By Lisa Polisar

"Well would you rather be dead?" she asked while slipping on her underwear and black uniform pants. With one eye she looked at the flower sculpture he'd brought her on the dresser, and with the other she saw him thinking, eyes glued to the ceiling, hands behind his head with a knot of introspection on his lips. In over a year's time, she didn't know Gary Nogal any more intimately than she had the first day they met. On the level of animals, she knew his instinct toward female attraction and had learned how to arouse his interest and his libido, but was no closer to understanding his mind and heart as she was her own.

"Don't be an ass," he said. "Of course I wouldn't. But if we allow it to go on much longer, we might be better off."

The drone of Pangea's motor betrayed its many defects, its ten-year history of poor or no maintenance, busted components loosely held together by hope, tricks and spells. The distinctive noise of its grinding into a higher gear muffled the voice of Clive Winchester.

"Nogue? You there? Nogal, answer if you're within range."

"I'm here," Gary yelled into the wall intercom.

"Bring the prisoner to Level One. Now."

Disconnecting the speak-button on the intercom without acknowledging a direct order would have ramifications for sure, Jenna thought watching from the doorway. But in some way she understood this recklessness, still knew what it meant to have ties to someone you shouldn't, to be loyal while knowing that this loyalty made your own life expendable. That's how Nogue had felt about the Journeyman at first, an unquestionable loyalty, and not because he was an outsider living near Megtalion or because he could do what others couldn't.

He had tried to explain it to her once.

"He means no harm," Nogue had whispered to her under the covers where the intercom couldn't be heard.

"We don't know anything about him, or hardly anything. What makes you want to protect him like you do?"

"The fact that he thinks he needs no protection."

"He doesn't, really."

"Not from us. But Clive would never willingly take such a risk by letting him stay here. Neither would Bennett."

"And Rory would understand your reasons at least, without any willingness to act on his behalf."

"So it's up to us then," Nogue said and from there it was decided.

He glanced up at Jenna now, half dressed with her uniform shirt unbuttoned all the way down. With his eyes, he said all he needed to.

"Think about what you're doing, Gary." She came towards him and grabbed the flesh of his arm with her fingernails. "You're making this decision for the whole crew, not just yourself, and if you're wrong about Clive we're all gonna pay for it."

"We don't just dispatch prisoners out the hull of our ship, Jenna. Our crew doesn't do that, Megtalions don't do it and neither does anybody else."

"On the contrary," she said. "People have been doing it for centuries. And before that, civilizations electrocuted their accused and convicted and hung them from trees. If the Journeyman committed a crime and violated the laws of this vessel and the Alliance, then I see cause for punishment. But I don't think that's the case. Clive was trained to deal with situations like this. He'll be understanding, I'm sure of it."

"I've been called," Nogue replied with a steely look. "He'll already be wondering where we are."

Jenna followed behind Nogue and the prisoner and scanned the details of the interior hull with her eyes. Everything gun metal gray, with opposing white ceilings for contrast. In a blink she could summon a memory of living on Varia, where they had been stationed for two years. Surface-duty, as it had been called, meant the ship was stationed on the planet's surface because the atmosphere was deemed safe enough by the Alliance. The ship's research library archives had provided samples of seeds and bulbs that could grow in that climate, and recipes for preparing their own food. Every morning she sat on the dewy grass in just her nightclothes and breathed the clean air, trying to store as much of it in her lungs as possible.

They were on Level Four now approaching the elevator, Nogue and the prisoner in front of her. She heard something as they stepped into the lift. Not a noise, but a voice. It was coming from the prisoner, but his lips hadn't moved, because she saw his face as she stepped in front of him. She had thought him to be an empath upon their first meeting, but he seemed even more than that now.

"Return to your quarters," he was saying with his watery, black eyes and dark circles surrounding the deep sockets. Locked in his gaze by an invisible beam, she had no conception of Nogue, as he seemed to have disappeared. The prisoner, Bronn as he'd introduced himself when she escorted him from the loading dock, seemed to stare at a spot on her forehead, concentrating all his energy on some mental process to which she was not privy. So far, he was not harming her and didn't seem to look at this as the conclusion of his effort. Try to relax, she thought as she frequently did when confronted by another species. Where is Nogue? He was just here a moment ago.

