Star Trek: Second Generation – Distant Places Never Seen

"Captain's log. The experiments to improve the effectiveness of our warp field has seemingly been an unimagined success. Unfortunately this success has propelled us ten thousand years away from Federation space, with no clear idea of how to return home."


It was a somewhat dejected feeling command crew that came together the next morning. Some had clearly had little sleep, while others were starting to feel the pinch in other ways.

"I can see that we're going to have issues with morale fairly quickly," Troi commented, her tone somewhat resigned. "Though it was entirely the right thing to do."

"Vulcan combat rations are the most efficient form of food that the replicator can produce," Data informed her. "It is necessary in our current situation to ensure that we minimise power wastage as quickly as possible."

Various people around the table exchanged looks that ranged from mild amusement to derision. Vulcan combat rations were indeed the most efficient form of food in existence: each pack contained a slab of slightly waxy material, a pouch of water, and some pills. A single pack could be replicated cheaply, easily, and in bulk if necessary. The packaging itself was intended to be minimal, and was a standard design, so that it was actually possible to replicate a meal inside the used packaging. Each pack contained, allowing for the pills which varied between species, all of the necessary nutrition for an adult in one day of moderate activity aboard a ship.

They were bland, and the waxy texture put people off them quickly. And the replicators had, as of Picard working out where the Enterprise had come to a halt, been locked to only produce ration packs.

"With luck we won't need them for more than a short while," Picard said. "For now though... Commissar, are there any immediate problems relating to our situation that I should be aware of from you?"

"Nothing immediately," she admitted. "Certainly nothing unexpected. I've already picked up rumours of discontent with the estimated ten thousand year return journey, but at the moment the crew is holding together. I'll notify you if that situation changes."

"Liaise with Lieutenant Yar on that one primarily," Picard advised. "I want a lid kept on any trouble. Take what measures you feel are necessary to hold things together for a while at least." He turned to La Forge. "Commander. Your assessment of our return journey."

La Forge shrugged. "We've been over those equations and sensor logs half a dozen times," he declared. "I've got a team going over them with a fine tooth comb for anything minor that we might have missed, but..." He shook his head. "We have no idea of why the ship accelerated the way that it did. At present our best hope is simply to turn around and follow the same course back, and try to recreate the same circumstances."

"What about the Fearless? Wasn't the idea that it had been the interaction with their warp field that caused the trouble?"

La Forge shook his head. "Unless the trouble was occurring at a level a long way below the sensitivity of our sensors, there was no unexpected interaction there at all. And certainly no indication of any kind of feedback building up like Kosinski was suggesting. Whatever caused us to accelerate like that, we were carrying it with us."

"So our best hope is to just reverse course and hope for a repeat performance?" Riker asked. "I think we were hoping for something more definite than that."

"Trust me commander," La Forge assured him, "I've been up all night working on this; I've been popping stims to keep awake, but I'm still rated as clearheaded. Our only hope at this point is that we localise whatever the odd effect was from the sensor records. We might be able to control it somewhat once we understand what it is. But until then..."

"Understood," Picard declared. "We'll wait two days. At the end of that time we'll assess the state of affairs and make a decision. Commissar, Doctor, I need you to work on ways that we can limit our life-support consumption if the journey takes longer than fifteen minutes. I know that we have contingencies for handling short-term shutdown at least. We may need to expand those somewhat."

"We've got a few ideas already," Crusher admitted. "It's one of the old medical/ engineering thought experiments of how to preserve a crew for as long as possible. I'll need access to our inventory and an idea of our fuel status to work from."

"Fuel, at least, isn't a problem," La Forge assured her. "The ship was still drawing power as if we were at warp two right up until the warp field collapsed, so we've still got over eighty percent of our antimatter stocks and seventy five percent of our He3 reserves. The problem is going to be getting somewhere that we can actually produce more He3; we need to process it from a gas giant, and I don't know how close one of them is."

"I have located three solar systems within a thousand light years," Data informed them. "However, I have not yet been able to ascertain whether there are gas giants in any of them. I must also point out that we will exhaust our antimatter supplies reaching the second closest, and may possibly be able to reach the third one if we are able to take a full load of He3 there and exhaust that in the journey."

Picard let everyone process that one, then nodded decisively. "There we are then; we need to work out a way home quickly. In two days we attempt to recreate the results of the previous test."


A twelve hour rest was mandated for those principally involved in studying the warp field dynamics and assessing what had happened twenty hours after the experiment ended. Picard authorised sickbay to issue sedatives to those who felt that they needed them, and to administer the sedatives to those who were deemed to require it.

Reed had declined it, and appeared convincing enough when he said that he would be going to bed that no one questioned it. Kosinski had helped this somewhat by almost requiring an armed escort to take him back to his quarters, making everyone else appear cooperative by comparison.

Once he reached his quarters though, Reed didn't sleep. He didn't pace and fret as he guessed Kosinski would have preferred to do, viewing the cabin as a prison that he needed to escape from. Instead he sat on the edge of the bed, his feet resting on the floor and his hands resting on his thighs, and closed his eyes.

He was still sitting there, not sleeping but certainly not awake as most people would understand the term, when the door chime sounded. He didn't stir, but there was an edge of tension to the room which hadn't existed a moment earlier, as if he was suddenly more aware, and wary, of what was happening than he had been.

When the second chime sounded he appeared to realise that the person there wouldn't be going away without speaking to him. There wasn't even any point in pretending not to be here; the person on the other side of the door was fully aware that he was here after all.

"Enter," he called out, seeming to draw himself closer, as if his attention was returning to here and now rather than spreading itself out.

The man at the door looked somewhat ragged; his clothing was entirely serviceable, and his appearance wasn't in any way inappropriate, but there was still a sense to his image that he wasn't keeping himself or his clothes in the best possible condition.

He stepped into the room, the door closing behind him as he did, watching Reed carefully as if comparing him to some kind of mental image. "Somehow, I was expecting more," he admitted, not bothering to hide his disappointment.

"I wasn't really expecting anything," Reed admitted. There was a somewhat vague sense to him. "I hadn't even realised that there were two of us on this ship."

"Yet I spotted it immediately," the other replied. "You do very little to conceal yourself, Alex Reed, except where it is very obvious; you cloud your thoughts rather than disguising them as you should, and your effect on the ship's warp field was obvious from the moment that you came aboard."

"I have never needed to hide myself in such a manner as this before," Reed replied.

"Clearly you are hardly bothering to do so now," his visitor snapped. "What were you thinking of, bringing us here? This can only lead to trouble."

"Perhaps," Reed said, seeming to come back to himself suddenly and actually opening his eyes to look at his visitor. "I can get us back easily enough though, and probably without them even realising that anything other than a glitch in the experiments occurred."

