Such a beautiful planet, Number One thought, certainly deserved a name more descriptive than G24-M12. Perhaps she could come up with something suitable -- off the record, of course.

A breeze from the lake fluttered the pages of Thomas More's Utopia, an antique treasure she'd picked up on her last visit home. It had been the first trip back to Earth since her promotion to Lt. Commander -- and assignment as first officer of the Enterprise -- eighteen months earlier. She still smiled at her father's irascible response to the appellation she now bore.

"Number One? What kind of a cockeyed moniker is Number One?"

"One that most starship captains -- and crews -- know their first officers by," she'd answered teasingly.

Dad had remained unimpressed. "Hmph," he'd grunted. "Gave you a perfectly fine name when you were born. Don't see what's wrong with it."

"Not a thing, Dad. Not a thing."

It hadn't been entirely true. She'd stopped using her name the day Brent had broken their engagement and left for the Kyron colonies. No point in being married, he'd reasoned, if she planned to make Starfleet a full time career.

"Why, Natalie?" he'd demanded. "Why are you always the one who insists on being different? Both your sisters managed to land careers, husbands, kids, all here on Earth. Why not you?"

She turned a page, tried to bury Brent's memory in More's words. It worked, for a while.

Two other members of the Enterprise shore leave party wandered out of the trees and took up residence on the opposite shore. They'd all paired off, one way or another; partners, friends, lovers... Aside from herself, only one other crew member -- the new science officer, Spock -- had elected to explore G24 alone.

She wondered what his reasons were.

Number One lay back in the grass, closed her eyes, and drew in a deep breath of clean, non-recycled air. A breeze rustled through the leaves overhead. Heaven, she thought, just to be away from people for a time; away from the drone of ship's computers and the constant power hum of a warp engine below decks. She'd nearly forgotten how musical simple sounds like wind and water could be.

Beep beep!

Her communicator shattered paradise, rudely demanding attention. Scowling, she sat up and pulled the offending device from her belt. She flipped back the antenna grid, instantly banishing any hint of irritation from her voice.

"Number One here," she said.

Captain Christopher Pike's apologetic tones floated from the tiny speaker. "Sorry to intrude." Always the gentleman. "But can you locate Lt. Spock? We just lost a transmission from him and can't seem to re-establish contact. His last known co-ordinates were three-zero-five by four-eighty."

"I saw him not more than ten minutes ago in that same area. I'll check it out, sir."

"Thanks, Number One." There was often a smile in Pike's voice, but this time it was also tinged with a hint of concern.

"Yes sir," she replied, and signed off.

With a sigh, she left the lake's quiet sanctuary and headed for 305 x 480.

She found Lt. Spock less than a hundred paces from where she'd seen him last. He stood unmoving in a small glen under the tree canopy, before a tall, blue leafy plant, staring intently at the whirring science tricorder in his hands. On the ground at his feet, a forgotten communicator lay with its grid closed, beeping plaintively for attention.

"Lieutenant?" She'd thought at first that he might be frozen there, paralyzed, perhaps, by the sting of some poisonous native insect. But he moved when she spoke, glanced quickly up at her, then instantly returned his attention to the tricorder screen.

"Fascinating," he said with all the breathless passion of any human scientist she'd ever known. (Hadn't someone said that Vulcans had no emotions?) "Where our ship's sensors indicated only plant and insect life signs, my tricorder is registering a seven-point-four sentience level."

"Lieutenant..."

Spock's enthusiasm continued unbroken; he hadn't heard her at all. "A seven-point-four sentience reading is inconsistent with all previous planetary scans, and would indicate an extremely high level of intelligence. Yet it is clearly emanating from what appears to be--"

"Lieutenant Spock," she said sternly, and when he stopped talking to stare at her, as though wondering why she'd interrupted his dissertation, she knelt to retrieve the dropped communicator, flipping it open.

"Enterprise," a young male voice responded eagerly.

"Tell the captain I found Mr. Spock for him, would you?"

"I'm right here," Pike's voice cut into the transmission. "Spock, what happened down there? We lost you in mid-signal."

