Disclaimer: Paramount owns the universe and all the regular characters, I just play here.

7. More discoveries.

That night, as the stores at the Promenade closed their doors, Elah suggested they go to Lady Roon's shelter to bathe and wash their clothes. The Voyager officers gladly agreed. Their uniforms were made to repel dirt, but they had been wearing them for two days straight.

Lady Roon remembered them. She approached Leena.

"You are the one who's been singing, right?"

"Yes," Leena nodded.

"Why don't you come here on Ramvenday. The Promenade will be closed and many people will be in all day. I won't be able to offer you much, but you can all eat here and I won't charge you for the washing," Lady Roon said.

Leena agreed -they could use anything they could get.

After they had washed up, they walked back to the Pass. Set joined them there.

"I found a good power unit. They want 950 for it, but I can get it for as little as 800," he told them.

That was still a lot, considering they only made about 70 each day, and they had to eat from that, too. Still, they were going to need that power unit. It would take them several weeks to raise the funds.

After dinner, Chakotay brought Kim and Leena up to date on what he had found out that day.

"I found exactly how far we have to go back in time. With the power unit we can get the transporter working, but we'll have to make exact calculations," he told them.

Leena took her time studying the tricorder readings. "I think I can adjust the time within minutes, but I would like to get a look at the transporter before we make the actual attempt, so I know what to expect. From what I understand, the Museum staff is not going to be co-operative in this, so we might not have much time when we do go in to make final adjustments."

Chakotay nodded. He didn't like her loosing a day of income, as he really wanted to get the funds together as soon as possible, but he knew she was right. He'd already planned on doing some scouting on the security of the Museum, himself. It looked as if they would have to break in at night. Fortunately, there didn't seem to be a high frequency of break-ins on this planet, and most buildings did not seem to have sophisticated security systems.  He didn't like planning a break-in on this quiet planet, but Set and Elah had made it clear that they wouldn't get permission to use the transporter to tamper with time, even if it was really only undoing the tampering they had done accidentally.

"Okay. Go to the Museum tomorrow, and take Set to keep the guards busy. Neither Elah nor me should go again if we don't have to. And borrow some clothes from En or someone -they might notice two people in similar uniforms taking interest in the transporter."

"Understood. We will go as soon as the Museum opens. I'll gather all information I need, and return to the Promenade as soon as I can," Leena said. She, too, wanted to get back to Voyager as soon as possible. They had found shelter here, but it was far from warm and comfortable.

Leena stood and walked over to one of the other fires, where En and a couple of other women were sitting, to arrange for clothes.

Chakotay selected one of several pieces of wood he had collected earlier that day, and started carving it with a knife set had dug up for him.

Kim had seen Chakotay's work before, but Leena was surprised when she returned with the clothes she needed for her mission to the Museum the next day. She was hesitant about asking the Commander about it, even after their talk yesterday evening. For some time she watched as the head of a wolf took shape under his hands. Finally, she did comment.

"That is very beautiful."

Chakotay looked up, surprised. "You like it?"

"Yes," Leena said. She added, "I didn't know you did wood carving."

"I didn't know you could sing," Chakotay said.

Leena heard the deeper question in his words. "Cardassians have art, too. My mother was a professional singer."

Chakotay reflected on that. He realised how little he knew about Cardassian society, apart from military intelligence.

"On Cardassia?" he asked.

Leena nodded. "Oh, she isn't famous or anything. I doubt anyone in the Federation would have heard of her even if the Cardassian society was more open. She was well liked in the regio, though."

She fell silent and stared into the fire. After a while she spoke again.

"I guess the Federation knows even less about Cardassian civilian life than we do about the Federation."

Kim only now realised how true that statement was. He'd spoken frequently with Leena over the past six months, but he'd never heard her speak of her family, even when others spoke about theirs. This was the first time she mentioned anything about her life on her home planet.

"What does your father do?" he asked.

"He's a civilian scientist," Leena said. And, as she had started to tell of home, she felt easier about continuing. "My mother would've liked me to stay on Cardassia, my family does not have a military history. But I looked at my father, how he got to study those things the military and the Order pre-selected for him... I knew if I wanted to get into the important work, have a chance to make some real discoveries, I would have to join up and go off planet. My father knew he only gets to work on what the military tells him to, and he understood. I don't know that my mother ever did."

Chakotay had stopped carving to listen to her. "You miss them.," he said.

"Yes," Leena simply said.

