And if Will Riker had to live it out with me? Well, a girl has needs. And he would certainly need someone to comfort him.

She spent a pleasant hour imagining the details of that comfort. It was just a fantasy, of course. But Aili knew there was a chance it could become reality, and she could live with that.

TITAN

It was Eviku who finally figured out what was driving the life forms of Droplet to their increasingly erratic, aggressive behavior. “I realized that I felt a similar anxiety myself when I was on the planet,” he told Vale and the others gathered in the conference room. “At first I assumed it was because of my…well, my fears for the captain and Ensign Lavena. But then I realized that there was a direct correlation between how close I was to Droplet and how anxious I felt. And it struck me that Arkenites have something in common with Dropletian life forms.”

“Your magnetic sensitivity,” Vale realized, her eyes going to the black magnetic headdress he wore to maintain his equilibrium.

“Yes. We had assumed the Dropletian animals’ magnetic sense was used primarily for navigation. But what if it has some influence over their behavior as well?” He went to the viewscreen and pulled up a cross-section graphic of Droplet and its magnetic field. “According to our readings, the planetary magnetic field has been subtly altered since the impact. This is because the field has two sources. In addition to the core dynamo that creates the field, the hypersaline layer at the base of the ocean generates a saltwater dynamo effect that enhances and modulates the field. The interaction of the two dynamos creates an oscillation of sorts, a regular fluctuation like a, well, a sort of heartbeat for the planet.”

“Or a musical beat,” Ra-Havreii said. “From what we know of the squales, they perceive the world in very musical terms.”

Vale’s eyes widened. “So they could be constantly aware of this magnetic pulsing in their heads? Like a…a rhythm track for their lives?”

“More than just a rhythm,” Eviku said. “The way the field patterns fluctuate as the saltwater dynamo undergoes convection, thermal changes, and so forth produces modulations and variations on top of the basic rhythm.”

“Like modulations in pitch, variations in intensity and duration,” Ra-Havreii added, smiling now. “A perpetual song underlying their whole existence—a song without sound.”

And I get annoyed enough having a song stuck in my head for more than a day or two,Vale thought. But then, if she’d lived her whole life with a song in her head, she’d probably take it for granted.

“Incidentally,” Eviku went on, “we now think that’s why the squales have been so reluctant to come near our technology. It wasn’t just fear of the unknown; the EM fields emitted by our vessels and devices may have been causing them discomfort. Or perhaps simply drowning out the song.”

“I have a team working with Life Sciences on finding a way to damp their emissions,” Ra-Havreii said.

Eviku called up graphics of the field parameters in the wake of the impact event. “But the song appears to have changed recently. It’s all those exotic dissolved minerals and dust sinking down to the hypersaline layer. Minerals that still carry a substantial residual charge of energy from our attacks on the asteroid.”

“And not just the solar or kinetic energy these compounds usually absorb,” Pazlar elaborated. “Nadion energy from the phasers, gravitons from the tractor beams, thoron and subspace radiation from the quantum torpedoes, gamma, x-and m-rays from the antimatter blast. It’s a potent cocktail. And as more and more of those energized remnants descend into the dynamo layer, their exotic emissions disrupt the magnetic field.”

Vale frowned. “So…the planet is singing off-key?”

“In a sense,” Eviku said. “It creates a dissonance. Imagine if you had to listen to music whose pitch had been flattened and whose timbre was turned into a high-pitched whine. With periodic bursts of noise as pockets of asteroid debris discharge.”

Oh my God, they’re listening to bagpipes.“So the chaos down there…it’s our fault. If we’d just left well enough alone…” She exchanged a look with Keru.

But he would have none of it. He met her gaze evenly and asked, “So what can we do to fix it?”

Pazlar went on as Eviku resumed his seat. “First we need to evaluate the condition of the dynamo layer in more detail. Our scans from up here just don’t get enough resolution.”

Vale stared. “From up here? You mean we need to dive down there.” The Elaysian nodded. “Melora, the pressure’s over a hundred thousand atmospheres! We don’t have anything that can withstand that.”

“Don’t we?” Keru asked. “Remember that ocean in space Tuvok told us about, the one Voyagerencountered? As I recall, their Delta Flyerdove down a good six hundred kilometers. This ocean’s only ninety.”

“The pressure in the Monean ocean was relatively low,” Pazlar said, “or else most of it would’ve been allotropic ice like Droplet’s mantle. Its core generators gave off just enough gravity to hold the sphere together, not so much that the pressure would crush the generators themselves. The Moneans relied on artificial gravity in their ships and habitats.” She turned to Vale. “And even despite that, with pressures of onlya few thousand atmospheres, the Delta Flyer’s shields could barely withstand the pressure differential. And they had it easy. The kind of energies that are at play down inside Droplet could disrupt any shuttle’s shields and integrity systems.”

Vale threw her a glare. “So you’re telling me that the thing we have to do can’t be done.”

Pazlar’s brow ridges shot up defensively. “I’m working the problem, okay?”

Ra-Havreii leaned forward. “The key is differential. The external pressure is less of a problem if the internal pressure is as high as possible.”

“Right,” Pazlar said without meeting his eyes. “The higher the pressure we can achieve inside the craft, the less field energy we’ll need to counteract the rest. It’s the same principle that’s been used by deep-sea divers for centuries.”