Looking distinctly chagrinned, Spock shifted the tricorder to one hand and with the other, accepted the communicator from her. "My apologies, Captain. I was... momentarily distracted. It would appear, however, that our scans of this planet have been in error..."

While he proceeded to repeat his life-sign discoveries, Number One stepped aside to more closely examine the plant -- if plant it was -- that had preoccupied him so. It stood taller than Spock, and sprouted long, thin leaves that almost glowed a bright, translucent blue. Lovely, yes, but sentient? She touched one slender leaf, felt its cold, waxy texture, but there was no warmth, no autonomous movement, nothing to indicate intelligence. More likely, she thought wryly, Spock's tricorder just needed an overhaul.

Captain Pike's suspicions of precisely the same thing came from the communicator a moment later, causing Spock's brow to furrow.

"I have no indications of any tricorder malfunction, sir," he objected.

"I think maybe you should come back aboard and have it checked out anyway." Despite the casual wording, it was not a request. "Under the circumstances, though," Pike added, "I wouldn't recommend taking any plant samples. Just in case."

Spock's left eyebrow arched. "Yes sir," he said. (Was there just a hint of consternation in that carefully schooled voice?) In another moment, the transporter beam had taken him back to the ship, leaving her alone in the glen.

She'd intended to return to her lake, to spend the rest of the day lost in Utopia beside the water, but something compelled her to linger here a little longer. With breezes stirring the leaves, it was almost as peaceful here as at the lake. She walked past Spock's plant and further into the shade of the trees, relishing the coolness, the quiet.

Natalie.

"Yes?" She spun, automatically responding to the address. No one was there.

No one here would ever call her by that name. Yet the voice had clearly whispered it.

"Who's there?" she demanded, and felt suddenly silly uttering such an old 2-D movie cliché aloud. "Is someone there?" She tried to make her voice strong, commanding. "If this is a joke, it isn't funny. You can come out, now."

But nothing stirred in the quiet glen except the willowy leaves on more of those tall blue plants. Another two dozen or so were clustered here in the shade, in groups of three or four, most of them growing near the tree trunks. Was she imagining more than just phantom voices, or were those leaves moving more vigorously than the gentle wind should allow for?

Natalie.

Again, the soft, shuddering whisper spoke her name, and again, she turned to find no one there. Only the plants, waving, murmuring... Had they been this close to her before? Funny. She could almost swear they were...

Walking.

She started to move away, reaching for her communicator at the same time, but one of the thin blue fronds stretched out to brush against her, to caress her, a feather touch on the back of her neck. It whispered calming thoughts, and instantly her fears dissolved. She forgot whatever she'd been about to do. Call the ship? Why had she wanted to call the ship? Oh well. No matter. It couldn't have been very important... could it?

A sea of cool, glowing blue surrounded her, chill fingers stroking, soothing. They spoke to her of so many beautiful things; of a world once lush with life, thriving, sustaining. She saw crystalline cities with spires towering to the skies; a people slender and pale with large expressive eyes; a world in perfect balance with Nature and with its sentient species. Both of them.

So alone, the voices whispered.

Yes. Agreeing, she gave in completely to their embrace. She had been alone, set apart, different all her life. But now...

Now all of that would end.

"Tricorder functioning within specified parameters," the computer intoned for the fourteenth time.

Frowning, Spock plucked the device from its test niche. The console's diagnostic screen went blue with an END TEST message, tinting the small science lab's walls the same color.

"Computer," the Vulcan said thoughtfully, "display current survey data on planet G24-M12."

"Working."

He scanned rapidly through the data, not surprised to find it scant and decidedly superficial. Before this most recent report, only one previous survey existed, logged when the planet had initially been charted and classed, and neither survey had entailed more than a cursory surface scan.

"Tie into ship's sensors; begin planetwide scan to a depth of one hundred meters. Report any anomalous data."

"Working."

Six minutes into the computer's resulting analysis, a screen to the right of the scanner display lit with Captain Pike's image. "Mr. Spock, you have any results yet on that tricorder check?"

Simultaneous with Pike's question, the central screen began to flash a series of multi-colored schematics.

