"A Matter of Record"

[Mr. Atoz]

A MATTER OF RECORD

Captain's log, Stardate 52467.8: The Odysseus is on approach to the quantum singularity designated Columba X3834, there to deploy an experiment sponsored by the Terran Academy of Science. As a matter of historical interest, I am told that this was the first and still the largest rotating black hole ever discovered by Earth.

"Let me see if I have this straight, professor," said Captain Atoz. "You expect us to position your instrument package near the event horizon of the singularity?"

"Precisely, Captain. Just inside the Radetsky Limit."

Atoz looked at the older man in the desk viewscreen, wondering what he was feeling. Professor Hiram Axelrod was 79 years old, and his hair was flaxen, his skin bland and as smooth as wax from anti-agapic treatments. It was difficult to read anything at all in his face. And yet to Atoz, he seemed almost too calm for a man about to see the results of a project he had been working on for twenty years. If anything, he appeared preoccupied. "Forgive me for asking, professor," said Atoz, "but I'm not that well-versed in astrophysics. When I have a question, I go to my Science Officer..."

"Very wise of you, Captain," said Axelrod, with a delicate smile. "I don't remember when I had a better student than Diane Weir."

Lieutenant Commander Weir herself, sitting across the desk, lowered her eyes, almost flushing with pleasure at the compliment – something which was strange to see from an officer who normally kept her emotions under tight control.

"As I understand it, your projectors will fire a beam of reverse-phased deuterium ions alongside the event horizon, to test for something called the Radetsky effect."

"Yes, Captain. You see, according to Einsteinian physics, the beams would merely follow the space-time curve as any other particle with positive mass. But according to Radetsky, in the vicinity of a rotating singularity, the inversed atoms should move in a closed time-like spiral. With the modifications I have recommended to your ship's sensors, you should easily perceive the difference."


Before Atoz could reply, the bosun's whistle of the ship's comm system sounded. "Captain, we are approaching the black hole," said the First Officer, and it didn't require much imagination to notice the slight nervousness in his voice.

Through the porthole of his ready room, Atoz saw the stars change from passing streaks of light to brilliant, stationary pinpoints, and he knew that the starship Odysseus had dropped out of warp, in accordance with his previous orders. "Very good, Mr. Fawkes," he replied, making an effort to keep his own voice steady. "Proceed at one quarter impulse. I'll be right there."

"Aye-aye, sir. Ahead one quarter."

On the viewscreen, Axelrod's eyes twinkled as he glanced away at an off-camera indicator. "Yes, Captain, our communications link is becoming unstable due to the subspace interference. I won't hold you up any longer. I'm sure that commander Weir can answer any further questions you may have. I wish you my best."

"Thank you, professor. Odysseus out." Atoz touched a button on the desk, and the screen went dark. Only then did it strike him that Axelrod's farewell had been an odd thing to say. "Diane, I'm curious. Is there any reason you know of that the professor remained behind at Starbase 63?"

The Science Officer had already jumped to her feet with impatience. "He is nearly eighty years old, sir. The equipment isn't so complex that he absolutely has to be here. I think I can handle any problems that arise."

"I didn't mean to suggest otherwise, commander," said Atoz, nodding reassuringly as he came around his desk. "I suppose we should be grateful that he specifically asked for the Odysseus, when any science vessel in or out of the fleet would have jumped at the chance." And any science officer would love to have this on her record, he realized, but didn't say out loud.

***

The bridge was hushed with anticipation. Fawkes was standing beside the command chair with his arms crossed, frowning as he kept one eye on the Ops position just in front of him, and the other eye on the main viewscreen. The ship was on yellow alert, the telltale indicators winking silently. "Steady on course, Captain," he reported. "Stabilizers at seventy percent, shields at fifty percent. Sickbay reports no radiation leakage."

"Thank you," said Atoz, as behind him Weir hurried to take her position at the Sciences station. He barely noticed because his whole attention was on the horrifying but beautiful sight on the main viewscreen. Dead ahead of them, and rapidly approaching, was the singularity -- a small spot of collapsed matter so terrifyingly dense that it swallowed up literally everything that came within range of its gravitational field, even light. The only visible sign of its presence was a shallow truncated cone several hundred kilometers in diameter. This was the accretion disk, an enormous, spinning whirlpool of particles, atoms and other matter, spiraling into the singularity where they were devoured. Even this would not normally have been visible but for the false color image on the ship's viewscreen, which registered the x-rays given off by the disintegration of these particles in shades of amber.

