Poor you!she thought. What a shock this all must be. Your first offworld flight, and you didn’t even get space sick. Your first look at the stars up close, and all you did on the first leg of the journey was stare at them all through the third watch when you should have been sleeping, as if they would vanish if you didn’t watch them! Poor child, have I put too much responsibility on those narrow shoulders?

None of it showed on her strong-jawed face, she hoped. “What is it?” she asked in the same imperious tone she had adopted since she had wheedled Zetha away from Koval expressly for the purpose that had brought them to this gods-forsaken place. “I have not much time before I am missed. Speak!”

“Am I to return, Lady?” was all Zetha asked.

“I try not to predict the future,” Cretak said. “Nor should you, if this is the life you want.”

Zetha hesitated for only a moment, then shrugged. “Any life is better than no life.”

“Then go!” Cretak ordered her, thinking: And what little faith I have left in the future go with you!

Chapter 1

Not every crisis,Admiral Uhura believed, begins with exploding planets or even a starship battle. Sometimes it is the things we cannot see that cause the greatest harm.

“Joshua Lederberg,” McCoy said, glowering at her from the comm screen in her office at Starfleet Intelligence, “Twentieth-century Earth geneticist. Said something to the effect that the single biggest threat to man’s continued dominance in the universe is the virus. They were here long before us, they’ll be here long after we’re gone.”

“So you will help us, then,” Uhura said.

“Yes. Repeat: No.”

Uhura frowned back at him. “Now what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, young lady, that I can’t help you with this one. I’ve gone fishing.”

Uhura counted to ten before she trusted herself to speak again. Age hadn’t mellowed Leonard McCoy one iota; he was as ornery as ever. He was pretending to ignore her, puttering with something just below the comm screen’s sight-line, and she wondered what it was.

“What if I told you it’s urgent?” she asked.

“It’s alwaysurgent!” McCoy grumbled. “Is Starfleet so devoid of decent medical personnel these days that every time there’s a crisis you have to drag an old warhorse like me out of the barn? Dammit, woman, I’m retired! Leave me in peace!”

He had a point, Uhura thought. He was at least a decade up on her, and every other week she thought of retiring. Not that Command would let her.

She supposed if she insisted they’d get someone else to cover her class at the Academy, but she likedteaching! It was being head of Starfleet Intelligence that Command wouldn’t let her wiggle out of. The C-in-C would have her believe that she was the only one in the quadrant who could handle that.

Meaning no one else is crazy enough to take the job,Uhura thought wryly. Also, the theory is I know too many secrets to be trusted to take them with me to some quiet country retreat and be relied upon to keep my mouth shut.

But McCoy had no such burden. He was legitimately retired…again. But every time he stepped down, someone or something lured him back in. A man of 130-something ought to be allowed to enjoy a little leisure. Maybe she’d leave him in peace after this assignment, but right now Uhura really needed his expertise.

“I already have a team in place,” she explained, wishing he’d stop fidgeting and pay attention. “All I’m asking you to do is consult by remote. I’ve got some excellent people working on this already, but I need your wisdom and experience, Leonard.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere…”

“You won’t even have to get off the porch,” Uhura wheedled.

“Then you don’t need me!” McCoy grumped. “You’ve got all of Starfleet Medical at your disposal. How many Vulcan physicians are there in the fleet these days?”

“It’s not just about Vulcans,” Uhura said.

“Affirmative, Admiral,” Dr. Selar had told her, after no doubt staying up all night to run the algorithm. “I am investigating all reported cases of unusual illness on Federation worlds bordering the Neutral Zone.”

“And—?” Uhura prompted.

“Ruling out an outbreak of neo-hantavirus on Claren III, which was self-limiting and contained in a single sector, and a previously unidentified aerobacter found in the soil of Gemus IV, which caused flulike symptoms in 1,700 children in two of the three settlements before it was isolated, and for which a vaccine has since been developed, there are so far seventy-three cases in seventeen different locales proximate to the Neutral Zone which potentially fit the parameters.”

“Demographics of the victims so far?” Uhura asked, jotting notes on a padd for a memo to her Listeners on the ships that patrolled the Zone.

“Thirty-one Vulcan, twenty-three Rigelian, nineteen human.”

“All fatal?”

“Affirmative.”

“Did they infect anyone else?”

“Unknown at present, Admiral. All of the Rigelians were from the same extended family, but the Vulcan and human casualties were isolated and, apparently, unknown to each other. The last confirmed case occurred three weeks ago, so it is assumed the current outbreak was self-contained.”

“Which is not to say that there couldn’t be further outbreaks,” Beverly Crusher chimed in from the other screen on a three-way conference call. She was across town from Uhura at Starfleet Medical HQ; Selar was parsecs away aboard a Vulcan research vessel on its way to Earth from the Beta Quadrant. “It could be something geographic, something seasonal or cyclical, something that occurs every few years or even centuries.”

“And except for the Rigelians, none of them knew each other?” Uhura said. “Traveled between worlds? Had a friend or relative in common? Ordered supplies from the same source? Ate at the same restaurant?”

“Admiral,” Selar said, “may I respectfully point out that we do not yet know, purely on symptomatology, whether this is the same illness in each case?”

“I realize that, but—”

“Nevertheless, I am attempting to establish a commonality among the victims,” the Vulcan physician added primly. “As for ordering supplies from offworld, irradiation procedures at point of origin and point of arrival would have precluded the possibility of any known disease organism—”

“I know, Selar.” Uhura sighed. “It’s the unknown disease organisms I’m concerned about. Dr. Crusher, suggestions?”

“I’d suggest Selar expand her algorithm to include all Federation worlds.” On her screen, the Vulcan nodded, unperturbed by the amount of extra work this would require. “In the meantime, I’ll need tissue samples, or at least readouts, from as many of those seventy-three cases as possible to run a comparison. I’m still trying to isolate an organism in the samples you gave me from…the other side. There isn’t very much to go on. I’m doing my best.”

“I’d expected nothing less,” Uhura said warmly. “Carry on, Doctors. Keep me informed.”

“My people are already working on it,” she told McCoy now, preparing a data-squirt about “it” even as she spoke. Her talented fingers ticked over the controls like a concert pianist’s. “There’s this weird fever that’s been cropping up in some of the colonies. Starfleet Medical thinks it might be similar to something that my sources tell me may be happening inside the Romulan Empire. I’m sending you the readout now.”