So after careful thought, and with considerable embarrassment, she’d gone to Jaza and retracted what she’d said to him in bed. She’d asked him to treat it as a one-time thing, with no strings, no hard feelings and no future. He had taken it as well as she could have hoped, expressing regret but telling her he understood, and promising to respect her wishes. It had just made her feel guiltier about reversing course on him like that.

She shook herself, returning her focus to the matter at hand. Reviewing her memory, she was pretty sure Riker had just asked Jaza, “You think the Pa’haquel made them?” or words to that effect.

Now Troi was shaking her head. “They insist that the jellies have been the same since the dawn of their history. If someone did engineer them, it must have been some earlier race.”

“History can be rewritten,” Keru interposed. “People can forget their true past, or have it deliberately hidden.” I guess a Trill would know,Vale thought.

“True,” Jaza said. “If the Pa’haquel did create the jellies, that makes this an internal matter, and the Prime Directive would apply.”

“Would it?” Troi challenged. “Whatever their origins, the jellies now live free, and have a life, a society of their own, separate from the Pa’haquel. These jellies don’t even know that their hunters arePa’haquel. They’re a separate culture.”

“That’s open to debate.”

“That’s right, it is,” Riker said. “But that doesn’t change anything.” He paused, his gaze taking in everyone at the table. “We all understand the risks of intervention. That’s what the Prime Directive is for—to make sure we consider those risks, and remember our own limitations. Many of us have seen firsthand what can go wrong when we grow overconfident and meddle too much.” He and Vale exchanged a significant look. They both knew the horrific costs of ex-President Zife’s clandestine interference on Tezwa. “But we’ve also seen whole worlds die because we refused to help them—because we thought that somehow a disruption of their worldview was a worse fate than total annihilation. There was a time when I supported that policy myself. But I’ve seen too much death and devastation in the past decade not to question that. And I think that adhering too slavishly to the letter of the Directive can be an excuse for inaction—for not wanting to deal with the responsibility and the tough decisions that come with trying to help.

“Now, I still believe in the Prime Directive, and I’m still bound by my oath to defend it at all costs. But I will not see it used as an excuse for taking the easy way out, for letting injustices thrive because we decide they aren’t our problem. Not on my ship. Not in my crew. Because I trust that this crew can handle that responsibility, can make those tough decisions.”

After a moment, he went on. “Either way, what we need to do now is learn more about the situation. We’ve met with the hunters, now it’s time we met with the prey. Mr. Jaza, your first job is to scan for star-jelly life signs and find us the nearest school. Your second job, once we find them, will be to study their biology and learn what you can about their origins.” He turned to Troi. “Counselor, hopefully you can do the same. Work on making contact with them, getting more from them than just emotions. Maybe they have long memories, and can give us some answers. But your main job is to learn whatever you can from them, work toward establishing a dialogue—one in which we can hopefully include the Pa’haquel. Try to find a way the two species can coexist peacefully.” Troi nodded.

“Mr. Tuvok,” Riker went on. The tactical officer looked up sharply. “Your job is to work on recalibrating the shields so they can handle the Pa’haquel’s bio-energy bolts more effectively. And work on tactics for defending the jellies from armed attack without resorting to deadly force.”

“Acknowledged.” Tuvok seemed relieved, Vale thought—probably at not being asked to work with Troi on communicating with the jellies.

“Dr. Ree,” Riker said, “your job is to administer telepathic blockers to those crewmembers who can’t resist the star-jellies’ emotions on their own. I don’t want any of our people out of commission when we may need them.”

“There is an herbal medicine from my world which I think would do the trick,” Ree said. “Some of my people are empathic—though not I, obviously—and there were times in our history when the ability was seen as an aberration, which a drug was devised to ‘cure.’ With some refinements, it could be adapted to other species.”

“Very good. That’s it, people—let’s go to work.”

Chapter Four

Tuvok stepped through the doors of stellar cartography to find the Horsehead Nebula blocking his path. “Oh, there you are,” came Commander Jaza’s voice from beyond it. “Never mind that, just step on through.” Tuvok did so, adjusting his gait to the lowered gravity of the catwalk, and reminding himself that this seemingly flamboyant mode of presenting data did have its practical value for visualizing spatial relationships. Still, the crew members who spoke of their experiences with the free-fall environment of the holotank tended to describe it in the terms one would use for a recreational contrivance—a “thrill ride,” he believed his old crewmate Tom Paris would have called it.

Once he cleared the simulated dust cloud, Tuvok saw Jaza and Lieutenant Pazlar beyond it. Both of them were hovering in freefall, outside the observation platform’s localized gravity field. “Feel free to come up and join us, Commander,” Jaza said, blithely disregarding the inapplicability of the word “up” to his own current frame of reference.

“No, thank you, Commander. I would prefer to remain here.”

“Of course,” Pazlar observed. “Vulcans do everything with such gravity.”

Tuvok ignored the remark, addressing his comments to the commander. “You wished to see me, Mr. Jaza?”

“Yes, Tuvok, we could use your input,” the Bajoran said. “We’ve been unable to detect any star-jelly schools within sensor range, and we’re having trouble tracking the warp trail of the one we encountered before. Something to do with the organic nature of their drives, I suppose.”

Tuvok’s gaze sharpened. “If you wish me to attempt to sense them telepathically—”

Jaza shook his head. “Don’t worry, nothing like that. You see, I realized that the star-jellies can’t exist in…well, I was about to say ‘in a vacuum,’ but that would’ve been a poor choice of words.”

“You mean,” Tuvok interpreted, “that as living beings they must logically be part of an ecosystem.”

“Yes. And I realized the same must be true of all spacegoing creatures—cosmozoans, to use the technical term. Starfleet vessels over the past two centuries have observed hundreds of such organisms, but their reports have usually described single individuals or monospecies groups in isolation, rarely interactions between multiple species. That’s understandable, given the vast distances of interstellar space. But there must be a big picture we’re only seeing isolated pieces of.

“So we’ve been going through all the reported contacts with cosmozoan life-forms, looking for patterns and connections among them. We noticed that Voyagerencountered more than its share of such creatures in the Delta Quadrant, so we wanted to consult with you about them. Perhaps learning about the cosmozoans in a different quadrant—essentially a separate ecological region—could help us see some larger patterns.”

Tuvok frowned. “Could you not simply have consulted Voyager’s logs?”