Atoz realized that he was holding his breath. "Operational status?" he asked, mainly to test that his own voice was still working.

"Engine efficiency is ninety-eight percent, Captain," replied newly promoted Lieutenant (j.g.) T'Pana at the Ops position. If the Vulcan was awed at the prospect of sailing this close to a black hole, she didn't show it. "Astronautical systems stable within normal operational parameters."

Atoz relaxed a little bit as he sat down. The calm in her voice would hopefully be contagious. "Turbulence, Captain," reported Lt. Caeli at the helm, as the deck began to vibrate very slightly.

"Reduce speed to point two," said Atoz. "Reserve power on standby. Emergency protocol 1 in effect"

"Contact with Starfleet has been lost, Captain," said Ensign Penner at the Comm station. "Subspace interference."

From where he was sitting, Atoz could see the helm navigational monitor well enough to know that the ship was on course for the coordinates which Professor Axelrod had specified. "Are we close enough yet, Sciences?"

Weir shook her head, peering into the sensor station. "I'd prefer to get closer, sir. If we launch too soon, the tidal forces will overwhelm the probe's thrusters and pull it off course."

The starship plunged on towards the accretion disk, Atoz comforting himself with the knowledge that there still plenty of reserve power to pull the ship out of the gravity well if the need arose. A warning light began to blink on the armrest of his chair – external radiation was rising, although the shields were compensating for the increase. "Diane?"

"Launching now, sir. In five... four... three... two... one. Probe away."

In the viewscreen, the bright red flash of the probe's thrusters fired as the instrument package streaked off. Initially it was on a perfectly straight line, then began to veer off sharply towards the singularity, as Weir hurriedly made adjustments, inserting the probe into a circular orbit. The deck beneath them gave a sudden lurch, powerful enough to rock Atoz in his chair. "Gravity wave, Captain," said Caeli at the helm.

Atoz looked up at the main screen. Some kind of disturbance was forming in the accretion disk just above the singularity's axis of rotation, like an eddy thrown off from a hurricane. "Diane, what is that?"

"Unknown, sir," the Science Officer replied, frowning at her sensor display. "It looks like some kind of gravimetric vortex, but it's too close to the event horizon for an accurate reading."

"Let's get some distance between us." Whatever the thing was, it was sending out waves of instability which buffeted the Odysseus even at this distance. Caeli struggled to back the ship away, while turning its prow towards the disturbance to maximize the effectiveness of the stabilizers.

"Captain," said Lt. Rosh at the Tactical station, "sensors are now reading a space vessel just outside the anomaly."

"What kind?"

The security officer shook his head. "Unable to make a determination, sir. However, it appears to be in distress. If it has engines, they are inactive."

Atoz thought quickly. "Mister Caeli, try to get us within tractor beam range."

"I'll try, sir."

A howl of protest came from the Odysseus' engines as the starship changed course again, moving even closer to the vortex. "Gravitational sheer is mark two eight," the helmsman reported, punching buttons to compensate. "Reserve power is 70%." Atoz had to clutch the armrests of his chair as the deck slammed abruptly over at a sharp angle. The very bulkheads seemed to be trembling from the strain. The other ship was just visible on the screen now as a long, slender craft. Atoz couldn't make out much detail at this distance and frankly didn't expect to. He already knew that no other Federation ship was authorized to be in this area. He glanced over to the Sciences station to see if Weir had anything further to report, but the Science Officer caught his eye and gave a terse shake of her head.

"Emergency warp power, Mr. Caeli," he said. Turning towards T'Pana, he added, "Gravitation on automatic. Emergency protocols 4 and 5."

And just then the entire ship seemed to roll over, as if a solid wall had come from out of nowhere and abruptly slammed into it. As the bridge lights went out, Atoz felt himself picked up and hurled out of his chair. He struck the side of a console hard and grabbed hold of whatever it was to prevent being tossed around. For a whole minute, it seemed, the Odysseus vibrated like a leaf in a gale wind, and then once more silence descended.

