She craned her head to look back at one of the most spectacular ruins, which their stasis bubble had simply sailed right past. Some of the other tourists were protesting, too, until they had to be shushed in order to hear the Izad at the controls.

“There is a malfunction?” it said timidly.

Cries rose from the passengers. “Something’s wrong?” “A malfunction!” Someone let out a small scream of fright.

“Relax,” Jayme ordered Bobbie Ray, trying to remove his hands, which had clenched around her arm on hearing the news.

Meanwhile, Moll Enor got up to go to the front. “What’s wrong?” she asked the Izad.

“There is a malfunction?” it patiently repeated. Moll had found that the Izad had a common, subtle tick of allowing their voices to go up at the end of a sentence, making everything they said sound like a question. Moll attributed it to their socially subservient position.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“We will go to nearest port?” the Izad offered.

“Should you surface?” Moll asked, glancing at the green arch of water held back by the stasis bubble.

The Izad merely shook its head, seemingly unworried about a stasis failure.

Moll returned to her seat, telling the others, “There’s nothing to worry about. We’re being taken to the nearest port.”

The tense whispering in the tour‑bubble didn’t lighten until they surfaced at the port. Moll was pleased to see Jayme patting Bobbie Ray’s leg occasionally, acknowledging his fear at being underwater when a “malfunction” was occurring. They wouldn’t be able to get him out of the hostel after this.

But Bobbie Ray got safely out of the bubble without wetting a hair, though he seemed subdued by the scare. Their entire group was a little disconsolate as they trailed after the Izad guide. Moll wondered how they were going to get Bobbie Ray back in a bubble to return, when Jayme edged closer and whispered, “We’ll have to find some other way to get him back.”

Moll was pleased to have her thought voiced. “There’re airbuses everywhere. We should be able to arrange something for him.”

Moll Enor blamed herself afterwards for being so concerned about Bobbie Ray that her usually superb attention was distracted from what was going on. But the Izad guide was quite natural about standing aside and gesturing for them to enter one of the massive doors of the coliseum ruin.

Inside, their group merged with a larger, milling group of mixed tourists, all confused and babbling questions over one another. “What’s going on?” Moll asked, too late to stop them from entering.

Jayme immediately turned and tried to get back out, but the entryway was blocked by a double forcefield. There were two Izad at the other end, patiently funneling more tourists into the cavernous space. The press of people pushed them deeper inside, and they were unable to stop the influx. Arching overhead and cutting the harsh sun was the sustaining blue light of the forcefield, holding the ruin together.

“It’s the Izad!” a Rahm cried out, holding its hands up to stop the angry questions. A scattered group of Rahm had gathered in the center of the enormous coliseum. The Rahm were rapidly trying to join forces against the hundreds of tourists who were discovering they were trapped against their will.

“What do they want?” Jayme called out. “Why did they do this to us?”

But she was drowned out by other voices, louder and closer to the Rahm. One was deferred to by the other Rahm; he stepped onto a fallen block of stone, to say, “I am Oxitar, Senior Manager of the Regional Tourism Board.”

Cries greeted his announcement: “What’s going on?” “When can we go back to the hostel?” “My friend needs water!”

Others shushed the voices, trying to hear Oxitar. “The Izad won’t talk to us, but there have been rumors for cycles that they were unhappy with the way our world is run. We all work hard to make Rahm‑Izad a pleasant place for people like yourselves to come, and we will continue to do so–”

“This isn’t a commercial!” someone yelled.

Oxitar held up his hands. “I’m sure this will be worked out soon, if you could be patient and let us deal with the Izad.” He bent and listened briefly to one of the other Rahm. “You can find water in the rear of this building. Please be courteous to those in need. I will speak to the Izad, and will return to tell you as soon as I have information.”

Oxitar jumped down from the block, agile like all the Rahm‑Izad despite the age lines on his forehead and ultra‑thickening of his nose‑bridge. He was surrounded by Rahm as the small group moved through the tourists, sullenly parting to let them through.

“Nice vacation,” Bobbie Ray told Jayme. “Stuck in the middle of a local revolution.”

Moll didn’t like how long Jayme was gone. After the Rahm returned to say the Izad wouldn’t communicate with them, Jayme had thought for a long time, her brow furrowed. Every time Moll tried to speak to her, she shook her head. Finally, she had said she was going to try to talk to the Izad.

When Moll offered to go with her, she acted like she would have loved to say yes, but she refused. “They may feel less threatened by one person alone.”

“Threatened?” Bobbie Ray had slyly asked. He was lying back on a blanket that padded a large section of the original benching in the coliseum. “They’re the ones holding ushostage.”

Moll lost sight of Jayme–which was a difficult thing to do in those red tights with a black‑and‑white checked ultrashorts set. Jayme wasn’t one to dress down when she was off duty, but she was so flamboyantly personable that people usually forgave the assault on their eyes. At least Moll did.

Jayme appeared, then disappeared for long stretches of time as she went down various entryways, trying to talk to the Izad. When she finally returned, she was grinning like she’d just aced a biochemistry test.

“You want to get out of here?” she asked.

“They’re letting us go?” Moll replied, startled at her success.

“Only the three of us, if we agree to help them,” Jayme clarified.

“Help them?” Bobbie Ray asked.

At the same time, Moll said, “You were able to get them to trust you?”

Jayme shrugged. “Enough anyway. I told them I’ve had training as a Starfleet negotiator–”

“What?” Bobbie Ray demanded.

“It’s sort of true. I’ve negotiated family fights plenty of times.” She smoothed her hair and resettled the clip. “Anyway, the Izad know they’ll have to deal with Starfleet sooner or later because of all these Federation citizens they’re holding.”

“The Federation won’t negotiate in a hostage situation,” Bobbie Ray protested, squirming into a more comfortable position on the hard bench. Moll figured he was outraged by Jayme’s utter audacity. “The Izad are wrong to keep us prisoners here”

“The Izad have never been given a chance,” Jayme insisted.

“And they know that releasing Starfleet personnel–us–will show goodwill.”

“What do they want?” Moll asked.

“They don’t like how the ruins are being treated,” Jayme said bluntly. “All the money is going to support the Rahm elite rather than being spent on maintaining the artifacts. The place is crumbling out from under them. At the very least, they need a weather satellite to keep the temperature swings to a minimum.”

“This is about a weathersatellite?” Bobbie Ray blinked a few times. “You mean I’m napping on a stone because they want sunshine all the time?”

“Drop it,” Jayme ordered out of the side of her mouth. Appealing to Moll, she added, “These Izad don’t have anybody capable of negotiating with the Rahm or the Federation. Apparently their plan has been boiling for decades, until the entire Izad populace simply cracked. I’d hate to see them stomped back down when they’re finally standing up for their rights. With your help, maybe we can do something.”