"Probably?"

"There is always an element of chance to these things," Reed admitted. "Don't worry though; I'll keep you out of this unless you choose to become involved." He stood, but this gesture only served to diminish him compared to his visitor; the ragged man was slightly taller, and a lot more distinctive, his appearance failing to fade into the background the way that Reed's did. He didn't appear to mind this though, simply standing there and gazing at the visitor.

"It would be for the best if you did not involve me," the man replied. "And that you stayed out of my way for the rest of this journey." With a dismissive glare he turned and stalked out of the door.


Tasha Yar kept an eye on the security team that was escorting a crewman to the brig. On a Starfleet vessel, conventionally only in contact with other planets when in orbit over them where the local communications booster array could be accessed, unless the ship's subspace communications link was approved by the captain for personal use, being out of touch with the rest of the galaxy for a while wasn't unusual.

Something about this jump totally outside the galaxy and nearly into a new one had spooked people though. While the test was going on they wouldn't even have been in contact with those planets anyway, and the test had been due to be going on for nearly two weeks during the trip to Starbase fifty two. Somehow being two days away from a probable return trip had scared people, where being two weeks away from anywhere hadn't.

This particular case, Tasha suspected, wasn't to do with that, but rather the rations. To people used to being able to replicate almost any food that they had ever heard of, the cutback to combat rations was a bit of a culture shock.

She wasn't bothered by it herself. They were blander than what she had grown up eating on Turkana IV, but some of what she had eaten growing up had been, at best, garbage. Something that was merely bland was a change for the better if it actually included nutritional content rather than simply sitting in your stomach and trying to make you throw up.

The culture shock was hitting a few people, especially combined with the rumours running around about the uncertainty of getting back.

Tasha sighed and turned to head to her office. Reports had been piling up, and the few bits of personal attention that she had been paying to keeping the peace had kept her away from her desk a surprising amount of time.

A few people were out and about at the moment, but just about everyone was either working or keeping in their quarters. The ship's holodecks might have been out of action, but personal entertainment suites had been left running for the time being at least, and an innovative engineer had rigged up a projector in one of the cargo bays along with some seating made from cargo crates. The captain had looked over the proposal, along with La Forge's estimates of energy usage and power costs, and approved it with a reward of a two day pass the next time shore leave came up. It was keeping things going for a while at least; the chances were it would be taken down again before it got any serious business, but at least it was there.

It was something that Tasha hadn't quite gotten used to about the Enterprise, or human-built Starfleet vessels in general: so much of the entertainment, aside from Ten Forward or the holodecks, was based around either single people or remote contact with people in other rooms. Certainly on a starship having large open areas that weren't totally functional was awkward; power requirements for life support, artificial gravity and the like increased with the size of rooms. You needed to justify the space somehow, and with so much space needed for powering or maintaining the space that was already being used for critical functions, things got tight.

But there were options. A few large rooms, or even properly equipped smaller rooms, could serve the needs of small groups. Some kind of portable chairs would allow people to meet up in each other's quarters. Instead out of the thousand strong crew, only a handful seemed to meet up outside of their time at work.

Tasha was one of those few; she sought out company in the gym, in Ten Forward, in the few parties that occurred aboard the ship. After a life on the streets, where the only escape had been the gangs or the occasional appearance by someone from Starfleet, she had craved good honest company. Being, not only trusted, but able to trust other people to have interests beyond the mundane selfish cravings, was something that she had become almost addicted to during her days at the academy. Pure social contact was her ambrosia, and something that she wasn't willing to put in danger.

"Lieutenant," Troi said, startling Tasha out of her train of thought. "How are things?"

Tasha hesitated, then straightened up somewhat. "About what we expected Commissar," she said formally. "A few people aren't taking the sudden loss of contact, the rationing of food and power, and the uncertainty of our situation, very well. My people have it under control."

Troi nodded, and Tasha could almost feel her trying to get hold of what she had been thinking of about home. She buried her thoughts about it as effectively as she could, concentrating firmly on the needs of the crew and the situation at hand. She was doing her job well, and so were all of her people. There was nothing that a snooping empath could get hold of to raise any queries about her loyalty or dedication.

"Thank you lieutenant," Troi said, her tone formal but with a hint of weariness at her continued failure to catch Tasha out. "Let me know if you need any assistance."

"I'll do that," Tasha said briefly. "Now if you don't mind I need to get back to my office; I have reports to work on."

"Of course," Troi replied.

Tasha turned and walked off, careful not to rush or hurry. Troi would find nothing about her to suggest anything other than loyalty.


Riker stretched as the turbolift doors closed behind him. "Deck twelve, officer's quarters," he instructed as he turned around to face the door and leaned back against the wall.

Two days of trying to keep everyone moving, and calm. Frantic activity on the part of the engineering and science teams working to get them back to their own galaxy, but trying to induce lethargy onto everyone else in order to reduce the use of resources across the ship. The combination wasn't easy; genetic engineering of the kind used regularly by Humans was fine for reducing sleep requirements and conquering muscle atrophy and the like, but it had yet to determine how to prevent people getting bored or fidgety.

The mental gear-shifts of trying to convince some people to speed up while telling others to slow down had given Riker a headache partway through the afternoon. He had been positively delighted when everyone had been told to take a break.

The turbolift doors suddenly opened, and Riker began to pull himself upright before realising who was on the other side of it. "Deanna," he said with a smile. "How's your end of things holding up?"

"About what you'd expect," she replied, leaning against the back wall of the turbolift as well.

"Anything specific?"

"The usual; I ran into Tasha."

Riker nodded sympathetically. "Is there any word from Turkana IV about that yet?"

Troi shook her head. "I don't expect there to be at this point; the last report I had basically boiled down to the recruiting mission there having been a joke. Minimal psychological profiling and limited background checks. Not that they had time for the first or the capability for the second; the planetary data network is in an appalling state at best outside the Turkana itself. The planet's internet is so badly sub-divided into alternets and local domains belonging to the gangs..."

"So the chances of finding out what happened are..?"

"Slim at best," Troi replied with a shrug. "Unless Tasha tells us herself, and I'm convinced that she genuinely doesn't remember."

Riker considered this thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Aside from ordering her in for a psych evaluation or getting someone to authorise use of a mind probe, it looks like we're out of options."

"Which is about where we've been since she joined Starfleet," Troi admitted. "How about your end of things?"

"Telling one half of the crew to hurry up and the other half to slow down," Riker replied with a smile. The turbolift came to a halt and the doors opened. Both of them got out, heading down the corridor together. "It's damned awkward to remember who I'm meant to be telling which to sometimes, especially since we've got so many departments who have a legitimate reason to keep going; most of the engineering crews could theoretically be taken off duty, but the amount of work necessary to keep this ship running is quite scary."