"Nogue is here with us. Your eyes are seeing him but your brain cannot." Bronn blinked his eyes and smiled as he said this without moving his lips.

"What are you doing to me?" As she thought this, she examined Bronn for any external oddities that her brain might have missed earlier. He wore plain black shoes made of fabric and a long black caftan bound at the waist by two wide strips. She could no longer hear the motor from the ship, or the buzz of lights above her head or even the distant beating of her heart. I am not afraid, she decided right then.

"What do you feel now?"

Taking a moment to consider what had happened in the last sixty seconds, she bravely uncrossed her arms and let them hang gently at her sides. "Curiosity. I had only read about your species in the ship's archives."

"There are many of us left."

"Do you all communicate this way?"

"We are able to speak if needed, but prefer telepathy as it offers a kind of unfiltered communication. Words and thoughts at the same time without the devious interference of the ego."

From a part of her brain, Jenna Luther could hear someone clear their throat, close a door and start down the hallway they were both standing in the middle of. She felt the brush of an arm against her back and the sound of a human exhalation as the person passed, obviously unaware of their presence and their process. What was Bronn seeing in her anyway? Did he see her as a thirty-four year old woman with light brown hair and green eyes? Could he see the faint scar on her cheek that she got as a child after falling off a swing, a nose sculpted from her father's ancestry and her mother's high forehead? Could he see the particular shade of lipstick she'd put on while getting dressed, or was he looking at the patterns of neurotransmitters flashing their secret code of lights and movement within her cerebral cortex? Come to think of it, did he even distinguish women from men? Perhaps she was just a specimen and he was looking to suck her brains out her forehead. No, he didn't mean her any harm. Not her anyway. She worried about Nogue, though. His behavior around Bronn seemed contrived and somewhat brainwashed. She had trusted him at first. Maybe this was a mistake.

"What do you want with me?" she said telepathically.

"Look around you. Tell me what you see."

She turned her head left and then right, and noticed that the world she had temporarily departed from, the gun metal gray interior of the ship's hull, the synthetic feel to her clothing and the chemical odor in the air, begin to return. Though shaded and only partly visible, she was standing between two worlds now, two dimensions - one physical and one purely mental. The image of Bronn was beginning to fade as the world of her familiarity slowly broke through.

"I see that you're disappearing. Is that what this charade was about? Special effects? Wowing me with your telepathic ability as a distraction from the real truth of your escape? I find your behavior quite cowardly, Bronn, if I am correct."

"You are not. Journeymen do not have the capacity to feel fear. I am trying to assimilate our brains so that we can begin communicating on a deeper level. I have completed this procedure on your friend, Lieutenant Nogal. We communicate together quite well now."

Jenna returned her arms to their crossed position and tried to hide her frustration. "You have put Nogue's life in danger, all of our lives. Clive Winchester, our captain, will execute you with the same emotion he feels when brushing his teeth. The Alliance does not allow unwanted visitors on board its explorer vessels, and Clive has no tolerance for deceivers."

"What is my deception? I have done nothing wrong."

"You came here to spy on us. You are getting close to Nogue and myself for the purpose of extracting tactical information from us so that, I can only guess, you can take over our ship."

"You have misjudged me. My intentions involve nothing more than education."

"I think not. Release me from this hold immediately."

"I will do so if you answer one question with perfect honesty and clarity."

Jenna Luther shook her head and bit her lip. Patience ran out of her like jelly beans from a glass jar. She inhaled deeply and tried to understand what the Journeyman wanted with her, but then realized that he was reading her thoughts probably before she even became aware of them. Nogue would be looking for her, and looking for Bronn. Would he think that she had helped him escape? Of course not, since she had been suspicious of him from the start. Nogue would be standing at attention in Clive Winchester's office explaining to him what she could not even explain to herself. Where had they gone, after all? Slipped into a hidden pocket of air, or something more overt like having walked through walls? Was she part of the air molecules in the hallway or was her presence altered to include a mathematical formula like the holographic images she could conjure with the touch of a button on Deck Nine?