"Sir, the tricorder exhibits no sign of malfunction." Spock touched a control that would send the scanner data to the bridge. "And if you will turn your attention to the science station monitor screen, you will note that we are now receiving conclusive evidence of a past civilization on G24-M12."

Pike turned away for a moment, then faced the pick-up once again. "Past civilization? I thought you said you were picking up vital life signs?"

"That is correct, Captain. The anomaly will require further study. However, under the circumstances, I would strongly advise recalling the shore leave parties."

Pike nodded. "Transporter room says Number One came back aboard about an hour ago. I'll recall the rest of them, just to be on the safe side. Keep me informed?"

"Of course, sir."

Pike's face vanished abruptly, and Spock turned to carry the tricorder-in-question out of the lab. The most efficient computer configuration for analyzing this data was the customized unit in his own quarters, so he headed there, wondering all the while why the ship's more powerful sensors still failed to corroborate the life-sign readings.

Preoccupied with the tricorder screen as he entered his quarters, he failed to notice anything amiss until he'd finished keying the sequence linking the tricorder into his console terminal.

A heartbeat. Breathing. The cloying scent of... perfume?

"Don't you ever stop working, Mr. Spock?"

Had she not spoken, he might not have recognized her. The voice undeniably belonged to Number One. The body, however... Well, that had been draped in something decidedly non-regulation, low cut at the top to reveal ample portions of the female anatomy, high cut at the bottom to reveal all of her very long legs. He could be mistaken, he supposed, but wasn't this the sort of attire intended to incite certain... reproductive urges... in the human male?

"Number One?" Before he could question her strange mode of dress or her unauthorized presence in his quarters, she strode rapidly toward him, closing the space between them to an uncomfortably short half meter.

"Natalie," she said, her voice rasping at a pitch he'd never heard her use before. "That's my real name. Natalie. But hardly anyone ever called me that. When I was a child, they always had... other names. Cruel names. It must have been the same for you. I wasn't like them. I never blended, never fit in; not then, not later. But we've changed that, now." She lifted a hand to rest two fingers against his cheek. Spock flinched, backing away from the unwelcome contact, but she moved with him, persisting. "We are Shaluur. We know what it is to be alone, to be isolated, not to belong. Together, we can end our loneliness."

"Lt. Commander..." He backed up again, and restrained her hand when she reached once more to touch him. "I need hardly inform you that this behavior is highly inappropriate, nor that your manner of dress is--"

"Shhhhh." Her fingers escaped his grip and pressed themselves firmly to his lips. "Don't say any more. Let us show you..."

"Number One--" He seized the fingers anew, attempted to force them away, but his objection was abruptly quelled by something that grew from the palms of her hands. Her eyes glowed, preternaturally blue, and thin blades of the same color slithered up to attach themselves to his throat. Spock tried to pull away, but something held him fast, whispering lulling words while tendrils twined and probed for vital nerves, seeking access.

"No..."

Number One whispered now as well, words meant to comfort, platitudes about overcoming loneliness, about belonging.

I do not want to belong! he tried to say, but speech failed him. Something crawled on a thousand gossamer feet into his mind, into his being, and there demanded further submission: the surrender of intellect, the release of emotion.

"No!"

He thrust her hands away and turned aside, erecting mental shields against the invaders, determined to shut them out. In immediate response, a blinding pain drove him, with a cry, to his knees. "I won't," he gasped. "I can't..."

"We will not harm you!" Number one was instantly beside him, once again caressing and soothing. "Allow us in completely, and we will show you."

Defiantly, he strengthened the barrier instead, and when the pain level rose accordingly, he tried to invoke the mental disciplines necessary to deny that as well. His father had taught him to control pain. It should be possible to--

"Don't do this!" Number One's voice said stridently in his ear. "Please!" Was she pleading with him or with the thing that sought to control him? It didn't matter. He would not permit this.

He would not.

Logic must overcome emotion. Reason must prevail over...

Pain!

He fought his way back to his feet, shoving Number One roughly aside. She fell with a cry, though he hadn't intended to hurt her.

Control. He was losing control.

