TRANSFORMATION

Doppelgänger-B Orbit
USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)
Stardate 2261.26

- 0942 hours -

The turbolift opened to Deck Three at the semi-circular corridor just aft of the bridge. Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Rand followed the curving passageway around to the command briefing room where Doctor Marcus, Spock and Doctor McCoy were already gathered at the conference table, along with a newly-arrived pair of Cardassian officers just now entering through the opposite hatch with Lieutenant Bailey bringing up the rear.

Kirk stopped and took them in for a moment, giving his newly anointed Security Chief some time to get comfortable with her sudden authority. Gradually the entire group took their seats around the long table; Spock took his customary station at the library computer terminal, and all seats around the table were arranged facing a circular bank of HUD windows, designed to display information without compromising the line of sight between any two seats. Kirk spoke first, as he knew he was expected to, "Gentlemen," he said, addressing the Cardassians first, "How was the tour?"

"Enlightening, Kirk," said Gul Dulek, this time by way of a universal translator Lieutenant Uhura had programmed and clipped to his breast pocket. Now at least Kirk could hear a rendition of his voice in standard English through his own earpiece, although he still had to adjust to Dulek's lips moving totally out of synch with his words, "This ship is very impressive. We were told ahead of time that your vessels are equipped with artificial gravity devices, but to be honest I'd expected this was an exaggeration."

Kirk chose his words carefully, not wanting to offend, "Actually, I was impressed with your Grazine when I first saw it. It's a surprisingly large vessel for a ship with no gravity control. I imagine it takes a bit of technical ingenuity to solve the microgravity problem, especially during combat maneuvers."

Dulek suddenly seemed uncomfortable. "Well... actually, the Grazine's current mission is exploratory. Our orders are to avoid combat whenever possible. Which is only prudent, considering our limited defensive capabilities." He was choosing his words equally well; that sentence took almost two seconds longer to finish in Cardassian than the translation let on.

"I know the feeling." Of course, he didn't mention the anomalous fact that a black-market phase cannon wasn't totally consistent with that mission, considering the number of seedy connections the Detapa government would have had to cultivate in order to purchase such a thing.

Glancing around, Kirk spread the focus of his attention to the remainder of the room and began, officially, "Anyhow, Dulek, we're extremely eager to have a look at your findings. We weren't expecting your government to send a whole ship to deliver them, but the fact that you are here suggests you turned up something interesting."

"You could say that, Captain." Gul Dulek gestured to his science officer, who retrieved an encapsulated silver disk from his sleeve pocket and handed it over to Spock. The Cardassian government had transmitted the specs for their computer systems over subspace days earlier, and Spock and Scotty had spent the last four hours rigging a disk-drive adaptor for the Enterprise's computer and the Cardassian data disks. It was into this adaptor that the disk was fed, and Spock went to work hammering out any compatibility differences and formatting the information in time to display it on the monitors, seconds later, as a programmed presentation briefing.

"Astonishing!" Gul Dulek came half out of his chair, "You were even able to preserve our system's formatting!"

Spock almost smiled. "I have simply programmed equivalent formatting into this computer terminal. It is logically identical to your native configuration."

Glyn Lynoi rasped, briefly in that whimsical sing-song Cardassian language before the translator kicked in, "How could you do that so quickly? It would take an entire team of programmers with access to the source code-"

"Mister Spock is the foremost authority in computer science aboard the Enterprise," Kirk said with a note of pride, "and as a Vulcan, he is trained in high-level logical analysis."

Gul Dulek squinted, "A Vulcan... you are not Human?"

"I am half Vulcan. My mother was Human."

Gul Dulek was about to comment further when Doctor Ayash interrupted on the ship's intercom, "Security Chief, please report to sickbay. Code blue, urgent."

A dark cloud suddenly flooded the room, hanging over the heads of the Starfleet officers - and Lieutenant Rand in particular - knowing that "code blue" indicated that someone on the ship was either dead or dying and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Rand snapped into her communicator, "I'm on my way," and then nodded apologetically to the Captain and swept out of the room like a humanoid breeze.