"What is your question?" she heard herself think and then wished her mental filter had stepped in to edit for her.

"Good. You are trusting me more than ever. That is what I want. I would like you to tell me what you saw in the medical facility when your guards discovered my presence the first day I arrived."

Jenna Luther struggled to control her thoughts and impulses now as she never had before. Thoughts, now, were like spoken words. So her mental editing had to come before the thought made itself known in her consciousness. There was so much to consider now, so many probabilities, strategies and consequences to her actions over the next few minutes. Because of the restrictions imposed by the Alliance the last time they got wind of a visitor, Clive would be out for blood. But Bronn should not be allowed to move freely within the vessel and take hostage the minds of her crew. He seemed to respond to active thoughts, rather than the jumble of passive thoughts that normally swarmed around her brain. How she answered his question would quite possibly decide the fate of herself, Pangea's crew, and any other ships that may have been visited by such a being.

Bronn already said he was here because of education. But education being the first step of what process? Mutiny? Seige? Hijack? Or was it simpler than that? Maybe what the prisoner wanted, what 'they' wanted, involved just one thing.

"There's not much time left," he said in the cool, liquid voice that all of his other thoughts were spoken through.

"How much?"

A pause followed her words, during which time she watched the prisoner's countenance fade in an out and her own surroundings seemed to return to their original vibrance.

"I watched you walk from your own body and enter another's. You remained in the body of Dr. Margy Wheelock, the ship's physician, for several minutes while she spoke to the captain, and when the captain left you returned to your own body. You are obviously quite skilled with this type of transformative displacement, because Dr. Wheelock's words truly seemed like her own. I wonder how many other bodies you have inhabited in the short time you've been on this ship. I suppose when I was engaged in intimate activity with Lieutenant Nogal, you were in possession of his body."

"Yes."

"Why? Why would you do this? You obviously have enough experience studying humans to know how personal this is."

"Do not feel betrayed. It was an education. I have no personal knowledge of the experience you call pleasure."

"What kind of twisted education are you getting, exactly?" Jenna yelled into the startling silence of the hallway. "Are you studying us? Studying our species? Well I ask you, then, do you also study principles like deceit and betrayal? How about how humans deal with invasive maneuvers such as this?"

Since she had spoken her last sentiments rather than thinking them, the stranger was no longer visible opposite her. Speaking, she thought, must have broken the chain.

Jenna found Rory and Bennett arguing with the computer in the Secondary Bridge.

"What's going on here?" she asked, trying to sound as normal as possible, knowing all the while that the prisoner was probably in her own body now, transferred from Deck Nine to half-potency in the hallway and now completely under her skin.

"We're studying the logarithmic tables downloaded from the data recovered from Varia."

"Varia?" she asked. "That was years ago. What do we want with that data?"

"Acidox is telling us that the vibration frequency emitted by the prisoner started when we left Varia."

Jenna Luther tried to think of the response she would have given to this information under normal circumstances, under the circumstances of being her own person, a human female, an officer on an Alliance Charge A vessel rather than an empty host.

"What type of vibration is it?" she asked, or did the prisoner ask it? She knew nothing of frequencies and would not understand the answer they gave. But Bronn would understand.

"It's emitting a high powered frequency unfamiliar by anyone who's looked at it.

The metal, grainy, digitized voice of the ship's computer interrupted. "The- frequency-pattern-has-grown-in-intensity-since-Lieutenant-Luther-arrived-on-the-bridge."

"I don't doubt it. I was talking to the prisoner just a short time ago," she replied.

"Acidox, where is the prisoner now?" Rory asked.

"On-the-bridge."

Rory, Jenna and Bennett all looked at each other and let their eyes scan the room's surroundings. No one was visible but the three of them.

