The images of the dream continued to move, like obscene specters in his mind, like information being fed into a computer not prepared to accept new programming. He fought, writhing under the disheveled covers until beads of sweat stood at prompt attention on his forehead.

Intellectually, he knew he was awake; yet the nightmare quality lingered, refusing to deliver him into the sanity of consciousness.

His mind was ripped from him, pulled into unseen hands, then reshaped to create another creature, an entirely different being. His muscles remained taut, as sails on a ship; and he found himself too frozen with horror to move or breathe. Memories which had once been pleasant were suddenly unreachable as his past disappeared down a long, black tunnel. Painful recollections took shape before his inner eye—women he had loved, women he had lost. A ship— his.All gone.

"S-Spock?" he cried out, hearing it as a scream in his mind, but as little more than a dry whisper suspended in reality. The Vulcan should be there … yet was not. The familiar link seemed obscure and distant, as if it no longer existed.

For a single terrifying moment, Spock was dead; and the human knew instinctively that he was alone with ghosts. In the past, the idea of solitude had never frightened him; but now, a sense of mindless, terrible loneliness came to dwell in him with a vengeance, wrenching a cry of anguish from his throat as his mind instinctively sought Spock's.

No … not dead. Not quite. He thought he could almost sense the mental rapport which had always been there before. But it too slipped away … and was gone.

Time cartwheeled.

Backward … Forward again.

Somewhere in the back of his conscious mind, the human chastised himself for the abrupt and unprecedented failure of his command pose; but as his eyes finally wrenched themselves open, he realized that it had been nothing more than a dream within a dream.

With a gasp, he caught himself wondering where he was, why he was trembling in fear, and why he had been mentally reaching out to a man whom he'd never personally met. And, most of all, he wondered why he should consider the ShiKahr's Vulcan captain to be a friend.

Shaking the disorientation from his mind, he forced himself to start breathing again, and slowly fell back into the strange bed as the dream transmutated and became reality.

A quick glance at the other single bed confirmed that his roommate—a man who had been introduced to him less than twenty-four hours previously as Paul Donner—was still sound asleep, apparently untroubled by dreams.

With an effort, Kirk rose, stumbled into the small bathroom, and splashed cold water on his face until the discomfort alone chased the last shards of sleep from his mind. But the anger returned with a vengeance when he realized that he wasn'ta starship captain, would neverbe a starship captain … and that the dreams were just another way the Talos Device kept coming back from his past to haunt him.

Yet even those memories which had always been so sharp and clear seemed distant now—more than a vision … less than a recollection. He told himself firmly that dreams of disorientation and bitterness were bound to linger for a while; he'd been drafted into active Starfleet duty less than six months ago, and only assigned to the VSS ShiKahryesterday. He glanced suspiciously around the dimly lit quarters, ignoring the easy snoring from Donner, and trying to shake the feeling of alienation as he studied the unfamiliar surroundings. None of it felt right … but he had expected nothing more or less.

And he also accepted the fact that he did not wantit to feel right. . . .

Cautious, hardened hazel eyes scanned the bedroom carefully, gave one last check on Donner's status, then traveled to the small bag of personal belongings he'd brought on board and tossed haphazardly into one corner. Moving back into the living area, he knelt by the bed, fumbled with the tattered suitcase, then withdrew two small items. With trembling hands, he lifted the syringe to the bathroom light, filled it with the last few drops from the ampoule, then turned the instrument toward his wrist. For a moment, something inside him rebelled; something warned that drug-induced acceptance of Fate might not be the answer he needed. But he swept the nagging thought aside when stray fragments of the dream returned to remind him of what he had lost … what he had never possessed.

She … silver woman-goddess. She.

Dead and buried.

He brought the hypo down against his bare wrist, flinching only slightly when the high-pressure needle injected cold fluid into the vein with a hiss which reminded Kirk of a serpent.

Donner moved in his sleep at the sound, slapping at his round face as if chasing an imaginary fly or spider. Then, with a grunt of dismay, the powerful body rolled onto its stomach, and strong arms pulled a pillow over tousled hair as he slumped deeper into sleep.

As the drug entered his system, Kirk replaced the damning evidence back in the bottom of the suitcase and staggered unsteadily to the bed, barely drawing the covers over his chest before the dizziness took him. He realized with dismay that that had been the last dose of lidacin. On Earth, the drug had been easy to buy … but on a starship, it would be next to impossible.

As his eyes lowered, he bit his lip until pain intervened. Sleep. Shewould be there. But onlythere.

With a heavy sigh, Ensign Kirk surrendered to the effects of the drug, to a darkness populated by spirits and a more acceptable reality. He was no longer the man he had been all his life, no longer Captain James T. Kirk. Now he too was a specter, another ghost of a far-removed surreal reality. The James T. Kirk he had known was now nothing more than a dream, a psychic stranger who occasionally came to the ensign in nightmares to demand a rank and a ship which would never be his in this universe.

Captain James T. Kirk no longer existed as the Romulan flagship descended from hyperspace and slipped into orbit over its home world … more than twenty light-years away.

Captain Spock walked down the deserted "night" corridors, completing the daily inspection with routine precision. Everything was in order: fire control systems fully operational on Decks 4 through 11; low-level radiation leakage in engineering well within normal range; matter/anti-matter pods checked and serviced by Chief Engineer Scott; warp drive functioning properly; ship cruising at Warp One on routine patrol of Romulan Neutral Zone.

The Vulcan studied the checklist on the computerized clipboard, made the appropriate notations, then placed the instrument under one arm and turned to go back the way he'd come. But as he gazed down the long, empty corridor, he felt something cold close over him. Dizziness surrounded him; gravity was suddenly twice normal. The deck seemed closer to his head than his feet. He inhaled deeply, surprised at the uncharacteristic sensations of vertigo. With one hand, he quickly reached out, steadying himself against the bulkhead as his ears detected the too-loud clatter of the clipboard hitting the floor.

Reality wavered like a malcontent child throwing a tantrum; and for a single instant, the corridors were … different.Fully lit. Daytime. Greater curvature—as if he were suddenly on a deck closer to the center of the saucer-dome. Instead of the Vulcan inscriptions denoting deck levels and instructions, Terran English swam before his eyes.

He blinked to clear the absurdity; then, recalling the correct procedure to combat vertigo, sank to his knees and placed his head firmly against the wall, breathing deeply. The air was thicker—Earth-thick instead of Vulcan-thin.

Alone. Thee are alone, Spock. Thee are no longer my son.