Текст книги "The Red King "

Автор книги: Michael Martin

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Chapter Seven

U.S.S. TITAN,STARDATE 57026.2

“You’re frowning at it again.”

Christine Vale shook herself out of her reverie, and turned to see Deanna Troi smiling at her.

Troi gestured at the blank space on the bulkhead next to Titan’s main bridge turbolift. “The missing dedication plaque. We’re going to have to settle on an epigram for it soon, or else I’m going to have to give you and Will a serious talking to.” She grinned mischievously.

Vale smiled back. “I’ve just never been on a ship since its initial launch before, so it’s weird for me. All the other ships I’ve served on—the Den-sxl,the O’Keefe,the Enterprise—had all been up and running for years by the time I came on board. Whenever I was on the bridge of any of them, I always looked to the plaque as a sort of touchstone.”

“I know what you mean,” Troi said. “When the saucer section of the Enterprise-D crashed on Veridian III, one of the first things I made sure we rescued from the wreckage was the plaque. Even though we could have made a new one—it’s not the physical plaque that’s so important, but the message it’s inscribed with—leaving it behind would have felt like abandoning a family member.”

Vale nodded, and turned to look back at the bridge. Riker was studying readings with Jaza Najem at the primary science station, and the other bridge personnel were busy at their various posts. She didn’t even remember how or why she had walked over to stare at the blank spot on the bulkhead; she’d simply done it.

“Will’s told me some of the mottoes you’ve been bandying back and forth,” Troi said. “He’s even half-seriously offered to put up a suggestion box on the bridge for crew input. It’s good that you’ve been tempering some of his wilder ideas.”

Vale snorted. “I’ve told him at least five times now that ‘It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing’is not an acceptable motto, but he keeps coming back to it.”

“You know,” Troi said, “almost all the options I’ve heard from both of you are very Earthcentric. Why aren’t you considering the words of some nonhuman philosophers?”

Vale was about to protest that they hadlooked at nonhuman aphorisms, until she realized that Deanna was mostly correct; the vast majority of their choices had been from ancient Earth writers, artists, and leaders.

“I’m a little embarrassed to admit that you’re right, Deanna,” Vale said, her voice low. “And with the crew on thisship, of all the ships in Starfleet, the motto should be from some non-Terran culture.”

Troi nodded. “If you’d like some suggestions, I’ve found some of Kahless’s proverbs quite eloquent, as well as a few of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, the Andorian speeches of Thalisar and the poetry of Shran, not to mention the philosophical writings of a few dozen Vulcans through the last two millennia. I even read a slim tome on Horta mysticism recently.”

Vale’s eyes widened with surprise. “Horta mysticism? What kind of read was that?”

Troi turned to walk away, offering her answer over her shoulder.

“A little rocky in places.”

Vale groaned and shook her head. She’d walked right into that one. Nevertheless, Troi had effectively lightened her mood, which, Vale knew, was precisely the counselor’s intent. This evening’s memorial service aside, the crew was already operating under extremely high stress levels. Repairs on the ship from the Romulan-Reman conflict were still ongoing, as were the attempts to recon-figure many of their systems to keep them operable in such close proximity to the thalaron-generated rift that had whisked Titanall the way to the Small Magellanic Cloud. Or Neyel space, as many members of the crew were calling it now.

She wondered how long it would be before they actually metone of the Neyel, and if the Neyel had continued to evolve past what old Starfleet records had shown them to be eighty years ago.

Riker tugged at his beard absentmindedly, studying the numbers and graphics that scrolled down both sides of the main viewscreen.

He didn’t like to give up, but they’d been scanning for other vessels for almost a day now, and they hadn’t found any yet. The interspatial anomaly was still interfering with the ship’s sensors, and they’d found no trace of the Valdoreor any of the rest of the missing Romulan fleet that Donatra had sought when she had requested Titan’s assistance near the phenomenon she called “the Great Bloom.”

“Ensign Lavena, let’s put another five hundred kilometers between us and the anomaly,” he said, “Mr. Dakal, continue scanning for other vessels. Maybe our sensors will be more effective once we’re out of range of the worst of its subspace interference.”

He turned to his right, where his executive officer sat. Vale looked up at him expectantly, lifting her gaze from the chair-mounted padd console on which she had been studying various readings.

“The bridge is yours, Commander,” Riker said. “I’ll be in my ready room. Call me when you have some good news.”