"If you care to continue, Dulek," Kirk said, salvaging the meeting from any further derails.

"Yes, of course..." and turning to the monitors Dulek announced, "Stage one, begin playback."

The image on the monitors became a split-screen, four separate frames dividing the screen, one showing a navigational plot of the Grazine's position, another showing numerical scrolls of raw un-processed sensor data, another showing a multi-colored, multi-line graph of spectral analysis, and the last showing an extreme range telescope view of the system that now contained the Enterprise, the Grazine, and the so-far unnamed Gorn trawler. "Our first reading was taken from these coordinates, a position at one hundred sixty one light years distance. We were able to identify the planet," as he said this, the telescope image adjusted and panned, slowly and haltingly as if under manual control, until it settled finally on Doppelgänger and its two Class-D moons. "Visual observation shows an oxygen nitrogen atmosphere, equatorial diameter of approximately twelve thousand seven hundred kilometers, gravitational flux at eight point one meters per second. Average surface temperature of approximately two hundred and eighty kelvins."

"Identical to the planet as it is now," Kirk said.

Spock shook his head, "The gravitational attraction is almost twenty percent lower. I am not sure how to account for that discrepancy... except possibly instrument error."

Dulek shook his head, "We thought so too, but we double checked using diffraction measurements of nearby stars. The gravitational flux is lower at this time, but maybe more relevantly, distant observations showed circumstantial evidence of a subspace field surrounding the planet."

"Circumstantial?"

Glyn Lynoi said, "We determined the planet was generating an electromagnetic field between five and eight hundred thousand gauss. With proper modulation, a field of that intensity could easily produce a subspace differential."

"Thereby reducing the effective mass of the planet," Doctor Marcus said, "Lowering its gravity."

Kirk asked, "Why would anyone need to lower the planet's mass? It's not as if it was being moved anywhere..."

"We think it may have been accidental," Gul Dulek said, "Or, that is to say, a consequence of the planet's formation. Speaking of which," and to the computer he said, "Stage two, continue playback."

The screen images all changed at once. The timestamp in the corner showed this second set of readings was taken two days later, and again the image panned and zoomed until it finally identified Doppelgänger.

Only it wasn't Doppelgänger, at least not yet. The object on screen now was a Class-E "hothouse" world surrounded by a thick greenish yellow cloud layer and intermittent flashes of high altitude lightning. "At a distance of one hundred and sixty nine point two light years. Spectral analysis indicates an oxygen-methane atmosphere prone to spontaneous combustive episodes, and a hydrosphere containing high concentration of phosphoric acids. Visual observation gave an equatorial diameter of roughly eight thousand kilometers with a gravitational flux of twenty six point two meters per second, average surface temperature of three hundred and ninety kelvins. There's some evidence of life forms, but our sensors aren't designed to take those kinds of readings from a distance. We also identified two oddities: firstly, the the planet's orbit at this time is about twenty million kilometers closer to the star than it is today, and secondly, that at this time the planet had three moons, the outermost being highly geologically active. Obviously, the absence of the third moon presents a bit of a mystery."

Lieutenant Bailey asked, "How sure are you that this is the same planet?"

"We surveyed the entire system and visually confirmed all ten major planets in their proper orbits. Doppelgänger was the only anomaly. We even checked twelve nearby dwarf planets just to be certain. Of course, at that distance it's still possible we were in error."

"In any case," Spock says, "this is a revealing development, since no planet similar to the one you observed currently exists in this solar system."

Dulek smiled, "We haven't even gotten to the best part... Stage eight, continue playback."