[Mr. Atoz]

The bridge was dark. Even the main viewscreen was off. By the dim glow of the emergency lights, Atoz discovered that he was holding on to the Sciences station, a good four meters and on the other side of a partition rail from his command chair. His upper right arm was badly wrenched, and he had also picked up at least two painful bruises lower down on his anatomy. At least the artificial gravity generators in the deck plates appeared to be functioning.

He felt his way around, bumped into Weir already struggling to stand, a trickle of blood on her forehead. "Diane? Are you hurt?"

She looked at him a little bit dazedly. However, she assessed the situation quickly and nodded. "I'm all right, sir."

"That could be a concussion," he replied, reaching gingerly for her injury. She tried to pull away and almost fell again, but Atoz was there to catch her and hold her steady. She closed her eyes for a moment.

"Really, I'm fine, sir," she said, once the floor stopped spinning.

"Damage reports coming in, Captain," said Fawkes grimly, as the main lights came back on distinctly less brightly than normal. "Main power is down. Auxiliary power is at less than forty percent. Haven't heard from Sickbay yet."

"Shields are down to 39%, Captain," said Rosh, punching buttons at the tactical station. "The main sensor array seems to be inoperative, but I am working on it."

"Impulse indicators show active," said Caeli, "but the helm doesn't respond. We're drifting."

Atoz pressed his comm badge. "Bridge to Engineering. How bad is the damage?" There was no reply.

"Apparently the comm system is out, too," said Fawkes.

Atoz sighed. "Charles, get down there and see what Vespis has to say. I want a meeting in the conference room in ten minutes." As the First Officer nodded and hurried for the turbolift, he turned back to the Sciences station. "Diane? Do you have any idea what just happened?"

Weir had been standing over her instrument panel, analyzing readings from the short-range secondary scanners. She turned around and eased herself into her chair. "From what I've been able to determine, the ship must have run into a pocket of null space. It's a subspace distortion formed by the extreme conditions around a rapidly rotating a singularity, usually transient in nature. We appear to be trapped inside one such pocket."

"How do we get out of it?"

Weir shook her head gently. "The null space domain acts like a transduction conduit to absorb any form of electromagnetic energy and channel it into subspace. That would explain Mr. Caeli's problem with the impulse engines. I don't know that it's even possible..."

"Captain, partial sensors restored," said Rosh. He took one look at his console and started in surprise. "The other vessel is drifting nearby."

"Can you put in on screen?"

The security officer tapped commands into his station, and after a painful pause, the main viewscreen activated. The scene outside the ship was like being inside a strange, glowing cloud, completely unlike the blackness of ordinary space. The alien ship, however, was beautiful. It was sleek and graceful like a dagger, from the bulbous dome in the prow to the twin slender engine nacelles jutting out at rakish angles from the stern. It was also oddly familiar to Atoz.

"Its engine pattern appears to be Terran," said Rosh, "although I am still unable to make a precise identification."

"I can identify it, Mr. Rosh," said Atoz, crossing his arms. "It's the Astrolabe. I built a model of it when I was a boy." When you grow up wanting to be a science officer, you build models of famous science vessels.

"That's not possible," said Weir, staring at the screen. "The Astrolabe is in a museum on Alpha Centauri. Maybe it's some kind of sensor echo."

Ensign Penner had been working diligently to get the comm system restored. Now she suddenly looked up, touching one hand to her ear pod. "Captain," she said in astonishment, "the other ship is hailing us."

"On screen, ensign."

The view changed once more to that of a neat, compact ship's bridge. The man sitting in the command chair was not a Starfleet officer, but the insignia on his collar identified him as a ship's captain. "This is the Earth ship Astrolabe," he said. "Ed Fitzgerald commanding. Can we be of assistance?"

"We were just thinking the same thing, captain," said Atoz. "I'm Seven Atoz, captain of the Odysseus."

The other man frowned. "I don't recognize the design of your ship, Captain Atoz. But any help would be welcome. We're having trouble with our power systems, and frankly even the eggheads are flummoxed."

