72

“I’ll see you on the bridge, Captain,” Nog said.

Before Vaughn could respond, Dr. Bashir offered his own opinion on the matter. “Not for at least a day or two, you won’t,” he said, walking over to Vaughn’s biobed. The doctor held a padd in one hand, which he referred to as he checked the diagnostic panel.

“I’ll be there soon enough,” Vaughn told Nog. The engineer smiled and nodded, then left. This had been Nog’s second visit today—earlier the lieutenant had also gotten the opportunity to speak with Ensign ch’Thane—and he had not been the only crew member to stop by the medical bay. In fact, the only person among Defiant’s small crew who had not come by, not surprisingly, had been Prynn.

Vaughn might have had a profound experience down on the planet, and come to a deeper understanding of his relationship with his daughter and of the troubles between them, but he had no reason to expect that she had done the same. According to Dr. Bashir, who had clearly noticed Prynn’s conspicuous absence, he had released her to her quarters this morning, with orders to remain off her feet until tomorrow. Of the three members of the away team, Prynn had been in the best condition after their ordeal, but even she would need time to recuperate. Vaughn had tried to accept what the doctor had told him, but it seemed less like a real explanation for Prynn not visiting him, and more like wishful thinking. And the truth was, no matter the troubles between them, it hurt him that she had not come in to see him.

“So how are you feeling?” Bashir asked.

“Tired,” Vaughn said, and though that was certainly true for him physically, it was in an emotional sense that he felt most drained. Since he had regained consciousness, he had attempted to shake off the effects of his experiences down on the planet, but he had not been completely successful. All those memories of loss that he had carried with him through his life, most dulled by the passage of time, had been made current again for him, and all at once. He suspected that only time would help him mend the reopened wounds. He would be able to get through it, he believed, but he did not expect the process to be particularly pleasant.

Not wanting to dwell on all of that right now, though, he asked the doctor, “How’s Ensign ch’Thane?” Bashir glanced across the medical bay to where the young man lay sleeping.

“He’s doing well,” the doctor said. “He’s got a strong constitution. I’ll probably release him tomorrow morning.” Vaughn had already learned that ch’Thane would not lose his leg, although Bashir had noted that if the ensign had gone without major medical treatment for another few hours, not only might he have lost his leg, but his internal injuries might have killed him. “You, on the other hand,” the doctor continued, “I may want to keep here for two more days.”

“I understand.” What had physically happened to Vaughn during his time within the thoughtscape, up until his eventual rescue, remained something of a mystery. Vaughn had hypothesized that, although he had dived into the vortex, he might never have actually passed into the universe of the Inamuri, or if he had, that he might have been carried quickly back into this one when the Inamuri had made the transition itself. Either way, he had guessed that the thoughtscape, sensing his plight via their strange mental and emotional connection, had formed an atmospheric pocket around him.

Dr. Bashir, on the other hand, had developed a different theory. He had detected residual energy readings within Vaughn’s body, leading him to conjecture that the Inamuri had actually reorganized matter within Vaughn’s lungs into respirable air. And because the residual energy spread throughout Vaughn’s body, the doctor also thought that the Inamuri might have essentially pressurized him from within.

Whatever the explanation, Vaughn felt confident that his survival had been the result of action taken by the thoughtscape, and Bashir concurred. Because of the uniqueness of that situation, Vaughn understood why the doctor wanted to keep him in the medical bay for a couple of days. While there appeared to be no deleterious effects on Vaughn—other than to his emotions—he agreed that remaining under direct medical observation for the time being seemed like a good idea.

To Bashir, he said, “I trust your medical judgment, Doctor.”

“Well, I guess somebody has to.” Vaughn and Bashir both looked toward the door on the other side of the medical bay, where Lieutenant Dax had just entered.

“You keep talking like that,” Bashir said as the lieutenant walked over, “and I’ll have grounds to declare you mentally unfit for duty.”

“And you can write those orders from the brig,” Dax retorted. Vaughn enjoyed the lively banter, a welcome change in tone for him from the last few days.

“I like the brig,” Bashir joked, checking the diagnostic panel again and making a note on his padd. “Less work to do.” He held up the padd, obviously to demonstrate how overworked he was. He finished what he was doing, then discreetly withdrew across the room to a console, leaving Vaughn and Dax by themselves.

“How are you feeling, sir?” Dax asked.

“Like an old man.”

“Hmmm,” Dax said. “That doesn’t really fit with the crew’s view of you as being indestructible.”

“Indestructible?” Vaughn said.

“Prynn and Shar were at least wearing environmental suits when we recovered them,” Dax explained with a smile. “You made it through two universes in a torn Starfleet uniform and a field coat older than most of the crew.”

“Take my word for it, Lieutenant, there are better ways to travel,” he said. Then, curious, he asked, “What’s the status of the thoughtscape?”

“It’s difficult to know for sure without direct communication,” Dax said, “but it appears to have transformed a great deal of matter into a form that it can inhabit in our universe. So far as we can tell, the entire thoughtscape emerged through the interface and now surrounds the planet, in normal space and in several other dimensions.”

“It’s been trying to do that for centuries,” Vaughn said. “The energy clouds were the mechanism for that. The thoughtscape—” Vaughn searched for the right word. “— pushedthem through the vortex…the interface.”

“And the energy released with each push was the pulse,” Dax said.

Vaughn nodded. “And each time, the interface widened,” he went on, “allowing the thoughtscape to push more through the next time, and faster, which increased the size of the pulse. But it hadn’t yet been able to get enough energy through to transform enough matter…not until Nog’s devices widened the interface.”

“You know all of this from communicating with the Inamuri,” Dax said. Though she had phrased it as a statement, it was clearly a question.

“I wouldn’t say ‘communicating,’” Vaughn told her. “I liked your word, Lieutenant: communing.Except that where you only seemed to have a one-way communing, I seemed to have had it in both directions. Obviously, I was able to make the Inamuri understand the danger to Ensign Tenmei and Ensign ch’Thane.”

“And to yourself,” Dax noted. “It was quite a sight to see the holes in the shell around the planet, especially when we found the three of you at the bottom.”

“I’m sure it was,” Vaughn said. “I also sensed that, when Defiantand Chaffeewere hit by energy from the clouds, the Inamuri wasn’t attacking.”

“It was trying to communicate,” Dax surmised.

“Yes,” Vaughn confirmed. “As we both found out, the substance of the clouds also functioned as a conduit for thought.”