The image changed three times in rapid succession, each time pausing for a few seconds to show an extremely abbreviated summary of the long-range sensor findings. "We made several warp jumps at one light-year intervals," Dulek explained, "basically, observing the planet one year at a time. After one of our jumps, we lost track of the planet and picked it up again in its transformed state, almost identical to our first observation, so we backtracked by three months, then three more, then forward again by four weeks... and so on. Finally we were in the right position and our telescopes recorded this." The final stage began, with Grazine's telescopes zeroing in on the Class-E world with its bands of poisonous oceans and toxic atmosphere.

But even before the telescope could zoom in, something else was already in the frame. It was moving quickly - at the scale of the image, much too quickly to be anything but a warp driven space vessel. At this distance, identification would be impossible; even at the highest resolution of Starfleet telescopes it would have appeared as little more than a fast-moving pinprick that was only visible because it was moving faster than light. But as they watched the recording, that singular point of light assumed a heading directly into the northern hemisphere of the greenish-yellow world and slammed through its thick atmosphere without even slowing down. A titanic burst of energy rippled out from the impact site, followed by an expanding madness of orange and yellow streamers as if the entire planet had been coated with thermonuclear warheads all detonating in sequence.

"What am I looking at?" Kirk asked, as the glowing fiery effect slowly enveloped the entire planet.

"We don't know at this point, but our sensor logs suggest it might be a t-"

"Material transformation," Doctor Marcus answered breathlessly, staring at the frame that contained the raw unprocessed telemetry data, "the entire planet is being transformed at the subatomic level! I've never seen anything like it!"

"What could cause that?" Kirk asked.

Marcus stood up and leaned half over the table, freezing the playback and maximizing the sensor readouts on the screen, "The readings are fuzzy from this distance," she said, "But the energy signature reads like... almost like a thousand small transporter signals all overlapping."

Kirk looked at the monitor himself, baffled, "Where do you see that?"

"I believe Doctor Marcus is correct," Spock added, watching the presentation on his own monitor. After a moment he resumed the playback and manually highlighted the data fields relevant to both of them. They were just gibberish to everyone else in the room, but simultaneously Spock, Marcus and Glyn Lynoi all shared an expression of wonderment. "It's as if the planet is being dismantled and reconstructed by an enormous matter replicator."

Doctor McCoy asked, "Now wait a minute, didn't one of you say something about how this would require some kind of giant machine? Like a planet-sized transporter?"

"Evidently not," Marcus said, too lost in her amazement to care about any past theories. "Back it up a minute or so, mister Spock... look at the spectral pattern at the blast site."

"When?"

"At forty five through sixty... you see it?"

Spock did, and then raised both eyebrows, "Fascinating. The planet's atmosphere has been converted into gaseous carbon and helium, with rapidly increasing levels of oxygen and nitrogen."

"Fusion transmutation?" Lynoi said.

"Energy output is too low. Possibly rankine-cancelation or muon-catalyzed transmutation..."

Kirk interrupted the scientific spectacle with a terse, "We can leave the details for later. What I most need to know right now is what kind of technology could cause all that to happen. Obviously, by the time this process is complete, the planet transforms into what it is now..."

"As I have surmised," Spock said, "based on the composition of the artifact at stonehenge, the most likely culprit is a type of sophisticated phased-matter process."

Lynoi looked at him as he if he'd just invoked the existence of God. "I beg your pardon?"

"It is a concept widely in use by our technology, sometimes called photonics or programmable energy," Spock explained, "It is known to your science in the field of quantum process physics, what your people currently regard as a fringe theory. In principle, it describes a method of using standing-wave energy patterns to produce coherent structures with a set of behaviors. Our transporter beams, for example, can deconstruct an object at the subatomic level and encapsulate its constituent molecules into energized capsules, composed of electrons and virtual photons, which are themselves programmed with an assembly matrix that will allow them to re-construct the transported object in a specific location of the operator's choosing."

Gul Dulek smiled, "Sounds like nanorobotics. You program millions of tiny robots to take something apart, then go somewhere and put that thing back together in a new location."

