“I went someplace else again,” Ezri said, evidently unwilling to supply any details. She rubbed at her eyes with a thumb and forefinger.
“Me, too,” Nog said, sounding anxious.
Bashir was silent, looking more bewildered than fearful.
“According to the ship’s combadge monitors, you all vanished for almost one-point-five seconds,” Shar said.
“I’ll take that flash of light to mean that we’ve come to the end of our, um, dimensional tether,” Nog said, his dazzled eyes still blinking rapidly. He patted the phaser on the side of his EV suit, evidently to reassure himself that it was still there. “We’d better get to the pads. Now.”
Ezri paused long enough to check her own phaser, then gingerly escorted Bashir onto the platform, helping him don his helmet and then putting on her own. She and Nog took turns checking the seals on all three EV suits. Then they took their places on pads flanking Dax’s container, with Ezri standing beside Bashir. After Nog took a moment to confirm that the subspace transponder mounted on the symbiont’s transport pod was operating, he signaled to Chief Chao that the away team was ready.
“Good luck,” Shar said from beside the console. To Bowers’s ear, it sounded more like a farewell.
Taking a deep breath, Chao energized the transporter. “Confirm activation of first transporter relay,” she said. “It’s transmitting its signal, beaming a second relay to the next Oort-cloud body in the sequence.”
“Beam us out,” Ezri said.
“Godspeed,” Bowers whispered as the beam engulfed the four shapes on the platform.
Vaughn clutched the arms of the captain’s chair so tightly that his fingers had grown numb. On the viewer before him was spread a velvet-black sky, bejeweled with countless points of light. In the left foreground drifted a computer-enhanced image of an icy, potato-shaped cometary body. To its right was a tactical image of the alien cathedral.
“The transporter beam’s away,” said Tenmei from the conn console, her voice businesslike and rock-steady.
“Passive scans confirm the beam has struck the first cometary body in the sequence,” said T’rb, leaning forward over the science console. “The first transporter relay has redirected the beam precisely toward the next body in the line. And the away team’s beam is right behind it.”
For a seeming eternity, T’rb gave a running commentary as each new transporter relay appeared on a comet body closer to the artifact’s position, followed in each instance a moment later by the arrival and retransmission of the away team’s transporter beam. Reduced to a coherent stream of energetic particles, the Sagan’s crew was slowly working its way in an indirect, caroming zigzag pattern across a gulf of trackless space some ten million kilometers wide. With more than a little awe, Vaughn calculated that Nog and Shar had increased the transporter’s range by a factor of about twenty-five.
“How’s the signal attenuation, T’rb?” said John Candlewood from a secondary upper-bridge science console.
“Acceptable,” T’rb said, his voice and manner bereft of their usual jocularity. “So far.”
Moments later, Candlewood announced that the away team had just cleared the final relay—and that their transporter beam had finally reached the alien cathedral.
“Awaiting the combadge signals confirming beam-in, Captain,” Ensign Merimark said from the tactical station. Vaughn knew that the same relay network that had sent the away team would also carry their combadge signals after the materialization had been completed.
Long moments elapsed, time slowly piling up in drifts around Vaughn. What had surely been half a minute or less since the beam-out had begun seemed to be taking hours. Wecan’t have failed. Wecan’t have come this far only to scatter their molecules across the outskirts of some gods-forsaken Gamma Quadrant system.
“Anything, Mr. Merimark?” Vaughn said, his voice scarcely above a whisper. The relief tactical officer turned in her seat to face him with a stricken expression, her hand on her earpiece.
“Nothing yet, sir. I—”
A strident klaxon interrupted her, in concert with the urgent flashing of an alarm indicator on her comm panel.
Merimark’s smile was triumphant. “Confirming receipt of four tight-beam subspace blips, Captain.” The bridge was suddenly awash in the sound of applause, and T’rb gave out an enthusiastic war whoop.
They’re aboard the cathedral.Vaughn slumped backward in his chair, just for a moment. A tremendous weight had just fallen from his shoulders, though he knew that the mission was still far from complete.
“All right, people,” Vaughn said as order quickly restored itself. “We still have the problem of recovering the away team once they signal that they’re ready to leave.”
If theycan signal when they need an evac. And a great deal else can still go wrong between now and then.
“Mr. T’rb,” Vaughn said, leaning forward and facing the science station. “Have the Nyazen blockade ships detected the away team’s signals?”
After glancing quickly at the science panel, T’rb shook his head. “No, sir. Given the subspace vibrations of these Oort cloud bodies, it should have been pretty hard to distinguish them from the galactic subspace background noise—unless you happen to be listening for them, the way we were. It’s highly unlikely that anybody else would even recognize them for what they were.”
“It’s also highly unlikely that three Starfleet officers would be yanked toward umpty-million parallel dimensions by an ancient alien construct,” Vaughn said. Sometimes these brilliant science-specialist types needed to be reminded of the dangers of overconfidence.
“Aye, Captain,” T’rb said, sounding chastened.
Addressing the entire bridge crew, Vaughn said, “Maintain yellow alert, but keep our shields down for the moment. Watch those Nyazen ships for any hostile moves. If they so much as dump their waste overboard, I want to know about it.” He punched a button on the arm of his chair. “Vaughn to transporter bay one.”
“Bowers here, Captain.”
“Maintain a constant transporter lock on the away team.”
“Not a problem, sir, unless we have to change our position in a hurry. But we can’t maintain the lock if we’re forced to move out of transporter range of the first relay unit.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Vaughn out.”
Merimark spoke up in alarmed tones. “Four of the Nyazen blockade ships have broken away from the main group, Captain. The Nyazen flagship is leading them. They’re approaching us at high impulse speeds, close to warp one. They’ll be on top of us in thirty seconds. And they’re powering up their compression disruptors.”
“Our shields can probably handle a simultaneous barrage from four of them, Captain,” Tenmei said. “For a while, at least. But extensive combat maneuvering might break the transporter lock.”
“The flagship is hailing us on subspace bands,” Merimark said.
“On screen,” Vaughn said.
The starscape fluttered for a fraction of a second, to be replaced almost instantly by a view of the bridge of the Nyazen flagship. It was a collection of blocky shapes whose functions were obscure. In the foreground stood—or perhaps sat—a blotchy, off-white figure, visible only from the shoulders up. An inarticulate bellow issued from the creature’s oval mouth, and its whiplike limbs twirled in apparent outrage.
“Firing of weapons at the cathedral/anathema is not acceptable practice,”shouted the Nyazen commander, its voice rendered into incongruously mellow, bell-like sounds by the universal translator. “Withdraw from this system presently, or face decompression/discorporation.”
So theydid detect the transporter beam,Vaughn thought, wondering if they possessed transporter technology themselves. Judging from their instant assumption of an attack, he concluded that they probably did not. But he also knew that he was in no position to tell the Nyazen the whole truth—not unless he wanted to provoke an angry reprisal by beings determined to protect their sacred object from outsiders.