As he strode toward the doors of his sanctum, he hoped that his final phrase had sounded optimistic enough. Not “if” there’s good news. “When.”

He felt a familiar presence.

It was a warm red splashed across the dark canvas of his consciousness.

Other colors had been there before, but he subsumed them.

Turned them dark.

Pushed them away.

Solitude was comforting.

But the red splashed, again and again.

STARDATE 57026.4

Returning to the bridge after the recent accidental collision with the Reman ship had been a bit of an embarrassment to Aili Lavena. After all, the shielded face mask of her hydration suit had cracked when she’d been flung from her chair and onto the bridge deckplates. The resultant rupture hadn’t caused her any permanent harm, though the Selkie conn officer had been forced to spend almost her entire subsequent shift recuperating, first in sickbay, and later in her own water-filled quarters. Even now, the twin gill-crests that ran along her cranium ached slightly, though they steadily continued to heal.

The particular suit she wore now didn’t fit her quite as well as the damaged one had, and she found herself unconsciously fidgeting as she sat at her station. She hoped the others hadn’t noticed. Instinctively, she was aware that the loud sloshing sounds that her self-contained liquid environment made all around her as she moved were virtually inaudible even to those nearest to her. Still, the noises made her a bit uncomfortable and more than a little selfconscious at being the only water-breather living and working aboard Titan.

Quitgretzing, Aili,she thought, gently scolding herself. You wanted a bridge job, you got a bridge job. If you’re unhappy, go be asepkinalorian, like your fourteen siblings.She shuddered. That job was mind-numbing, and she suspected she’d rather be a meal for Dr. Ree than return to Pacifica and its expectations of mundanity.

Seated at her immediate right, Cadet Zurin Dakal scowled down at the screen of his ops control panel.

“What is it, Zurin?” Lavena asked.

“I’m getting some strange readings here. Reallystrange.”

Lavena tapped her own console, and the screen before her filled with a myriad of numbers and sine-rhythms. She studied them for a moment, then turned back toward the center of the bridge.

“Commander Vale, Commander Jaza, we’ve found something highly unusual.”

Vale cocked an eyebrow. “On screen.”

Two smaller images opened to the starboard side of the forward viewscreen. One was nearly black, the other was filled with the same scrolling coordinates and other information that both Lavena and Dakal had just seen.

“Analysis?” Vale asked, and Lavena saw both the haggard-looking Vulcan, Tuvok, and the Bajoran science officer, Jaza Najem, running diagnostics at nearby science stations.

Jaza didn’t look up as he spoke over his shoulder. “Commander, I’m finding widespread spatial instabilities throughout this region. Entire sectors of the Small Magellanic Cloud are being affected to varying degrees.”

“Affected in what way?” Vale asked.

“The black portion of the screen shows a segment of space that should have something there. But there’s nothing there. No stars, no planets, no gases, no debris, no energy fields, no readings whatsoever. It’s a complete void. I can’t even find any sign of virtual particles popping in and out of existence. That shouldn’t happen even in the emptiest parts of intergalactic space.”

“How can that be? If it’s a void, wouldn’t whatever surrounds it be rushing in to fill it?”

Jaza waggled his hand from side to side. “Yes and no. But nothing’s coming into or out of this void.”

Lavena half-expected Vale to tell her to chart a course closer to that sector of space; many starship captains would have done just that. She was relieved then, to hear the ship’s first officer instead tell her to pull back.

“One interspatial anomaly at a time for this crew,” Vale said, half under her breath. She tapped her combadge.

“Bridge to Captain Riker.”

The captain’s voice issued immediately from the tiny speaker. “Go ahead.”

“You’re needed on the bridge, sir.”

As the doors to the ready room slid open, Lavena turned back to the conn, studiously avoiding making eye contact with the captain. She hadn’t had much direct interaction with him since she had first come aboard weeks ago. Given their checkered—if brief—history together, it was probably better that way.

After Vale and Jaza had finished briefing the captain on what they had learned so far, Tuvok turned to address all the bridge officers at once. “This ‘void,’ for want of a better term, has been reordered on an elementary particle level. Put simply, nearly half a cubic parsec of space containing what washas been replaced—by utter nothingness.”

“Which is pretty much the definition of a ‘void,’ ” Dakal said quietly. Lavena supposed that she wasn’t the only one who heard him, however, since her aquatically adapted hearing wasn’t particularly acute in the bridge’s prevailing M-Class environment. She also wasn’t sure what had triggered the sarcastic timbre of Dakal’s voice. Did the cadet have some personal issue with the commander, or was he simply living up to his people’s reputation for arrogance? She decided she would have to let time determine the answer to that question.

