He chuckled and shook his head. “I’ve got a story, all right. It’s a doozy. But I’m not telling it, not here, not tonight. Some of us have to go to work in the morning.”

“Why do you live here? You work pretty regularly, you must get paid okay.”

“I guess because I’m not an easy case either,” he answered.

“Must be a good story, then.”

“Oh, it is.”

“Full of love and hate and betrayal and passion? Those are the best stories.”

“I think it’s safe to say all those elements are present in mine,” he said. “What about yours?”

“I don’t have a story,” Michelle said, closing her eyes. Her lashes were long and thick and, like the rest of her face, perfectly formed. “I’m the exception that proves the rule.”

Kyle reached out and touched her perfect chin. “I don’t believe you.” As he held it, she opened her eyes and it was like staring into the sky on the clearest summer day imaginable. He felt lost, as if he were falling into the vortex of their blue.

“I guess you’ll have to stay around for a while,” she said. “So you can find out if you’re right or not.”

“I can think of worse things to do,” Kyle said.

“I can think of better things.” She pushed herself forward, so that her face was closer, and tilted her chin, bringing her lips against his again. “Much better things.”

Chapter 19

There was, Will had always believed, some kind of mystical connection between the night sky and romance. And because he had romance on his mind, he found himself looking forward to a scheduled trip to the moon with more eagerness than he had previously expected. Various squadrons would be going to stay for a few days in Tycho City there and to work on some flying exercises. He was going, which was great, and Felicia was going, which was even better. He figured there would be a chance to get her out under the starry lunar sky and really find out what he meant to her. And to let her know what she had come to mean to him, which seemed to become, with every passing day, all the more urgent. Besides, it was a chance to get off-world, and that in itself was reason to celebrate.

Probably because he was so excited about the trip, the days before it seemed to drag along interminably. He went to classes, he did homework, he played strategema and racquetball and poker and parrises squares. From time to time he went out with friends, but much as he wanted to be alone with Felicia he really wanted to save that until the Tycho trip. It all seemed so numbingly routine. During quiet moments, when he was eating or lying in bed waiting for sleep to claim him, he ran through different scenarios in his head, but they all included him and Felicia.

Tycho City, Will knew, was a populous place—so big that it could be seen from Earth on a very clear night. But he’d been there once before and he knew there were some spots on its outskirts—not far away from the Starfleet base they’d be staying in—that were still within its atmospheric and gravity fields but were otherwise traditional lunar landscape, as it had existed even before Neil Armstrong had left the first human footprint there. He would take Felicia out there, alone, and they’d sit close together, looking out at the Earth and the stars. He would take her hand in his and look into her warm brown eyes and say something like, “Felicia, I’ve really enjoyed spending this time with you.” Then she would melt into his arms.

Except there were some occasions in his mental motion picture when she would simply laugh, or even shake off his touch and storm away. He wasn’t sure what he would do if those came true, but he knew his heart would stop beating. Maybe he’d simply walk outside of Tycho’s atmosphere and see how long it took him to suffocate or freeze to death.

When he got to thinking that way he would shake his head and tell himself that he was being stupid. That’s not you,he thought. That’s some lovesick puppy. Will Riker’s a lot of things, but he’s not a guy who’d commit suicide for anyone.

Then again, love changes you,he guessed. If it doesn’t, maybe it was never really there at all.

Tycho City was everything Will had remembered it being—big, sprawling, bustling, full of bright lights and loud noise and riots of color, as if to chase away the deadly silence of the moon’s surface. Everyone who lived there seemed to speak louder than was necessary, and tried to pack more activity into each day than Will did in a week. The pace of life was furious.

For the cadets, the pace was also fast. They woke early each morning, bathed and ate and then went straight to the field for flight practice. Breaking into their squadrons, they flew an assortment of shuttlecraft, mostly ships that would have been mothballed if not for the educational opportunity they offered. On the morning of their last day, Will was at the helm of a twenty-year-old executive shuttle. It was a sleek ship that seated ten, though on this one there were only the four cadets and their flight instructor, a Vulcan named Satek.

Will felt nervous as he eased the ship out of the dock under Satek’s watchful eye. He had done this enough times in flight sims and training runs, but he wanted everything to be perfect this time. The ship responded like a dream to his commands, though, despite its age—it was actually pretty lush, compared to what he was used to, since it had been the private shuttle of a highly placed Federation diplomat, and all its systems were in top working order. The shuttle hangar opening looked awfully small as they approached it, and the nose of the ship awfully large. And despite the low speed Will knew they were holding at, he felt like the ship was accelerating much too fast.

“You’re doing great,” Paul Rice whispered to him as they cleared the hangar bay. “No problems. Give it some power now.”

With the last structure safely behind them, Will knew that it was okay to give it some juice. They would fly out to a series of buoys, perform a few maneuvers around them, then return. The only tricky part yet to come would be landing again, which would also be Will’s job.

Once at the buoys, each of the cadets in the squadron took their turn putting the shuttle through its paces. They worked on accelerated banked turns, figure eights, hard stops, and other aerial maneuvers. As usual, Paul had the surest hand and best control—he was born to fly, Will was convinced. Dennis Haynes, still in Will’s squadron, was uncertain and hesitant, and that showed in his flying. Estresor Fil was workmanlike and by the book, but every move she made felt just a little stiff. She got the job done, though, and Satek seemed pleased with her performance. Jenna Garcia was nearly as smooth as Paul was, impressing Will with her technical acuity and her command of the conn.

Finally, once they had all made a couple of turns, Satek turned to Will. “Very well done, gentlemen. Cadet Riker, please take us back to Tycho City.”

“Yes, sir,” Will said. Jenna slipped from the helmsman’s chair and Will sat down. He glanced over the instrument display. Everything looked shipshape. “Set course for Tycho City, Starfleet hangar bay,” he instructed the computer. A quick look at the navigational reference display told him when the course had been confirmed.

A short while later the hangar bay loomed in the front viewscreen as the ship’s navigational systems homed in on it. Will kept track of all his displays, and everything looked good for a landing when Satek spoke up. “Computer off, Instructor Satek’s command.”

Instantly the onboard computer obeyed, switching itself off, and the shuttle was under Will’s manual control. “You’re in control, Mr. Riker,” Satek said. “Bring us in.”

“But ... yes, sir,” Will replied. He fought back the sudden wave of panic. He could do this manually, he felt sure, even without a computer. Any pilot worth the name had to know this procedure inside and out. He’d practiced it, run through the steps, simulated it ... that hangar was rushing up at them fast, though, as they entered Tycho’s gravitational field.