The thing in his head writhed, pressed harder, demanded further entry.

He refused.

Logic must overcome...

Agony verging on madness swept in on him. Dimly, he heard a female voice sobbing entreaties. Then the pain overcame all else, and he heard nothing but the incessant, cajoling whispers of the Shaluur.

Control, reason, logic, all gave way to the madness. He struck aside the feeble obstacle attempting to block his path, and bolted from the room.

The last of his shore leave parties safely recalled, Captain Pike had been on the way to his quarters when a commotion erupted in the corridor ahead of him. He saw a tall figure -- Spock? -- disappear around a juncture at a dead run. Someone screamed, the sound quickly muffled by a closing door.

Pike charged forward, rounded the corner. "Spock?" Whoever it was had already vanished. Into the turbolift? Cries from behind a nearby door made him turn back; he pressed the hand plate and the unlocked door of Spock's quarters slid instantly open.

Who--?

He knelt to help the sobbing woman up from the deck. Recognition didn't set in until he'd placed her in a chair and brushed the long strands of disarrayed hair back from her face.

"Number One? What the--?" She was still crying, murmuring something he couldn't understand. What language was that? "Number One..." He grasped her by the shoulders, shook her gently. "What happened here?" A red welt was forming on her right cheek. Had Spock hit her? Spock? Pike shook her again. "Answer me! Number One, report!"

When she lifted her head to look at him, Pike took an involuntary step backward. Whatever gazed out at him from those glowing blue eyes was not Number One. Nor was it human.

"We wished him no harm," she said, in Standard this time. "We have sorrow. We never meant--"

"What did you do?" he interrupted. "Who are you?"

"Shaluur," she replied, and with one hand outstretched, she rose to approach him, fingers reaching to stroke his face. "We will show you what we are."

Pike grabbed the hand and unceremoniously pushed her back into the chair. "Stay there," he said sternly, and something in her expression told him that the command had registered on some level. She stayed put while he edged to the computer console and flipped open the intercom circuit.

"This is the captain. Security to deck five, cabin C25A. I need a second team to locate and restrain Lt. Spock. Use stun force lasers if necessary, but he's not to be harmed. Is that understood?"

"Yes sir," a crisp voice responded.

"Good. Pike out."

He'd kept one eye warily trained on his first officer throughout the call, and she in turn had never taken her glowing gaze from him. Those eyes made him wish he'd happened to be carrying a hand laser set on stun, just in case this whatever-it-was decided to become more aggressive.

In a moment, the door had whisked aside to admit two armed securities. They made a rapid sweep of the room, concluding their circle with a puzzled look at the captain. He nodded toward Number One, who hadn't moved from the chair. At least her eyes were normal again.

"Escort Number One to the brig," he said. "Keep her under guard until I call you with further orders."

The puzzled looks became brief astonishment. Pike could almost read their minds. What was the first officer doing, dressed like that, in Spock's quarters with the captain? Neither man said a word, however, as they moved to obey the command. Number One went along without protest.

Now as to Spock...

Pike stepped back to the computer console and tried in vain to make sense of the jumble of figures his new science officer had left on the small view screen. He was no scientist, but he was beginning to regret not taking Spock's first reports more seriously. He'd been right about the life forms on G24. And he'd said they were intelligent...

The intercom shrilled, and an anxious voice called his name.

"Pike here."

"Sir, we've located Lt. Spock in the shuttle bay."

"Can you restrain him?"

"No sir. I... Captain, I think you'd better come down here."

"On my way."

He found three securities and an engineer (Jenkins, wasn't it?) hovering outside the bay when he arrived. The latter stood beside an open wall panel, attacking the exposed circuitry with an electronic probe. He started speaking before Pike could ask for a report.

"He's sealed himself in, Captain. And he's been trying to override our lock on the main bay doors."

"The main...? You mean he's trying to take the shuttle?"

Jenkins shook his head. "We thought so at first, but sir, he's not in the shuttle. He's trying to override from the aft bay emergency controls."

Pike opened the intercom circuit beside Jenkins' panel. "Spock? Lt. Spock, this is the captain. Respond." Nothing. Pike scowled at the gutted door circuitry. "How soon can you get it open?"