As a reflex, Jenna found herself buttoning the other two buttons on her uniform jacket as if the prisoner's head might be protruding from her clothing.

"Lieutenant Luther?"

It was Clive. "Yes Captain. Secondary Bridge, sir."

"Where's Nogue? I ordered him to bring the prisoner to the Main Bridge twenty minutes ago."

"I'll go check the cargo lifts, sir. Engineering reported a problem with them two days ago," she lied. "They could be stuck between decks."

Bennett, the ship's head engineer, shot a suspicious glance. "I'll help you," he said following Jenna into the hallway.

"What the hell's going on?" he demanded.

Nogue's dead, we're being taken over by a malevolent species and the prisoner's hiding inside my body, she thought to herself and stifled a chuckle.

"Is something funny Lieutenant?" Bennett asked and turned around to face her.

"Certainly not. It's just that ...people have started disappearing lately."

"Like you, for instance?"

Jenna swallowed a lump in her throat and pressed her palms against the fabric of her uniform pants. Bennett's face betrayed the truth about her darkest fears. "You know?"

Chief Tactical Officer David Bennett grabbed Jenna's arm and yanked her into an alcove around the corner. "The prisoner was in me for three days last week. I can't be sure but I suspect he made his way into Nogue as well."

Jenna rubbed her eyes and scaled her fingers through her hair. Was this possible? Was she even talking now, listening, cognizant of anything other than the odd taste in her mouth and the creaky feeling in her bones when she moved her arms and legs? "How did you recognize that this happened?"

"I read about something in the logs. Quite a while back, but Aileron 3 had some officers' logs that reported a visitor suspected of inhabiting some of the crew members."

"For what purpose? And how did they finally leave?"

Bennett squinted and looked oddly at the ceiling as if responding to some interior verbal cue. "We don't know if they ever did."

The hall grew dimmer and the air had a stale smell to it. David Bennett's face flashed in and out of clarity just as Bronn's face had before he entered her own body. She touched his cheek, and touched his hair, looked into the same blue eyes that she'd grown used to seeing every morning for three years until Gary Nogal took a position on the ship. What had once been a sharp edge between them had softened into mutual agreements. Agreeing not to hate, agreeing to try to still care and co-exist in a way that wouldn't disrupt the flow of ship's business. But the blue eyes were washed out; the blonde hair diluted and transparent so that the shade of the carpet shone in its place.

A trembling started in Jenna's stomach and radiated up her chest and sternum. Swallowing felt like her throat was made of broken glass. A retreat to her quarters to her special chair with her special cup of tea failed to quell the anxiety vibrating in the marrow of her bones. Unable to comprehend why she was thinking her own thoughts and why her own image looked back from the mirror, she tightly shut her eyes from the blinding truth of inhabitation. Decades of books, articles and holographic sims had prepared her for this wild possibility, but not so much that she actually considered it probable. With her teacup still full and steaming, she got up and stood outside the door of Rory's office. The sign read, "Dr. Rory Linn." Clive had purposely omitted the word psychologist from the door as a means of downgrading and humiliation. The two things he was most adept at.

She sat down on the hard blue couch because it was near the window and she needed to avert her gaze from the confines of the ship. Out the window, everything was just as it always had been. Cold, dark, and empty but with the promise of something greater held in its glistening arms. On Varia, she thought she had been happy but seeing the universe up close was where she had always felt the most alive.

"What do you fear the most, Jenna?" Rory said in a thick, upper class English accent.

"Being alone."

"Are you alone now?"

She laughed then as she did every time the universe presented its sense of humor through comic irony. Sure, she thought. I'm alone in a way, except for the species trying to take over my body and mind. "There's no sign of Nogue. He's missing."

"When did you last see him?"

She shook her head and shrugged. "I don't know. An hour or so."

"You sound paranoid. Do you believe he's been kidnapped? Or left the ship through the loading bay?"

"The pods have been temporarily declared off-limits by Engineering for repairs. He didn't go anywhere," she enunciated, "but he's gone just the same." She looked up, at that moment, and realized several things at once. Realized that she was talking as a result of her own thoughts or what felt like it, and that Rory didn't sound like himself.

