Where No Witch Has Gone Before

Chapter Two

Pushkin strode down the corridor between MacGregor and Edmundsson, while Ensigns da Costa and Olafsdotter tried valiantly to keep up.

"I'm telling you, she can't be the saboteur!" Edmundsson said. "She's too good at her job; in fact, she might be the best maintenance engineer we have. She's managed to fix half the ship's bugs since we left Mars...a lot of them before I even knew about them. For her to be the saboteur? It makes no sense!"

"What better way to divert suspicion?" Pushkin replied.

She held up her hand as they reached Llewellyn's quarters. "Captain, Commander, step aside, please. da Costa, Olafsdotter, phasers on stun." She gave them a moment to position themselves before she stepped forward. The door swished open. Pushkin entered the cabin, the security detail directly behind, followed by MacGregor and Edmundsson.

The room was unoccupied. "Ensign Llewellyn, come out!" Pushkin called as she took a couple of cautious steps. There was no reply. She moved close enough to trigger the motion sensors on the bathroom door. Pushkin entered, phaser first, and snorted with frustration when she saw nobody there either.

"She's not here," she said needlessly. Olafsdotter checked the closet and nudged the suitcase on the floor with her toe. It moved easily.

"You two, wait here for her," Pushkin barked, "and search her cabin. Arrest her the moment she comes back to her cabin.

"Where does she spend her free time?" Pushkin asked Edmundsson.

"I've seen her in some of the observation lounges. She may be in one of the rec rooms, or in the gym. Other than that..." He shrugged. "To be honest, I thought she'd be here, too."

Pushkin sat at Llewellyn's desk and toggled the intercom. "Pushkin to Security."

"Obata here."

"Send security teams to the observation lounges, the rec rooms, and the gym. If Llewellyn isn't there, search the ship deck by deck. Phasers on stun and issue communicators to everyone. Let me know the second we have her."

Pushkin cut off the intercom without waiting for a reply. "I'm going back to Security," she said. "We should have her before she has a chance to do anything else. If you hear or see anything, let me know."

They waited in Llewelyn's cabin for a minute after Pushkin departed, looking at each other before they left themselves.

MacGregor followed Edmundsson to Engineering and sat across from him in the chief's office.

"What do you think?" the captain asked. "Is Llewellyn our saboteur?"

Edmundsson shook his head. "I don't believe it. I know Pushkin says all the evidence points to her, but I can't see it."

"Why?"

"She's too excited about her job. Every time I see her, she's buried waist-deep in wiring, or crawling around the Jefferies tubes. She got the highest grades of any engineering student at the Academy in five years, and barely missed being Valedictorian. And I don't see how she could have made it past all the psychological testing and the background checks if she was going to turn around and commit sabotage two years later. And I think something would have come up on her cadet cruise if she was going to be a problem."

MacGregor nodded. "I've read her entire file. I didn't see aything that looked like she would go bad on us, either."

Edmundsson scoffed. "If she's our saboteur, I'll eat a dilithium crystal raw."

---

Olafsdotter and de Costa searched Llewellyn's cabin while they waited for her to return, which could be any minute. Olafsdotter threw paper to da Costa's scissors, so she wound up starting in the bathroom. It didn't surprise her to find nothing out of the ordinary. It did surprise her when she tried to take one of the books off the shelf, only to have it jerk out of her hand and land against some of the other books. She frowned as she slowly reached for the book again. She didn't feel anything strange when she grabbed the book. She slowly started to pull it out again, only to have it balked when she reached the front of the bookshelf. She jerked it toward her, but it refused to move any farther. It didn't sound like the book was hitting anything, but there was obviously a barrier of some kind that the book couldn't cross. A barrier that only went one way, which made no sense to her.