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They reached the bridge and found Riker, Counselor Troi, and Lieutenant Commander La Forge waiting. “Mr. Hawk, you have the bridge,” Picard said.

Hawk watched as they all filed into the observation lounge and the doors closed behind them.

She passed the blood screening, he thought as he sat in the command chair. Why can’t you let it go?

Because, he realized, his deepest instincts told him something was wrong. When piloting the ship, he’d learned from hard experience that it was necessary to separate instinct from appearance. There were circumstances when human senses, the viewscreen, even the ship’s instruments could be wrong. Always, for him, there was an inner voice that helped him separate the real data from distractions, misinformation, and noise.

When he was sitting at the conn, he always trusted that voice. Now he was second-guessing it, perhaps in part because he wanted it to be wrong. If the “Linda” here was in fact a Changeling spy, the best he could hope for was that the real Linda Addison was a prisoner of the Dominion. It was far more likely that she was simply dead.

This “Linda” was very good. She looked right. She talked right. She moved right. She seemed to know almost every detail of Linda’s life. But a spy would likely have studied such details from Starfleet records, and would have access to her personal logs, files, and diaries, as well. With time and determination, Hawk had no doubt that he could trick a Changeling spy into an unambiguous mistake, but time was something he didn’t have.

He stared at the observation lounge doors helplessly. He still had no more than a suspicion, but if it was valid, the ship’s officers were alone in a room with a murderous enemy.

All the senior officers he could have approached about the matter, the people with the authority to do something about it, were already in that room, and he couldn’t charge in without alerting the Changeling. There were ways he might slip a message in to the captain, but it wasn’t simply a matter of telling him. He would have to be convinced, and Hawk wasn’t that certain himself. All the other options he could think of would either take too long or had other drawbacks.

What he needed was conclusive proof. His plan to contact Vulcan might turn up something, but that would take too long as well.

There was one other possibility, much closer at hand.

Looking around, he saw that the senior person on the bridge was Lieutenant Berardi at ops. “Adriana, I’m not feeling well. I think the replicator’s steamed asna needs work. Can you take the bridge while I run to sickbay?”

Berardi got up from ops, saying, “Sure, but you owe me one.”

Nodding, Hawk headed for the turbolift, refusing to consider the ramifications of what he was planning.

“Deck eight, section four,” he said after the door closed and before he changed his mind.

Thanks to his orientation assignment, he’d earlier seen the cabin numbers assigned to the new arrivals. He knew the location of Linda’s cabin, and knew that her personnel file had been logged into the computer. That file would include certain personal preferences and configuration files, which followed a Starfleet officer from assignment to assignment, ship to ship.

Most of these files would concern such mundane things as the temperature she preferred in the shower, or what sort of music or audio she preferred to be associated with the wake-up alarm.

But they also would include an override file for the door lock.

At the Academy, Hawk and Linda had shared an interest in nineteenth-century American literature, and Linda had a small collection of books that had been handed down through her family. She had allowed Hawk to borrow them, and had given him an override code so he could return or take them at his leisure. It was just possible she had never deleted the code from her file. Of course, it was just as likely that she had, and he’d have to think of some other way into her quarters.

Worry about that later.

He stepped from the lift and trotted down the hall to her quarters. “Computer, override