“That’s it?” Lavena asked. “After all this, the relationship we’ve built with the squales, we’re just going to up and leave? There’s still so much we can learn about them, and they about us.”

At Riker’s side, Deanna leaned forward. T’Pel was taking care of the baby so the two of them could both attend the briefing, though he knew Deanna was just as eager to get back to their daughter as he was. For now, though, she was the ship’s diplomatic officer again. “Aili, we’re all very grateful for the job you did with the squales,” she said. “It was a remarkable piece of diplomacy. I’m glad to know we have someone who can fill in for me when I’m busy with parental obligations.” A chuckle went through the room, though Lavena didn’t join in. “But the Prime Directive is clear. Just because interference has happened, that isn’t a license to keep interfering. We have to minimize the interaction as much as possible, just as we did on Lumbu.”

“But that isn’t fair to them! The squales are scientists and explorers just as much as we are. They have an intense curiosity about the universe, and we’ve just opened the door to a whole new realm of it.”

“Then we need to let them build on that knowledge at their own pace,” Christine Vale countered. “We don’t do them any favors by giving them knowledge they aren’t ready for yet.”

“Who says they aren’t ready? Just because they don’t have warp drive?” Lavena laughed. “Look at what the squales have accomplished. They have a biotechnology far more advanced than our own—and they’ve developed it all, built an advanced technological civilization, without metal, without stone, without even having hands! Can you imagine how long that took? They’re a much older civilization than yours or mine. They had genetic engineering before your species even learned to domesticate animals. And in a lot of ways, they’re a more advanced civilization than ours. Is it fair, is it even meaningful, to use warp drive alone as the only benchmark for whether a civilization is ‘advanced enough’ for contact?”

“It is not the only benchmark,” Tuvok put in. “However advanced their technology may be, the squales responded to our arrival with aggression and xenophobia.”

“It’s not like we didn’t give them reason. Our devices were hurting them from the moment we landed. And we should’ve left well enough alone with the asteroid.”

“And there’s another reason, Aili,” Deanna said. “The Prime Directive is as much about our lack of readiness as theirs. It’s about keeping us from being incautious in a contact situation. The squales are very, very alien. Who knows how else we might clash with the best of intentions?”

Lavena straightened. “Then doesn’t that make this a symmetrical issue? What gives us the right to make the decision unilaterally? Shouldn’t we at least give them a say, let them decide if they think we’reready for further contact?”

“I think she’s right,” Riker said. “This is their world. And we’ve done enough harm trying to make decisions on their behalf. The Prime Directive exists to keep us from imposing our will on other races, but unilaterally deciding to deny them further contact can be just another way of imposing our will.”

“But do we have the right to reinterpret the Prime Directive?” Vale asked. “If the rules are going to be changed, isn’t that for Starfleet Command and the Federation Council to take up? There’s a reason why the Directive uses space travel as its standard. It says something about a species’ readiness to accept the idea of being part of a larger cosmos, their curiosity about other forms of life, their ability to reach out to them. However advanced the squales’ biotech may be, the idea of space travel is totally new to them. It could be generations before they’re ready to cope with it.”

Suddenly Lavena wore a knowing smile beneath her suit visor. “Commander, I think you should come down to Droplet. There’s something Melo mentioned to me that I really think you should see.”

Lavena’s invitation extended to Riker, Ra-Havreii, and Pazlar as well as Vale. Christine was uneasy about leaving the ship without both its command officers, but Riker assured her that they would be safe in squale…tentacles. She wanted to convince the captain to stay behind, continue recuperating, and spend time with his family, but she could tell that Lavena’s little secret had fired his curiosity and nothing would stop him.

Their destination was one of the woodlike lattice structures that the squales used as secure facilities. They found that the top spiral of the lattice had been bred to fold open in response to a vocal command, irising out in an intricate, flower-petal pattern that was beautiful and stunning to see on such a scale.

The aquashuttle wouldn’t fit in there, of course, so the visitors donned scuba gear to dive in—all save Lavena, who went in nude save for a combadge choker and wrist tricorder. Hardly regulation, but everyone except Ra-Havreii seemed to be taking it in stride. They were accompanied by Melo, the leader of the astronomy pod Lavena had bonded with, and by another pod leader from a bioengineering group, but not the one Lavena and Riker had dealt with before. Reportedly this pod specialized in breeding life forms devoted to meteorological and astronomical research, such as the “weather balloon” creatures that had first tipped the crew off to the squales’ sentience. Lavena had dubbed this squale Anidel after a famous astronomer from her world.

Once Vale dove into the water and her vision cleared, the object of their journey came into view. It was a large conical structure, over four meters high. Its surface was a honeycomb lattice of hard, whitish material, the holes filled with a smooth translucent substance. It tapered to an elongated spire at the top, and four large fins were evenly spaced around its lower perimeter. It reminded Vale of the silica shell of a protistan organism she’d once seen under a microscope. Beneath the conical “shell” bulged four large spheroids, with pulsing tubes leading into them from parts unknown.

“What is it?” asked Riker. But the squales remained silent. “Lieutenant?”

It took a moment for Lavena to realize he was talking to her. “I’ll tell you if you order me, sir…but I think they want you to figure it out for yourselves.”

It was hard to tell through the scuba mask, but Vale was sure Riker was grinning. “I enjoy a challenge. Commander Pazlar?”

Melora had been glancing at the squale Lavena had named in her honor, or perhaps glaring. She had initially been flattered to learn that Lavena had named a pod leader after her, until Lavena had demurred that they had little in common beyond profession—with Melo being much more good-natured. Now, the Elaysian refocused on her work, bringing her wrist tricorder to bear. “The shell is of a dense organic polymer of some kind.”