"Sir, we've got a problem on the Command Deck," said a gangly officer running up behind Riatvin in the corridor. The officer waved his arms. "There are coolant leaks on the main BUS terminals. Sir, nobody can go up there."

Riatvin kept walking. The bright lights flickered in the hallway. Crewmembers passed in groups.

"Sir, we've got to quarantine the entire deck."

Riatvin stopped at the ladder to the Bridge and turned his pale, stern visage to the jabbering underling. "I'm going up."

Five minutes later, Shaw, Razor, and Alice were tripping over themselves in the increasing fog that clouded the bridge.

"We've got to seal those couplings!" Shaw said and almost tripped over his chair.

Razor was banging away under the tactical console. "I'm trying to reroute power to the containment grid."

Shaw laughed and coughed. "You should be getting pretty good at that by now."

Alice tapped the console in rhythmic succession. "I can hold this feed steady for another three minutes. After that, you're going to get a face full of plasma, Razor." She spoke surely. Alice was in her element.

"Navigational readout is a negative," Shaw said and sat at his station. "We've got three minutes before aft thrusters suffocate and start pulling in on the hull."

"I'm feeling a slight vibration here," Razor said. He pushed out from under the console. The hatch behind Shaw's station opened, and Riatvin climbed out.

"So who set my bridge on fire?" he said, sitting in the Captain's chair.

- Commander Bede stood in the center of the bridge on the nearby Phaeton. "I need a status report," he said, shifting his portly figure to adjust his uniform.

His tactical officer went to work, and the rest of the Bridge crew looked at the Daedalus on the view screen puffing a white-blue cloud. The ship listed to its rear, pointing vertical away from its course.

"This is Commander Bede to the Daedalus. Come in Daedalus. Riatvin, what is going on over there?"

The Commander sat back down and bit his lip. "Why aren't they responding?"

"They probably busy, sir," his tactical officer replied. "According to these scans, and judging from the exterior hull damage, they've got about two minutes."

"Two minutes before what?" the Commander asked. His voice was rough and intolerant.

The Daedalus' aft thrusters shimmied from a lack of plasma in their normal feed. Internal sparks from the overworked electrical systems ignited what fuel was left in the lines, sucking out the remaining oxygen. The Phaeton's crew watched as the rear hull of the Daedalus crumpled in on itself like an aluminum can.

- Back on the Daedalus, Razor was pounding at the inner workings under Tactical.

"What's taking so long?" Riatvin asked, not leaving his chair.

Shaw turned to him. "We're trying to get emergency plasma back into the thrusters. If we let it in too fast, we'll lose all power to the rest of the ship, and then they'll probably explode instead of implode."

"I'm letting it back in gradually," Razor said, "but we've got a problem."

Alice pounded the console. "There's air in the pipes."

Razor banged around some more. "No, there's space in the pipes. The ignited plasma sucked out all the air."

Riatvin got up and went to join Alice and Razor. "So what do we have to do?" He stumbled in the fog.

Razor slid out from under the station. "I'm not sure there's anything we can do."

Riatvin hit the wall panel. "Evacuate the ship. I repeat, evacuate the ship as quickly as you can."

"Wait," Shaw said and stood up. He joined the three at the rear of the Bridge. "We can blow oxygen into the pipes and send that plasma back all at once."

"That's exactly what we're not trying to do," Razor said. "You'll blow the ass right off the ship."

Alice shook her head.

"No." Shaw looked at both of them. "There's a waste gate for excess plasma that leads off into the incinerator. The secondary hull."

"Yes," Razor replied, "but that waste gate is made to handle a few quarts of plasma. Not dozens of gallons. And we need to go." He turned to leave, and Shaw grabbed his arm.

Riatvin separated them. "You'll blow up the damned ship."

Shaw went to work at a nearby panel. "In a minute, she's going to blow up anyway."