Atoz couldn't resist a quick grin at the way Fitzgerald described some of the most famous scientists of his generation. "I need to speak to my own Science Officer and get back to you. But first, could you tell me what year it is? Please humor me, captain. I promise you I have a good reason for asking."

Fitzgerald was evidently a man who didn't surprise easily. He shrugged. "It's 2314. Does that help you?"

"Yes, it does, Captain Fitzgerald. I'll get back to you soon. Please keep this channel open." As the screen went blank, Atoz sighed. "Sixty-one years ago," he said under his breath. "Welcome to the future."

***

In the conference room, the first order of business was a report from Ben Pierce, the Chief Medical Officer. "Twenty-one casualties, three of them critical. Ensign Jiang was standing too close to an exploding EPS conduit. She has first degree burns. I need a sterilite force field if I'm going to keep her alive, but power in Sickbay keeps fluctuating."

"Hey, I can't help it, doctor," said Chief Engineer Vespis, her antennae fluttering with annoyance. "It's this null space. Auxiliary power keeps dropping, and I don't know how long it's going to last. My guess is less than an hour."

"Why aren't the main antimatter engines functioning?" Atoz asked.

Vespis shrugged. "I can't pin it down. Every time we try to power them up, they start to go into antimatter imbalance. Probably another side effect of this null space domain."

"And what about this other ship?" asked Fawkes, grimly gesturing towards the vessel, visible through the big, glass-steel portholes. "Can it really be the Astrolabe?"

Atoz swung his chair in that direction. "Is there any chance that it's some kind of temporal reflection or duplication?"

"The resonance signature is correct, sir," said Rosh. "It is the Astrolabe."

Weir had been sitting quietly, abstractedly rubbing the bandage on her forehead. "I reran the sensor logs of the vortex we encountered. At the time our probe went into orbit, there was an oscillation within the surrounding dekyon field."

"A rift in time?" asked Atoz.

"More like a closed time-like spiral, sir," she corrected. "But of approximately the correct order of magnitude."

"Hold up a minute," said Pierce. "Are you saying we could have caused the rift that brought the ship here?"

"Not at all, doctor," said Weir. "The cause was a zero point surge in the dekyon field, which just happened to coincide with our arrival."

"If this is the same Astrolabe," said Fawkes, "surely this happened to it sixty-one years ago from our point of view. If they escaped, to us it's history. All we need to know is how they managed it."

Weir gently rubbed her temples. "I read the mission logs of the Astrolabe when I was in graduate school, Commander. I don't remember any mention of them being drawn into a time spiral or trapped in null space."

"So maybe we did do something to change history," said Pierce.

"That wouldn't make any difference," Weir insisted, "because whatever happened to the Astrolabe would still be in our past. All our records and our memories would also reflect the change. If the Astrolabe hadn't returned from its five-year mission, it wouldn't be famous. It wouldn't be in the museum at Alpha Centauri, where I clearly remember seeing it. The Captain would never have built models of it."

"Time travel paradoxes!" said Vespis, as her antennae quivered with disgust. "I feel a headache coming on."

"Time is certainly running out for us," said Atoz, "unless we escape this null space. And at the same time, we have to do our best to return the Astrolabe to its original time period. Does anyone have any ideas?"

Silence fell around the conference table. Finally Weir spoke. "It's a matter of record, Captain. The Astrolabe returned from this mission, therefore there must be a way." She looked down at the conference table. "Even if we can't think of one."

***

The only concrete recommendation to come from the conference was Vespis' suggestion to establish a transfer link between the engines of both ships so that they could stabilize one another's power plants and stop the power drain. Atoz made that proposal to Captain Fitzgerald, only to find that the scientists on the other vessel had come up with the same idea. Five minutes later, Atoz and Weir were in the transporter room as two people beamed over from the Astrolabe to determine if the two vessels' systems were compatible.

"Oh my stars and garters," said a thickset man of about forty as he looked around the room in amazement, "as my grandmother used to say! This is quite a ship! Miranda class, isn't it? My name is David Horkheimer, chief astrophysicist." He climbed down from the transport pad and enthusiastically shook hands as Atoz introduced himself and the Science Officer.

