The computer didn’t answer, but he knew it was already complying with his demand.

Carefully avoiding the dead man, Kyle sat down on his couch and waited.

His wait was not especially long. Starfleet sent four officers to his apartment, arriving less than fifteen minutes after the yeoman had fallen. They checked the body and confirmed what Kyle already knew. The young man was dead. One of the security officers, a seasoned human lieutenant with hair almost as silver as Kyle’s own and heavy, hooded eyes, sat down on the couch next to Kyle while another called for a removal team to come for the body. He had introduced himself as Lieutenant Dugan.

“There’ll be a hearing, I expect,” he said. “But it looks as if the case for self-defense is pretty strong. Guy was in your house, discharged his phaser. I should arrest you, but given who you are, sir, I feel confident that you’ll surrender yourself if I ask you to.”

“Of course.” It had gradually dawned on Kyle that this was probably coming. He was innocent, of course, of any misdeed. But until a thorough investigation proved that, he would be under some degree of suspicion, even though his story made sense. As they spoke, the other security officers were busying themselves around the apartment, checking the central computer, inspecting the wall that had been damaged, trying to recreate, as best they could, the sequence of events as Kyle had described it. While they worked, a coroner’s team arrived to take the body, closing it into a kind of sled that then hovered waist-high so they could guide it from the apartment and out to a transport. They were quietly efficient. It was possible that Kyle’s neighbors didn’t even know what had happened.

An hour later they were all gone, and Kyle was left alone. He ordered the computer to repair the wall now that the forensic team was done examining it.

Lieutenant Dugan had recommended that he get some sleep, but Kyle knew that was impossible. Every time he closed his eyes he was back on 311. He could hear the emergency Klaxons, see the flashing red alert lights, taste the adrenaline and fear that had been in his mouth as he scrambled from room to room. No, sleep was the last thing he wanted to try just now. Instead he went to his bookshelves and withdrew a biography of Napoleon he’d been meaning to get to, then sat back on the couch to wait for daylight.

At the Starfleet Command plaza station, Kyle disembarked from the monorail and took the stair-lift down to plaza level. There, he had to pass through a security station where two alert-looking security officers scanned him. Instead of going to his own office, as he normally would have, he headed for the office to which Lieutenant Dugan had asked him to report. The office was in the main Headquarters building, seventh floor, on a long hallway lined with closed, numbered doors.

He was, he had to admit, a little relieved to find that the room really was just an office, and not a cell or a hearing chamber. Dugan sat behind an orderly desk, speaking to his computer, and he looked up when Kyle came in. “Mr. Riker,” he said with a friendly tone. “Thanks for coming. Have a seat.”

Kyle sat. The office, he noted, was sparely furnished, as if Dugan didn’t really spend much time in it. Beside Dugan’s desk there was a credenza with globes on it, depicting Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, and two visitor’s chairs. Holoimages hung on the walls—landscapes of planets Kyle couldn’t identify but which clearly weren’t Earth. The images changed as Kyle watched them, one planetscape dissolving into another in random sequence. “If I were to guess, Lieutenant Dugan, I’d say you were not all that happy about being chained to a desk. You seem to be a man who’d rather be in deep space.”

“I’ve spent some time on a starship,” Dugan admitted. “It’s always fascinating. But there’s nothing wrong with good old momma Earth, either.”

“That’s my attitude too,” Kyle said. “Our own planet is almost infinite in its variety. I like a little trip off-world as much as the next guy, but I’m always glad to see her in the forward viewscreen when I come home.”

Dugan glanced at a screen that Kyle couldn’t see, and when he looked up again his expression was more serious. “Mr. Riker,” he began. “I have a little more information now than I did last night, at your apartment.”

“It’d be hard to have less.”

Dugan chuckled. “That’s true. The man who attacked you was named Yeoman Second Class William Hall. He was assigned here, at Headquarters. His primary duty was as an assistant clerk in Vice Admiral Bonner’s command. The vice admiral’s office has notified his next of kin, family back in Arkansas, I gather. Do you know Bonner?”

Kyle tried to picture him, and came up with a vague impression of a severe man in his fifties, with thick black hair and a pinched face. “I believe I’ve met him once or twice, but I don’t really know him.”

“He’s very loyal to those in his command,” Dugan said. “My impression is that he barely knew Yeoman Hall, but he’s very concerned about what happened to him.”

“So am I,” Kyle confessed. “Do we know the cause of death?”

Dugan hesitated before answering, as if he needed to decide how much to reveal. “An autopsy was conducted last night. There’s evidence of brain damage—some kind of interference with the operation of his brain’s limbic system. More specifically, the hippocampus.”

“Caused by what?”

“That we don’t know,” Dugan replied. “He’s still being examined to see if that can be determined.”

“And that could have killed him?” Kyle asked. “That damage?”

“Not by itself, no. But the force of your blows, in combination with the preexisting condition, possibly might have.”

Kyle looked at the floor, carpeted in institutional blue. “So I did kill him.”

“It’s quite possible that you did, yes. Or contributed to his death, which would probably be more accurate. I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Kyle said sadly. “I’d like to be able to contact his next of kin, if that’s possible, to express my deep regret.”

“I’ll try to get you that information, sir. In the meantime, we’ve checked your computer’s memory, and it confirms your version of events.”

“I could have faked that,” Kyle suggested.

“You could have,” Dugan agreed, his narrow, hooded eyes fixed on Kyle’s face. “But you would have had to work fast. We were there shortly after everything started happening. And the computer was recording events the whole time—it would have been pretty tricky of you to fake the record without any gaps in the real-time log.”

Kyle had intentionally kept the computer recording everything, just for that reason. Once the authorities had been notified, he knew one of their first priorities would be to investigate what the computer had observed from the first phaser discharge on.

“Did Mr. Hall have any genuine reason for coming to see me?” Kyle asked. “Was he bringing a message from Bonner, or anyone else in the command?”

“Not that we’ve been able to determine,” Dugan responded. “He went off duty at eighteen hundred hours, and last anyone knew he was headed to his home in Daly City. There seems to have been no Starfleet-related reason for him to even have still been in uniform, much less passing himself off as on official business. That’s how he got through the door of your building, by the way. And he had a Starfleet keytag to make it seem on the level. It wasn’t activated—wouldn’t have got past a first-year cadet—but it was good enough to get into a century-old civilian apartment building.”

Kyle felt defensive. “It’s a nice place,” he said quickly. “Lots of atmosphere.”

“I’m sure,” Dugan replied. “And substandard security.”

“Which is normally not a problem,” Kyle countered. “I’ve been living there for years. This is the first time I’ve been attacked. So statistically, it’s still a good bet.”

“Statistically, most people only get killed once,” Dugan pointed out. “We’re not charging you with anything, sir. And we’ll keep investigating Yeoman Hall, to see if we can figure out what he was doing there. But if I were you, I’d be a little careful.” He looked away, wordlessly dismissing Kyle.