“I certainly hope not, Captain,” Theras said, his blind eyes settling eerily upon Archer’s sighted ones, no doubt guided by the Aenar’s telepathy. “I have to allow myself to hope that Shran’s…attitude adjustment may mean that we may be closer to Jhamel and the other captives than we think.”

Archer found the blind telepath’s elliptical remark both confusing and intriguing. “I don’t understand, Theras. Are you saying that you’ve begun to…home in on her telepathically?”

“No, Captain.” Theras turned his milky eyes upon Shran. “But I believe that yourmind may have begun to react to the presence of hers,if only unconsciously.”

Shran’s face abruptly lost its prior, almost convivial expression, immediately collapsing back into a far more familiar frown. “Ridiculous, Theras. Ipossess no telepathic talents.”

“No,” Theras said. “But such gifts aren’t necessary for one to share a permanent mind‑link with a true telepath.”

“That is true,” T’Pol said in a voice that sounded almost wistful to Archer’s ear.

“Theras,” said Archer, “Are you telling us that Shran and Jhamel are telepathically linked somehow?”

Theras nodded. “Yes. I believe they are.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Shran said flatly.

“You love her, Shran,” Theras said, though his tone remained even, matter‑of‑fact, and completely nonaccusatory. “You’ve already admitted as much.”

Shran flushed a deep indigo. “Theras, it isn’t wise to put Jhamel’s allegedly calming influence over me to the test.”

Theras continued, undeterred by color cues and body language that he couldn’t see. “You share a bond with her, Shran. And it’s deeper than anything she and I could ever share.”

“You are a part of her shelthrethquad, Theras. And that is something that Ican never share.”

“Only because our shelthrethwas arranged long ago, Shran. Before another conflict involving the Romulans brought the two of you together, binding you in shared loss and shared triumph.”

The “why” of the notion made some degree of sense to Archer, even if the “how” still eluded him. Jhamel had lost her brother Gareb during the Romulan drone‑ship crisis, while a Tellarite diplomat had killed Shran’s beloved Talas; Jhamel and Shran had also worked in tandem to help Archer’s crew stop the Romulan drone affair.

“Even if you’re right, Theras,” Shran growled, “the bridge of a pinkskin starship is no place to discuss the matter.”

Archer had to agree. Noting Shran’s obvious discomfiture, he tried to steer the conversation away from the Andorian’s personal feelings and back toward the mechanics of Aenar telepathy.

“I still don’t quite understand this, Theras,” Archer said. “If we were actually anywhere near any of the Aenar captives, wouldn’t yoube the first to notice? After all, you’re the only telepath we have on board, if you don’t count T’Pol.”

Archer noticed that T’Pol had raised an eyebrow in response to his last remark. Though she was capable only of touch telepathy–and therefore possessed far less esper ability than Theras–it was certainly possible that she was miffed at being summarily excluded from Enterprise’s current extremely short list of psi‑gifted individuals. He made a mental note to apologize to her later.

“If we were extremely close to my fellow Aenar, I would almost certainly detect their thoughts,” Theras said. “I wouldn’t even have to be particularly close to them, for that matter. But I’m assuming that their captors would have drugged them to prevent them from revealing their location telepathically, particularly to other Aenar who might come looking for them.”

“That is a logical assumption,” T’Pol said.

Archer frowned in his first officer’s direction. “So wouldn’t those drugs also disable Shran’s link with Jhamel?”

Theras shook his head. “Only death itself can interrupt such a profoundly deep connection.”

“Then it’s a pity I’m not an Aenar,” Shran said. “If I were, I suppose I could telepathically trace Jhamel and the others straight to their exact location via this supposed mind‑link, whether the slavers had drugged them or not.”

“It’s a pity that I cannot test that idea with my own deep link to Jhamel,” Theras said sadly. “But if you were an Aenar, Shran, I think you probably could do just that.”

“But if I werean Aenar,” Shran said, hostility audible in his voice, “I’d have been captured right alongside you and everyone else the Orions took, because I wouldn’t have been able to put up enough of a fight to stop it.”

Theras quailed before Shran and even took a step backward. And although Archer sympathized with Shran’s obvious and justified frustrations–his ongoing inability to rescue Jhamel had to be hard for him to take, particularly now that he’d been informed that he possessed a mental connection to her that was tactically useless–he couldn’t allow the Andorian to get away with taking those frustrations out on the gentle Aenar any further.

“As I recall, Shran, the fight you put up didn’t end up making all that much difference, as far as the Orions and their business partners are concerned,” Archer said, stepping toward Shran. He hoped his body language was communicating the wordless pick‑on‑somebody‑your‑own‑size message he intended to convey.

Perhaps because he wasn’t a bully by nature, Shran seemed to receive the message without comment or complaint. He merely fumed in silence, his antennae lancing forward in undisguised but undirectable anger. Nowthat’s the Shran we’ve all grown to know and love so much these past few years,Archer thought before turning toward Theras.

Malcolm Reed, who’d been sitting in silence at his starboard station until now, chose that moment to speak up, raising the very question that Archer had been about to ask: “Theras, why haven’t you mentioned Shran’s mind‑link to Jhamel before now?”

“I suppose I never considered it relevant,” Theras said, turning so that his glassy eyes pointed in the tactical officer’s direction. “It had always seemed to me merely a personal oddity, and certainly nothing to worry about. Since I have always trusted Jhamel’s judgment, I had no reason to resent either her or Shran because of the link. And because Shran lacks sufficient esper capacity to even consciously sense the mind‑link’s presence, I could think of no practical way to use it to aid in our search. So I assumed that it wasn’t noteworthy enough to talk about.”

“That’s because it wasn’t,” Shran said flatly.

“Perhaps,” T’Pol said. “Or perhaps not.”

“You have something?” Archer said. He couldn’t help but notice that her reserved exterior was being betrayed by the slight olive flush that had risen in her cheeks. For a Vulcan, it was the equivalent of shouting “Eureka!”

T’Pol turned toward her science console and began punching in strings of commands with a dexterity that would have put the most nimble blackjack dealers on Risa to shame. “I’m not entirely certain yet, Captain.”

“Forget certainty,” Archer said, approaching her console and watching over her shoulder as she worked. “At this point, I’m willing to settle for wild speculation.”

“Very well, Captain. Shran can’t use his mind‑link with Jhamel to locate her. Correct?”

“So I keep hearing. Endlessly,” Shran said as he came up beside Archer, also clearly curious about T’Pol’s emerging hypothesis.

T’Pol turned her chair slightly so that she could look up at both Archer and Shran. Addressing the Andorian, she said, “I believe it may be possible to use your link to Jhamel as a means of actually locating her–by using some outside assistance.”

Archer thought he was finally beginning to see where she was going with this. “You’re proposing a Vulcan mind‑meld.”

Shran took a step back. Archer turned toward him, and saw an unmistakable look of dread cross his face. “You want me to open my brainup…to a Vulcan?”