The other crewman appeared to be a gangling kid of no more than twenty, but wearing an engineer's working jumpsuit. He peered at the equipment with silent interest until Horkheimer seemed to remember him. "And this is my opposite number. Don't let his age fool you. If you want to know how our engines work, this is the man to see. This is--"

"Flash," the boy interrupted, snapping to life as he gently shook Weir's hand. "Everybody calls me Flash."

"Pleased to meet you, Flash," said Weir with a warm smile.

"I have duties to attend to," Atoz said to them, "so commander Weir will show you to Engineering." Privately, when only she could hear, he added, "We know that Earth didn't have as much contact with Andorians sixty years ago. So try and prepare them for Vespis."

"If anyone can be prepared for Vespis," she murmured in reply.

"And try not to tell them any more about their situation than you need to."

"Understood, sir." They had already spoken about the very real possibility of violating the Prime Directive by telling them too much. Weir had explained the situation to Arachne and asked her to keep a low profile while the guests were on board. An artificial intelligence ship's computer would be simply too much to explain.

"Forgive us if we stare, commander," gushed Horkheimer as she caught up with the two visitors by the turbolift. "There's so much to see."

"Yeah, I'll say," said Flash, but he was looking at Weir as he said it.

[Mr. Atoz]

It turned out that Horkheimer had once collaborated on a paper with an Andorian colleague named Selova, so he got along famously with Vespis. "He was a guest lecturer from Yedla University of Andor. Ever heard of him?"

"Uh... no," said Vespis. "Strange as it may seem, I don't personally know every Andorian."

"Too bad; he's a great guy. We did a paper on super-massive stars in the Doradus region of the Large Magellanic Cloud. We were up for a Zee Magne prize, but it ultimately went to a couple of Vulcans who had done study of quantum filament proton decay. Weird, isn't it? Wouldn't you think our paper was more important than yet another speculation on time travel, especially since time travel is impossible?"

"It is?"

"Of course it is. Everybody knows that."While the two of them immediately put their heads together on figuring out how to overcome the inertial field of the null space pocket, Flash worked with Lieutenant Buckman to set up the transfer link. Within a few minutes, the power systems of both ships had been stabilized and were beginning to slowly regenerate.

With his part of the operation over, the boy looked around at the busy activity of the engineering room. Weir, programming a simulation of the null space domain in one of the auxiliary computer stations, thought that he looked bewildered and nervous and out of place. "You're very good, for someone your age," she said, trying to put him at ease.

"Twenty," he blurted. "I'm twenty." After a moment, he lowered his voice sheepishly and leaned closer to her. "Don't tell anyone, but I'm really only eighteen."

She raised one eyebrow to show how impressed she was. "You should still be in school, then."

He shrugged. "I tried the university, but I didn't have the patience. I had this great idea for generating musical harmonics mathematically. I was going to be a rock star."

"What happened? Didn't people like your music?"

"I don't know. I forgot that I couldn't play an instrument to save my life." She smiled, which encouraged him to keep talking. "Then I wanted to see what space was like. Not riding the space liners from planet to planet, but out here actually exploring."

"I know how you feel," said Weir sympathetically. "I went through the same thing when I was in school."

"Really?"

"Really. But one of my instructors talked to me. He said that space has been there for fourteen billion years, and it will still be there tomorrow. Who cares if you're the first one to see some tiny speck of it? But discovering a new idea that nobody else has ever thought of... working out some puzzle that nobody else has ever been able to grasp. . understanding... that's something that endures." She paused with a slightly faraway look in her eyes, then went on matter-of-factly. "If it hadn't been for him, I might not be a science officer today."

Flash nodded thoughtfully. "You're easy to talk to, commander. Most of the girls... I mean the women I know aren't like you."

"I'm nothing special," she said dismissively.

There was an awkward pause. "May I ask you something, commander? Something personal?"

She indicated her willingness, but whatever question he intended to ask went unknown. Vespis and Horkheimer came hurrying in from the main engineering computer annex. "Where's your captain?" said Horkheimer urgently. "We've got problems!"

***

Horkheimer stood next to the conference room screen, which displayed a graphic representation of the null space domain they were trapped in. To Atoz, it looked like a three-cornered pillow, with rounded edges and shallow curves. Various coordinates were marked, but he could make very little of it.