“What do those readings there mean?” Riker asked, pointing to another window-inset image that had been opened on the forward viewscreen’s port side.

“That’s an analysis of several other points we’ve been scanning throughout this portion of the Small Magellanic Cloud,” Jaza said. “Some of them are showing unusual activity. Whether this is also being caused by whatever created the void is unclear.”

“So, essentially we have a huge volume of local space that has been erased from existence,” Riker said.

“Except for the empty space itself, yes, that’s correct, sir,” Jaza said.

Riker nodded. “And we also have widespread spatial instabilities that are threatening other local regions.”

“Apparently, sir,” Jaza said. “I can’t explain it just yet. Not without resorting to the metaphysical, that is.”

“This pocket of the universe doesn’t seem terribly friendly to starship crews or other living things,” Vale said wryly.

Though Lavena found Dakal a bit difficult to understand, she decided then that Vale and Jaza were anything but. Noting how close together the two of them were standing at the main science station, and how often that seemed to happen, she wondered how anyone else could have failed to notice it.

Lavena’s peripheral vision was drawn to a light on Dakal’s ops panel, which had just started blinking rapidly. Before either Dakal or Lavena could say anything, Tuvok spoke up again from tactical.

“Captain, we’re receiving a hail. It’s from the Valdore.”

Jaza turned in his chair, looking over his shoulder toward the bridge’s center, where the two most senior officers present were now seated.

“She’s exiting the rift’s main zone of subspace interference, Captain. And long-range scans show that she’s not alone,” he said, his dark eyes suddenly widening.

“There’s a Klingonvessel with her.”

Chapter Eight

“It’s good to see you again, Commander Donatra,” Riker said, meaning every word. After everything he’d witnessed since being catapulted into this region of space, he was keenly aware that both he and his Romulan counterpart were lucky to be alive.

Donatra stepped down from the stage in Titan’s transporter room one, while the three others who had materialized alongside her—two Klingons and a gray-skinned humanoid of a type Riker recognized immediately, but had never before encountered in the flesh—remained standing on the pads.

“Likewise, Captain,” Donatra said, a hint of a smile playing at her lips. She nodded curtly to him, a gesture of courtesy among Romulans, an acknowledgment between individuals of equal status, such as ship commanders. “We have a great deal to discuss.”

“Indeed we do, Commander,” said Deanna Troi, who was standing attentively at Riker’s side. “Welcome aboard.” Turning to face the trio that had yet to step down from the transporter stage, she added, “All of you.”

Riker recognized the two standoffish Klingons instantly. Shortly before fate had thrown them all into this remote region of space, he, Christine Vale, and Ranul Keru had shared a meal with both of them aboard General Khegh’s flagship, the I.K.S. Vaj.

“Captain Tchev. Lieutenant Dekri,” Riker said, taking a step toward the dais. “Welcome aboard Titan.It seems we’ll all be working together.”

The Klingons acknowledged his greeting with simultaneous salutes—right fists to left breasts—then stepped down onto the deck. “I look forward to it, Captain,” Tchev said, casting a momentary derisive glance in Donatra’s direction, as did Dekri.

The Romulan commander either failed to notice this or didn’t care.

Satisfied for now that Donatra and the Klingons were already well past the point where they might come to blows—and, even if they weren’t, the unobtrusive yet watchful presence of Commander Tuvok near the doorway would certainly act as a deterrant—Riker turned his attention toward the tall, robed, gray-skinned creature who had remained in place on the stage. The being’s scalp was nearly hairless, and looked as though it had been shaved in haste; it was beardless, adding to its overall impression of youth. But its flesh seemed somehow hardened, bringing to mind both leather and tree bark. Its dark, thick-lidded eyes were taking in the room attentively but apprehensively. The restless tail whipping back and forth behind it underscored the being’s obvious uncertainty.

Now thoroughly familiar with Excelsior’s eighty-year-old reports, Riker had immediately recognized this individual as a Neyel. A male, probably an adult, though definitely on the younger side. The same young Neyel who had numbered among the few survivors of an apparent attack by Donatra’s missing fleet, according to the Romulan commander’s earlier communication.