"Conceptually, yes," Spock nodded, "Except the so-called 'robots' in this case are themselves created from programmed photonic energy transmitted as a phased-matter particle beam, which is under indirect control by the transporter operator. Our primary weapons employ a similar principle, using phased-matter particles called nadions."

Glyn Lynoi looked incredulous, "How could that possibly be true? I mean... building atoms out of photons?"

"Virtual photons and electrons," Spock corrected, "And not atoms, per se, but virtual particles whose existence is merely the intersection of multiple controlled energy fields. The process allows for apparently solid materials to be fabricated out of pure energy in some arbitrary form, such as a wall or a protective dome. The applications for the process are numerous, but phased matter cannot exist for more than a few seconds at a time without an external energy source."

"I've never heard of anything like this before..."

"The details of these processes can be made available from our library computer if you so desire."

"I do desire, Mister Spock. I won't believe a word of this until I see it myself."

"Theoretically, you've already seen it yourself," Doctor Marcus said with a gesture to the viewscreen, where the once-toxic Doppelgänger was already beginning to stabilize from an unnatural orange glow until something vaguely Earth-like. "Although, with a caveat, I might disagree with Mister Spock in one aspect. Gul Dulek mentioned nanorobotics... that seems more consistent with what we're seeing here."

Now it was Spock's turn to look incredulous, "Doctor McCoy earlier made mention of your hypothesis to this effect. What is your basis for it, Doctor Marcus?"

"Storing a completed pattern for phased-matter duplication would require an enormous database and an inconceivable amount of power. You'd have to harness the total output of a blue giant just to support a process like that."

Spock caught the reference with growing interest, "The Helios Device."

"Exactly! But what we see here..." Marcus shook her head, "This is a radically different approach. See, if I wanted to reduce the hardware requirements, one of the ways I might do that is a kind of self-organizing data matrix, maybe some kind of fractal algorithm for data compression. Phased-matter processes don't perform well in fractals, but quantum computers do, especially in nanoscale. So the device that struck the planet... it's not a giant device to do the job, but billions of tiny devices each doing a microscopic part of the job, like bees constructing a hive. I think what we're probably seeing is the effect of a swarm of nanorobots, each equipped with a tiny phased-matter device. They're probably programmed to make use of the planet's structure for raw materials and rearrange it to a specific pattern."

Spock thought about this for a moment, "Such an endeavor would require an alarming number of nanoscale devices..."

"Ultimately, yes," Marcus said, "But you could start the process with just a handful if they were self-replicating. Like a Von Neuman device or something, maybe cannibalizing part of the planet to make more of themselves. We don't know what they're using for an energy source, but whatever it is, it's obviously powerful enough to propel a small vessel to warp velocities. That should be enough for the initial boost."

"Indeed..." Spock nodded, slowly conceding defeat, "They may be powered, or even controlled, by subspace differentials or electromagnetic fields... if that is true, then the energy emissions from our own sensors may have reactivated some of the constructor devices on the surface, perhaps triggering a malfunction in the construction process... Captain, it has just occurred to me that, if those devices are still present in Ensign Hallab's body, it may also explain the incident in the transporter room when we tried to beam her aboard. Her original pattern briefly manifested before the nanomachines present in her body restored the humanoid facade..."

"This is all very interesting, Spock," Kirk said, quickly terminating what had already mutated into a scientific brainstorming session, "But we're overlooking two very simple things. Firstly, the entire system is in a different orbit than it was at the time of this recording. Second... well, I don't mean to be dense, but what the hell happened to the third moon?"

"That," Gul Dulek said, "is where this recording gets interesting."