"We will get back, you will see them again." Kim knew he was saying it to reassure himself as much as her. But Leena shook her head slowly.

"My father, perhaps. My mother... She was sick with Tenaf's Disease when I left Cardassia. There is no cure. She would not have lived more than a few months after the Stavos disappeared."

"I'm sorry," Kim said.

"That is why you never sung on Voyager," Chakotay realised.

Leena nodded. "It would have been hard to explain. Too many people who never realised there even was such a thing as singing, or dancing, or painting, on Cardassia. Too many memories to want to explain it to 140 people."

"Yet you started to sing here," Kim said.

Leena shrugged. "It was the only thing I could think of. Besides, it has been two years." She said it lightly. "Time heals all wounds."

"Time alone won't do it."

It was Leena's turn to jump at En's voice. *Is she going to drop in on every conversation we have?* she felt herself thinking.

"Time helps, but you have to heal your own wounds. If you don't deal with them, they stay. Time can make it easier to deal with them, that is all."

Leena stared into the fire and realised En was right. She would've had to talk about it eventually, to deal with it. She glanced at Chakotay, sitting across from her. Perhaps some good would come out of them getting stranded here like this. If they could get back to Voyager, of course.

The next morning Leena and Set left early for the Museum. They went in, and Leena took her time scouting out the transporter and the room it was kept in. Still, she was back at midday. She was feeling pretty good, confident she could hook up a power unit and make precise adjustments without any problems. Of course, there would be no way to test their final settings; any object they would normally use to send through first would end up in the past with no way of telling if it got there, and at exactly what time. And if they were only a little bit off, they might be stranded here forever, on a planet where the next ship was due in 69 years. She cut off that line of thought abruptly. The controls would allow for precise adjustment, and their calculations would just have to be correct.

She'd also discovered something else, and this she had to discuss with the Commander, as she did not know if it was anything they would be allowed to tell Set and Elah. When the three Voyager officers walked to the Pass that night, she brought it up.

"Commander, I think I know what caused the time rifts. Comparing this transporter in the Museum with the one on Voyager, I think I found a way to eliminate the effect."

Chakotay looked at her. "You found what the scientists of this planet couldn't discover in all this time?"

"It would be really hard to find working with just one of the transporters. I don't think we could've found what exactly causes the time travel on Voyager, with the whole ship's computer at our disposal, if we didn't know about this transporter here. But the transporters are very much alike, and with the schematics of both of them, knowing they create the opposite effect, it becomes obvious."

She showed Chakotay the schematics on her tricorder.

"A few adjustments in the pattern particle phase beam is all it would take. Adjust it up or down until the effect is zero."

Chakotay took it all in. It certainly looked as if it would work. It was as Leena had said, almost ridiculously simple when you had all the information, and almost impossible to hit upon when looking at just half the picture. The problem was, what could they do with this information. Could they tell Elah? Or was this a case of the Prime Directive? He knew that as the leader of the away team, the decision would be his. But he knew the value of discussing these kind of dilemmas with the others, and hearing their suggestions. He asked them.

"On any other planet they would've had transporters for years," Leena said. "But here they might never develop them any further without help."

"They aren't even native to this planet. They colonised it. So it is not like it is natural for them to live with this problem in the first place," Kim argued. "I say we show them our findings."

Chakotay nodded. That was what he had wanted to do. He still valued his team members' opinions. The one question that remained was how this knowledge could affect their return to their own time.

"If we make this knowledge public, we might not be able to get access to the transporter anymore, at least not for a very long time," he said.

"We can talk to Elah about it. He will be able to follow the technical explanation, and he can also tell us what to expect if we bring this out in the open," Leena suggested.

"Agreed," Chakotay said.

That night, they told Elah. He studied the tricorder read-outs in detail. When he spoke, his voice was calm, but his eyes glittered.

"With this, we'll be able to transport safely. This will mean a great deal to our society." He looked at them and came to the same conclusion they had. "We'll have to get you guys back first, though. Once this gets in the news, you'll never be able to gain access to the one in the Museum again."

"You do not think they'll let us use it to get back, even with this new information?" Chakotay asked.

Elah shook his head. "No, I don't think so. They are very strict about time travel, this won't change that. We've waited for fifty years for a working transporter, a few more weeks will not make a difference."

Chakotay looked at the man sitting across from him. "Thank you," he said.

Elah looked at the Pass, then turned back to Chakotay. "You have a home. Just make sure you get back to it."

Chakotay nodded. "I intend to."