The engineer's probe went instantly back to work. "I should be able to override his override in another few minutes. But Captain..."

Pike turned to one of the securities and held out a hand. "Give me your laser."

"Captain," Jenkins said again, "if he opens the outer bay doors while you're in there with him..."

"Thanks, Mr. Jenkins." Pike double-checked the laser's setting. "I'll keep that in mind."

With a mechanical squeal of protest, the entry doors finally parted. When both securities moved to follow him, Pike held up a hand. "Give me five minutes," he ordered. "If we're not out by then, come looking."

The guards nodded. Pike turned and stepped through into the shuttle bay.

The cavernous room gave everything, even footsteps, an eerie, resounding echo. He could hear the soft beeping of computer keys before he'd cleared the obstacle of the bay's aft-most shuttle. Pike rounded the craft's nose to see his science officer working feverishly at the emergency override controls near the huge bay doors.

"Spock?"

The Vulcan paused to look up at him. His eyes didn't glow, but the look of torment in them was nothing short of horrifying.

"Can't," he was murmuring, a harsh, guttural whisper. "Can't let it control..."

"Spock, listen to me." Pike approached slowly with the laser held casually, pointed down, at his side. "We won't let it take control. Come with me to sickbay. We'll find a way to--"

"No." The Vulcan science officer turned back to the wall panel and pressed a control. The brief shrill of an alarm klaxon preceded the computer's terse announcement that access to the emergency door controls had been denied.

"No!" Spock shouted this time, then with both hands pressed to his temples, he fell against the bulkhead and whispered the word over and over again.

Pike started forward. The natural, human reaction was to offer a hand, to comfort, but he instantly arrested the motion when something thin, blue and glowing snaked from an opening below Spock's left ear.

Sheer reflex brought the laser to bear, but again, Pike hesitated. What now? Stun him and hope that the parasite didn't thrive on laser energy?

In the next moment, the two security guards from the corridor rounded the shuttle and charged toward them. Spock's head snapped up. He thrust out a hand and started forward, the blue threads darting from his fingers. Pike shouted a warning. He saw the guards drop just as Spock would have reached them. Then the Vulcan swung abruptly back toward him as though to grab for the laser.

Pike pulled the trigger.

For a prolonged moment, the stun charge appeared to have no effect at all. Not until one of the securities fired a second burst from the deck did Spock finally collapse. The blue filaments writhed briefly, then retracted into his hands and neck.

"What the hell..." The guard who'd fired, on his feet now, stared from Spock's still form to the captain and finished sheepishly, "...was that, sir?"

"My question precisely." Pike hit the intercom switch on the override panel. "This is the captain. All members of the G24 shore leave party will report immediately to sickbay for medical scans. Two crewmen from the party have come back aboard with some sort of alien parasite. Any aberrant behavior in any shore leave personnel should be reported at once. And I want a detailed life sciences scan on planetary coordinates three-zero-five by four-eighty. Start with the tricorder recording in Lt. Spock's quarters. I want to know exactly what it is we're dealing with."

He turned back to find Jenkins and both securities struggling to lift the unconscious Spock from the deck. "Take him to sickbay," Pike ordered. "Then report to the brig and escort Number One to sickbay as well. Keep your lasers on heavy stun force. And..." They'd already started to walk away with their awkward burden between them, but paused at his word and waited. "Don't let her touch you," he said.

These beings did not understand.

She'd tried to tell them, tried to explain how the joining could end their loneliness. Why did they refuse to listen?

"In here." One of her two armed escorts waved his gun to usher her into sickbay. A crowd filled the outer rooms -- all members of the landing party, she realized, lining up to be scanned. Her guards urged her on, into the ward, where Captain Pike and Dr. Boyce waited on either side of the only occupied diagnostic bed. Spock's ashen color might have belonged to a corpse, except that the panel above him pulsed with the steady rhythm of a Vulcan heartbeat.

"All right," Pike said when the guards had positioned themselves on either side, their lasers still trained on her. "I want answers, and I want them now. What did you do to Lt. Spock?"

