Chapter Seven

Doctor Beverly Crusher sat in her office in sickbay, searching the main database of millions of files for documentation of an obscure ailment she had just read of a crew member suffering from on another starship. Beverly prided herself on being "up" on all developments of the medical world. The crew member had died of it, and no one knew what it was. Name search had yielded nothing, but perhaps it was categorized under a name of which she wasn't aware. Symptom search proved to be far too broad. She sighed and rested her chin in her hands.

"I need a secretary," she said aloud to absolutely nobody.

Wesley strode into her office wearing the huge grin that seemed always to precede the phrase Guess what?

"Guess what?"

Beverly smiled. Did she have her son pegged or what?

"Mom, you'll never believe what's going on up on the bridge."

"Probably not," she quirked her lips, "but I'll find out soon enough. The captain's called a meeting in the conference room at 2100 hours."

"I know."

"You know? Are you supposed to be there?"

"Yeah. I'm a pretty big part of this."

Then why hasn't our noble captain spoken to me yet?, she wondered. "Wesley," she was suddenly stern, "are you in trouble?"

"No, Mom," Wes was wounded, "I was just in the right place at the right time."

"Careful, Wes. Interesting doesn't always mean safe." Then her whole face changed to interest in the bridge developments. "So what's going on? We were fired on before, that much I know. I got so many reports of falls that I actually sent out med teams to roam the corridors!"

"Yeah, I may have you check out my neck and shoulders later. I was kinda dumped out of my seat."

"Kinda."

"Yeah, kinda."

Beverly was already digging her fingertips into the back of her son's neck. "And the red alert?"

"Yeah, there's this ship full of children. There are no adults on board, not even the cap-- ow!"

Beverly yanked her hands away. "Sorry. There's a knot there. That where you hit the floor?"

"No, the other side. Anyway, the captain's even a teenage girl. The ship's called the Neverland."

"How apropos."

"Really. They were demanding that we surrender our ship to them."

"This is sounding less and less believable."

"Well, I don't tell it right. But when we wouldn't give them the ship, they -- ouch!" Wes sucked air between his teeth. "That's where I hit the floor -- they opened fire."

"More like hit us with everything they've got."

"Not even. They fired once, and we have reason to believe it wasn't even full power."

"That... was one shot?"

Wes nodded, head drooping slightly from the slowly relaxing muscles in his shoulders. "This is helping so much. Thanks."

"Want me to go get the--"

"No."

"You're worse than the captain."

"Not hardly. But these children know just about everything about everyone on this ship, God knows how. They're willing to negotiate, but only with me and only on their ship."

Beverly grabbed Wes's hair and tugged his head up firmly but gently. "WHAT?"

"Hey, easy! I'm not going."

"You'd better believe you're not."

"Mom, I'm a Starfleet officer and I go where the captain tells me to go. Currently he's telling me to go nowhere."

"Smart man."

"And it better not have been because he was afraid of you."

Beverly rounded her desk and sat down to face Wesley, suddenly very concerned. "Wesley, are you telling me that there is a ship ready, willing and able to destroy us lurking out there and they want you?"

Wes blinked. He'd never thought about it that way. "Well, yeah, I guess. But you make it sound so bad..."

"Wesley Richard Crusher!" Never, never, never cross a mother protecting her young.

Wes shook his head, staring at the floor. "It just didn't sound so scary until just now." Concern and fear had returned that had been banished by the excitement of the moment. Now, distanced and waiting, they came back with a vengeance. And on top of it all... "There was a ghost, too."

"A what?"

"A ghost, it was Tasha."

Beverly was silent for a moment. She waited for Wes to elaborate.

"Well, I suppose it was a ghost. We were in Captain Picard's ready room and Tasha came in. She suggested we do what the children wanted. But when the captain touched her she disappeared."

Beverly stared for a long time at her son, eyebrows drawn up in intense concern. Wesley could feel that gaze, and purposely avoided looking up to meet it. He was worried and frightened enough without knowing the full measure of worry it was causing his mother.

"You're right," Beverly whispered, "I don't believe this..."

* * *

"Not good news, Captain Kaelha," Briyen touched the PADD and the screen scrolled. "It's nothing inherent in this Human. He was visited by an alien from Tau Alpha C who can travel through time, but would never alter or change it."

"How about Crusher? Can he alter the past?"

"Anyone can alter the past. It's a matter of getting into the past to alter it."