"We do tend to rely on a certain level of home comforts for our normal operations," Troi admitted. "I don't think this ship has ever been more than three months away from a shipyard or starbase of some kind before now. It does put our mission to explore unknown places into perspective somewhat."


Beverley sat down and looked at her plate for a moment, pushing aside her distaste at the sight of the ration bar on it. Knowing the necessity of something didn't make it any more pleasant or desirable.

That Wesley wasn't even trying to disguise his dislike of it didn't help matters.

"Couldn't we just replicate something more?" he asked, looking down at his plate with distaste. "Even just more of it than this."

"This is all you need for the day," Beverley reminded him. "And you know that we can't have more. Thanks to those experiments you were so excited about we're stuck out here now until we find a way back."

Wesley pushed the waxy block around his plate for a moment, then picked it up and started nibbling at it. "We might be a while," he commented. "I don't see how we can recreate what happened there; it wasn't like the experiment actually worked."

"What do you mean by that?"

"The equations that Reed was using," Wesley replied. "They had nothing to do with the way the warp field was working. He was just putting nonsense into them, and then everything went haywire."

"What do you mean he was putting nonsense into them? You can't expect to understand that kind of thing straight away."

"They were nonsense," Wesley objected. "I have a knack for these things, and those numbers didn't make any sense. They certainly didn't have anything to do with what the warp field did; that just went out of control, then... It felt like someone brought it back under control. But it wasn't Reed, because he'd almost entirely stopped by then."

Beverley frowned. Wesley sounded remarkably earnest about this, which wasn't entirely unusual; his enthusiasm took its own turns as and when he wanted. But there was a kind of intensity here which suggested it was more than Wesley simply getting a project. "Did you mention this to anyone else?"

"No one wanted to listen when we were down there before," Wesley pointed out. "I got told to leave before I could explain. No one would believe me anyway," he added with a hint of serves-them-right-ness about him.

Sitting back, Beverley considered this. There had been all sorts of issues in the run-up to these tests where people had been saying that the results made no sense. Had Wesley spotted something?

"How sure about this are you?" she asked thoughtfully.

"I'm positive," Wesley insisted. "The warp field was doing things that had nothing to do with the equations. I could feel it," he added, jabbing a fork into the waxy block viciously.


Picard listened carefully to Beverley's description of what Wesley had said, fighting down his own dislike of having children on board, or having to associate with them. Assuming an objective attitude to the whole thing where he ignored Wesley's personal involvement helped somewhat, because it forced him to consider the facts.

"So he believes that there was something else acting on the warp field other than the changes in the equations?"

"He didn't know what though," Beverley admitted. "He just saw that the changes in the equations had little to do with the changes in the warp field itself. Surely that kind of thing can be verified."

"Only by experts like Kosinski or Reed in this case," Picard admitted. "The changes that they are making are revolutionary to say the least, and so we're not expecting to be able to understand them."

"But surely we have some kind of understanding of how these work," Beverley objected. "They can't be totally outside the understanding of our own experts."

"That's part of what these tests were meant to resolve," Picard reminded her. He sighed. "It doesn't entirely matter: we need to get back, and our only hope at present is using the same method that got us here. If we can discover precisely what made our previous trip so different then I'll be a lot happier. For now though I think we can all live with not knowing if we just get back home." His commlink bleeped at him, and he tapped at it. "Picard here."

"Riker here sir. We're nearly ready to begin accelerating up to warp speeds. Mr Kosinski and Mr Reed both report ready, and commander La Forge indicates that he just needs an hour for final checks."

"Understood commander." He paused for a few seconds before carrying on. "Would you have any objection to Wesley Crusher coming down to watch again? He's offered some interesting thoughts about the experiment and I'd like to see if he can confirm them."

Riker paused before replying, clearly realising that there was some kind of sub-text to what his captain was saying, but not being able to enquire about it. "Understood. I'll inform lieutenant Aden and have the necessary security arrangements made."

"Thank you commander," Picard replied. "I'll inform Doctor Crusher shortly. Picard out." He tapped at his commlink and sat back thoughtfully. When Beverley looked expectantly at him he shrugged. "If nothing else, Wesley's presence might have been a contributing factor to what happened. Putting him down there again seems like a sensible way to maximise our chances..."


Riker nodded at Wesley as the boy took up his station behind Reed, and then transferred his attention back to La Forge. "Are we ready?"

"All stations check in okay," Geordi replied, his tone somewhat apprehensive. "Everything's locked down and ready."

"Good. Computer, open a conference link. Participants are myself, Commissar Troi, Captain Picard, Lieutenant Commander La Forge, and Mr Kosinski."

Once the computer acknowledged that everyone had joined the link, Picard gave the order. "Helm, take us to warp. Same procedure as before. Take your lead on timings from Commander Data."

The hum from the warp core changed slightly as the engines purred into life, and Riker found himself watching Reed out of the corner of his eye. The bland man was concentrating on the console in front of him with an intensity that Riker didn't remember from the previous run. Was the man more nervous about trying to recreate an accidental occurrence?

The slow build-up of power over the next few minutes as they crawled up to warp speed and then advanced from there changed the tone further still, and also changed Reed's expression. Kosinski was intent on his own console, but clearly confident, expecting a triumphant return home. Reed though was showing signs of stress, as if actually having to physically strain at some monumental task rather than merely working at his console.

Behind Reed, Wesley looked concerned by the whole thing. When Riker managed to catch his eye, Wesley gave an uncertain shrug, apparently not seeing anything yet.

Once the ship hit warp three Kosinski looked around expectantly. "This is where it all happens," he declared boldly.

Frowning at that, Riker looked around expectantly. "I don't see anything yet," he pointed out. "Have we done something wrong?"

"Not yet," Kosinski replied. "Here we-"

Everyone cut off as the noise from the warp core abruptly shifted; an engineering crew, trained to an almost religious degree to respect the warp core in the same way that most people respect ticking bombs, takes its orders first and foremost from that sleeping dragon at the heart of their domain, and when it demands their attention even Kosinski wasn't about to ignore it.

"Warp field is shifting," La Forge announced. "We're accelerating."

"Power flow is up three percent," one of the Vulcan engineers declared from across the transept.

"Speed is warp five and still accelerating," Kosinski chimed in, sounding very happy with himself. "Warp six point five."

Riker glanced at Wesley. The boy was watching Reed intently, and from his expression Riker didn't need the shake of his head to know that things were going wrong again. He gave a tight nod in return, and returned his attention to Kosinski who was watching his display intently but didn't actually seem to be doing much towards the situation.