"His pain is of his own making. We did nothing to harm him."

"Nothing?" Pike echoed. "You infected him with the parasite. But instead of bonding as it did with you, it drove him to attempted suicide. Why?"

"He denies us," she answered truthfully. "None has ever denied us before."

Boyce stepped toward her, a medical scanner whirring in his hand as he spoke. "The Vulcans practice very strict mental disciplines," he said, then shut the scanner off and addressed the captain. "Whatever it is, it's completely integrated itself throughout her neurological system."

"And Spock?"

"The same. My guess is he managed to use those Vulcan disciplines to stop it taking over entirely. Mentally, anyway." The doctor's blue eyes turned back to her, accusing. "Is that why he tried to walk out the shuttle bay doors? Because he 'denied' you?"

"We did nothing to harm him!" she repeated. Why did they refuse to understand?

"But you have harmed him," Pike said, his voice threatening. "And now you're going to undo whatever you did. I want my officers back. Both of them. If the parasite refuses to leave voluntarily, then we'll have no choice but to find a way to destroy it."

She shook her head. "The Shaluur are an immortal race, Captain. Once joined, we separate only upon a host's death. But we are not a threat to you. Nor are we a 'parasite.' We lived peacefully, joined, among the people of Fereyn for thirteen of your millennia, until the plagues came. Since then, we have waited, alone. As you are alone. We were not meant to be so. Please..."

Her plea was cut short by the sudden bleeping of Spock's diagnostic monitor. Boyce rushed to adjust it, and at the captain's anxious look, shook his head. "I'm far from an expert on Vulcan physiology, but I know a coma when I see one. Parasite or not, whatever it is is killing him."

Pike moved toward her so quickly that the security guards barely had time to react. Each of them stepped closer to her, their lasers threatening as the captain grasped and shook her shoulders.

"You did this to him. Undo it. Now!"

Reveling at his touch, the Shaluur longed to reach out for him, to join, to share. She restrained them with a forlorn mental plea. This species fears joining. How can they desire alone-ness?

She looked back at the anger raging in the captain's eyes, and with genuine regret, told him the truth.

"We cannot," she said.

Glass spires of blue and green surrounded him. They were, Spock surmised, the cities that had once been Fereyn. Alone, he walked the length of an abandoned street, crossing both shadows and color prisms cast by the towers.

"You are capable of love, you know," a familiar voice said, and he turned to find the image of his mother standing behind him.

It could not be his mother, of course. She was on Vulcan, light-years from this place.

"No," he told the deception. "The concept is alien to us. It is illogical."

"So alone," she lamented. "Always so alone. How do you live that way? How can you deny what you are?"

"Logic," he told her, "is what we are."

Her head turned to regard his reflection in the nearby glass. When he followed her gaze, he saw not his own form, but that of his father. When he spoke, it spoke as well, though with his own voice. "If you were who you appear to be, you would know this."

The profound sadness on her face was indeed very like an expression he had often seen his mother wear. "I only want you to be happy," she insisted. "Is that so terribly wrong? Why do you shut me out?"

"Because I must," he answered in his father's guise, and from that unexpected unity, he began to draw strength. "Because we must. We are not the people of Fereyn. We are Vulcan. And... we are human. We cannot join with the Shaluur. Therefore, you must release us."

"No. We were starving, dormant for centuries until you came. You are our salvation, as we shall be yours."

In a shimmer of multi-colored light, his mother's image surrendered to another form -- Number One's. His father's reflection vanished as well, becoming his own once again.

"Surely you must have longed, as we did, to end your isolation," she entreated, "to belong somewhere."

"I do belong," he said. "Where I am. As I am. And I have learned that there is merit in being like no other. One may seek that aspect, embrace it, learn to draw strength from it."

His reply seemed to cause her further distress. "We must make you understand. If you do not allow us to complete the joining, you will die. We do not desire this."

"Nor do I," he answered truthfully. "But I will not permit this joining."

"You would choose death?"

He nodded grimly. "In the beginning, it did seem to be the only logical alternative. Now, however, I believe there is another."