As if it wasn't interesting enough, Kirk thought. But then Dulek's prediction became true: the recording backtracked to a point slightly before the transformation of Doppelgänger, this time focussing on the turbulent third moon. As before, a small object was shown racing towards that moon at superluminal velocities; a flash of light in the background indicated the beginning of Doppelgänger's transformation, and moments later the moon was struck as well, undergoing the same fame. "We almost overlooked this second event," Dulek said, "But the spectral pattern of the impactor is identical to the one that hit the planet. The transformation pattern, however, is very different." The recording showed this as well: for the second time the expanding blaze consumed yet another world, but this time more quickly than before, spreading fast until the volatile third moon stabilized into a cold dense sphere of brightly-shining material. "According to spectral analysis," Dulek concluded, "The third moon is now encased in a layer of iridium at least five kilometers thick, interlaced with other compounds our sensors could not identify."

"Kemocite," Spock said, looking at the sensor data, "And large amounts of Trellium and Verterium allotropes. All three are common in warp propulsion systems."

Kirk took a moment to absorb this as he watched the recording. A moon that size, instantly transformed into a pile of valuable resources. Just one of the Enterprise's warp engine nacelles cost as much as a Saladin-class scout ship; this transformed moon could provide building materials for a million Enterprises and still have resources to spare.

"We fixed our telescope on it for a few hours, and then..." the recording skipped this interval also, transitioning to a moment only seconds before the now-silent moon suddenly lit up with a galaxy of swirling blue lights, as if a million highways suddenly lit up with traffic for a million city-sized vehicles.

"What's all that?" Marcus asked.

"The moon is generating some type of force field," Spock said, and watching the sensor data added, "Am I reading your telemetry correctly, Gul Dulek? It appears to be towing the entire system into a higher orbit."

Gul Dulek nodded, "It's a type of tractor field we've never seen before. Power levels are beyond measurement, but our observations record that the Doppelgänger system was moved into a higher orbit over the course of just seventy five hours. After that..." the now-transformed third moon released its hold on its former siblings, then moved out of its once-stable orbit and raced off into the distance, leaving a rainbow-colored after image in its path. Though it didn't seem to be moving that quickly, the telltale splash of the Tachyon Effect indicated that it was moving somewhat faster than the speed of light.

"Did the moon just go to warp?" Marcus asked.

"Yes it did," Dulek said, "Or, at least what was a moon, until whoever-they-are got to it. We think they may have used the same material transformation process to rebuild the third moon into a gigantic space vessel."

"A vessel..." Kirk drummed his fingers on the table, grasping an implication he hadn't considered earlier. It made perfect sense: why transform the entire moon into a stack of raw materials when you could just as easily transform it into a finished product?

For the moment, Kirk brought their attention back to the monitor, "Doctor Marcus, your theory is that Doppelgänger and its third moon were rearranged by a swarm of... what? Microscopic robots equipped with fabrication equipment?"

"It's just a hypothesis, Captain," Marcus shrugged, "For all we know, it could have been Jesus."

"But it does partially fit the facts, Captain," Spock added, "At the very least, the radiative emissions from our engines could result in the time-slip effect we observed, especially if the constructor devices were spurred into undesired action by those emissions. The Gorn arrival several years ago may have had a similar effect that resulted in the planet's instability..."

"And the people too," Kirk said, and suddenly a thought occurred to him, "But it can't be radiation alone. Our engines and sensors have had no further effect on the survivors from the surface, or even the reavers for that matter. Bones, you said the effect only lasts while they're on to the planet?"

"And in Miri's case, brief return to the planet might account for the transformation when she was beamed back aboard. Who knows what those things are programmed to do under those circumstances?"

"A nanorobot formation would probably operate using swarm intelligence, Captain," Spock added, "separating a small portion of them from the remainder of the group would undoubtedly diminish their operating capacity to an extremely low level. In Miri's case, returning her to the planet may have allowed them to briefly reestablish their network, and her sudden separation from it probably resulted in what we might call a 'reboot' of her molecular structure."

"Well, that's possible, but mainly I'm wondering..." Kirk hesitated for a moment. The implications were starting to turn bitter, "Doctor Marcus, suppose Miri's still carrying those little robots around. It should be possible to isolate a few of them for study, don't you think? I mean," he glanced at Spock, "This could be that unknown factor you mentioned, the difference between the Onlies and the reavers we brought back. It might be that the children still have active units operating inside them while the reavers have been fully isolated from the swarm."

