“No, sir,” said Rossini. “I mean, yes, sir. I mean, you’re right, sir. These systems are all performing to spec. But Dr. Ra-Havreii says he wants Titanto be the first ship to return to the dock in better shape than she left it, so-”

  “Thank you, Ensign,” Jaza interrupted. “Can you tell me where I would find Commander Ra-Havreii at this precise moment?”

  “Probably in his quarters, sir. Truth is, he’s not spending much time down here anymore. Just comes through, makes notes, and tells us…”

  Rossini trailed off. Jaza was already on his way out of engineering.

  “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?” asked Vale.

  Troi made a show of putting away whatever had been occupying her mind. “I’ve been listening,” she said. “Dr. Ra-Havreii has been a concern of mine for some time.”

  “But you haven’t done anything about it,” said Vale.

  “He hasn’t exhibited any truly aberrant behavior,” Troi said. “The anecdotes are troubling, yes, but they don’t add up to an actual pathology.”

  “You’ve been around the man,” said Vale. “And you’re a telepath. You’ve got to know something’s going on with him.”

  “I’m an empath, Christine,” said Troi. “I’m only half-Betazoid. My telepathic abilities are limited.” The words came out in what to Vale was a stilted manner, rife with something like bitterness-odd for Troi. She was neither of those things as a rule. “And the accuracy of my empathic abilities varies from species to species. Efrosians are…complex.”

  “The point is,” said Vale, “I shouldn’t even be involved in this. The fact that I am says somebody’s falling down on the job.”

  “You’re blaming me?” said Troi. “Is that what this is about?”

  “I’m asking you to do your job,” said Vale. “If I have to have an official on-the-record conversation with Ra-Havreii…”

  “I’ve been at this a lot longer than you, Christine,” said Troi archly. “I think I know how to-”

  “You can’t play the old veteran card every time, Counselor,” said Vale. “ Titanisn’t the Enterprise. We’re on our own out here, naked. We don’t get to swap Ra-Havreii out for a better model.”

  “You’re in no position to lecture me, Commander,” Troi snapped.

  Suddenly all Vale could think about was the argument she’d had with her mother after announcing her intention to join Starfleet.

   There have been Vales in Izar’s Peace Office for generations. You’re spitting on your heritage!

  There were ugly words and uglier feelings between them then, all tangled up in the dance of mother and child and all of which had been resolved to remain unresolved years ago. Why would she think of that now?

  The moment passed.

  Vale blinked, unsure how things had spiraled this far so fast. “That’s where you’re mistaken, Counselor. As first officer, it’s my duty to make sure the ship runs smoothly. When something impedes that, I have to take steps. This is step one.”

  For a moment it seemed that Troi was about to respond with something caustic. It was now clear to Vale that she was worked up about something other than their conversation. The counselor sat, composing herself by degrees, breathing deeply. When she was done, when her mask of serenity had reassembled, she stood, indicating that, for her at least, this meeting was over.

  “I think we understand each other, Commander,” she said. “I’ll have a proposal for remedying the Ra-Havreii problem by the end of the day.”

  “And the other situation?” Vale asked, rising to her feet.

  “That’s not your concern.”

  Vale hated what she was about to say, but it was too important to the well-being of the ship and its crew to leave unsaid. “I’ve noticed the captain’s been a little slow off the mark lately as well.” In fact, Riker had been stiff as a board for the last two weeks, and he also had consistently deflected Vale’s concerned inquiries. “Is something going on between you two that I can-?”

  “As I said,” Troi interrupted, “whatever is or isn’t between me and Will is our concern, not yours. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have duties to attend to.”

   But it is my concern, Deanna, thought Vale, as the doors to the counselor’s suite whispered closed behind her. And I can see I’m going to have to move on to Plan B.

  She waited until she was around the bend in the corridor before tapping her combadge. “Vale to Counselor Huilan.”

Chapter Two

  T he Federation archive at Memory Alpha described the Bajoran people, sometimes called the Bajora, as “one of the very few humanoid species that have managed to achieve balance between scientific progress and their organizing spiritual lifeview. Bajorans account for this harmonious integration of faith and reason by citing these lines from the Eighth Song of the Prophets:

   “ ‘One hand holds the stone, the other the spark. To make fire they must come together.’ ”

  Jaza wasn’t precisely sure why that particular line kept running through his mind as he pounded on Xin Ra-Havreii’s door, but he found himself identifying with the stone.

  Jaza considered himself a fairly even-tempered person, never quick to judgment or anger. He and Titan’s chief engineer had discussed the delicacy of the mapping endeavor at length almost a month ago. Titan’s ultrasensitive sensor nets had been painstakingly recalibrated to detect and probe this uniquely configured dark matter system.

   Titan’s sensors were state-of-the-art. Even in their base configuration they were orders of magnitude more sophisticated than anything outside the equipment sported by the very newest stationary observation arrays.

  In their current setup, specific to Titan’s charting of the darkling phenomenon, even the slightest spike in ambient radiation could completely obviate all their readings, forcing them to start again.

  Ra-Havreii had, it seemed at the time, been in total agreement with the need for his people to do absolutely nothing that could upset the balance of software and hardware that Jaza and his team had taken days to create. “I know you wanted to upgrade several systems,” he had said. “But if you can hold off until we’re done, it would be much appreciated.”

  He remembered the conversation perfectly. He had expected it to be contentious, as Ra-Havreii had lately seemed increasingly self-absorbed, ignoring anything that fell outside his own specific area of expertise and showing little concern for the work of departments other than his own. Jaza assumed this was due to Ra-Havreii’s having spent the bulk of his Starfleet career not in the field but in R&D labs, which, traditionally, took a more feudal approach to interdepartmental diplomacy.

  More than once in recent months, Jaza and his people had been forced to scrap or suspend ongoing experiments because some of Ra-Havreii’s staff were tinkering with systems their superior had deemed in need of attention. The episodes put considerable strain on their professional relationship.

  In this case, however, Jaza’s fears proved unfounded. His meeting with Titan’s chief engineer had been cordial, almost jovial. Ra-Havreii had played him a selection of strange Efrosian music-all chimes and strings-even offered him a glass of Andorian ale, which Jaza had politely declined.

  “Have to stay sharp,” he’d told the engineer. “It’s not every day one finds concentric belts of exotic matter asteroids in orbit around a neutron star,” he had said. “We may never see anything like this again in our lifetimes.”

  Ra-Havreii nodded in all the right places and stroked his mustache wistfully while making little affirmative noises in his throat at each of Jaza’s requests. When they were done, Jaza had gone off to his work on the sensor nets in the sure knowledge that he and the engineer were on the same page.