Number One's form, like that of his mother before it, began to shimmer and fade along with the buildings surrounding her. "Another?" she echoed.

"Yes. You yourself have given me the necessary key. And I will admit, it is not without some regret that I must now make use of it."

"We do not..." Number One's image faded out of being, leaving only a solitary word behind. "...understand..."

The towers, prisms and skies of long-ago Fereyn dissolved as well. Spock focused his thoughts inward then, invoked the healing trance practiced by his forefathers since the time of the first Vulcan masters, and concentrated on two words the Shaluur had spoken.

Starving, it had said. And dormant...

Pike quelled an angry response to the alien's denial. There had to be a way to bring both of them back, despite what it claimed. There had to be!

"I won't accept that," he started to tell her, but a commotion behind him drew his attention back to the bed and the medical team trying to hold down a thrashing Spock. Two of them took unscheduled flights across the room before Pike leaped into the fray, narrowly avoiding the same fate.

"Can't you sedate him?" he demanded of Boyce over the din.

"Sedate a patient coming out of a coma?" Boyce grabbed a flailing arm and held on. "Not what I'd recommend."

Pike reached for the bed's restraint straps, only to find them already broken. So much for that option. As abruptly as it had begun then, Spock's struggling ceased. The two orderlies he'd thrown across the room, both of whom had returned to pin his shoulders to the bed, now jerked away as though his touch had burned them.

Pike looked down and promptly pulled his own hand away. He was vaguely aware of Number One crying out and starting forward, only to be restrained by the securities. From a gill-like slit beneath Spock's left ear, the parasite had begun to emerge. But instead of lashing and writhing as before, the thing spilled out into a wet, pulsing heap. Boyce pounced on it with a pair of medical forceps, shoved it into a transparent specimen cylinder and summarily snapped the lid shut. It didn't move again, but Spock had begun to, twisting his head from side to side and muttering something unintelligible.

"Help me with him." Boyce was pulling on one arm as though to drag the still-unconscious Vulcan from the bed.

"Phil, are you sure you--?"

"Just pull." Pike shut up and pulled until Spock was sitting upright. Boyce motioned him away then, and took a firm hold on Spock's shoulders.

"All right, Lieutenant. You can wake up, now." He slapped the science officer on either cheek, lightly at first, then hard enough to alarm Pike. What kind of demented medical treatment did you call this? He'd barely reached out to intervene, however, when Spock's hand flew up to intercept the doctor's.

"Awake?" Boyce queried, perfectly serious.

Spock nodded. "Yes," he said succinctly, and in the next moment, he'd brushed the physician's objections aside and risen from the bed. He headed straight for a gaping Number One, who backed into the wall in a fruitless effort to escape him.

"We cannot un-join!" she cried. "We cannot!"

She tried to twist away, but Spock's left hand grasped her arm, his right coming up to close, spider-fashion, over her face. "We shall join," he said. "But not with the Shaluur. We will be one mind. Vulcan. Human. Both and neither. We are one."

This was happening too fast for Pike to follow. "Spock, what the devil are you--?"

"Chris..." Boyce's hand came out to restrain him. "Don't."

The securities on either side of the pair had backed off slightly and were now watching, open-mouthed, as Spock's fingers probed the first officer's forehead.

"What is he doing?" Pike demanded of Boyce, who seemed completely unfazed by all of this. "He could be re-infected, touching her like that."

"Looks to me like he's found a way to deal with that." Boyce glanced back at the motionless thing in his specimen bottle, then barked a command at one of the orderlies. "Williams! Get another jar over here, stat."

While Williams hurried off to comply, Number One made a final, pleading effort to dissuade Spock. "I don't want..." she started to say.

"There is no 'I.' Only we. One of us. One mind."

The alien's blue glow flashed once in her eyes, then faded as she took on the glazed look of someone under hypnosis. "One mind," she repeated dully.

"Then understand," he said. "We invoke the disciplines of our fathers: those which embrace pure logic and which purge our thoughts of all emotion. It is gone. Banished."

"Gone..." Number One very nearly sobbed the word. Watching her face, Pike began to understand.