"Isolated..." something dark passed through Spock's features and he added, "Or discarded."

"Spock?"

"Captain, we've established that Miriam Hallab is one of the original inhabitants of the planet, but transformed - body and mind - into a human being. She was beginning to degenerate into a Reaver when she was discovered in Gaza. But when we beamed back aboard from Stonehenge..."

McCoy's eyes widened, "She arrived her original form, but the machines turned her back into a human."

Spock nodded, "We also know that all of their memories prior to about twelve years ago have been falsified. Yet the planet has existed in this form for one hundred and sixty five years."

"And what's been happening down there for the other hundred and fifty years?" Kirk also nodded as he saw what Spock was getting at, "So this is all some kind of huge experiment, and the Onlies are..." he winced at the unintentional pun, "The only active test subjects."

"This can be verified," Spock went on, "If we can determine for sure the presence of nanomachines in Miri's body and the absence of machines in the reavers, we will have established this fact for certain."

Doctor McCoy straightened up a bit, "I'm not really sure how to go about determining that, Jim. If Doctor Marcus is right, those machines could be extremely small, maybe even molecule-sized. We can't search for something that small unless we have some idea what they're made of, what kinds of molecules they contain. If they're made of the same phased-matter quasi-substance as that platform on the surface, then we'll have a hell of a time just identifying their presence, let alone studying them."

"And again," Spock said, "it is only an hypothesis. We do not even know for sure that there is anything within the Ensign's body for us to find."

"I might be able to help you with that." Marcus punched up something on a palmcomp, and a prompt appeared on the monitor for an indexed file being pushed electronically from Marcus' unit. Spock opened the file, and the Cardassian splitscreen was replaced by a similar but differently formatted playback, one showing security video footage from the transporter room, the other three showing energy readouts from the main transporter sensor. It was a playback of the away team's emergency beamout where the transformed Ensign Hallab first appeared on the pad. The blackened apparition that materialized behind Kirk and Rand looked so totally alien as to be utterly unrecognizable, but Marcus' focus was on one of the sensor readouts: a gyrating line graph labelled space-energy flux. "Just before Miri beamed back aboard," Marcus said, "The transporter sensor registered a very brief disturbance in the subspace Z-Band. It only lasted a few seconds, but the pattern had modulation characteristics that, at least to me, looked artificial. Mister Conrad thinks it might be a transmission from that alien artifact, maybe instructions to Miri's nanomachines to execute the program Doctor McCoy observed. If this is true th-"

"Doctor Marcus," Spock paused the recording, and by the sound of his voice something very unsettling had just crossed his mind, "This would appear to be a duplicate copy of the transporter diagnostic log."

Marcus nodded. "Of course it is."

"How did you obtain this?"

"I uh... downloaded it myself. Why do you ask?"

"With whose security clearance?"

Kirk bristled, now that it occurred to him - just as it moments ago occurred to Spock - that the operational transporter logs weren't generally accessible to science-division personnel without direct action by one of the ship's department heads.

Marcus raised a brow, "I didn't get any clearance. I didn't think it was necessary."

"Then am I to understand you gained access to this transporter log by circumventing the computer's security protocols? By, I presume, enlisting the services of Mister Conrad?"

"Who's Mister Conrad?" Kirk asked.

"Doctor Glenn Conrade, graduate of Cal Tech, with advanced degrees in subspace harmonics and information warfare, presently working towards a PhD in cryptanalysis. He is also a close personal friend and colleague of Doctor Marcus." Spock looked at her in what - for anyone other than a Vulcan - would have been a threatening glare, "You circumvented our security protocols to access this data?"

Marcus looked apologetic, but undisturbed. "Didn't think anyone would mind."

"You thought wrong, Doctor," Kirk said, and immediately snapped open his communicator, "Lieutenant Rand, you're needed in the briefing room."