"As you can see," Horkheimer lectured, "the transductal node is exhibiting a seven percent triaxial string-vibration shift along dimensions ten through fourteen. We have a frighteningly small window of opportunity."

Captain Fitzgerald turned to Atoz. "Did you understand any of that?"

"Not a word. Diane?"

"The null space domain," Weir explained, "is beginning to collapse, sir. Remember I told you that these things were transient." On her other side, Flash sat quietly absorbing every word.

"That's good, isn't it?" said Atoz.

"No, sir. When the domain collapses, it will be pulled into the singularity. We go with it."

"That's bad," said Fitzgerald.

"What can we do about it?" Atoz asked.

"Vespis and myself," Horkheimer continued, pushing a button on the wall panel and bringing up another graphic which was about as comprehensible as the first, "have come up with what we think is the only viable plan. If one of the ships creates an expanding warp shell of approximately point nine two diameters, it could theoretically slingshot the other ship free of the domain. We had hoped to do some more number crunching, but we are rapidly running out of time."

"Vespis," said Atoz, "how did you get the warp engines back on line? I remember you telling me they went into antimatter imbalance every time you tried."

The Andorian leaned forward across the table, her antennae fluttering in distress. "That's the thing, Captain. We're going to have to... um, bypass the safety systems, and launch the warp shell in the few seconds before the reactor core collapses and the engines go boom."

Fitzgerald looked from Vespis to Horkheimer. "So the ship that stays behind gets sacrificed. You're certain this is the only option?"

"I'm afraid so," said Horkheimer. "We've been over it and over it."

"And the Astrolabe?" said Atoz, turning to Weir.

"If the ship was following a closed time-like curve," the Science Officer said carefully, "then once free of null space, it should continue back to its point of origin."

Atoz took a deep breath, ignoring the confused look on Horkheimer's face. Then, making eye contact which included both Vespis and Weir, he said, "Start making your preparations. I'll be on the bridge in a moment."

Vespis and Weir stood up to leave, Flash quickly shot to his feet to follow, but Horkheimer protested. "Wait just a minute," he said heatedly. "Captain, I realize you're used to having things your way, but this is an entirely different sort of situation! This is a decision that calls for rational, scientific insight, not military regulations!"

"Mister Horkheimer..." Atoz began calmly, but the other man kept talking, ignoring him.

"It should be made democratically, and not at the whim of some dictator who happens to be wearing a uniform! The eighty-seven people on our ship have just as much right to live as the three hundred on your ship! It should be--"

"David, shut up," said Fitzgerald. The astrophysicist shut up. Turning to Atoz again, Fitzgerald said, "We could draw straws if you like."

Atoz smiled. "That won't be necessary."

"Does it have anything to do," said the other captain, "with what year it is?"

Atoz paused, then decided he might as well disclose the whole story. He owed Fitzgerald that, as one captain to another. "I did promise you that I had a good reason for asking. Your ship has been displaced sixty-one years into the future. If we don't send you back to your proper time, there could be serious repercussions. Your future, our past."

Horkheimer stood there with his mouth working, but for once no sound coming out. Fitzgerald shook his head. "We're just a little science vessel. How could we change the future?"

"Are you kidding?" said Atoz, standing up and pacing toward the portholes. "You made tremendous discoveries. The scientists of the Astrolabe went on to become the teachers, the innovators of the next generation. For all we know some assistant deckhand on your crew might have fathered the next President of the Federation."

"When you put it that way, I guess it makes sense," said Fitzgerald.

"Believe me, this isn't an easy decision," said Atoz. "But it's the only decision. We simply can't take the risk of altering the time line. You have to go back, no matter what the cost to us."

Fitzgerald stood up, clasping Atoz on the shoulder. "You're a brave man, Captain. And so is your crew."

"Just do me a favor," said Atoz, shaking his hand. "Don't mention this is your log. Strictly speaking, I shouldn't have told you this. The Prime Directive."

Fitzgerald grinned. "I can just see Starfleet waiting sixty years to bring charges against you posthumously for something you haven't even done yet! But will do, Captain. I'll see that none of this gets reported."