“Welcome aboard,” Riker said, extending his right hand toward the extremely alien-looking creature. He had to remind himself that this person—whose bare feet were essentially a second set of hands, and whose spade-tipped tail moved in a way that suggested it was capable of reaching and grabbing as either of Riker’s own arms—was more like himself than any of the more familiar aliens in the room.

The Neyel regarded him in silence for a seeming eternity, prompting Riker to wonder whether the Neyel-specific universal translator program that Jaza had adapted from Excelsior’s records had somehow failed to function. Except for the restless twitching of his tail, the creature remained stock-still.

“Be careful, Will. He’s terribly nervous,” Deanna said quietly, but quite unnecessarily; Riker recognized fear when he saw it.

Tchev chortled, then glowered at Donatra. “A consequence, no doubt, of Romulan hospitality.”

Riker noticed then that the Neyel was studiously avoiding looking in Donatra’s direction. He also saw something he hadn’t seen before: a pattern of subtle lines running along the creature’s shorn right temple, barely visible beneath the thin layer of black fuzz that covered his gray scalp.

Surgical incisions?Riker wondered.

His arm still outstretched toward the Neyel, Riker glanced toward the Romulan commander, who met his gaze momentarily before abruptly breaking eye contact.

Riker frowned. What had Donatra done to this being? Turning back toward the Neyel, he noticed that the creature’s hands were stuffed defensively into the front pockets of his robe. Tuvok was no doubt keeping a weather eye on him for any sign that he might be preparing to draw a weapon.

“Welcome aboard,” Riker repeated, moving slightly closer to the Neyel. “I am Captain William T. Riker of the Federation starship Titan.”He gestured in Deanna’s direction. “This is Deanna Troi, my diplomatic officer.”

“Federation,” the Neyel said. “You are from Aerth?”

Riker nodded, recognizing the name of his homeworld in spite of the odd pronunciation. And now he knew that the universal translator was indeed working properly. Trying a warm smile, he said, “Born and raised there, in a place called Valdez, Alaska.”

The Neyel seemed to roll the place name over in his mind several times before replying in a surprisingly pleasant, sonorous voice. “Alaska. The revered Burgess left behind stories about Alaska. Beautiful, but cold.”

Federation Ambassador Aidan Burgess,Riker thought. He smiled, wondering if the storied diplomat had ever actually visited the land that had once been called the last frontier. “It’s definitely both of those. And I hope to see it again someday.” He offered the Neyel his hand in the traditional human greeting.

“Frane. My name is Frane.” The Neyel withdrew a pair of gray hands from the pockets of his robe, and with one of them he clasped Riker’s proffered hand, enclosing it in a grip that was firm yet surprisingly gentle for someone who presented such a hard, almost armored exterior.

Riker looked with wonder into the creature’s dark, still-frightened, and unmistakably human eyes.

“Captain Riker,” Donatra said, interrupting the captain’s momentary reverie. “We have a great deal to discuss. I suggest we waste no time pooling our knowledge of this place, and of the circumstances behind our arrival.”

Disengaging from Frane, Riker turned to face Donatra. “I agree completely. Commander Troi has already prepared a room where we can do just that.”

Smiling, Deanna made a follow-megesture as she moved toward the doorway, where Tuvok was standing vigil. “Our science team should already be waiting for us.”

Deck one’s forward observation lounge presented a spectacular view of the spatial rift’s slowly drifting, multicolored energy tendrils. Troi had asked Will to have the lounge area cleared of all unnecessary personnel specifically for this joint briefing, and he had immediately understood the need to do exactly that. It wouldn’t do, after all, to allow anything unexpected to damage the fragile bond of trust they were trying to build to the still-apprehensive Frane.

Or to slow down the increasingly urgent scientific agenda of Science Officer Jaza, who stood anxiously at the head of the long conference table.

Two other key members of Titan’s science staff were already present and seated—or otherwise positioned—at the table near Jaza: Melora Pazlar, the head of stellar cartography, and Dr. Se’al Cethente Qas, Titan’s senior astrophysicist. Clad in her gravity-canceling exoframe, Pazlar nestled comfortably into a chair, her garlanic wood walking stick leaned up against the table. Dr. Cethente, whose Syrath physiognomy precluded “sitting” in the conventional sense, was poised opposite from her near the head of the table; chairless, Cethente stood on his four intricately articulated legs.

Taking a seat beside Cethente, Troi watched as Will and Christine Vale took seats across from one another. Tuvok and Akaar did likewise, all the while seeming to go to great lengths to avoid looking directly at one another; the pair of Klingons and Donatra staked out positions at opposite ends of this same side of the table. Only two chairs, both located on Will’s side of the table, remained empty.