"Already on my way, Captain."

"Oh, bloody hell..."

"Doctor..."

"You're really calling the cops on me? For this?" Marcus rolled her eyes, "Don't be thick, Captain. Because of this, we have a real chance of identifying the actual mechanism behind the alien transformation techn-"

"Because of this," Kirk corrected her, "the security of this ship may have been jeopardized. There's a reason diagnostic subroutines require command authorization, Carol. We've already had one conversation today about following proper protocols."

"It's no big deal, Jim! It's just the transporter logs!"

"And you should have gone through proper channels to obtain them."

"Look, Captain," Marcus drummed her fingers on the table, "This transformation technology isn't fundamentally beyond anything the Federation has now. I mean, the basic principles are simple..."

"Doctor, y-"

"Do you not understand what a Von Neuman machine is? We can make something like that with our own technology. Imagine if you programmed an industrial fabricator to scoop some of the regolith off the lunar surface and use that material to make a copy of itself. You'd have two fabricators, then four, then eight... in a few days, you'd have a million of them. With a million fabricators you could transform the moon into anything you wanted, you could transform dead rocks into fertile soil, you could turn sand into oxygen, you could even..."

The briefing room doors opened and Lieutenant Rand entered the room with along with two additional security officers. She'd come here, obviously, under the assumption that the two Cardassians were making trouble; at the sight of Doctor Marcus' body language, she realized it was actually much worse than this.

"Lieutenant," Kirk began with a dismissive scowl, "Escort Doctor Marcus to the brig."

"The brig?! What?!" Marcus stood up, but the two security officers were already herding her towards the door, "Captain, please, don't do this! I didn't intend any of-" the briefing room doors closed behind them, leaving only silence and a frustrated-looking Lieutenant Rand in her absence.

"She may be right, you know," Glyn Lynoi added, ever so cautiously, "Our sensors also detected a subspace anomaly that matches the pattern in your transporter logs. That might have been some sort of alien control signal..."

"She was almost certainly right about that," Spock said, "She was, however, seriously in error as far as her methodology-"

"She put her own personal curiosity over the security of the Federation," Kirk said, and then turned and glared at him, "And you of all people know the penalty for treason, Mister Spock."

Spock stared back at him for a long moment, searching the Captain's expression for clues. After half a second, he nodded slowly and answered, "I am not looking forward to another public execution."

"Hopefully, she'll make a strong enough example that this will be the last time." Kirk turned to the three Cardassians, who were making a very strong and almost successful effort not to look absolutely mortified. He smiled pleasantly as if they'd just been discussing the weather, "I can't thank you enough for your help, Gul Dulek. Once again, we're happy to share with you some study materials about phased-matter physics if it'll help you understand the theory behind this technology. Although..." he knew he shouldn't, but he was tempted to add, "Considering the armaments on your ship, it seems you're already familiar with the subject."

Gul Dulek squinted at him, "Armaments?"

"Your vessel is equipped with a phase cannon, is it not?"

"How could you know that?" Dulek's eyes widened.

"Oh, don't worry about it. We'll adjourn for now. In the mean time, you're welcome to stay aboard as long as you like. Mister Bailey will see to your needs."

"Ah... thank you, Captain, for your hospitality." Unhappily, Gul Dulek rose from the table and followed Lieutenant Bailey out of the room. He had the look of a man - well, a Cardassian - who did not like being one-upped by a potential enemy, or even a potential ally.

That was admirable, on some level. Cardassians, like many humans, seemed to have a natural distaste for ever being at a disadvantage.

With only Starfleet personnel left in the room, Kirk turned to Lieutenant Rand, still standing unhappily behind Doctor Marcus' Chair, "Once the Cardassians are gone, have Doctor Marcus confined to quarters for the duration of this mission. I'm putting a formal reprimand in her file."

"Yes, Sir," Rand said, then, "Capt-"

"What was that all about, Jim?" McCoy asked, "I thought you were loosing it for a minute."

