Hriss was covered with fine auburn fur, broken here and there with white speckles about the size of Dakal’s thumb-print. She was thick bodied, somewhat imposing-a good quality for someone making a career in security. Hsuuri was smaller, slighter, and curvier, with a coat that looked like an arctic forest set ablaze. The lower part of her face, her throat, and, he presumed, her chest were covered in the snowy white fur. The rest of her was fire. She had a way of flicking her tail from side to side as she stood that was at once playful and somewhat hypnotic.

  Hsuuri was Dakal’s superior officer, as was nearly everyone on Titan,but that didn’t mean he couldn’t admire her from time to time. There was a lot to appreciate about her, and not all of it had to do with her cultural history. Feline or no, she was a fascinating woman.

  They hadn’t passed two words to each other that weren’t work related, but once omega phase was finished, who could say?

  At home there were taboos against too much close fraternization with non-Cardassians. There was also an even stronger proscription against joining the paramilitary organizations of former enemies. He hadn’t given a shtelabout that, had he? So Dakal saw no reason to balk at a chance to interview Hsuuri about their cultural differences over something hot and steamy. Yes, he would ask her to join him for that meal as soon as the work was done.

  “Cadet Dakal,” said Jaza’s voice from below, snapping him out of his reverie. “I asked you for an update.”

   Back to work, Zurin,he admonished himself. Mr. Jaza passed over four other candidates to put you on his team. Stop dreaming.“Probe Four is cresting the inner perimeter now, sir,” he said a little hastily. “Telemetric linksys is in the green.”

  “Activating TOV,” said Jaza, reaching for what looked like a large glass bowl impaled here and about with slender metallic rods and connected to the dais by a length of thick cable. It slid down over his forehead and eyes and then, “Counting down from five, four, three, two-”

  He was outside, free from the confines of Titan’s shell, free from the restrictions imposed by his physical body, out among the darklings. Only the small blinking display in the lower corner of his vision disrupted the illusion that his presence in open space was anything other than simulated.

  Using the TOV-telemetric observation VISOR-Jaza saw what the probe saw, its sensor data translated into the visual spectrum with small annotations scrolling by to denote the exact composition of whatever happened to be its target.

  It moved as he wished with little more than a flick of his mental will. Though he could never see them naturally, using the probe’s “eyes” he found himself floating in the midst of a universe of floating black asteroids of every conceivable shape and size.

  He felt a little pang of rue as he moved in on a particularly enticing hunk of darkling matter. They’d had a great time excavating all the data they could from this place, but once the omega sweep was done, Titanhad to move on.

  Later Starfleet might decide to place an outpost here to really plumb the depths of Occultus Ora, but that was years away. If it ever happened.

  The only real drawback of deep space exploration was what the humans often referred to as the Faustian bargain. He had no idea about the origin of the phrase, but the practical definition seemed to mean having to press on before you’d done more than scratch the surface of the new.

  Ah, well, he thought. Every action has its opposite. At least we were here first. “Lieutenant Pazlar,” he said aloud as he moved toward the great black hulk.

   “Pazlar here,”said a mellifluous voice over the comm.

  “Omega series is under way,” said Jaza, the pleasure in his own voice audible to anyone in a position to hear. “Prepare to receive telemetry from Probe Four.”

   “Ready when you are,”said Pazlar, as he closed in on his shadowy prey.

  “Excellent,” Jaza said. “Let’s get started.”

  Bralik shot slowly upward, happy to let her momentum take her where she wanted to go. In this case that meant about thirty vertical feet away from the deck of the stellar cartography lab, up through the strange inky formations, like asteroids and unlike them as well, that floated all around.

  The chamber-you couldn’t really call something so enormous a room-was a massive sphere in which star systems, individual cosmic bodies, even the entire galaxy could be displayed, at will, in three dimensions.

  Bralik took great pleasure in her visits here, but as a geologist, she normally had little official reason to drop by.

  This current project of Jaza’s was not only an opportunity to demonstrate her expertise as a rock hound but it also required her to spend lots of time in this lovely, lovely chamber.

  Of course the current setup also removed about a quarter of the fun of coming here, leaving only the job itself, the lowered g, and the companionship to entertain her. Bralik enjoyed fun and did her best to wedge it into just about any activity she could manage. Life was too short to do otherwise.

  It wasn’t a very Ferengi attitude, the seeking of pleasure without profit, but Bralik long ago decided that profit was sometimes in the eye of the beholder.

  Most of the crew of the Starship Titanfound the decreased gravity the mistress of this area enjoyed somewhat discomfiting. Not Bralik.

  Years working mining excavations situated on asteroids large and small had made gravity just another variable to her, nothing to get worked up about. Plus, the vibrations her spinning assent sent tingling across her lobes had an erotic quality she found hard to resist.

  The remaining quarter of pleasure in this duty was the company of the chamber’s only other occupant.

  Melora Pazlar, the ship’s lead stellar cartographer, was the reason for the area’s lowered g. Pazlar’s species, the Elaysians, had evolved in environments just like this, though how they’d also managed to maintain their basically humanoid structure was a matter of considerable conjecture. Unlike the squat, utilitarian Ferengi physique, Pazlar’s people were almost the living incarnation of delicate grace.

  Whatever the truth of her bizarre evolution, Pazlar took to her low-g haven like a slug to the swamp. Seeing her glide effortlessly from one position to the next was, Bralik thought, not unlike watching the flight of a creature from human myth that had once been described to her.

  Of course, the only thing about Pazlar that was angelic was her looks. The rest was a combination of prickles and frost, at least at first, but even those qualities could be enjoyable. Once you got past her initial standoffishness-a trait Bralik made it a rule to ignore in any being she encountered-Pazlar was an energetic, even magnetic companion. She’d traveled everywhere, despite being hobbled by gravities that were almost invariably crushing for her delicate frame. Her mind was like a laser drill. She looked after herself and was proof against any display of pity or condescension.

  She might look like she was built of dzurabones and silk, but Pazlar was solid as osmium ore. Like any raw metal, a little patience was all it took to polish up a gleam.

  “Somebody doesn’t look happy,” said Bralik as she passed between two of the black asteroids to bump lightly against Pazlar’s legs.

  “I miss my stars,” said the younger woman, dutifully helping Bralik orient herself so that their heads faced each other. “I’m sick of all this black.”

  She meant the current display dominating the entirety of the chamber. Instead of the normal star field, the two women were surrounded by the computer’s best guess at what Jaza’s probes and recalibrated sensors had under examination.