They had been going for ten minutes in the end, La Forge breaking off with the rest of the engineering crew to try and stabilise the warp field, or at least work out what was actually going on, when Wesley called out rather abruptly, drawing the attention of most of the people in the transept.

Reed had collapsed on top of his console, trembling as if caught in the middle of a fit. Beneath him the screens on the console continued to show the warp field shifting, only now there wasn't anyone keeping them under control.

"Take us out of warp!" Riker called, well aware of what it might mean if they overshot their destination. In four steps he was beside Reed's console, fingers moving rapidly over one part of it and transferring the functions it controlled to a console two spaces away. "Get a medical team down here."

"Warp field is still too strong," La Forge called back. "I'll try to burn it off as fast as we can, but I don't know how fast that's actually going to be."

"Commander, report," Picard called into the relative silence that followed this; in the background the engineering crew had stepped up their activity and were making more noise than they had been before, but in the transept itself things were relatively quiet as lieutenant Aden and one of the other engineers moved Reed to the floor and then moved to clear things out around him.

"Mr Reed has had some kind of seizure," Riker reported. "The warp field is currently not under our control. Commander La Forge is trying to stabilise it now."

"It's too late," Wesley declared, staring up and to one side where, Riker reckoned, one of the warp nacelles was. "It's going-"


Data was watching his console, trying to interpret what was going on in the hope of plotting the ship's position when they eventually came to a halt again. This task was complicated, but a necessary delay was built into it by the need to use a console designed for Vulcan visual perception rates; his own ability to absorb information visually was pseudo-photographic and operated at fifty times the speed of Vulcan perception, and seventy times the speed of Human perception.

As such only sixty percent of his available processing capacity was taken up by the task and the monitoring of the current run, and most of that was rechecking figures and comparing them to the results of the first run of this test. The remaining forty percent, which didn't include any of the software for keeping his body running, was roughly taken up by an analysis of the bridge crew's reactions, some checks on the engineering systems not related to the current situation, and his next move at shensic, a geometric equation game which he had been playing by email with one of his Vulcan classmates from the Academy for six years. He predicted victory in sixteen moves, although who would win he wasn't yet certain of, and his analysis of the possible moves was proving something of a dilemma.

When Riker warned that Reed had collapsed, Data reduced the processing power allocated to the game, opening up additional threads for handling the suddenly increasingly random fluctuations in the ship's warp field. Unfortunately the flow of information through his console was too slow, and much of what he came up with was little more than conjecture.

In the seconds following that change though, Data felt something else happen. He wasn't certain what it was, or even where it came from. His diagnostic systems tracked down multiple instances of data corruption errors, checksum failures, non-Mayanic logic conditions, and at least one instance of a thought process finishing before it technically began, before they off-lined themselves, logging a single error message indicating that they themselves were becoming unstable, and ended with six words: Mary Mary Quite Contrary How Does.

Uncertainly struck Data, as without his diagnostic systems he wasn't able to confirm the state of his own mind. Backup routines tried to kick in, but failed just as quickly. On some level Data noted that the ship was as badly affected by this as he was; the lights overhead flickered and his console was showing little more than random information. Inertial dampeners seemed to be having trouble as well, as the ship bounced and jolted in an increasingly erratic manner.

Increasingly aware that his reasoning ability should be being compromised, but apparently wasn't, Data brought android logic to the fore and applied what he could scrounge together of his mental faculties to the current situation. He began by closing down anything registering as corrupted or not functioning correctly. That left him with thirty percent motor control, forty three percent sensorium, and less than ten percent of his conventional processing power.

Despite that, he realised, he was still able to function. Unhelpful noise in the background from faulty systems and diagnostics became quiet, and rather than a slowing of information processing, he found instead that he was starting to speed up again now that distractions were being removed.

With a kind of fatalistic sense of enquiry, he composed a program to bring all of his systems back online after ten seconds of inactivity and then off-lined most of his systems aside from those necessary to run that program and enable it to work. Icy calm and quiet descended over him, but bizarrely with his main processors shut down he was still able to think.

Turning himself around in his seat, realising as he did that he was still aware of his body despite most of it being off-line, he took in the state of the rest of the bridge.

The rest of the bridge crew didn't seem to have fared as well as him. Everyone was unconscious, though he noted no irregularities in pulse or body temperature suggesting any kind of seizure or other malady. Rather, he reasoned, they must have been hit by something similar to what had affected him. Being unable to selectively shut down their minds as he could, they had instead had to shut down totally to overcome the difficulties.

He brought the shensic game back up to higher priority as he turned back to his console, accessing and jumping between various sensors across the ship. It was touch and go with the systems in such a bad way, but Data was able to get some minimal information out of them, discovering that no one was actually in danger, aside from a few people in engineering who had fallen into awkward positions.

His checks of what was going on outside were even less helpful. Sensors registered empty space out to fifty metres from the ship, and then indicated the presence of the warp field. And beyond that, nothing. Oh there was something out there, the sensors were fairly clear about that, but there was no possibility of them admitting what that something was.

Disregarding the disobliging sensors, Data stood and stalked over to the door leading out to the corridor which led, eventually, to conference room two. As he approached it he calculated the precise point at which the door should have responded to his presence, slowing enough that he wouldn't hit it on his way through. When it didn't respond within the requisite timeframe, he didn't bother stopping, but simply extended both hands and forced the door open, making a note to himself that the emergency seals, which should have kicked in automatically in the event of a computer failure, seemed to have failed along with a lot of other stuff.

The conference room door gave the same problems, but once inside the conference room he at least had a view of what was outside the ship. Or, he probably did...


Picard groaned as he awoke, trying to work out where he was and what the situation was around him.

He remembered the second run to try and get home. That slotted into place without any issues. He had word from Riker about Reed having a seizure; that had been troubling given how much they were relying on that one man. But simply shutting down the warp field should have resolved that, even if it did leave them not quite home yet and they had to make a third run.

Then there had been a sensation of... Something. He had felt his thoughts drifting, his mind wandering, and it had taken some considerable effort to pull himself back before... The memory refused to come for a moment, and then vague recollections of disjointed images and words and phrases and smells and...

"Captain, are you all right?"

He opened his eyes, raising a hand to shield them from the expected overhead lights of the bridge and finding instead that the room was instead lit by some other kind of lighting, off to the sides. Flickering orange/ yellow light showed him Beverley Crusher leaning over him, a look of concern on her face.

"Doctor... What..?"

"Take it easy; it takes a moment for things to settle down," she advised. "We seem to be safe for now. Some of us are taking longer to recover than others, and Data decided to prioritise assisting the recovery of medical personnel rather than command crew."