As they all stepped out into the corridor, Weir waited for Atoz. "Sir, Vespis can handle the preparations without me. May I escort the visitors to the transporter room?"

There were many things that Atoz wanted to say to her, but there would never be enough time. He just nodded.

***

It was a pretty quick ride in the turboelevator, but for Flash it was agony. Then the curving corridor that seemed miles long. When the doors to the transporter room hissed open in front of him, he found that he just couldn't go through them. "Commander Weir?" he blurted out. "Diane? I want to stay here with you! Please?"

A flicker of sympathy darted over Fitzgerald's face, but he strode on into the room as if nothing was happening. Horkheimer gave a sigh of impatience, but followed the captain's example.

"I can't let you do that, Flash," Weir said quietly. "You belong with the Astrolabe."

"Then come with us! I'll talk to the Captain. He'll let you do it. Surely it won't matter if one person--"

She put her finger to his lips. "I can't do that, either. Just don't forget us, okay? Make our sacrifice mean something."

He opened his mouth to say something else, but at that moment Horkheimer's restiveness couldn't take any more. "Come on, kid," the astrophysicist urged. "Time to go, Hiram."

The boy sighed resentfully. "He knows I don't like my real name."

"There's nothing wrong with the name Hiram," said Weir soothingly. "A man I admire very much is named—"

She froze in mid-sentence. It couldn't be! "Your last name? It isn't--?"

"Axelrod," he said with a grimace. "Hiram Axelrod. Wouldn't you want to shoot your parents for sticking you with..." His voice trailed off shyly. "I'm being stupid. You're about to... to do what you're going to do, and I'm going on about my stupid..."

He never finished that sentence because when he looked at her face again, he could tell that something was going on. Wheels were obviously turning. Her eyes were darting back and forth as if following a train of thought. Then, astonishingly, she hugged him.

"Hiram, I think you've just saved our lives!"

[Mr. Atoz]

Atoz was standing next to the command chair, thinking that the next time he sat down in it would be his last. Over at Tactical, Fawkes and Rosh were going over the final checklist. People spoke, if at all, in whispers. It felt like a funeral.

Suddenly the turbolift doors hissed open. Weir dashed out of the lift, hurrying across the bridge to the Sciences station. "The probe!" she said breathlessly in passing. "We forgot about the probe!"

Vespis looked up from the Engineering station. "What probe?"

"Professor Axelrod's probe! It was programmed to transmit a ready signal then wait for confirmation before continuing."

Atoz turned to follow her. "How does that help us?" he said. "I thought our sensors wouldn't penetrate the null space boundary."

"That's true, sir," said Weir, rapidly punching buttons on her console. "But the inverted deuterium stream can. I just need to send an isolitic pulse to have it begin transmitting."

"So what?" said the Andorian engineer. "Is this the time to worry about a science experiment?"

"Listen to me," Weir said. "When a ship goes into warp, it essentially becomes a dimensionless particle in a multi-dimension space/time matrix. What happens when a dimensionless particle encounters an inverted gamma stream in the vicinity of a rotating black hole?"

"How should I know?" Vespis grunted. "I'm not an astrophysicist, thank Zarkhon!"

Atoz frowned, remembering his earlier conversation with Prof. Axelrod. "The Radetsky effect! Diane, are you suggesting we stake our lives on an untested theory?"

For a moment, Weir looked a tiny bit unsure of herself. She opened her mouth once or twice while she thought of the best thing to say in reply to the Captain's question. "Well, now is as good a time as any to test it."

Atoz looked from Weir to Vespis, whose antennae were still flexing with uncertainty. He looked at Fawkes and Rosh, who had paused in their checklist to wait. He looked at Penner, wide-eyed with apprehension, and at Caeli, wiping a bead of sweat from his upper lip. He looked at T'Pana, to all appearances calmly manning Ops as if nothing out of the ordinary were going on, and yet even she had her eyes on him instead of her station. "Let's do it," he said.

