended; he would have preferred it if Huilan or Ra-Havreii could have been along too. But the gig was a catamaran design, able to remain afloat even if capsized. Plus, this was Lavena’s element; if something untoward did occur, he trusted her to get him safely back to the gig.

Riker did his best to try to participate in the language lesson that followed. The squales needed to hear from him directly, at least enough to establish his authority, so he needed to use what Selkie he remembered, plus what Lavena helped him brush up on, to get his ideas across. But airborne Selkie was a different dialect than aquatic Selkie. “Umm, that’s not the problem,” Lavena said when it seemed he wasn’t getting through. “The squales have a keen grasp of sound patterns and linguistic structure—the dialect difference doesn’t bother them. And they can hear fine out of the water,” she finished, seeming reluctant to say it.

“My accent’s that bad, huh?”

Her crests flushed. “I don’t know if accent is the word. More a matter of pitch and rhythm…”

He sighed. “I wish I had my trombone. I’m not much of a singer.”

Once past the usual “We come in peace” material, Riker tried to get across the idea of Titan’s exploratory purpose and their intense curiosity about this world and the squales’ remarkable technology. He had observed, both in first contacts and dating, that it usually helped break the ice to show interest in the other party and get them talking about themselves. And since the squales had been monitoring the away teams from afar with their living probes, Riker assumed they were an inquisitive people as well, despite their oddly inflexible fear of inanimate technology. He hoped to connect with their species through that common interest in discovery.