What he hadn’t expected was that Tuvok would be the first to react. Hearing a strangled baritone cry from the tactical station, Riker whirled to see Tuvok gasping and clutching the console for support. His teeth were clenched and he was clearly struggling for control…but his eyes showed panic and dread. Glancing over at Deanna, Riker saw the same emotions in her eyes, though she seemed to be controlling it better. “Mr. Tuvok, report,” Riker snapped, hoping the appeal to discipline would help him focus.

“I am…receiving telepathic impulses…raw emotion…terror! Pain! Aahh!!” He wrenched his eyes shut, fighting the panic.

As Riker moved closer to Tuvok, Deanna came up behind him. “I sense the same things. Fear, agony, loss…also anger.”

“Why is it hitting him harder?” Vale asked.

Deanna looked away for a moment. “I’ve…had reason to learn to strengthen my shields against mental intrusion.”

Riker winced at the reminder of Shinzon, and of the other mental incursions Deanna had been subjected to over her career. But this was a time for business. “Is this the same thing you sensed the other night? The nightmare?”

“I think so.”

Tuvok was still struggling. If anything, he seemed embarrassed by Troi’s superior control. “Bridge to sickbay,” Riker said. “Dr. Ree, we could use you up here.”

“I was just about to call you,”came Ree’s growling tenor. “Several crew members have just come down with severe panic attacks. Cadet Orilly, Lieutenant Chamish, even Ensign Savalek and the Lady T’Pel. All psi-sensitives, sir. I imagine Commanders Troi and Tuvok are reacting similarly, are they not?”

“I’m managing it, Doctor,” Deanna told him. “But Tuvok is having a harder time coping.”

“If you will have him brought to sickbay, I should be able to suppress his telepathic senses.”

“No, Captain,” Tuvok said, gathering himself with an effort. “The initial shock…has subsided. I am…in control.”

“I still want the doctor to look at you,” Riker said. He had an ulterior motive to the offer, thinking Tuvok might welcome an excuse to be there for his wife, T’Pel. When Tuvok had accepted the post of tactical and second officer, it had been with the provision that his wife be allowed to join him aboard the ship. After being separated from her for seven years by Voyager’s abduction to the Delta Quadrant, and facing the prospect of a similar separation twice in recent months (first by imprisonment on Romulus, then by Titan’s stranding in the Small Mag Cloud), he had expressed a wish to have her with him aboard the ship, and she had assented to come.

But if Tuvok was concerned for his wife, he showed no outward sign. “No! I…believe this to be a distress call. If so, the insights I can provide may be needed. They are only emotions…I am their master.”

Riker turned to Troi. “Do you agree? A distress call?”

“I do,” she answered without hesitation. “Something out there is pleading desperately for help. Something with a very powerful mind.”

And what could terrify something that powerful?Riker wondered. Whatever it was, they would need to be ready. He looked over at Tuvok, gauging his mental state. The Vulcan’s reputation as one of the fabled Voyagersurvivors had preceded him, but Riker still didn’t know the man well enough to tell whether he was really in control or simply putting on a brave front. But he decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “All right. You’re relieved from tactical, Commander—” He cut off Tuvok’s protest with a look. “But you can remain on the bridge to advise.”

Tuvok nodded stiffly. “Acknowledged.”

“Mr. Keru, take over tactical.” The big Trill worked his security station’s controls, slaving the tactical console to it. Riker turned to the tan-skinned Bajoran at the science station. “Mr. Jaza, scan the area for life signs, psionic energy, any unusual phenomena. Let’s see who’s trying to spread around their bad mood.”

Jaza replied promptly. “Stellar cartography reports strong life signs at bearing 282 mark 20, range point-one-two light-years.”

“Is there a star system there?”

“Negative, sir; they’re in open space, moving at high impulse. Hold on…. I’m getting energy discharges.”

“A battle?” Christine Vale asked.

“Hard to tell. The discharges seem bioelectric.”

“Let’s find out. Ensign Lavena—set an intercept course, warp eight, and engage.”

“Aye, Captain. Estimate arrival in three minutes.”

As the ship jumped to warp, Riker moved back to Deanna’s side. “Do you still get the sense of familiarity?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, maintaining proper discipline while they were on the bridge. “It’s extremely alien, yet it’s something I’ve been in contact with before…a long time ago, I think. I’m trying to remember.”

“I believe I can get a visual on long-range sensors,” Jaza reported. “Just a moment…there.”

Riker turned to the screen. At first all he saw was a group of pearlescent blobs of light, little more than pinpoints at this range. They were moving quickly, on erratic, independent courses. As Jaza worked his console, a set of crosshairs targeted the nearest blob and the screen zoomed in, tracking it. It was a translucent, rounded shape, apparently lenticular, with one face turned nearly toward their vantage point. “It reads over a kilometer in diameter,” Jaza said. It was illuminated from within by a bluish glow and by numerous points of reddish light arranged in concentric rings. Faint radial striations subdivided its surface into eight wedges. Riker felt the same sense of uncertain familiarity that Deanna described.

Then it angled sideways and Riker recognized it instantly. The eight long, feathery tentacles that trailed behind it, giving it the aspect of a vast jellyfish swimming through the lightless depths of the ocean, made it instantly recognizable. “The Farpoint creatures!”

Vale turned to him. “Sir?”

“We encountered them on our very first mission on the Enterprise,Deanna and I,” Riker explained. “Sixteen years ago, in the Deneb system. I think we ended up calling them ‘star-jellies.’ They’re shapeshifters, and more than that. They could read thoughts and synthesize any object you could think of, like living replicators. They even have transporter capability.”

“They sound more like ships than living beings,” Jaza opined.

“They’re definitely life-forms,” Troi told him. “Immensely powerful telepaths and empaths. I’ve never felt such overwhelming emotions. That first time, whenever I lowered my mental shields, it was like I became a conduit for their emotions, feeling them as if they were my own, and unable to resist them.”

“I can…verify that assessment, Commander,” Tuvok said stiffly.

“That would explain what’s happening to the crew,” Vale observed. “But what is it they’re so afraid of?”

“There’s a smaller cluster of objects closing on the, umm, school,” Jaza said. “They read similar to the jellies, but different.” He switched the viewscreen to a wider view. Harpoons of purple light were flashing through the school, scattering the star-jellies still further.

“Shields on standby,” Riker ordered Keru.

“Shields, aye,” the burly, bearded Trill acknowledged. “And weapons, sir?”

“Not yet,” Riker said as the attackers came into view. He recognized them as well: gray, lenticular metallic shapes, firing destructive blasts of violet plasma from their central concavities. “They’re another form of the star-jellies—apparently their attack mode.”

Vale frowned. “Have we stumbled into some kind of civil war?”

“It could simply be competition for food or territory,” Jaza suggested.

“Either way,” Vale went on, “I don’t think it’s something we have any business interfering in.”

Riker realized she was probably right, though it filled him with regret. There was something ethereally lovely about the star-jellies. He still remembered the sense of awe he’d felt when they’d revealed themselves at Deneb, when the one held captive by the Bandi had shed its imposed disguise as “Farpoint Station” and ascended into space, and reached out to caress its mate’s tendrils in a gesture whose simple poignancy transcended species.