After another few moments of listening, Garrett gave up and nodded toward Stern’s tricorder. “You still reading atmosphere in there?”

“Yup, andheat, plus some sort of organized energy signature. And that neuromagnetic field, it’s still there. Stronger than we read on the ship.”

“What about life signs?”

“Now that.”Stern grunted. “Reads like a convention down there.”

“How many?”

“A lot. Five humanoid and, oh, hell.”Stern jiggled her tricorder then smacked it with the side of her gloved hand. “Damn thing.”

“Very high tech.”

“Whatever works,” said Stern. She squinted. “Sorry, Rachel, they’re not all resolving. Like I said, I read at least five humanoids. Can’t tell you what they are either, what species. And there’s a whole bunch of other readings.”

“Define bunch. Are they life-forms?”

Stern made a piffling sound with her lips. “Life-forms. It’s a damn big galaxy, Rachel. I’m reading high-energy, almost like ionized plasma. But they’re contained, cohesive. I’m just not sure. I’ll tell you something, though. They remind me of something I read once. Mac talked about them in his seminars on xenobiology. You remember the Organians?”

“Who doesn’t? Organian Peace Treaty, 2267,” Garrett recited, “imposed by the Organians to prevent war between the Klingons and the Federation. Are you saying that these are Organians?”

“Not quite. The Organians were noncorporeal life forms, though: pure energy, pure thought. Mac was there, you know. Well, his captain was, anyway, Kirk, and his first officer, Spock. Anyway, they encountered a similar class of beings, two years later. Zetarians, they were called. Same deal: highly cohesive noncorporeal life-forms.”

“Are you telling me that’s what you’re reading here?”

“No, but it’s close. I’d have to get further in, I think, past all this damned interference, but there’s energy in there, and a lot of it. Neuromagnetic, for sure.”

Garrett was tempted to try to decipher the readings herself but doubted she’d have any more luck than Stern. “We saw two skimmers. Could whatever you’re reading have come from the biosphere?”

“I doubt it. That biosphere was made to handle ourkind, not,” Stern held her tricorder up, gave it a waggle, “this.”

“Okay,” said Garrett, though it wasn’t. “What about this panel? You sure about its being the source?”

“Absolutely, and I’ll tell you something else. This thing’s been opened three times now.”

Garrett was startled. “Three?But we only saw two alarms.”

“On the Enterprise.I know.” Stern gave her captain a significant look. “I don’t make these things up. You’d never catch it if you weren’t looking for it; the resonance band’s only slightly above that for Halak’s transponder, which was the reason we caught it the first time around. Only the secondtime, whoever opened it made a mistake. See here?” Stern pointed to a magnetic variance signature on her tricorder. “The first time, whoever did this got it right on the money. The second time, though, someone keyed in the wrong sequence to reverse polarity going in. Botched it.”

“And that set off the alarm.”

Stern nodded. “Then they seemed to have gotten it right. But the third time, well, here, look for yourself.”

Garrett thumbed through the entries. “Ionized debris, trace ferrous…Jo, this reads like a phaser blast. Recent, too.”

“Like within the last hour.”

“But then why isn’t the panel damaged? Or the surrounding rock?”

“Beats me. All I can tell you, whoever did this doesn’t have a hell of a lot of finesse, or patience. Not that hard to figure out, you know; this isn’t exactly twenty-fourth century state of the art technology here. But whoever was here just didn’t care, and that’s why the alarm has read continuous, only at a higher frequency. You could go in and out a hundred times now, and the alarm wouldn’t be any different.”

“Well, we ought to be able to do the same trick, minus the phaser.”

“But that’s weird. Phaser blast ought to have taken that thing right out of commission. From the looks of it, though, all it did was ramp up the alarm, only silently.”

“Your point?”

“Hell, I don’t know if I havea point. But I’ll tell you, this is one of the few times I wish we could just beam in, do our rescue, presuming whoever’s down there wants to be rescued, and then beam the heck back out.”

“We went over that. Too much…”

“Right, right,” Stern interrupted impatiently, “too much interference from the magnetic field. Don’t forget, I was there when you hatched this cockamamie plan. And I’ll tell you something right now. You can bet whoever’s out there listening won’t be far off. One blip, you can ignore. But not when it’s screaming. I don’t think we have a lot of time.”

“Noted.” Handing Stern back her tricorder, Garrett ran her eyes over the seam of the panel. “What’s immediately beyond this?”

“Another door. Passage beyond that. Tunnels. Beyond them, looks like a maze of tunnels, like an anthill. But, for my money, this is a kind of antiquated airlock.”

“So no explosive decompression,” said Garrett, pulling out her phaser. “Well, if someone’s coming, I guess we’d better get our asses in gear, don’t you think?”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” said Stern. She keyed in the sequence to open the panel: red…red…red…double green. Watched as her tricorder read air evacuating from the lock. The door slid open. Stern slung her tricorder over her shoulder. “Fools go gladly.”

“Where angels fear to tread.” Garrett thumbed her phaser to setting two. “No one ever accused me of being an angel.”

“What do you mean, boy?” Chen-Mai felt so much blood choking his face, he thought he probably looked as purple as a bruised plum. He glared down at Jase, who knelt by Ven Kaldarren. “What’s wrong with your father? Speak sense!”

“But I’m tryingto tell you,” Jase said, desperation in his voice. He held his father’s head in his lap. Kaldarren grimaced, moaned. His face was stained with sweat and blood; his shoulder-length black hair clung in wet tendrils to his neck. Every few seconds, a tremor shuddered through his body. “They’re here,and they’ve gothim! Don’t you see them? They’re all over the place!”

“Who?All I see is you, that boy,” he jerked his head toward the prostrate figure of Pahl, “and your father.”

Kaldarren.Chen-Mai had to restrain himself from giving Kaldarren a swift kick in the kidneys. After Chen-Mai had blasted that panel blocking their way into the tunnel (and then that panel just slid open, who built such a stupid mechanism?),he and Mar had crept down the tunnel, half-expecting Kaldarren to ambush them at any second. What they were not prepared for was a treasure trove. Jevonite, gold, platinum, fabulous gems: The sheer amount of treasure spilling out of rock crystal chests and heaped in piles around the red stone floor was simply dazzling. There was little doubt that they were a hair’s breadth away from being rich beyond their wildest dreams. Both he and Mar had been so awestruck they hadn’t budged until they heard Jase’s frantic cries mingled with Kaldarren’s screams.

Well, the Betazoid didlook bad. He watched as Kaldarren writhed, the cords of Kaldarren’s muscles standing out along his neck. And his screams, Chen-Mai thought, they were loud enough to wake the dead.

But he didn’t understand any of this. Chen-Mai’s look took in the chamber. Pahl, slumped in his uncle’s lap. That silver mask. Chen-Mai plucked it up between two fingers and held it up in a soft silver light that washed over the chamber from somewhere high above. (Recessed light panels, Chen-Mai thought absently.) His eyes traveled over the simple contours of what was otherwise an unremarkable piece of what? Art?

“Don’t,” said Jase. He was staring at the mask, a wild expression on his face. “Don’t put it on!”