then she realized she couldn't move her body at all. She couldn't even twitch her fingers or wiggle her toes.

She thought perhaps she had received an injury after all, but then she recognized the feeling. She had experienced it during her earlier encounters with the Other-worlders, the characters from imagination. The transformation they had tried to put her through twice before was now completed. It was as though her body had changed into a differnt substance. The feeling of immobility was terrifying.

She struggled and strained to move her eyes, but found the locked in their sockets.

She calmed herself as best she could. At least she wasn't blind. She started examining the scene presented to her. She couldn't see her body under all the debris covering it, except for part of her hand, which was extended in a reaching gesture.

It was covered with dust except for the upper edge of her index finger. The finger was dark and smooth, with flecks of sparkling material embedded in it. The finger looked like polished stone.

At that moment Troi realized that she had become a statue.

She panicked silently, cried out mentally. But no one came near her or even seemed to notice her. Wth her gaze now locked irrevocably straight ahead she couldn't search for Picard, Riker and Data.

She realized that she would never be found. A statue doesn't emit life signs. The Enterprise's sensors would never be able to locate her.

The sadness of the situation overwhelmed her, and she tried to weep, but couldn't. The sadness itself began to dry up. Her emotions were petrifying.

In another moment all emotions were gone. Nothing and nobody mattered to her. All that was left was a hard, dry rock of continuing awareness.

...

[Odysseus] noticed her anyway. He walked toward her, weaving his way around the piles of wreckage.

When he reached her he stood looking at her face for a long time.

...

"I know you, do I not?" he said. "Frome some other place or time?"

He stared uncertainly at her.

"And wasn't I prophesied to meet you again?... Well... I can see you can't answer me."

He began to pull the chunks of earth and wood off her.

"If it's so, I know how to free you. I know how to reawaken the women-trapped-as-a-statue. Pygmalion the sculptor did it once. With his touch he warmed the stone, and the stone softened into flesh."

He picked up a flat piece of wood and used it to fan the dust off her. When she was clean, a perfect, polished, poised stone image that looked as though it should have stood in a museum, he put down the plank and knelt next to her.

He touched her wrist, and squeezed it gently.

Slowly, her skin began to tingle where he touched it. It felt as a limb feels when it has slept and then been awakened by the tide of circulation.

All the cells in her hand seemed to come alive. She could feel blood moving through the veins.

His hand moved up to her shoulder and squeezed it. The shoulder became soft under his touch. The warmth spread. She could move the arm. The sensation was so divine she wanted to utter some word or sound, but still she had no voice.

He moved his hands to her face, stroked her cheek and her hair.

Now she felt her entire body re-awakening. The sensation was so intense, so electric, that she had to shut her eyes tight and couldn't breathe for a moment.

Then the transformation completed itself and she breathed and moved her limbs.

Emotions came back in a rush. She was supremely, inanely happy and sad at the same time. She let it flow.

Copyright 1990 by Paramount Pictures.