"Where's Rory Linn?" she asked in a pointed voice.

"Sitting right in front of you, of course."

Once again, language Rory would never use, especially if asked such an absurd question. Her stomach clenched at the sight of Rory's face folding in and out the same way Bronn's had in the hallway, and probably the same way her own face had upon his entrance and exit from her body. "Stop playing games, Bronn. You can't just bounce from one crewmember to another looking for whatever secret ingredient sustains you and your perverted species. You're endangering our well-being, not to mention the security of this ship. What do we have that your species does not?"

"Thoughts."

"You obviously have the other cognitive functions that depend on thoughts, so how can this be?"

"We function as a collective entity, but this entity lacks a central consciousness. So each separate entity has to inhabit the mind of another intellectually equal species and absorb their thoughts and replicate them to go into the databank of our collective self."

"Collective self? That's ridiculous. Okay, let's say for instance that this were true. So what happens if you don't?"

"We can only survive independent of another species for a mere hour. After that, we perish. So Rory, as you call him, is saving my life right now."

"And I'm sure he's grateful to provide this public service," she snickered. "So when I saw you in the loading bay and called security, you were in a visible form because you weren't inhabiting anyone else?"

"Yes."

"What do you do with the thoughts you've replicated from one host when you enter the next? Do you carry over the thoughts from one being to another?"

Rory, or Bronn, hesitated before answering. Even the body language was different. Rory, thin, brilliantly intelligent and usually fidgety, now sat looking down with his hands flat on his knees. "I believe you are asking if I alter the thought patterns and memories in a host with the knowledge I acquire from the previous host."

The sound of the words frightened her more than the implied possibility. She managed to nod, terrified of the answer.

"If I do, it is not my intended result and therefore -"

"You're lying," she said, unable to restrain her emotions. "Where's Nogue? Have you harmed him?"

"I have no desire or ability to harm any being, even those of my own species. I do not know where Lieutenant Nogal is. Perhaps he's sleeping."

Perhaps sleeping. This didn't sound like Bronn. It almost sounded like something Rory might say, finding possible scenarios for problem solving. After all, this was Rory's field of expertise aside from behavioral psychology. He had been the chief tactician on board Pangea prior to David Bennett. Sleeping. Food for thought if nothing else.

Jenna got up from the blue couch and moved toward the door without looking behind her.

"Are you leaving?"

"Yes. The captain has been waiting for Nogue to deliver you, or Bronn, and now he wants me to report on their whereabouts. I don't know what to tell him."

Approaching the main bridge had always given her the jitters. Only having been an officer for the past year, she had never felt much like one and still looked at herself as an underling of Nogue or Clive. Her hands tingled and she clenched and reclenched her fists. Passing Deck 8 on the way to the bridge, she resisted the urge to enter her own quarters, take all her clothes off and scan every visible inch of her body to be sure she hadn't been altered physically, somehow, while possessed by the Journeyman. It was almost too much to fathom, knowing this in her mind, feeling this truth every time she looked at her own face in the mirror and experienced her own independent thoughts.

She could hear the clicking of Clive's fingers on the keys of his panel from outside his door.

"Yes?"

She entered after exposing her palm to the wall reader. "I need to talk to you," she said in a flat voice.

Captain Clive Winchester didn't look up from his work. "What is it? I have two crises I'm diffusing right now."

"I assure you, captain, whatever they are, they can wait."

Clive looked up. "Stop stalling. Where's Nogal and where's the prisoner you alerted us to not three days ago? Must I go out looking for him myself?"

"You won't find him," she said with her eyes on the floor. "As a matter of fact, I'm sure he's not where I left him ten minutes ago."

"Why is that?"

"Because I spoke with him for almost an hour, and his time is up."

Clive put down his module, pressed the 'record' button on Acidox's top panel and turned to face her. "Stop with the theatrics, Jenna. What does that mean?"

"I'm having trouble explaining it myself. The prisoner is of the Journeyman species, and is using the members of this crew as host bodies."