Still standing, Troi turned back toward the doorway, where Frane stood quietly, under the watchful eyes of Lieutenants Hutchinson and Sortollo. The two security officers, assigned by Tuvok to chaperone Frane, were discreetly hanging back from their charge, though they were clearly on the alert for any sudden moves on the Neyel’s part. But Troi sensed no aggression whatsoever coming from Frane; the Neyel merely seemed to be experiencing apprehension, though not nearly as intensely as he had a few minutes earlier in the transporter room.

The low conversational buzz in the room began to subside after Will rose from his chair, signaling that the ad hoc briefing should now come to order. Troi quickly crossed to Frane and favored him with her most disarming smile. He didn’t resist as she took one of his arms and gently led him toward the two unoccupied seats located near Will. Frane quietly took the chair nearest the bulkhead, where he paused to look at a pair of chess sets—one three-dimensional, the other set up in the far more ancient, traditional flat arrangement—that adorned a corner recreation table. Sensing the Neyel’s clear recognition of the flat board and its array of ornate game pieces, Troi wondered what other commonalities Frane’s people shared with his human cousins.

Such as myself,she thought, pondering how closely related the Neyel’s forebears might be to the ancestors of her own human father.

“We’ve already learned a lot about the phenomenon that brought all of our ships here,” Will said, quickly gaining the undivided attention of everyone in the room. “Just as I’m sure you have, Commander Donatra. Captain Tchev. And if we’re to stand any chance of getting home, we’re all going to have to share everything we know.”

“Agreed,” Donatra said. “Now that the Valdore’s comm system is up and running again—and with both our vessels out of the worst of the subspace interference zone surrounding the Bloom—my crew has begun transmitting its data to Titan.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Will said, nodding. Gesturing toward the science specialists, Will made quick introductions, then turned the floor over to Jaza.

Troi noted a certain tension in the room, as curiosity about the happenstance that had brought everyone to this distant place was neatly balanced by anxiety over whether those very circumstances might successfully be run in reverse. She sensed that everyone who had come through the rift was worried, at least to some extent, that returning home might not be an option.

“First of all,” Jaza said, still standing at the head of the table, “we’ve discovered that there’s a lot more at stake here than just getting home.”

“For you, perhaps,” Tchev said. “We have no interest in this region of space, other than expediting our departure from it.”

“I agree,” Donatra said. Troi sensed her surprise at hearing herself utter this phrase in the context of an accidental collaboration with Klingons. “My first concern is locating my…misplaced ships, and returning them and their crews safely to Romulan space.”

Troi felt Donatra’s anguished sense of loss, and saw her hard gaze settle briefly on the two Klingons who had accompanied her here. Off of the veiled-yet-surprised reactions of Tchev and Dekri, Troi gathered that this was the first time Donatra had admitted to having lost her fleet in the Klingons’ presence. But Frane reacted with only a small degree of startlement, as though Donatra had merely confirmed his own strong suspicion.

Of course, Donatra must have realized that she wouldn’t be able to conceal this doubtless embarrassing fact from any of them for very much longer.

“Of course, Commander,” Will said to Donatra in soothing tones. “Titan’s sensor are fully engaged in the search, now that we’ve cleared most of the disturbances coming from the rift.”

Donatra inclined her head forward toward him, her dark eyes momentarily refulgent with gratitude. “Thank you, Captain.”

Jaza’s emotional state, in stark contrast to Donatra’s, seemed nearly as serene as ever, though it covered an undercurrent of great urgency. “I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the importance of this place,” the Bajoran science officer said, obviously speaking primarily to both Donatra and the Klingons. “The spatial rift out there seems to be having some extremely strange effects on local space.”

“What sort of ‘strange effects’?” Dekri asked in surly fashion.

While Jaza seemed to be gathering his thoughts, Norellis stepped into the conversational breach. “Simply put, space itself here has begun coming apart.”

Donatra’s eyebrows rose, and she radiated equal parts incredulity and incomprehension. “ ‘Coming apart’?”

“More precisely, large volumes of space are in danger of being…permanently displaced,” Jaza said.

Tchev bared his snaggly teeth. “Displaced by what?”

Jaza leaned forward and touched a control on a keypad that was built flush into the tabletop. A meter-wide model of the spatial anomaly obligingly appeared nearly a meter above the conference table, the image overlaid by a latticework of fine, distorted grid lines that reminded Troi of twisted nets woven by ancient Betazoid oskoid fisherfolk.

