Notyet, Norellis thought as he passed through the gates of Hell, and abandoned all hope.

But once inside sickbay, he was heartened by the sight of a kindly, familiar face. Instead of a savage lizard-man, he saw Nurse Ogawa turn toward him. Except for her young son, Noah, the head nurse was the only other person in the sickbay reception area.

“Please tell me Dr. Ree is out,” Norellis whispered, his jaw drawn tight from the agony in his knee as Keru and Pazlar helped him sit on the edge of a nearby biobed. “Maybe one of the other doc—”

“As a matter of fact, Dr. Ree isout at the moment,” Ogawa said, cutting him off. “He’s trying to boost morale by making a few ‘house calls’ among the crew.”

Norellis sighed in relief at her confirmation of Ree’s absence, then winced again as jagged lightning bolts of pain shot through his right knee.

Then he noticed Ogawa watching him in silence, her expression baleful. She brandished a medical tricorder as though it were a hand phaser. “Would anyone mind if I have a word with Mr. Norellis? Alone?”As Keru and Pazlar beat a tactful retreat, the nurse placed a gently restraining hand on little Noah’s shoulder. “Not you, Noah. I want you to hear this, too.”

Oh, crap,Norellis thought again, wishing he could run after his two shipmates. I’ve really stepped into it this time.

“Tell me, Kent, what do you know about Dr. Ree?” Ogawa said as she ran a quick scan of his injured knee. “How much can you tell my son about him?”

“Not a lot,” he confessed.

She exchanged the tricorder for a hypospray, and injected him on the side of his knee. The pain immediately abated, and he flexed the joint cautiously. Still no pain. He heaved an appreciative sigh. Then he noticed Noah regarding him with his dark, curious, almond eyes.

Acknowledging Norellis’s grateful smile with a small smile of her own, she continued: “So you aren’t aware of all the new surgical techniques Starfleet has acquired thanks to the Pahkwa-thanh in general, and to Dr. Shenti Yisec Eres Ree in particular.”

“Um, no.”

“Or the dozens of papers he’s had published in Federation medical journals.”

He knew his face was heating up, warming and tinting itself to the precise color of shame. “Ah. Not, er, not as such. No.”

“So all you doknow about him amounts to the fact that he belongs to a species that superficially resembles an extinct Earth reptile.”

Norellis nodded. “A very scary, carnivorous Earth reptile. Yes.” He remembered meeting Ree the night before in the arboretum; the doctor’s long, crazily articulated fingers alone had made Norellis want to jump out of his skin. This morning Norellis had watched in mortified fascination as the doctor took a meal in the main mess hall. He wondered when the dripping red contents of Ree’s plate would stop haunting him—

“Are you even listeningto me, Kent?”

He shook off his unpleasant memories, wondering just how much of Ogawa’s dressing-down he had missed. “You’re right. I suppose I haven’t been exactly fair to Ree. I took the same Academy diversity training you did.”

“That’s exactly what I was trying to remind you about.”

He nodded. “I guess I’m just not used to being part of such an obvious minority. Being a human on a ship with a crew as varied as this one, I mean.” It suddenly occurred to him that he himself had been a minority of quite another sort for as long as he could remember—a fact that had never bothered him, nor anyone else in his life.

To Norellis’s intense relief, Ogawa broke off her attack and answered his frank admission with a smile. She began waving a deep-tissue regenerator over his injured knee. “I’m glad we’re seeing eye to eye then.”

Though he returned the smile, he thought, But I can’t promise you I won’t flinch if Ree tries to touch me.

That notion made him feel rather disappointed with himself. He remembered his Starfleet Academy diversity training, of course, and recalled how very seriously he had taken it at the time; he’d just never expected to have to put it to so much practical use so very often. Between his anxieties about Titan’s CMO and a score of other nonhumanoid crew members aboard, not to mention the cultural differences among the rest, Norellis was beginning to think diversity was easier in theory than practice.

“Is this what you mean by ‘conflict resolution,’ Mom?” Noah asked, brushing his dark bangs from his bright, coal-colored eyes.

Ogawa beamed at her son. “Yup. And it’s the best kind.”

“Huh. I wonder if it’ll be this easy with the Romulans.”

Norellis saw that her smile faltered then, though not completely. “We can only hope, kiddo,” Ogawa said as she tousled the child’s hair, then told him he was free to go now if he wanted. Noah wasted no time taking his mother up on the offer, leaving sickbay at a brisk trot.

Now alone with a woman whom he knew he’d just given good reason to chew him out, Norellis was more desperate than ever to change the subject. “So will I ever play soccer again?” he said, pointing to his knee.

Ogawa had already turned back toward the biobed and was putting her instruments away. “Stay off it as much as you can for the rest of the day. And try not to fall down any more Jefferies tubes the next time you’re on duty.”

Rising cautiously to his feet, Norellis wondered how she knew exactly how he’d injured his knee. Had Keru or Pazlar called ahead while he’d been distracted by his blinding pain? Or had Ogawa just made a lucky guess? In the short time he’d known her since he had left Starfleet Academy for Titan,she had always struck him as an extremely intuitive person.

“Alyssa, what do you know about Ranul Keru?” He was glad now that she’d insisted ever since joining Titan’s crew that everyone stay on a first-name basis with her.

“Anything in particular you’re looking to find out, Kent?”

Norellis cleared his throat, silently cursing himself for his nervousness. “Is…Is he single?” He felt his cheeks beginning to flush again.

Casting a glance over her shoulder as if to make certain they really were alone, Ogawa pulled up a chair. The junior engineer resumed his perch on the edge of the biobed.

“I don’t want to get a reputation as being Titan’s resident yenta,” she said. “So you haven’t heard anything from me. Got it?”

He nodded, silently making a lock-and-key gesture across his lips.

“He’s single. But he’s also kind of a loner.”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t, you know, pursue him?” Norellis wanted to know, feeling some genuine confusion.

“No. I’m just saying you need to proceed with caution. He lost a lifemate during a Borg attack on the Enterprisesix years ago. And he’s been carrying around a lot of grief ever since then. So my advice is to proceed with caution. Go slow, Kent.”

Thanking her, he moved toward the door. He wondered if he was about to exchange the pain in his knee for pain of a wholly different sort.

“It’s nice of you to make a house call like this, Doc,” Olivia Bolaji said, resting on the sofa in the center of the quarters she shared with her husband, Axel Bolaji. “I know how busy you are.”

“I am never too busy to check up on Titan’s very first hatchling-to-be,” Ree said, his voice a leathery rasp. “So, how is the unborn youngling today?” Ree placed one of his nimble, superarticulated hands gently on her abdomen. Olivia fought to keep from flinching away from his touch. Shamed by this, she hoped he hadn’t noticed.

“Our newcomer has been kicking a lot lately,” Axel said, a proud parental smile spreading across his deep brown Australian aborigine features. “It’s hard to believe the due date is only fifteen weeks away now.”

That seems like an eternity,Olivia thought as she looked down at her inexorably expanding belly. Her only regret about their decision to have a child was the time it would force her to spend away from her job. Olivia loved her work, and she knew she was going to have to begin curtailing it sometime in the next couple of months, if not sooner.