Kirk frowned, slightly angry at the need for the performance at all, "That Gul Dulek's been shuckin' and jivin' ever since he came aboard. He wants us to think he's awe struck and intimidated by the Enterprise. But he's way too smooth with it. He's like used car salesman or something."

McCoy frowned, "Could be he just rubs you the wrong way..."

"No, he did the same thing for me," Bailey put in, grimly, "He said something about how our computer systems were so advanced and he wished the Grazine had that level of automation. It's a weird comment considering the Grazine is flying with an evolved AI."

Spock raised a brow, "Is it?"

"It's another hand-me-down from the Shofixi. In every other measure they're over a century behind us, but their computers are at least as good as ours. Up to ninety percent of the Grazine's internal functions are fully automated, and there's Gul Dulek going on and on how impressed he is with our automation."

"He's assuming we know nothing about them," Spock added, "And he wants to leave us to believe that they are harmless and primitive."

Scotty laughed, "And you want them to believe that you're a hardass who executes people on a whim."

Rand started again, "Sir, there is a-"

"I want them to believe that double-crossing us might have some serious consequences. That will be useful when the time comes. Speaking of which, Rand," he turned to his newly-appointed security chief, "Have a team go over the shuttle bay after the Cardassians leave. Make sure they didn't leave any nasty surprises for later."

"Yes, Sir. Also-"

"You suspect the Cardassians are planning a subterfuge?" Spock asked, slightly alarmed.

"Subterfuge?" Kirk frowned, "I think they're planning to kill us the moment cooperation isn't to their advantage. That's why they came all the way over here instead of transmitting their findings remotely. They know what this is about and they're after the same thing we are..." then he shook his head, grinning, "And I've just realized that in relation to our Gorn friends out there... Francium's orbit commander must have figured it out too. I don't know why we didn't see it sooner."

"See what?" McCoy asked.

"The technology that created this planet... I think Carol's got it right. The technology itself isn't that exotic, it's just a question of technique. The Gorn want to be the first to discover it, and obviously so do the Cardassians." He grinned to himself but refrained from saying aloud, So does Carol Marcus.

Scotty chuckled, "Bloody chance of that. Those laddies are still decades away from developing their own transporters."

"If they bother to develop them," Kirk said, "The Cardassians obtained warp drive by reverse engineering an alien space craft, and they probably obtained phase cannons form the Orion Syndicate or God knows who else. I'm guessing they're planning to speed up their entry onto the galactic stage by getting a corner on this whole planeteering thing. And still, with all of that, there's the question of whatever the hell it was that Miri fired at down on the surface. We thought at the time those might have been Gorn scouts, but who knows what that was? It's likely there's at least one other party involved that hasn't openly revealed itself."

"So it's a competition," Bailey said, "A good old fashion space race..."

"Captain!" Lieutenant Rand, raised her voice over the others, an outburst that commanded attention just by virtue of its being totally unprecedented from what used to be the captain's yeoman, "I have just been informed that Lieutenant Onise has a malignant tumor in his brain. That's what was causing his erratic behavior. Doctor Ayash extracted a piece of for analysis... it's definitely reaver tissue."

"Son of a-!" without another word, Doctor McCoy was out of his chair and out the door on his way to sickbay, almost running the security chief over on his way.

Kirk nodded. And then he rubbed his temples as his head started to throb, "So what else can go wrong today?"

"Bridge to Captain Kirk," sounded Lieutenant Uhura in the ship's intercom circuit, paging the conference room specifically instead of the entire ship as normal.

Sighing, Kirk punched the intercom button, "Kirk here."

"Long range sensors have detected a vessel approaching Doppelgänger at warp speed. ETA, eight minutes, twenty seconds. There are no other vessels expected at this time."

"I had to ask." Kirk sighed once again and stood painfully from the conference room chair, "Uhura, sound yellow alert, and have Lieutenant Bailey escort our Cardassian guests back to their ship."