CHAPTER 13

"Computer, run simulation O'Brien Three," O'Brien commanded.

The walls of the holosuite dissolved and the undamaged Probe Preparation Bay appeared. Sisko, Dax and O'Brien stood near the entrance to the Bay.

"Show blast vectors," O'Brien commanded, and blue lines filled the Bay, radiating from a particular location in the Bay, about a meter away from the bench.

"Now, show blast simulation in slow motion," O'Brien commanded. Where the blue lines had converged a yellow-orange ball appeared, about forty centimeters in diameter. As Sisko, Dax and O'Brien watched, the blue lines disappeared, and the ball expended. As the ball encountered an object, it affected the object in some way. When the ball grew to the point that it encountered the bench, the bench broke into pieces and the pieces were hurled toward the deck. When the ball encountered a bulkhead, it pushed the bulkhead outward. When the ball encountered equipment in the Bay, the equipment was wrecked and thrown about.

After about ten seconds, the ball had expanded to fill the Bay, and the simulated explosion was over. Once again, Sisko, Dax and O'Brien were standing on what seemed to be a glass floor, looking at a wrecked Bay with debris strewn about.

"So, that is what we'd expect a blast from that location to do," O'Brien said. "The deformation of the decks and bulkheads is almost exactly what is shown by my readings from Observer."

"So you're confident that you have identified where the explosion took place?" Sisko asked.

O'Brien grinned. "I've learned more than that, sir. Take a look around you. You think you're standing in Observer's Probe Preparation Bay? Well, you're not."

Sisko and Dax exchanged glances.

"Computer," O'Brien announced, "show Probe Preparation Bay from simulation O'Brien Two." The scene abruptly changed. The positions of the decks and bulkheads hardly changed at all.

But the debris inside the Bay had changed a great deal.

O'Brien waved his hands at the wreckage. "This is the debris pattern as it currently exists in Observer. It is different, significantly different, from the debris pattern that would be expected to occur."

Dax wasn't buying it right away. "But in an explosion, things don't exactly go where they're expected to go."

"That's true, but I've run several simulations, and none of them gives me anything like this." O'Brien pointed to a pile of unrecognizable components heaped near a bulkhead, then gestured to a pile that has been blasted into a corner. "Or this. What this suggests to me is that Observer's Probe Preparation Bay was not laid out as shown in the unclassified Summary simulation."

"The simulation was wrong?" Sisko asked.

"Not necessarily. It might show accurately how Surveyor's Bay was laid out. But Observer's arrangement seems to have been somewhat different. For one thing, it appears that Observer's bench was about fifty to seventy centimeters," O'Brien gestured, "in this direction."

"In other words, under the source of the explosion," Dax said.

"Yes. If I'm right about that, then the bench is over here, and this would suggest that the probe exploded while on the bench. And this debris," he pointed to a place on the cratered deck, "would be remnants of the bench; which, according to my scans, it almost certainly is. I mean, see that fragment there? It's unquestionably from the bench; and it's been blown straight downward into the deck, not laterally."

"So, they moved the bench?" Dax asked.

"It looks that way. But that creates another mystery."

"Which is?" Sisko was intrigued.

"If the bench is where I think it is, there wouldn't be enough space to fit the scanning hardware. And if they needed to move their scanner somewhere, I'm not sure where they'd be able to put it. These slots to the Locker, to the launcher, and return from the shuttlecraft, they're all in fixed places and can't be moved or blocked. I mean, they might have tried to fit the scanner on that bulkhead, but that would make it really awkward to move around in here. So I don't know how they had things set up."

Sisko scratched his head. "I suppose I'll have to ask Commissioner Young about that. But I suspect I know what her response will be."

"It's classified," Dax said.

"Yes. Unless, I can make a case that I really need to know. Maybe I can."