Clive stared at her, then lowered his eyes to her neck, her chest, and then back up to her face. "You're certain of this?" he asked softly, the lines in his face betraying his state of mind.

"Yes."

"For what purpose?"

"He's feeding off our intellects and thoughts because his species lacks a central consciousness. I was told this through Rory Linn. That's where the prisoner last appeared. But if he's finished with Linn, he has one hour to find a suitable new host, or else he'll expire."

"Who else is involved?"

She sighed. "Besides myself, I don't know. But I can say this: Rory, or who I believe was actually the prisoner at the time, admitted that his species alters the memory and neural patterns of their hosts by implanting information from their previous hosts each time they go through this change. And what that means, from a security standpoint, is that the integrity of this crew and the entire security of Pangea is at risk while this entity is making its rounds."

Clive had his head in his hands now, and swept his hair back in a repeating pattern. "The entity must be eliminated. What suggestions can you give me at this point?"

"None yet, sir. I'm on my way to engineering now to pick their brains and I'll have an answer for you within the hour."

"What about Nogue? Has he been, how shall I say, compromised by this entity?"

"I think so, yes."

There was no answer to the sound of the buzzer at the office door of Rory Linn. She entered anyway, but he was gone and his module was turned off. So that's two now, she thought, referring to the fact that both Rory and Nogue had been inhabited by the entity and now both were missing.

"Acidox?" she spoke toward the ceiling.

"Acidox-is-currently-online, Lieutenant-Luther. What-information-do-you-require?"

"Where's Bennett?" she asked, not wanting panic to sound in her voice. She was in no mood for computer-psychoanalysis.

"Second-Officer-David-Bennett-is-on-Deck-Four-Officer's-Lounge."

On the way there, she regarded every crewmember she passed as a possible Journeyman disguised as a human. Unsure why, she felt certain now that Bronn was only one of several intruders on board the Pangea. But the one signature she'd seen in Rory that she also saw in Bronn while he was walking in his own skin was his face. Not a normal face, surely not a human face and not even a recognizable one as its color, texture and most basic structure faded in and out. Deck Four's Officers Quarters were always inhabited by the same crowd. David Bennett, Rory Linn, Nogue, and Dr. Margy Wheelock. Sometimes even Clive, in his stiff unyielding manner, could be seen with a drink in his hand from time to time. Today, day two of the Moll cycle, David Bennett sat in the far corner with his head resting on his hands on the table.

"David?"

He looked up, but said nothing.

"Are you ill?" Jenna asked.

"No. I've been looking for you."

"I've been busy," she said and almost laughed but caught herself in time to restore her professional expression when the ceiling monitor beeped. Clive's enlarged face appeared on the screen in usual form. Stern, disconcerted.

"Lieutenant Luther, I need you to return to the Main Bridge."

They looked at his face, Jenna and David, and looked at each other as they watched its structure begin to gently implode on itself, and its very form collapse into the nothing-void of air, space and time surrounding it. And as gently as it had folded away it fed into itself again. Now the ghastly visage of Clive Winchester, Captain of Pangea, Officer in the Alliance of Planets, stared back at them impatient for the answer that had not yet come.

"Yes, sir. I'm en route."

David Bennett walked beside her, huddled into the crook of her shoulder, whispering while trying to comprehend the image forever stamped in his memory.

"Did you see that?"

"I saw."

"Is that what you saw happen to the others?"

She considered this question but said nothing.

"Jenna?" David's voice was frantic now, and she could understand this emotion since it's what she'd felt constantly for the past twenty-four hours. "In lesser degrees, yes. I saw the intruder's face move in that same pattern, as well as Rory's when he was inhabited. And -"

"And what?" David Bennett said without any regard to what was beginning to take form in his own face, his own head and cranial structure.

Jenna felt the strangling feeling return to her intestines as she calmly watched her biggest fear unfold before her eyes. She turned around and ran down the hallway toward Deck Nine. There was only one hope of finding sanity in this place, and Margy Wheelock was the only one who could help.