“By what appears to be another universe,” Jaza said. “An emergent universe, which is even now in the process of forming. A protouniverse, if you prefer. The process could complete itself in a matter of weeks, or perhaps even days. And if this happens while we’re still anywhere near the rift…” He trailed off, obviously aware that finishing that particular sentence was unnecessary.

Dekri looked askance at the spatial rift’s holographic image, then fixed a skeptical eye on Jaza. “You have evidence of this?”

Only now did Troi sense a disturbance in the tranquillity of Jaza’s emotional surface. The senior science officer nodded, a look of sorrow darkening his features. “Definitive evidence. Unfortunately.”

In response to Jaza’s next quick manual command, the image of the spatial rift vanished, to be replaced by a computer-rendered schematic of a blue, Earthlike world.

“This is the sort of evidence I hope never to encounter again,” Jaza continued. “The world you see before you has endured for perhaps five billion years since its formation by the ordinary processes of stellar and planetary evolution. Until recently.”

“What are you saying?” Donatra asked.

Jaza looked haunted. “Simply that this world, its primary star, and every other object in its system from the size of a planet all the way down to dust grains has… disappeared.We believe the protouniverse that’s now emerging from the spatial rift has something to do with the phenomenon.”

Although Troi already knew this much, like all the Titanpersonnel present, a hush again descended on the room as Donatra and the Klingons processed Jaza’s revelation.

“Newaerth,” Frane said. Troi realized then that he was familiar with the arrangement of oceans and coastlines of this world.

“Our guest,” Donatra said, nodding toward Frane by way of explanation, “would also have us believe that the Great Bloom—the spatial rift—caused a world and its entire system to vanish mere weeks ago. We have trained the Valdore’s long-range sensors on the coordinates Frane provided for this system. Other than a few stray subatomic particles, there’s no evidence that anything at all ever existed there.”

“So where did this image come from?” Tchev asked, gesturing at the blue holographic planet.

His huge hands folded primly on the table before him, Akaar chose that moment to speak. “Mr. Jaza and Lieutenant Pazlar have accessed the long-range mapping data gathered eighty years ago by Excelsior.”He pointed toward the slowly turning blue sphere that hovered over the table. “This image was obtained then. Since that time, this world and its system have indeed disappeared. You may review Excelsior’s detailed survey logs at your leisure.” Seated beside him, Akaar’s former Excelsiorshipmate Tuvok nodded quietly, though his coal-dark eyes remained focused straight ahead.

Donatra shrugged. “Even if we were to accept this incredible story at face value, it would provide us with only one thing: yet another good reason to hasten our departure for Romulan space.”

Troi had to admit that the Romulan commander had just made an excellent point.

“If we understood the mechanics of emerging protouniverses better, I’d say you were right,”Dr. Cethente said, his synthetic, wind-chime-like voice slightly startling Titan’s guests, but only for a moment. “But we don’t currently understand this process very well at all. The damage this protouniverse will cause as it fully forms will no doubt be widespread.”

“Again, a damned good reason to get out of here,” Dekri said. “Now.”

Cethente chuckled, a sound like winter icicles falling from the poinciana trees at Lake Cataria. “And that might also be a fine way to spread that damage back to Romulan space.”

“And perhaps far beyond,” Jaza said.

“How can you possibly know that?” Tchev said, jabbing a thick finger toward the Bajoran. “You don’t witness the births of these so-called ‘protouniverses’ every day.”

“No,” Jaza said, his patient, level tone calming everyone somewhat. “But Starfleet personnel accidentally brought a very similar phenomenon into the Bajor sector from the Gamma Quadrant about ten years ago. That protouniverse threatened to destroy both Deep Space 9 and the Celestial Temp—” He caught himself, and paused for a moment before continuing. “—the Bajoran wormhole, until DS9’s crew safely relocated the phenomenon.”

Dekri threw her hands in the air. “Why don’t we simply do something like that? Transplant this thing. Hook on a couple of tractor beams and drag it back to wherever it came from in the first place.”

“I’m afraid this particular protouniverse is already at far too advanced a stage of development for that approach to work,” Jaza said, shaking his head sadly. “If we were to attempt to move it with a tractor beam, we might well accelerate its spread. Or create another chaotic energy interaction just like the one that brought us all here in the first place.”