Nodding, and unwilling to be left out of the loop any more than necessary, Picard moved to stand up, accepting a helping hand from Beverly and angling for his seat so that he was at least sitting down rather than lying.

As he looked around, he realised that the ship might be in more of a state than he first expected. All of the consoles were dead, and the main screen was blank. Perhaps more ominously, the lighting around the bridge was being provided not by the normal lighting fixtures, but by a variety of designs of flaming torch ranging from a piece of wood apparently stabbed into the wall and with a lump of animal meat stuck on the end through to a medieval brazier.

Most of the crew were still lying on the floor in various states of disarray, on which note Picard found himself glad to have recovered early on; it wouldn't do to be seen to be sleeping on the job when everyone else had recovered.

"Where are we?" he asked. He noted that the door leading to conference room two was open, but couldn't actually see the conference room itself from his seat. In fact he noted that all of the doors seemed to be open, along with various inspection hatches and accessways.

"We are still trying to determine that," Data announced, suddenly stepping into Picard's view. "At present all we can say for certain is that we are not in normal space. We are hoping that Mr Reed will be able to provide more answers once he recovers."

"What is Mr Reed's status?" Picard asked, disorientation slowly wearing off as various questions began to occur to him.

"The last I heard he had calmed down, but he was still unconscious," Beverley informed him. "Commlinks are down, as is almost every piece of equipment on the ship. Even tricorters won't work at the moment," she added, gesturing vaguely to the two nurses who were clearly conducting visual inspections of the crew rather than relying on the sensor units that they wore on their belts. "We're doing the best that we can for now."

Looking around once more, Picard shook his head slowly. "Show me where we are."

Beverley looked at Data who gave a half-shrug and then offered a hand to Picard, helping him to stand up. Pride, and the need to be seen to be strong, would let him do no more than that though, and he staggered under his own strength down the corridor.

The light coming through the windows was a pale blue, shifting occasionally to green or purple. When he got a look at the source of that light though, Picard began to understand what Data had meant about not being in normal space.

Clouds of some kind surrounded the ship. Definitely not normal clouds: they were lit from within, and moved oddly. And inside and around them flowed shapes and forms which were hard for anyone to define.

"We've been unable to determine the range of the clouds from us. Also we cannot identify their composition," Data explained. "The objects and forms outside do not appear to respond to gravity or be impeded by the cloud. Also, conventional perspective appears to be distorted somewhat; the view of a particular section of cloud does not vary correctly according to where you view it from, and on at least one occasion an object has looped away from us and moved in front of a cloud which previously obscured it. Their nature is impossible to determine, as our sensors cannot penetrate beyond our warp field."

Picard watched for a moment before noticing that last fact. "We still have a warp field?"

"It appears to be forming a barrier between ourselves and whatever is outside. A brief experiment has determined that the more powerful the field the more systems we are able to bring online. However, my personal preference is to maintain it at this level, equivalent to warp two. Taking it lower endangers the ship as further systems begin to collapse, but increasing it impairs my functioning, unless we increase it to an estimated warp eight."

Again, Picard felt that he was still too light-headed, and found himself scrambling to catch up. "You're still functional?"

"My systems were degrading at the same rate as those of the ship," Data replied. "However, when I began to disable non-functional systems, I found that I was remaining functional in spite of that. Currently, I have only two sub-processors running, and all of my motor and sensor functions have been shut down. I am," Data admitted, a hint of embarrassment creeping into his voice and stance, "unable to explain how I remain functional."

Picard took this piece of information cautiously, considering it for a moment before adding it to the list of impossibilities that he was having to deal with. "What is our supply situation?"

"Replicators are non-functional," Data replied, his tone not changing from the normal business-like one which he habitually used. "We have some surplus supplies, and I have yet to fully investigate the ship for other options, however at present we do not have a means of producing new supplies." He hesitated, the sudden, pregnant silence catching Picard's attention. "Power is a slightly more troubling issue..."


"I'll need three of you on each entrance," Riker instructed the security team he had managed to assemble just outside engineering. "No one in or out who doesn't need to be there. Whatever's happened here we can do without making that any worse than it is," he added with a flick of his head towards the doors into engineering.

The team members nodded, all of them having already seen what had happened inside engineering and none of them wanting to aggravate the situation. At Riker's nod they dispersed, dividing up into teams and heading for the different entrances to engineering.

Temporarily bereft of anything to do, Riker stood for a moment, trying to collect his thoughts. Waking up in engineering after... Whatever it was... Hadn't been a pleasant experience. Fortunately, he'd been one of the first to be woken, before the medical teams even showed up, and so he had been somewhat prepared by the time they arrived and able to instil a certain amount of calm into the situation. The kind of chaos that would have ensued if a less level-headed officer had been the first to be woken...

"Commander." Riker turned to find Tasha Yar bearing down on him, showing signs of being as under the weather as he was, but equally determined not to allow herself to show it. Whether this was the need to appear in command and create a sense of calm, or whether it came from her upbringing and the inability to appear weak, he didn't know. But he needed it right now, whatever else was going on.

"Lieutenant, any word on what's going on?"

"Not yet sir," she admitted, looking around at the braziers lining the walls. "I can't find a working intercom anywhere. I'm trying to organise my people, but I've just been told that you've ordered some of them to guard engineering. May I ask why?"

"Because something has gone wrong in engineering," Riker informed her. "Whatever has happened to the rest of the ship," he allowed a half second pause while they both tallied up the slowly growing list of issues that they were noting, "we can't risk making things worse in there."

"If I may ask, what exactly has happened? It can't be a core breach or anything like that."

Riker hesitated for a moment, then nodded to the guards on the doors. "Open it up. I need to show the constable what's going on."

"Aye sir," one of the guards responded, and with one of his fellows he heaved the doors open.

"Why not use the manual override?" Tasha enquired.

"It doesn't work anymore," Riker replied, before gesturing for her to follow and be quiet.

They both crept into engineering, moving along the transept as quietly as Riker could manage; Tasha's upbringing gave her an advantage here. As they approached the inner end of the transept Riker led the way to behind a console and then indicated that they would look over the console together.

Despite knowing what he would see, Riker was still startled by what now occupied the central section of engineering. Where previously there had stood a six deck high piece of gunmetal coloured machinery which provided power to the entire ship, there was now... Well...

It still occupied roughly the same space as it had done previously. And the colour was roughly the same. But the sleek metalwork of the warp core was now composed of even sleeker scales, and the even shape was now arranged into new lumps. It took a few seconds to put the whole thing together from where they were situated, especially given that the lower two decks worth of it weren't visible to them. But when you started to put it together, like a puzzle picture where the whole thing suddenly clicks into place and you can see the image, the whole took on a startling reality and coherence all of a sudden when you realised what you were looking at.