"Where are you going?" David yelled in a horrified voice.

"There's something I need to take care of."

In the hallway, she passed two sets of crewmembers, two of them officers, two of them maintenance technicians she recognized from the medical wing. Trying desperately to keep her gaze locked onto the drab carpet in front of her, she allowed her eyes to meet the gaze of one crewmember as they passed each other, and... could it be possible? Was it happening again? But how could Bronn move so quickly from one host to another? And why would he? She had been directly informed that a Journeyman feeds off of the intellect of one host for several hours, sometimes a day before having to change locations to find a new host. So if David... if Clive ... if the technician she just passed...

Oh God, she thought. Unless there were more than one.

It was the only logical explanation. "No!" she yelled, running down the hallway now uncaring of who saw her and what they thought and how she was representing officers onboard the Pangea. She turned abruptly and fell down against the wall leading to one of the empty storerooms and allowed herself the luxury of crying. While tears fell from her swollen eye sockets, her jaw remained tightly anchored in anger and betrayal, still unable to comprehend the likelihood of this probability. "I have to think," she said aloud into the tiny alcove. It felt good being there surrounded by walls in a tight space. There was no way they could get to her now, unless of course they could survive within the walls. Okay, think, she said to herself. When did this first happen? While we were still near Varia. And Megtalion, the planet they'd been docked at for the past two years, was in the same galaxy as Varia. But other than that, Megtalion had no similarities to Varia, either in atmosphere, structural composition or inhabitants. Then it dawned on her. If Pangea was docked at Megtalion, a planet inhabited by over a million beings, perhaps the Journeymen were on there way to the surface to perpetuate their study of consciousness there, to ruin people's minds and alter their thoughts, memories, destroying what it took lifetimes to collect and assimilate, all for the purpose of education and exploration?

Were they so different from her, though? From humans? The Pangea was an explorative aircraft assigned to do tests, collect data and make observations on the inhabitability of Megtalion over a prolonged period of time, in other words to determine if it was likely to be still inhabitable in one hundred years based on the planet's current available resources and potential future resources. The only difference was that their exploration wasn't harming any other beings and had no dark implications for the future. Only one possibility remained. She had to assume, from what she'd seen in the past twenty minutes, that at least half the crew was inhabited by Journeymen right now, and she had to stop them. Standing in front of Dr. Margy Wheelock's office door, her eyes bleary from fear and panic, she braced herself for the gravest of possibilities.

Then the door opened by itself.

Margy Wheelock started to exit and walked straight into her. "Oh, Jenna. I'm so-rry! What are you doing here?" Margy bent down to look at Jenna's face. "Are you alright? It doesn't look like it. Come in."

Jenna followed her to a sitting area in her office.

"You look awful. What's going on?"

"I don't know how to explain it to you in a way that won't convince you that I'm insane." She tried to explain it. Started out with something Nogue said to her yesterday and continued with her own experience of inhabitation, then with Rory Linn, Clive, and now Bennett. Margy just nodded back at her in a calmer state than she would have thought possible under the circumstances.

"You're not surprised?"

"I've known about their species for some time, even known that they were, at times, among us. But now, we have become more than just curiosity to them."

"Are they trying to get to the surface of Megtalion?"

"That would be my guess. It's likely that one of them boarded Pangea from Varia, and they can carry other dormant beings of their own species with them. So in an open, trusting environment where communication is not only expected but accepted, we have allowed them to flourish." Margy looked deeply at Jenna.

"So this is our fault, then?"

"In a way, yes."

Jenna's hands sweat violently, terrified of what would come next, of how Margy was about to change and alter her appearance.

But she didn't.

"What can I do?" Margy asked.

Jenna wiped her face with own palms and drew in a breath and exhaled slowly. "They can't survive for more than an hour on their own. They inhabit us to collect information about our neural patterns and memory capacity, concentrating on the hypothalamus part of the brain, and essentially drain it of its life energy, and then take what they've collected and root it in the brain of their next victim."

"So once you've been 'processed' by them, you are clearly not the same person you were before."