"Is that why it couldn't control Spock?" he asked Boyce in hushed tones. "It feeds on feelings... on emotion?"

"Which the Vulcans suppress." Boyce, his forceps already in one hand, accepted an empty specimen bottle from his orderly. At the same time, a nurse from the outer med unit entered and whispered something in his ear. The doctor dismissed her with a nod and gave Pike a tight smile. "The rest of the landing party is clear of infection," he reported.

The captain made his sigh of relief at that news audible. "Then that just leaves Number One," he said.

He turned back to the bizarre tableau that still stood frozen against the bulkhead. His first officer no longer struggled, but there were tears both in her eyes and flowing freely down her cheeks.

"Please," she sobbed. "We want... to belong."

"No." Unmoved by the tears, Spock tersely contradicted her. "No, we do not. We seek wisdom in our difference, strength in our uniqueness. We are individual. We are like no other. That is our identity."

"No..."

"All emotion is purged," he stated. "And so, to the Shaluur, we are dust. As dead and useless as the Fereyn upon whom they once fed."

"We did not merely 'feed,'" she protested weakly. "We gave much in return. Happiness. Love. Belonging."

Spock shook his head. "Perhaps. But not to us. We are dead to you. We are dust and ashes. And in us, the Shaluur are starving. Dormant."

"Dust..."

"And ashes."

"Starving..."

"And dormant."

"Alone. So alone..."

Without warning, she slipped out of Spock's grasp and fell to the deck. Boyce was beside her in an instant with the forceps, capturing the wet, slithering thing that emerged from her neck and trapping it in his specimen jar. He handed that to Pike, who happened to be closest, and ran his scanner rapidly over Number One.

"Same as with him." He indicated Spock. "No discernible after-effects." He helped the stirring first officer to a sitting position. Pike stifled a smile when she looked down at her scant clothing and blushed profusely.

"Captain, I..."

"Welcome back, Number One," Pike said. He handed the jar to Spock and reached down to help her to her feet. "You can get back into uniform later. Just now, we have an appointment with a transporter."

"Captain..." Spock was examining the jar's contents now with a scientist's curious eye. "Surely a brief period might be allotted to permit further study of this life form?"

It had nearly killed him, and now he wanted to study it? Pike glanced at Number One and then at Boyce, who had already retrieved the other specimen. "I'm sorry, Mr. Spock. But that's just not a risk I'm willing to take."

He turned for the door, and the others followed obediently in his wake.

Number One watched as the clear containers with their dormant occupants were placed with care on the transporter pads. If she hadn't known better, she might have sworn that she could still hear them calling to her, pleading with her to prevent this return to exile. To loneliness.

"Are you sure," she asked the captain, "that we can't find some other way? You can't imagine what it's like, to spend an eternity like that. Sentient, but trapped. Starving. Alone."

Pike regarded her for a moment from across the transporter console. "I'm sorry," he said. Then he nodded to Spock, who touched two controls and slid the energizing levers forward.

The canisters dissolved and vanished from the platform in two glittering pillars of light. She stared at the space they had occupied, scarcely aware of Pike touching a switch in front of her.

"Pike to bridge."

"Tyler here."

"Jose, I want a warning beacon placed in orbit around G24-M12." He paused, considering something. "And while we're at it, tell Starfleet that the planetary designation should be changed -- to Fereyn."

"Aye aye, sir. Permission to break orbit when the beacon is set?"

"Granted. Set course for Starbase Two, warp factor six."

"Yes sir."

"Pike out."

The captain, Boyce and the security entourage all exited the room then, leaving her alone at the console with Spock.

"I'm sorry, too," she told him honestly. "You have my apology for any discomfort... any embarrassment I caused. I know how important control is to you."

He nodded in tacit acceptance. "To both of us, Lt. Commander," he said. "To both of us."

He left then as well.

Natalie fought back encroaching tears and told herself that yes, she did have control again, and lonely or not, she would learn to do as he had instructed. She would make assets of all those things which, throughout her life, had set her apart. She would be strong. She would endure. She would survive.

But she wept, all the same, for the Shaluur.