When Vaughn had closed to within twenty meters, the man held up his hand, palm out. Vaughn stopped. The man peered around, then gestured again, this time pointing across the corridor.

Corridor?Vaughn thought. The man pointed across the street.Vaughn looked there and saw nothing, but a sense of déjà vu overwhelmed him. It seemed ludicrous to even consider that he had lived a sequence of events like this before, but the feeling remained strong. Suddenly, without thinking, Vaughn lifted his empty hand and pointed past the man. The man nodded, as though acknowledging Vaughn, and then he came out from behind the building and into the corridor.

Street,Vaughn told himself, but already his thoughts had moved past that. The man was wearing a Starfleet uniform. An oldStarfleet uniform.

And Vaughn recognized him.

The man turned and started running away, the clap of his boots on the pavement echoing in the empty street. “Wait,” Vaughn called, and sprinted after him. Still running, the man waved back toward Vaughn, as though to quiet him down. “John, wait.” The man reached the next intersection and rounded the corner, disappearing from sight.

Vaughn raced toward the cross street, already knowing what he would find when he got there. He would look where the man had run and see nothing. The man would have vanished, leaving no trace beyond Vaughn’s doubting of his own mental state.

Vaughn reached the intersection, stopped, and peered down the cross street. Almost a block down, the man continued to run, his footsteps still resounding. Vaughn took a step, preparing to follow, but then stopped again. He did not have time for this. Unless and until he could demonstrate that chasing the man would provide a means of stopping the pulse, he had to go on. For all Vaughn knew, he was imagining this entire encounter. And maybe that, some form of mass delirium, had been what had carried the people of this world to their ends.

Vaughn raised his tricorder and scanned the receding figure. The readings indicated a human male, in good health, approximately fifty years of age. Vaughn looked up again and saw now that the man had gone—perhaps around a corner, perhaps back to wherever he had come from. Perhaps back into the recesses of Vaughn’s mind.

In the dust coating the streets, Vaughn saw a set of footprints leading away from him, in the direction the man had taken. Vaughn followed them back down the street, tracing them to where the man had emerged from the beside the building. The footprints ended there.

Transporter?Vaughn thought. But that would hardly explain everything. Time travel? Holograms? Illusions or delusions? A sensor sweep revealed no residual energy readings, other than those present everywhere on the planet. No transporter signatures, no chroniton particles, no photonic emissions.

He replayed the scans that he had initiated when he had first started toward the man. He saw the same readings: a healthy, fifty-year-old human male. Then he played back the visual record the tricorder had captured. He worked the controls in order to display a magnified image of the man’s face. Vaughn recognized it at once: the long, narrow countenance, the angular features, the graying hair above the ears. He remembered the day— What? Sixty, sixty-five years ago?—when he and the man had run down the corridor of a starship together, making the same gestures they had just made in the street of this dead city. And Vaughn remembered all that had been lost back then, so many years ago.

He doubted his perceptions, and even his sanity. But he also suspected the technology running through the city, despite that his tricorder registered nothing functioning within its confines. Regardless of the explanation for whatever had just happened, though, it was time for him to move on.

Vaughn turned back in the direction he had been traveling before he had seen the man, and started walking again. He would be out of the streets in another hour, back into open land. He had to focus on his journey now, on reaching his intended destination and stopping the pulse from launching into space.

And still, as his footfalls bounced between the wasted buildings of this wasted city, he could not banish from his mind the image of the man he had just seen: Captain John Harriman of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

44

Kira reviewed the list of food and drink for the reception. She sat at the desk in her office, tapping at the padd, which emitted tiny electronic tones as she paged through the entries. The Bajoran selections pleased her, and included alva,shrimp, hasperatsoufflé, and mapabread with mobajam, along with several bottles of spring wine and a variety of teas. One other item at the end of the list caught her attention. “How did you get foraiga?”she asked. The delicacy was very difficult to obtain, even on Bajor itself.

“Colonel, I’ve been doing business in this system for more than a decade,” Quark said. “And I’m a Ferengi. I know how to get things.” He stood across from her, waiting for her to authorize his catering menu.

“You know how to get things,” Kira told him, “and you also know how to overcharge for them.” His greed never slackened, she thought as she looked at his charge for the foraiga.

“Fine, take it off the list,” Quark said, with what Kira took to be feigned nonchalance. “I thought Minister Shakaar would enjoy it, but if you think it’s too expensive…” He left his statement dangling, obviously probing for information.

“I never said Shakaar would be at the gathering,” Kira reminded him, offering a cold smile.

Quark patted his chest with one hand. “My mistake,” he said. “I guess I just assumed that all of this fine Bajoran food wouldn’t be for just you and Lieutenant Ro.” His voice seemed to catch when he mentioned Ro, but the sound was so slight that Kira might have imagined it. Perhaps the security chief had been giving Quark a particularly difficult time lately—something she would have to laud Ro for, if true. “Besides, you don’t usually wear your dress uniform.”

“All right. The foraigais fine,” Kira said, choosing to ignore Quark’s observation, and moving on to the rest of the menu. She could have—and probably should have—delegated this responsibility, but she liked Quark to know that she personally kept her eye on him. And with the importance of the summit, she wanted to ensure that the reception this evening would be a success. Of course, Kira knew virtually nothing about Alonis or Andorian or Capellan food, and Jadzia’s tastes had ranged well beyond her homeworld of Trill. “What’s this?” Kira asked, spying another item with a sizable price. “Kagannerra?”She highlighted the item on the padd, then leaned forward and held the device out to Quark so that he could see it.

“That’s a type of kelp,” he said, only glancing at the padd. “Very large fronds. Quite flavorful, I understand.”

“Kelp?”Kira said. She pulled the padd back and looked again at the price beside the item. “This is what you want to charge for kelp?”

“Excuse me,” Quark said, affronted—or pretending to be affronted, Kira assumed. “There’s not a lot of call for food for water-breathers on this air-filled station.” He held his arms out wide, as though to take in the whole of DS9. “I couldn’t find any food native to Alonis anywhere in the sector. I did manage to locate a shipment out of Pacifica that contained the kagannerraand some other items known to be enjoyed by the Alonis.”