- A moment later, he was no longer Ensign Leo Shaw. He was a silhouette of a boy in the cold woods at sunset. The wind didn't whisper through the trees. It crackled like a mass of electrons freeing themselves from the static world. The boy could feel the electricity climb up his arms slowly. Then it started to rain, and the water falling through the trees was the sound of a hundred academy students flipping through their textbooks in a cacophonous flutter.

Shaw was sitting in his chair next to Rebecca Baumgartner. He smiled, having remembered her name. The tall professor out front had white hair and only one real arm. Shaw laughed, and the laugh echoed through the empty lecture hall. Everyone was gone: the professor, Rebecca.

Then he was sitting under the stars. There was no forest, but it was dark. The grass felt gooey under Shaw's hands.

"What planet is this?"

Lightning crawled through the starlit sky. It spoke.

"Phaeton to Daedalus."

The lightning disappeared, and a wind kicked up. It also spoke.

"Come on. Let's get him into the shuttle."

Somewhere in the distance, the black sky opened up. Shaw could see a hallway and crewmembers scrambling through.

Another flash of lightning preceded another wisp of wind.

"Daedalus, you are completely vertical."

The opening in the sky beckoned Shaw, but the Ensign turned around to see the woods behind him.

"It's always there." He heard Lisa's matter-of-fact voice. The stars overhead began to disappear, and the last voice wasn't from a crackle or a gust. It welled up from inside Shaw. He felt it vibrate past his heart and into his chest before all went black.

"Daedalus, we're following you in."

- "What the hell have they done?" Commander Bede said. He had watched as the resurgent plasma shot through the Daedalus' rear thrusters. It looked controlled enough, venting into space evenly until a bright orange glow started to emanate like waves around the ship. It blew what appeared to be a hole in space wide open just under the tail of the upright ship.

"Sir, we're getting readings from the other side," one of Bede's officers said from behind. "I'm reading twenty-three outposts, a starbase, and--

Bede turned and looked at him.

"It's a planet, sir. Sivil IV."

Bede started to talk. His shoulders sagged. He couldn't seem to find the right expression.

"Commander Bede, look." The officer pointed at the screen.

The bright, gaping rift sucked the Daedalus down like a tall rock into quicksand.

Bede straightened up. "Report. Is that taking them to Sivil? Are they even going to make it there in one piece?"

"From what I can tell, sir, it's a direct path. No interference. Sensors are showing that rift is like a doorway, not a tunnel. And that is Sivil IV on the other side."

Bede bit the inside of his lip. "I want constant scans and reports. Line us up for entry. Alert the Navaga and Courageous. Then put me through to the Daedalus. We're going to follow them in."

- "Sensors show we're falling into something, sir. But they're badly damaged. I can't tell what it is." Alice's hair was matted to half her face under a layer of sweat. Riatvin grabbed Shaw's feet, and Razor grabbed his shoulders.

"Come on," the Commander said. "Let's get him to the shuttle."

A short burst came through the comm system. "Daedalus, you are completely vertical."

The bulkheads whined and groaned as Riatvin and Razor carried the Ensign down the corridor. Alice followed. Crew members shot past on all sides. Each one repeated the same thing: "There aren't enough shuttles."

Alice grabbed one of them by the lapel. "What do you mean there aren't enough shuttles?"

The crewman pulled his head back away from her. "The implosion blew all the locks on the port quarter. Half of them just floated into space."

She let him go.

Riatvin nodded to Alice. She hit the wall. "Daedalus to Phaeton. Can you read me at all Phaeton?" She looked back at the Commander. "Comm's shot."

"Let's keep going," Razor said. His big body was soaked. His face was red.

The officers continued down the hall when a screech echoed through the hallway. It crescendoed followed by a pop.

"Daedalus, we're following you in."

- "Report."

Bede's tactical officer looked past him to the screen where the Daedalus had fallen halfway into the rift. He coughed. "Admiral Pollard's shuttle has just docked with the Navaga. They're going to hold position here until we send a report from the other side."

Bede nodded and stroked his jaw. The Commander let out the smallest laugh.

"Try to get hold of our outposts near Sivil. Let them know we're coming in hot."