USS Voyager, Delta Quadrant
Stardate 53328.6

"Captain," said Tuvok as Janeway entered the bridge, "our scans of the cloud's interior came up with some extremely unusual results." He had said it in carefully monitored tones, but nonetheless Janeway, a close friend, could tell that Tuvok found the matter both extremely urgent and incredibly baffling. There was something very, very important about that cloud.

"Can you give me a visual?" Janeway asked. The computer would be able to use the information from the scans to reconstruct the cloud's interior graphically.

"Affirmative," Ensign Harry Kim answered from his position at Ops. "Onscreen."

And on the screen appeared a ship. It was noticeably of Starfleet design, with two warp nacelles and a saucer section, despite significant damage to the hull from the ice cloud. Janeway could still read the writing on the ship's exterior. It read ENTERPRISE NCC-1701. Janeway took a deep breath. This was the USS Enterprise. James T. Kirk's ship. Constitution-class. She looked around the bridge, observed as Paris, Kim, Chakotay, and all her officers stared at the viewscreen image in awe.

"How the hell did it get here?" Janeway asked to herself. "I thought it was destroyed."

"It was," confirmed Tuvok.

Tom Paris, the ship's pilot, turned around at the helm. "Was it? I know that is what they say, but I never found any references to it in the computer's databanks."

"The mission was heavily classified," Tuvok said. "Although, at the time, there was much talk about it."

"Captain Kirk destroyed it to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Klingons," Janeway told her bridge officers. She, of course, was familiar with the saga of the Genesis project.

"Then how did it end up here?"

Janeway sure didn't know. "Tuvok?"

"The Enterprise went through a substantial refit in 2270," Tuvok said. "This Enterprise has these modifications. However, I believe it was also substantially damaged prior to fulfilling its final mission."

Janeway nodded. "Yes, by the USS Reliant."

"The structural damage to the Enterprise is not correlative with damage received in combat with another starship. It is thus to be assumed, until facts prove otherwise, that this Enterprise participated in the 2270 refit but not the battle with the Reliant. Time of transport is thus narrowed to a ten-year time period."

Paris seemed to understand these dates. "During Captain Spock's command."

"You're saying this ship is really from the past?" Janeway asked. She sure hoped not-temporal paradoxes gave her headaches. Yet, despite it, the allure of this legendary ship, from a glorious past, drew her in.

"Logically everything is from the past, since it existed at some prior date. However, to answer your question as you intended it: no, it did not travel to our present from the past through time travel. It appears to have instead traveled back in time almost two hundred thousand years, and then existed in the timestream from that past date until the present."

"Holy seraT," said Paris, undoubtedly using a Klingon ephitet he had learned from Torres. "If the Enterprise was transported back in time before the battle with the Reliant," Chakotay asked, "then why does our history have it existing afterwards?" "Logically," the Vulcan answered, "it would follow that this is not the Enterprise from our history, but a similar ship from an alternate history."

"An Enterprise from an alternate reality?" Janeway asked, incredulous. At least they hadn't come face to face with any major paradoxes, though-yet.

"Exactly, Captain."

Well, at least that explained everything. It wasn't the actual Enterprise, whose presence would create all sorts of temporal paradoxes and problems- problems Janeway would rather not think about-but, instead, one from an alternate reality. It all made perfect sense, and would not be cause for a headache. Janeway was grateful.

Yet there was still a mystery. "Somehow, this alternate Enterprise has passed into our reality. How?"

Tuvok answered. "There is an 87.2 percent chance it traveled through a space-time anomaly, an 11.3 percent chance it was transferred by an advanced, multi-dimensional being with unestablished motives, and a 2.5 percent chance this is some elaborate deception."

Janeway nodded. "We'll take the anomaly as our working hypothesis."

"The transfer of a ship would be a significant discrepancy between realities. It is likely that the anomaly is still active, and in all probability, dangerously unstable."

"Agreed," said Janeway. "Can you locate this anomaly?"

Kim, working the scanner from the Ops console, answered her. "From the data we are receiving from the ship, it is a quantum anomaly, but unanchored in space or time. It could be anywhere in the galaxy right now." Suddenly, Kim worked the controls intently. "But the high levels of tachyon residue make it likely it originated from an anomaly currently manifested three parsecs from here."

"It seems to be our lucky day," said Paris. "Or else we were predestined to find the ship and anomaly," Tuvok pointed out.

Janeway looked at the Vulcan. "Tuvok, please. There's no need to incite a migraine before we know what we're dealing with." Tuvok raised an eyebrow. "Mr. Kim, relay the coordinates to the helm."

"Course set in, Captain," Paris reported from the helm.

"Then let's go, Mr. Paris."