"It's a dragon," Tasha declared, her voice not daring to rise above an almost inaudible whisper. "Where did a dragon come from?!" she hissed.

"More to the point, where did the warp core go?" Riker responded his own voice equally hushed. "We've evacuated engineering, and I'm trying to clear out the surrounding decks-" He cut off hastily as the dragon shifted, the deep thrum of its breathing shifting for a few seconds as it seemingly adjusted how it was sleeping, before apparently becoming quiescent again.

Riker left it for a few seconds, then gestured to Tasha that they had to leave. Moving, if anything, quieter than before, the pair of them left the engine room, both determined not to return until they found out more about what was happening here.


Sickbay wasn't particularly busy when Picard arrived there. Partly, he suspected, this had to do with how people had collapsed; Data had already informed him that most people appeared to have had some kind of control over the direction of their collapse, sparing themselves the worst possible injuries. Only in a few cases were there serious injuries, and nurses had already been dispatched to affect triage on site rather than bringing the wounded to sickbay.

The loss of ship's systems had been felt here just as everywhere else; conventional lighting was replaced with braziers, consoles were dead, tools were useless. Here though there appeared to have been some sense of replacement of tools, as with the lighting; scalpels and forceps and drills now stood out ready for use, all crude and worrying to Picard's eyes.

The report he had already received from Riker regarding the state of engineering, one which he dearly wished to investigate and confirm for himself, had led to his urgent mission to sickbay. His haste was, temporarily at least, tempered somewhat by the news that there was a functional means of producing food in Ten Forward. What it was, the crewman delivering the report hadn't been keen to disclose, but food there apparently was.

Beverley looked up as he entered, and came over to join him. "He's woken up a couple of times now. As far as I can tell he's stable, but with our equipment in this state I can't tell for sure. I can give you a few minutes with him, but for goodness sake Jean-Luc, don't stress him too much."

"I'll try to avoid it. If nothing else, at the moment he is probably our only way of getting back."

Nodding in acceptance of the pragmatic outlook, Beverley led the way over to one of the isolation beds on which lay Alex Reed. He seemed to have shrunk somehow since Picard last saw him, which bizarrely managed to make him more distinct. As the two of them approached, Reed's eyes flickered open and he managed to focus on them both.

"Ah, captain... I seem to have caused some trouble. Tell me, do you know where we are?"

"I was hoping that you could tell me that," Picard admitted. "I've been informed that you were manipulating the warp field equations in a manner which had nothing to do with what actually happened to them. And then we find that doing so causes a degree of stress to you which appears almost crippling, something which has never been reported before. And as for where we are..." He trailed off ominously. "I would like some answers."

Reed nodded slowly. "Telling you can't make things worse now... We're beyond the realm that you call real space. In this place thought is the dominant factor. We still have a warp field, which is protecting us from the effects of this realm, for now at least." He trailed off, seemingly needing to catch his breath. "I didn't mean to bring you here. Something about this ship... The warp field went out of control. I thought I had worked out how to stabilise it long enough to get us back to Federation space, but..."

"So you were affecting the warp field? Directly?"

Once more, Reed nodded. "I am a Traveller captain. We turn up occasionally. Normal people born to normal lives who suddenly find themselves touched by the universe in a way that they can barely understand. The ability to affect space is just one of the gifts that I have."

"So the experiments? They were faked?"

"Regrettably, yes," Reed admitted. "I make it my job to search for more like myself and to introduce them to what they can become. Kosinski's experiments were a useful cover for this work. Some of what I did was real; the application of it is beyond Starfleet's technology at present. Maybe we would have been able to find a way, but... My kind have a rule not to reveal ourselves unless we have no choice. In the past we have been angels and demons. Now we would all too easily become laboratory rodents..."

"But you admit that you were lying about all of the experiments," Picard insisted, his thoughts on this now decidedly upset. "That you have been wasting-"

"Jean-Luc," Beverly cut across his triad before it could get going properly. She treated him to a warning gaze.

"We'll deal with this later," Picard declared. "For now, I need to know how we can get back."

"I can get us back," Reed admitted. "I will need time to recover, but time is something that we may not have..."

"Why? Are we in danger?"

"Very much so," Reed informed him. "There are things here... Thought is all that there is, but some things here remember having form. Physical matter, however transient it might be in this realm, is a pleasure that they cannot forego. It may take them time to approach us, but they will come. And once the warp field fails you will all become mere thought as well, things of this domain as they are. I need to concentrate on recovering... We can probably spare a few hours for that at least."


Conference room two had been picked as the site for their status update. It was a bit more cramped than the conference room that they would normally have used, but at least this one was against the hull and offered a view through the windows. The glow from the clouds and forms outside shone down on them, adding a ghostly feel to the proceedings which the braziers didn't manage to offset particularly well.

"So it seems that the experiments were nothing more than a hoax," Picard said grimly, directing his gaze partly to Kosinski. "Mr Reed was using them in order to move around. No doubt he had plans for dealing with the situation once the secret came out, though I doubt that he planned on the truth being revealed in this manner."

Kosinski, for his part, appeared to be in a state of shock. "I don't know what to say captain... The experiments worked..."

"When did they start to work?" Troi enquired. "You couldn't have been pursuing this line of enquiry all the time."

"We began looking into ways of modifying the standard Cochrane/ T'Ver equations about six years ago," Kosinski explained. "Those are nearly two hundred years old now, dating from just after First Contact when the Vulcan Science Academy gave Starfleet access to the latest set of equations that they had. Greater energy efficiency, reduced damage to subspace... Those equations were appropriate for the limit of Vulcan technology at the time, and even after the interspecies sciences program kicked off when the Federation came together, there were only a handful of minor revisions to them.

"We wanted to make things even better. Improve the efficiency of them based on modern technology rather than technology that is a hundred and fifty years out of date. It was slow work, but we had marginal success; not what we were hoping for, and barely worth the time and effort it would take to modify ships to use them. But we were moving things forwards.

"Mr Reed joined the program four years ago. His grasp of these things was intuitive, and... Anyway," he continued, his enthusiasm drooping somewhat, "Over the last four years various people have dropped out. They couldn't understand what we were dealing with, could handle that we were dealing with things that were unpredictable..." For a moment he paused, looking off into nowhere. "Mr Reed and I are the only members of the original twenty person team. I could never understand why they couldn't properly appreciate what we were achieving. Now I can't understand it myself..."

Picard glanced at Troi, who nodded slowly and gestured for him to change the subject. He returned the nod sharply. "Thank you Mr Kosinski. For now I'd like to know what is going on out there, and how it is affecting us. Command Data, perhaps you could summarise the situation."