"Correct."

"What do you suggest?"

"Putting the crew to sleep for twelve hours, to be safe. If we regain consciousness and realize that they are still alive and with us, no harm was caused in the trying, and we'll try again, next time for twenty-four hours. Do you have a way of doing this?"

Margy paced on the carpet for several moments. "Through the ventilation system, I suppose. I can exude an anesthetizing gas that will put everyone to sleep, including us. But how do we arrange this with engineering?"

"I'll take care of that. You work on the gas and signal my module when you're ready. I'll be in engineering."

"You're just going to walk through the doors and explain it to them?"

"Don't worry about me. You just do what you can and signal me once you're about to release the gas."

The respirator mask was still where she had seen it last in the storage room off the second engineering wing. Bennett and Raskin would be there, along with some of the half-time technical interns they always had on hand. So she sat behind the door in the storage room on top of a rectangular steel container - and waited. In the nearly pitch darkness, under the clanky hum of the ship's engine and a mélange of synthetic smells, Jenna Luther had time to consider her own thoughts. Had she been altered in some way since being inhabited and then released by the Journeyman Bronn? For that matter, how many other Bronns had violated her, slipped into her consciousness and stolen precious memories, worries, joys and pain? Was she the same Jenna that woke up twenty-four hours ago, the same woman who put on makeup, showered, and then crept back into Nogue's bed to press her warm body against his? With an indiscernible belief that he was still alive, where had he been hiding all day and night? Or, as the more frightening of possibilities emerged, where had he been hidden?

She felt a sensation on her hip where her module was vibrating. It was just like Dr. Wheelock to signal her without announcing herself and compromising her position. And since the doctor hadn't specified exactly how long it would take for the gas to take effect, she had to assume that it would be almost instantaneous. She looked at her watch and waited a few minutes more. When the sounds of activity and conversation ceased in the main hull of the engineering deck, she slipped her head into the respirator mask and then out of the small room to made her way to the controls. According to her brief cross-training course in engineering two years ago, setting the engine on the Automatic reader should involve three steps.

"Acidox?" she said, her voice muffled by the apparatus. Please don't give me any song and dance, she thought to herself feeling frustration tingle in her fingertips.

"Voice-recognition-not-approved. Please-identify."

Damn it, she hissed. Drawing in a long breath, she peeled off the mask just high enough to expose her mouth to the atmosphere, and repeated her command. "Acidox? It's Jenna Luther. I want all ship's engines put on Automatic setting for the next twelve hours."

"Automatic-setting-has-already-been-enabled, Lieutenant."

Already enabled? By whom? Jenna clamped the apparatus back on her face and quickly scanned the room. It was hard to see anything over the hard fiberglass hood, but no one else was visible ahead of her or from her peripheral -

"Hi," Nogue said from behind her.

She gasped and slapped her hand to her chest. "Are you trying to kill me? Are you?"

"No. I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to help all of us."

"You already did if we're on auto."

"Don't take your mask off just yet. We'll go to my quarters first, and get settled there."

Jenna grabbed Nogue's hand and pulled him toward her. "Where have you been? Do you know what's going on here?"

He nodded.

"Were you ... altered? Was I?"

"There's no way to be sure outside of a full psychological analysis whether either of us were. The fact that we're talking independently points to a negative conclusion, but we'll have to wait and see."

Jenna Luther woke up next to Gary Nogal twelve hours later the same way she had woken the day before and every day before that. The contents of Nogue's quarters were different somehow. Maybe dimmer in color, and the smells and sounds that she'd grown accustomed to were distant now and almost indistinguishable. Just before removing her mask, her eyes locked onto the bouquet of gold and silver sculpted flowers sitting on the dresser. They were as shiny as she remembered.

THE END
Copyright (c) 2001 by Lisa Polisar

Lisa Polisar has had 10 stories published in online and print magazines, as well as numerous articles and poetry. She is primarily a mystery novelist working to get her books published. This is her first story to appear in The Steel Caves, we trust it won't be the last.