***

There was just enough time to contact the Astrolabe and tell them about the change in plans, but Atoz decided against it. It would only be one more distraction when they didn't need it. And besides, it was better this way. As a boy, he had grown up with his head full of the exploits of famous captains – Kirk of the Enterprise, Stone of the Horizon, Fitzgerald of the Astrolabe. Against all expectation, the opportunity had arisen to actually meet one of them. But the crisis had come and gone, and the chance was gone forever.

"I feel I must warn you," said the feminine voice of the ship's computer, "that Lt. Commander Vespis is attempting to disengage the safety interlocks of the warp drive system. This is a very dangerous procedure."

"Yes, I know it is, Arachne," Atoz replied. "Please allow her to proceed."

"Are you absolutely certain, Captain?" The AI's holographic avatar appeared on the main view screen, looking regal in her white Greek chiton.

"Yes, Arachne. Please allow her to proceed."

Vespis ran her fingers over the engineering substation controls like a concert pianist. "Antimatter reaction chamber pressurized to 110. Plasma valves released. Initializing warp shell." Under her breath, she added, "Come on baby, hold together just a few minutes for mama..."

"Power reserves at 83%," announced T'Pana at Ops. "Intermix fluctuating."

Arachne remained on the main view screen, completely unaffected by the tension in the air. "There is an antimatter imbalance forming in the reactor core," she said calmly. "Estimating total collapse in 45 seconds."

"Warp shell is active," reported Caeli.

Both ships began to slowly circle one another, and then to rapidly spin around a common axis. The warp shell expanded around them both, throbbing like an angry welt.

"Thirty seconds," said Arachne.

Faster and faster the ships whirled, faster than mere physics would allow had they been anywhere but the null space domain. Had there been any eyes to witness it, together they would have born a striking resemblance to a yin/yan symbol. With a sudden flash, the Astrolabe shot off on a tangent and disappeared immediately. The Odysseus spun to a stop, shuddering from the abrupt energy release as its inertial dampers struggled to keep the ship from shaking apart.

"Fifteen seconds," said Arachne.

"Power reserves at 32%," said T'Pana, "and falling rapidly. Intermix unstable."

At the Science station, Weir was frantically scanning for the deuterium stream, remembering that the professor had specified a particular orbit for his probe. Finally she located it, and suddenly it was clear to her why. If the theory was correct, the probe was at precisely the right distance from the singularity to be of use. Now all she had to do was calculate the correct angle with the axis of the black hole to send the ship into a closed spiral without sending it down into the gravity well. The order of magnitude was going to be something like... Weir bit her lip, hoping that she hadn't made a mistake somewhere in her figures.

"Ten seconds," said Arachne.

"Power reserves at seven percent."

"Gravimetric intensity is off my scale!" said Caeli, shouting to be heard over the trembling of the ship's fabric. "We must be right on the edge of the event horizon!"

Atoz, clinging to his command chair as the starship bucked and swayed, suddenly felt an irrational surge of disappointment at himself. Had his entire life, his entire career in Starfleet, led up to this one moment? He looked at the hull space distortion streaking past the viewscreen and he sighed. It was just as well, he thought. "Now, Mr. Caeli!" he said. "Warp One!"

The ship leaped into warp.

***

An entire month had gone by since the disappearance of the USS Odysseus, presumed lost with all hands. In one of the guest quarters at Starbase 63, Professor Hiram Axelrod sat alone in the dark. At twenty hundred hours, the automatic diurnal simulation program in his cabin had activated, dimming the lights. He was sitting so still and so quiet, the computer had presumed that he was asleep. But he was awake and alert, staring out the porthole at the stars.

Only what he was seeing was sixty-one years in the past. It was strange how after all this time he could still remember every word she had said to him, every smile, every look. It had made it so difficult to be her teacher when the time came.

At twenty-one hundred, the attention signal of his cabin door chirped. When he didn't answer, the door slid quietly open, and a young man stepped quietly inside. "Professor?" the young man said softly. "Are you awake?"

Axelrod didn't turn his head. "Yes, Lieutenant Allenby."

"We just received word from the Odysseus, sir. The experiment was a success."

"Was it?"

"Yes, sir. Science Officer Weir sends her highest regards. She says she looks forward to telling you all about it."

Axelrod closed his eyes, letting out a long, slow breath of release. "I'm so glad."


<<< THE END >>>