"Certainly captain," Data agreed. "At present the ship is trapped in a realm of pure thought. One may theorise about this place and determine that it is an adjunct reality to our own, operating on different laws, similar to the Q Continuum. Thought and intent, rather than physical processes, appear to determine reality. Physical matter does not appear to exist, or be able to exist here, and mechanical systems are unable to operate."

"And yet some systems clearly are operating," Riker objected. "We have a warp field, we've got gravity..."

"The warp field appears to be little more than a residual echo of the state the ship was in when it arrived here," Data responded didactically. "The equipment to maintain it no longer operates, and control of it is merely achieved by means of a series of levers on the helm console. On some level, everyone must have been aware that the warp field was protecting us, and our thoughts on the subject shaped the ship to provide a refuge. Similarly, when the lights failed alternatives were provided. Incidentally the flames from the lights do not produce excess heat, nor do they appear to consume oxygen. Similarly, the ship's gravity: the gravity plating has failed, and the only reason that we are standing on the floor is because we expect to be standing on the floor."

"And if enough people realise that..?" Riker asked.

"We will most likely be returned to zero gravity," Data admitted. "It is a fact for limited distribution."

"Agreed," Picard said. "What about the warp core though? How do you explain that we now appear to have a mythical creature powering the ship?"

"Anti-matter containment fields would never have held together when the rest of the systems failed," La Forge pointed out. "Same as the warp field, we just pulled out the safest image that we could to fit the bill. We've always thought of the warp core in those kind of terms anyway..."

"The question then becomes what will happen to it when we return? I don't like the idea of suddenly being trapped on a ship with a genuine dragon and nothing else to power the ship," Riker pointed out.

"Mr Reed appears to believe that once the warp field is brought up to full power our reality will stabilise itself and everything will return to normal inside the ship," Picard declared. "At that point he will be able to remove us from this realm and restore us to our own. Hopefully, he will have enough control over our destination to bring us back into Federation space. Otherwise we will have to reassess at that time our proximity and make a plan from there. Doctor, as soon as Mr Reed is feeling up to it, we will need to make the attempt. Please have him moved directly to the engine room when he is ready so that we can begin as soon as possible."

"He might be ready by the time I get back there," Beverley admitted.

"In that case send a runner as soon as you start to move him. Warp field control is all being handled from the bridge at present, but once systems are restored we should be able to re-establish the intercom and coordinate properly."

Lacking further questions, the meeting dispersed. As they did so though, Tasha pulled Data aside for a moment. "You said that mechanical systems weren't functioning. But you appear to be normal..."

"That is correct lieutenant," Data agreed. "My mechanical functions have all failed, or been shut down. However, it appears that my thoughts were of sufficient strength to allow me to continue, while we are within this realm, without the need for my normal bodily functions."

"So what? You're just..."

"A consciousness occupying a body to which it has no direct diagnostic access, but which it nevertheless inhabits and controls. I am aware of the irony that we have had to come into a realm where thoughts can reshape reality and the ship has nearly been destroyed in order to get me this close to being Human. It is an experience I intend to make the most of while I have the opportunity."

Tasha gave a tight smile, then her eyes darted to the left, focusing out of the window. Data followed her gaze, his eyes tracking the same thing that she had seen.

Something in the form of a tetrahedron, which glowed with a bright blue light, had spun out of the clouds and was tumbling towards them in a determined fashion. Behind it a trail of what might have been echoes, or might have been lesser incarnations of the same thing, followed on.

Failures of perspective made it impossible to tell when it would reach them, and so both were surprised when it abruptly encountered the warp field. The bubble of reality around the ship, previously invisible, now rippled wildly as if a stone had been dropped into a pool of water. The entire ship trembled in sympathy with it, and Tasha grabbed hold of Data for support.

The thing, whatever it was, appeared to be put off by the warp field, and retreated, though Data noted that its strength appeared undimmed, and rather its shade had changed.

"It would appear that we have less time than we first expected," Data declared.


Riker was down in engineering again, with Reed and Kosinski both present. Wesley had once again been brought in, though how much this was to recreate things and how much to keep an eye on Reed, Riker wasn't sure.

Everyone was breathing a bit more easily than they had been a few minutes earlier, now that the warp core was back where it was meant to be and they no longer had a massive dragon threatening to wake up every time someone sneezed. It was thrumming rather strongly considering that they weren't actually going anywhere, but with the field ramped up to warp nine in order to bring everything back into shape that wasn't a surprise.

"Mr Reed, are we ready to begin?" Picard asked from the bridge. "I need to express a certain sense of urgency here. We've got over a dozen things out there and every run that they make at us is destabilising the warp field."

"I understand captain," Reed replied, sounding decidedly weary. Riker suspected that he wasn't nearly as recovered as he had led them to believe. He seemed intent on carrying on though. "I am now going to begin the process."

Pensively, Riker watched as Reed rested his fingers lightly on the console, touching buttons once more. Glancing at Wesley, Riker received a shrug in return; apparently the boy didn't see anything unusual about what was happening here so far. Or nothing worth mentioning anyway.

"Warp field is shifting," La Forge announced.

"No apparent change outside," Data added from the bridge.

Riker felt something then. It wasn't big or dramatic, but it was there, something at the back of his mind trying to make itself heard clearly. He glanced around, noticing that a few other people were looking around as if they had noticed something similar, like a group of people suddenly noticing music that has been playing in the background the whole time.

A shout from the far end of the engine room was the only warning that he got of what was coming. A glowing hexagon, hollow and shaded to golden yellow, shimmered through the rear wall of the engine room trailing a line of nearly identical hexagons behind it. Riker dived aside as they flew at him, widening like a snake opening its mouth to swallow something. It passed overhead, going through the wall without any apparent effect.

"Thought-forms," Reed announced, not taking his eyes off the console in front of him. "The ship's warp field is weakening, and the barrier that it presents is starting to fail as a result. In another minute I will have translated us back to our own reality..." He trailed off, his face creased in concentration as he focused on the task of doing something unexplained to the warp field.

It was a tense minute. Reports came through of other thought-forms breaching the ship and mostly passing through without damage. At least one of them had managed to hit someone though, and Riker had deliberately tuned out the reports of that while he concentrated here. They hadn't sounded positive though.

"Transitioning... Now," Reed declared suddenly. For a moment, which couldn't have been more than a few seconds but took on the slow inevitable quality of watching a falling wine glass, the entire ship seemed to spin gently around itself, and Riker was sure that for an instant he caught a glimpse of himself out of the corner of his own eye. Very abruptly though everything snapped back again.

Looking around, Riker noticed that everyone seemed to be recovering as well. "Mr Data," he called out, "can you confirm our position?"

