“Good afternoon, Commander. Lieutenant,” Data greeted them warmly.

“Commander Data, Commander Riker, good to see you,” said Keru.

“Hello, sir,” Hawk nodded to Riker, then added, “Hello, Commander Data.”

“Where are you two off to?” Riker said.

“Well, we finally got our shift schedules pretty compatible, so we’re going for a drink in the crew lounge, and then thought we’d take in a holodeck adventure,” Hawk said, grinning a little sheepishly.

“Something with pirates?” said Riker. When Hawk looked surprised, the Commander gestured toward Keru, smiling. “Ranul told me about your Captain Bloodscenarios during one of our velocity matches. They sound like a lot of fun.”

Keru looked down at Riker, a twinkle in his eye. “I understand that you and the captain sometimes run a holographic program involving an old sailing vessel known as the Enterprise? Someone once mentioned to me that Lieutenant Commander Worf received his last promotion there.”

Riker laughed, remembering the double‑dunking of Worf and Dr. Crusher that had occurred shortly before the Enterprise‑Dhad been dispatched on its final mission. “We’ll have to revive that program if– when– Sean gets lieutenant commander’s pips of his own.”

Data spoke up then. “I believe the two of you have a different kind of celebration coming up soon. Your second anniversary is next week, as I recall?”

Riker shot the pair a questioning look. Keru grinned under his mustache, and put his arm around the shoulders of the shorter Hawk, pulling him in just a bit. “That’s right. Two years since that fateful day on Risa.”

“I was spelunking in the crystal caves and lost my footing,” said Hawk. “I fell over the side of an outcropping, and landed wrong. Luckily, Ranul was exploring the same caves, and he rappelled down to help me.”

“He had broken his leg,” said Keru. “So, I hoisted him over my shoulder like a sack of Andorian curm’esh,and climbed up to safety and a medic.”

“He waited for me to get out of the medic lounge, took me to dinner, and we’ve been together ever since,” said Hawk. “We were even both able to arrange transfers onto the Enterprise‑Ebefore its launch.”

“And we’re all the better for it,” said Riker. He clapped a hand on top of Keru’s–which was still on Hawk’s shoulder–and nodded past them. “We have to get to a briefing. But if you’re up for it, I’ll buy you a celebratory drink next week for your anniversary.”

“Thank you, Commander. That would be nice,” said Keru.

“Good‑bye, gentlemen,” said Data.

As the two men headed for the crew lounge, Riker and Data went to catch the turbolift to their meeting.

Dr. Beverly Crusher had come to the ready room to deliver the crew medical evaluation report, and minutes later Picard found himself sharing the quick turbolift ride to deck three with her and Counselor Troi.

“Have either of you met the ambassador yet?” Picard said.

“Very briefly,” Troi said. “After Commander Riker had shown him and the admiral to their quarters.”

“And what was your impression of him?”

She shook her head. “Ullian minds are opaque even to full‑blooded Betazoid telepaths, so my vantage point is no better than yours, Captain. But I did sense that Admiral Batanides was trying to conceal something.”

Intelligence operatives,Picard thought. He couldn’t help but wonder what secrets she might still be withholding from him, despite the nostalgic bond between them.

“What do you suppose it is that she’s hiding?” Crusher said.

A thoughtful look crossed Troi’s countenance. “For one thing, she doesn’t seem to want anyone to discover that she and Ambassador Tabor are romantically involved.”

“What?” Picard said. He realized too late that he had spoken much more loudly than he had intended.

A sly smile blossomed across Crusher’s face. “Isn’t the admiral an old friend of yours, Jean‑Luc?”

“Yes, Doctor. But that’s allwe were. And that was a very, very long time ago.”

The chief medical officer spread her hands in an exaggerated gesture of peace. “Sorry, Captain.” Stagewhispering to Troi, she said, “Deanna, I think you’d better schedule a counseling session.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Picard said, trying not to smile. Troi’s face flushed with barely bridled mirth.

At least now I know why Marta calls the ambassador by his first name,Picard thought. He assumed that she never mentioned the relationship for professional reasons.

The turbolift stopped. The three entered an empty corridor and headed toward the fore part of the deck. Just before they entered the main forward observation lounge, Picard overheard Crusher tell Troi that shehad figured out that the admiral and the ambassador were an item when she noticed that Will had assigned them both to the same VIP stateroom.

Inside the lounge, Picard saw that all the rest of the ship’s senior officers were already taking their seats around the conference table. Aubin Tabor looked professorial, his hands behind his back as he stood before the star‑flecked observation windows. Picard was impressed that Tabor was greeting everyone by name, without even once consulting a padd.

Or is he simply plucking whatever information he needs from each person’s mind?

As soon as everyone was settled, Tabor called the briefing to order.

“To understand the people we seek to bring into the Federation,” Tabor said, “we must understand the world that produced them.”

Raising a small remote‑control device before him, he summoned a holographic representation of a planet, which began slowly turning above the conference table. Half of the planet was engulfed in inky, impenetrable darkness. The other hemisphere was brightly lit, colored with a pallet of inhospitable rust reds and sulfuric yellows. It reminded Picard of something out of Milton.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Chiaros IV,” Tabor continued. “Because its rotational period precisely matches its sidereal year, this planet presents the same face to its sun at all times. In other words, half the planet exists in perpetual, broiling daylight. The opposite side is consigned to an endless night. This leaves only a narrow swath of habitable area–the so‑called ‘twilight meridian’–girdling the planet from pole to pole and back again. As you can see, Chiaros IV is a place of remarkable contrasts.”

“Remarkable indeed,” Troi said. “The very existence of this planet seems to defy all the odds.”

“Actually,” Data said, “such orbital configurations are not uncommon. For example, Earth has a single natural satellite that orbits in exactly the same fashion.”

Smiling indulgently at the android, Tabor said, “ Actually, Mr. Data, I believe the counselor’s words were quite well‑chosen.” He then resumed addressing the rest of the room: “Besides the ferocious weather systems caused by the planet’s tide‑locked orbit, one must consider the Chiarosan star’s prodigious output of hard radiation. Without the protection of the planet’s immense magnetic field, no life of any sort could exist here. The solar bombardment long ago boiled away most of Dayside’s surface water, leaving the Chiarosans with the unenviable options of either pumping it out from dozens of kilometers beneath the nutrient‑poor ground, or collecting Nightside ice–the latter alternative being extraordinarily difficult and risky, given the permanently frozen conditions there. On Chiaros IV, life itself is very much against the odds, let alone the Chiarosans’ warp‑capable civilization. But the Chiarosans are inveterate survivors; they are a people long accustomed to ‘beating the odds.’ ”

“It’s hard to understand,” Crusher said with a slight shake of her head, “how a warp‑capable society can have so much trouble just keeping its people fed.”

“Not really, Doctor,” Batanides said. “These people don’t have any trading partners within ten parsecs in any direction. On top of that, they only discovered fasterthan‑light travel about a generation ago. Zefram Cochrane’s first warp experiments didn’t bring us asteroid mines and food replicators overnight. Until the start of the twenty‑second century, after the first Oort cloud resource‑extraction operations had gotten under way, Earth was still in pretty rough shape economically.”