"All right then, can he get into the past?" Kaelha sighed and stopped pacing around behind Briyen. She leaned over his shoulder to stare at the screen, letting her long brown hair fall down over her shoulders. Briyen was slightly distracted by the scent of lilacs the movement of her hair had brought to the air.

"We don't even know if he has any ability at all. He's never done it alone, that's for sure. He could very well need this alien to do it all for him."

"What do you mean, no ability? Look right here," Kaelha reached over Briyen's shoulder and pointed to the screen. "He was a source of strength for this alien when he was too weak to work. And here! He actually pulled himself out of his own time!"

"He didn't pull himself out, he pulled a dimension, a warp bubble, to him. It's entirely different. And, he created that warp bubble in the first place."

"Maybe we can have him pull 49 years ago to us."

Briyen shook his head. "It's not a self-contained area, and certainly too big."

"Can he just create a sort of a bridge for us?"

"He'd need something on the other side to attach it to. Forty-nine years ago, his parents weren't even born yet. There's nothing there for him to pull on. And none of them have ever even heard of the place."

Kaelha sighed in frustration and dropped her head down on Briyen's shoulder. Briyen ran his fingers into her hair comfortingly, but kept his eyes on his screen. "Don't give up yet, Kaelha."

"What else can I do? No one will help us."

"Did it occur to you to ask them for help, rather than tricking them into it?"

"No. No, we can't do that. Because if they attempt to help us travel back through time and it doesn't work, they won't fall for our original plan, which is now serving as our backup plan. They cannot know what's going on."

"Then you're saying we should continue with our original plan?" a quaver of fear was clearly present in Briyen's voice.

Kaelha draped her arms around his neck, staring into the screen Briyen's eyes had just left. "Not yet."

* * *

Picard's large, sweeping strides carried him from the silent refuge of his ready room to his captain's chair in the center of the bridge. He sat next to Deanna Troi and consulted with her.

"Counselor," he said in slightly private tones, even though he knew everyone on the bridge could hear. And if they couldn't, they were certainly trying. "What are you receiving from these children?"

"It's very strange, captain," she began without looking at him, but looking at the large ship on the viewscreen, "but I'm not receiving any emotions that are typical of normal Human children. They have little fear or anxiety over taking our ship from us. I have considered the possibility that this may be because they are confident they will succeed, but I sense no confidence in them, little thrill or excitement of success, either. Most of the fear is coming from the First Officer, Briyen. It seems that he's different from the rest of them. He is the only one acting like a typical Human adolescent."

"Perhaps, Counselor, they are not Human."

"I've found that it makes little difference in their behavioral patterns, captain. It isn't that they're not acting their race, it's that they're not acting their age. They're far too mature."

"Did you receive anything from the apparition of Tasha?"

"There was nothing in the apparition that was not inherent in Tasha herself, but there were major elements missing from the apparition that were in Tasha when she was alive."

"Mm? Explain."

"It's difficult to explain, captain. What I sense when a person walks into a room is almost like seeing a painting. And it's always fairly the same painting, even behind a large disturbance or emotion that's dominating his or her mind at the moment. When Tasha walked into the room, it was as if I were looking at a pencil sketch of a master work yet to be created. There were things missing from the apparition."

"Interesting."

"Even though you say she suggested sacrificing Wesley, I sensed no hatred for him, nor any anger, nor any feeling for Wesley that she did not have in life. Nor, though, did I sense any of the feelings she did have for Wesley in life. The only relationship I could sense any thoughts of at all were of Data. Perhaps because that was a stronger or more prominent one in Tasha's life."

"Sir," the Klingon Security Chief called from the aft section of the bridge, "the scan of the Neverland is complete."

"What did we learn, Mister Worf?" Picard used his full voice for the first time since entering the bridge.

Worf spoke in short sentences, as he always did when he had a lot to say, pausing for a few seconds between each. "We have been released from their tractor beam. But their technology is more advanced than we suspected. Our scan could not penetrate most of the ship. Most of the beam was... reflected, sir."

"So we did not learn much from the scan?"

"We learned that there are 274 life forms aboard the ship, all juvenile, Humanoid."

"That tells us painfully little," Picard was inwardly frustrated. "Mister Worf, is there any other way you can get more information from them?"

"I could attempt a more intense scan," Worf enunciated each word, "but they are aware that they are being scanned."

"Which means they're sitting on their toy bridge laughing at us," Riker scowled.

"I believe that is a chance we shall have to take, Mister Worf, and I believe that is a disrespect we shall have to suffer, Number One."