"I can indeed commander," Data responded. "Star positions put us three light years from Starbase fifty two. Our speed is warp nine point one, and our current course will take us within point six two light years of New Hope itself."

"Thank goodness for that," Picard declared. "Helm, all stop. Mr Data, signal Starbase fifty two and inform them of our position. Notifiy them that I will be in contact to confirm further details regarding the experiment within the next hour. If we can't make contact," he added, his tone dropping dangerously as the command crew jointly remembered that they might actually have destroyed the starbase in their first run, "then signal New Hope itself, or the Fearless."

"Aye sir," Data replied.

"Commander La Forge," Picard continued, "can you confirm the status in engineering?"

"We're good down here," La Forge responded. "No signs of abnormalities. I'll need a while to make a more thorough check before I can give you a better answer though."

"Understood. Give me that as soon as you can. Commander Riker, how is Mr Reed?"

Riker had been looking at the console where the strangely neutral man had been sitting since receiving Data's response. Behind the seat Wesley was looking stunned, and even lieutenant Aden, still in his place behind Wesley, looked surprised.

"Mr Reed appears to have vanished," Riker replied, his tone flat as he tried to work out whether this was a good thing or not.


"I will admit that the shock of you passing that close was worrying," Admiral Trab informed them as he carefully accepted a glass of Shemvor off Picard. The Andorian liquor was lethal to Humans, but Picard had always made a point of keeping it around in case of suitable visitors, and an Andorian admiral in Starfleet definitely counted, especially when you had apparently come close to killing him.

"You were lucky by the sounds of it. With a warp field that large I'm amazed that the starbase wasn't simply destroyed," Picard admitted.

"The East pier completely destroyed, major structural damage to the North and South piers, the core rendered uninhabitable in places, two runabouts destroyed and four more in for repairs... One hundred and thirty two dead and nearly a thousand injured." Trab glared out of the conference room window at the ruin of his starbase. It hung there in space, a hundred kilometres ahead of the Enterprise in the same orbital track. "If this... Traveller... Shows himself again, then he's going to have a lot to answer for," he growled.

"He will indeed," Picard agreed, his tone slightly less inclined towards the implication of violence. "And not just for the damage here. Starfleet has wasted years of research as well as time and effort in these experiments. Rather than try to help us he deliberately hindered us, led us down impossible tracks..."

Trab nodded absently, the loss to science being less of a concern for the Andorian culture. "What about the man's co-worker? Kolansk?"

"Kosinski," Picard corrected. "And he was hardly a co-worker. He appears to have been as much a victim as the rest of us in fact, since he's been made to look a large fool than the rest of us together. Commissar Troi reports that he has sunk into a desultory state, and appears to be somewhat adrift now. Sickbay are keeping an eye on him, but he's clearly a broken man now that his work has been revealed as a sham."

"You had other casualties as well?"

"Nothing as dramatic as your own," Picard admitted. "We've come off very lightly in fact. A handful of injuries beyond the bruised stage. The most serious are two cases where a thought-form managed to run straight through them before we completed the transition back to this realm. Autonomic functions are all there, but their minds appear to be gone. Doctor Crusher is still investigating, but she's not hopeful about their chances of being restored."

"More crimes that look like they will go unpunished... Do you even know what happened to Reed? How did he escape?"

"The only two witnesses to his disappearance are Doctor Crusher's son and the security guard assigned to keep an eye on him while he was in engineering. Both of them report that when the transition was completed Reed appeared to gather himself and then vanished. A ripple effect of some kind is reported by the security guard, and the ship's sensors reported a localised subspace distortion during that instant as well. So it would appear that his abilities included some kind of teleportation, something that we couldn't have anticipated or prevented without impeding his ability to assist us."

"Nonetheless," Trab declared, "I'll include in my report to Starfleet a warrant for his arrest, to be distributed to all systems via the ansible and high-priority subspace communications. And if there are any more like him out there..."

Picard debated pointing out that if there were any others then there was no certainty that they would be a threat. Arguing such a thing with an Andorian though, with their heavily clan based society and strong discipline system, would get nowhere; all were responsible for the one, and if those others couldn't be bothered to keep one of their number under control then they were held to condone that one's actions.

Trab's commlink bleeped, and he tapped at the control. "Trab here."

"This is Commander Data," came the response. "You asked to be notified when the Fearless entered the system. They have come out of warp and are approximately twenty minutes from orbit."

"Understood. Inform Inidia Minikial that I will require his ship's assistance with rescue and repairs to Starbase fifty two. I will want to see him personally in two hours in my office."

"Understood Admiral. I will pass on that message," Data responded before cutting the link.

"I'll want to see you there as well captain," Trab added before throwing back the Shemvor and drawing a shuddering breath as it burnt its way down. "A good vintage," he declared, handing back the glass.

"I'll be there Admiral," Picard agreed. "I'll bring the rest of the bottle if you want."

"A fine offer, but I have a feeling that we should save it for later," Trab admitted. "This may be a long meeting. Fortune favour you," he declared as he turned and left the conference room.

Picard paused for a moment, looking back out at the ruins of the starbase. One side had been gutted, almost ripped to shreds by the Enterprise's expanded warp field. It was a salutary reminder of how powerful and delicate these ships they flew around in really were; they could deliver this much damage, and yet the same could be done in return. The starbase was a hundred times the volume of the Enterprise, and had been this badly damaged...

More than that though, his thoughts flickered back to a conversation that he had had. One that he knew would haunt him for a long time to come...


"Very much so," Reed informed him. "There are things here... Thought is all that there is, but some things here remember having form. Physical matter, however transient it might be in this realm, is a pleasure that they cannot forego. It may take them time to approach us, but they will come. And once the warp field fails you will all become mere thought as well, things of this domain as they are. I need to concentrate on recovering... We can probably spare a few hours for that at least.

"There is something that you should know however," Reed continued. "I can take us back, and my experiment was what triggered us coming here. But I did not bring us here."

"What do you mean?"

"The boy," Reed whispered, his voice dropped to the point where Picard and Beverley had to lean forward to hear. "Your son," he added, nodding to Beverly. "I said that I was looking for more like me, and I found one. Wesley is a Traveller captain. He is possibly even more powerful than I am... And he will come into his power soon enough. Sooner if you encourage it. He's already becoming aware of the fact that his perception of things is different from that of everyone else around him. He has potentially beyond your wildest dreams if you choose to let him find it..."


A boy. An innocent who was just starting to understand how different he was. Someone who could send a ship across different realms by sheer willpower. Someone who, in the eyes of Trab and any number of people across the Federation would be at worst as guilty as Reed himself, and at best would be a lab rat... Picard left that one after a moment's thought; there was a time to tell, and a time to be silent. He only hoped that the time to tell would become apparent before anything went wrong.