Shelby cast a quick glance in Gleau’s direction, but the head of science—to whom M’Ress reported, when she wasn’t busy reporting about him—simply shrugged noncommittally.

“Very well,” said Shelby. “Have her meet us there.”

And as Shelby moved toward the turbolift, Mueller falling into step alongside her, the executive officer said in a low voice, “Si Cwan, against your best advice, gets involved with the Danteri and a passing Vulcan has to save his ass, and you have no intention of saying ‘I told you so’?”

“I said I ‘had’ no intention,” Shelby assured her. “That’s because I didn’t know we were going to run into him again. But I havethat intention now.”

“Did I ever tell you how much I look up to you, Captain?” asked Mueller.

“Not nearly enough, XO,” said Shelby as the turbolift doors closed around them. “Not nearly enough.”

EXCALIBUR

I.

MOKE’S HEART WAS POUNDING as he sprinted down the corridor, moving so quickly that he actually went right past Xyon. The younger child, apparently in response to the pounding feet behind him, came to a complete halt. He turned and waited and then sat there in surprise as Moke barreled past without even slowing.

“Moke?”

The calling of his name was small and innocent and filled with confusion. It instantly caught Moke’s attention, and he skidded to a stop. He looked back at Xyon, who was working on forming his lips into the perfect shape for repeating the word. “Moke?” he said again.

It was the first time that the child had uttered Moke’s name. Moke walked toward him slowly, pushing his hair out of his eyes, and hunkered down in front of him. He tapped his own chest and affirmed, “Moke.”

“Mooookkke,” said Xyon, dragging it out, and then bounced up and down on his buttocks while singsonging, “Moke Moke Moke Moke Moooookke.”

For an instant, Moke forgot to be afraid, and in that selfsame instant came to the startling realization that not only didn’t he have to be afraid, but he was tired of it. He had been running from that dark, one-eyed man. Now he’d run from the specter of Mark McHenry. There was something bizarre going on aboard the Excalibur,something of which only he seemed fully aware.

He’d gone to his adoptive father, to Mackenzie Calhoun, and told the captain what he had seen. Calhoun had seemed either skeptical or uncertain as to what was to be done. Either way the end result was the same: nothing.

But when he had challenged that invisible woman, that Artemis, she had vanished the moment he’d stood up to her. That should have told him something, except he’d been too upset to fully comprehend it. Now, though, he did, or at least understood it to the degree that he was going to try and act upon it.

Some of that resolve came from the way Xyon was looking at him. The pointy-eared child, whose face was a general mix of the features of both Burgoyne and Selar, obviously trusted Moke implicitly. He drew his perception of the world through Moke’s eyes, and Moke wasn’t about to make Xyon afraid of that which was around him.

He held out a hand firmly. “Come on, Xyon,” he said.

The small boy placed his hand in the elder’s, wrapping his tiny fingers around Moke’s. They got up and Moke headed back the way he’d come, shoulders squared, determined to deal head-on with whatever might be waiting for him. It particularly helped when he reminded himself that his strident finger-pointing had made the god lady go away when she was clearly trying to bother poor Mr. McHenry.

Indeed, there was no reason at all for Moke to have run from McHenry. He’d just been caught by surprise, that was all. McHenry had been coming right at him, gesturing frantically, and something within Moke had just cried out, “Enough!” And off he’d run. But that wasn’t going to be the case anymore. Moke was going to handle it. He could handle anything. Besides, the bottom line was that Mark McHenry was a friend. It wasn’t as if he was that intimidating dark man with the one eye. ...

Moke rounded the corner and saw McHenry right where he’d left him.

He was talking. As had consistently been the case, Moke saw the mouth moving but was unable to hear any words.

The thing was, McHenry was speaking with the one-eyed man.

That was enough to freeze Moke where he was. As much as he had stood up to Artemis, as much as he had overcome his initial fright and gone back to see McHenry, he wasn’t prepared for the sight of this darksome man standing right there, big as you please, in the corridor. Others were walking right past him without batting an eye. No one could see either McHenry or him. But Moke could, and—screwing his courage up—he stamped right toward the two phantoms and said loudly, “You go back where you came from!”

The old man and McHenry both looked straight at Moke. McHenry seemed startled, while the old man ...

He actually smiled.

It was the first time he’d genuinely smiled at Moke, and for no reason he could account for, Moke actually found the smile reassuring. The beginnings of a wild thought began to formulate in Moke’s mind. He’d spent so much time being startled by this imposing and fearsome individual, that he’d never considered the possibility that this ... this person... might actually be friendly somehow.

The old man said something to McHenry, and suddenly he turned and walked right through the nearest bulkhead. McHenry glanced at Moke, shrugged, said something although Moke couldn’t determine what, and followed the old man through the wall.

“Get back here!” shouted Moke. “Get back here!”

A bewildered Xyon tugged on Moke’s pants leg. Moke looked down at him and Xyon, again working meticulously to form the words, carefully enunciated, “I here!”

“I wasn’t talking to you, Xyon,” Moke said, but he had to laugh as he said it.

And then, to his surprise, McHenry reemerged from the wall. He glanced left and right, then looked straight at Moke and put a single finger to his lips, as if shushing him. Instantly, Moke understood: McHenry wanted him to keep quiet over the fact that Moke had seen him.

This immediately struck Moke as wrong. He felt as if he should go straight to Calhoun and tell him exactly what he’d experienced. As if sensing what was going through Moke’s mind, McHenry shook his head with even greater vehemence and again pressed his finger to his lips. The aggressive manner in which McHenry made it clear that he was seeking Moke’s silence gave Moke the impression that something very major was at stake. That by going to Calhoun and trying to improve matters, he might instead turn around and make things much, much worse.

Moke felt torn between his loyalty to Calhoun and the desperate urgency in McHenry’s face. Finally, deciding to err on the side of caution, Moke nodded once and mimicked the “shushing” gesture McHenry was giving him. McHenry let go a visible sigh of relief, which didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense to Moke. If McHenry was some sort of disembodied ghost, what did he need to be breathing for? But there was certainly no way he could pose such a question to the officer, and even if he did, he wouldn’t hear the answer.

And then Moke saw something he really didn’t understand in the least. As McHenry slipped through the bulkhead once more, a pair of darkly feathered birds flapped in through one side of the far wall and passed through the same bulkhead that McHenry had gone through. Quiet as shadows, as empty of substance as smoke, they were there and then they were gone, and so was McHenry.

Moke looked down at Xyon. “Just when you think things can’t get any stranger around here.”

At which point Xyon suddenly flashed perfectly formed, sharp little teeth, took two quick steps, and vaulted upon Moke like an attacking panther.