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Sisko stopped fidgeting with the controls and gave her his full attention. “Run that by me again? You honestly believe Starfleet will have you executed once this mission is over?”

“It is what the Tal Shiar would do,” Zetha said.

“Then why in God’s name are you going along with it?”

Does he not see? Zetha wondered. No, of course he doesn’t. His life to this point has been far too soft. When he speaks so fondly of a dead mother who loved him, a father who taught him to cook, his wife, his son-a family, a place to belong, in so many words-how can he possibly know?

“Perhaps I don’t understand,” she said ingenuously, watching him out of the corners of her green eyes. “Is not the purpose of this mission to trace the origins of this disease, apprehend whoever has created it, and save the lives of those who might be afflicted by it?”

“Ideally, yes, but-“

“Then that is why I am ‘going along with it,’ as you say. When ‘it’ is over, so is my usefulness. You cannot imagine I will be allowed to return to your Federation knowing what I know?”

“That’s exactly what-” Sisko started to say, but stopped himself. “You can’t tell me you’re just here to help us. We’re strangers to you. Enemies, as far as your conditioning has taught you. There’s got to be another motive.”

Zetha shook her head, almost pitying him, as she had almost pitied the elites on her own world whom she had spent a lifetime mocking, eluding, pilfering from. He really did not understand.

“Every day I live is a day I live, human,” she said with a coldness no one so young should possess. “It is one day more snatched from the jaws of death. Understand that, and you understand me.”

At last Selar got the joke. Anyone who thought Vulcans had no sense of humor need only study her face. Her eyebrows threatening to disappear into her hairline, she did not trust herself to speak, but allowed the two trained operatives to have the floor.

“Well!” Uhura said at last, as if a decision had been reached. “My log entry will show that Albatross intends to remain in Quirinian space while you complete your cover mission with a visit to the village of Sawar, which is badly in need of replicator parts. I’ll expect your follow-up report by this time tomorrow.”

“Affirmative,” Tuvok said, ending the transmission.

Selar allowed him a moment’s silence before she asked: “Lieutenant, am I to assume we will have need of those hazmat suits after all?”

At least the weather favored them. Quirinus offered the landing party one of its rare sunlit days. Citizens Leval, Vesak, and Zetha wore UV goggles to keep from going snowblind as they made their way on their short skis through an untouched alpine landscape beneath a cloudless lavender sky. The air was warm enough for Zetha to lower the hood of her parka and turn her face like a flower to the sun. Emulating her-if they were truly Romulan rather than Vulcan, they would be more adaptable to the cold-Tuvok and Selar did likewise.

It was hard to believe that only a few kilometers distant from this pristine beauty a wall sealed healthy citizens off from those suffering an agonizing death.

Tuvok and Selar wore their hazmat suits beneath their parkas, the face masks stored in rucksacks that also contained samples of the merchandise they had ostensibly come to Quirinus to sell. Zetha carried only a sample case in her rucksack, and wore no hazmat suit.

“We will require your talents as we mingle with the citizens on the ‘safe’ side of the quarantine enclosure,” Tuvok instructed her. “Obviously we will be forbidden access to that enclosure. We will appear to acquiesce, as long as it is daylight. After dark, Dr. Selar and I will infiltrate while you return to the ship.”

Their arrival in Sawar, a village sheltered in a valley surrounded by high mountains, was greeted with some curiosity and not a little suspicion. The curiosity they had expected. Offworld visitors seldom ventured beyond the major cities, and rumor had run ahead of them that they were selling not only genuine Romulan replicator