DOPPELGANGER

Doppelgänger Orbit
USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)
Stardate 2261.1

- 0820 hours -

Ensign Rand had a pretty good idea what to expect when she got the security call from sickbay. There weren't, after all, that many things that could go wrong in a sickbay that might require the presence of security officers, and most of those had to do with guests and civilians. Enterprise's only guests, as Rand confirmed on entering the room, was a gaggle of extremely anxious toddlers and pre-teens, crowded around the glass divider between the infirmary section and the surgery suite. Some were sitting in a circle muttering half-remembered prayers, three were penciling good-luck symbols on voodoo dolls, and two were actually presiding over the entire group with stern, authoritarian expressions with AKM rifles slung from their shoulders. It was probably the two armed children that prompted the call for security, not that they were making any threatening actions when Rand walked in. Maybe just the idea of a couple of twelve year olds with machineguns was enough to make the medical staff more than a little nervous; she couldn't really blame them.

Nor could she blame the children either. After all, the closest thing they had to a parent had been in surgery for the last two hours, and that would have been stressful enough even under normal circumstances.

"Miss Rand, good to see you," Doctor Ayash flagged her over as soon as she came in. The children had largely congealed around him like bees around a bowl of honey, seeking any sort of medical reassurance he could give them that their beloved Admiral would be with them again soon. "I was just explaining to our little guests here how poor Miri is going to be up and about very soon."

Rand nodded at the other two security officers, and they both took positions on opposite sides of sickbay, far enough away that they didn't seem to be a threat but close enough that a wide-field phaser stun could immobilize everyone in the room if something went wrong. Rand moved through the middle of the group and remembered that old introduction her gymnastics teacher used to use when she was little, "Good morning, friends! What seems to be the trouble?"

The two kids with the guns - a boy and a girl who looked like they might have been twins - answered dutifully, "Admiral Miri is in surgery, Ma'am," said the boy, "We're here to guard her until she's fully recovered."

Rand could relate. It hadn't been that long since she'd dropped out of college to enlist in Starfleet; she was still young enough to remember what it was like to be a child. "You don't need to guard her from us, do you? I thought we were friends?"

The girl shook her head, "Not from you, but what if the ship gets attacked by aliens?"

Rand smiled, "As I'm sure the Admiral would tell you, since you're on our ship now, defending it is our responsibility and you are our guests. If we were on your fishing boat, you wouldn't want us walking around with our guns all the time, would you?"

"I guess not," the twins exchanged long, confirmatory glances. Then both pointed their rifles at the ceiling, detached the ammunition magazines and cleared the round from the chamber, a set of movements so precise and so well practiced that Rand realized they probably knew those weapons better than she knew her phaser.

"My name's Janice," she said, collecting their ammunition but - respectfully - not their weapons, "Can you tell me your names?"

"Leila," said the boy, pointing to his sister.

"Nabi," said the girl, pointing to her brother.

And suddenly there was a ripple of responses from all around them, voices on top of voices all saying at once:

"Gabriel!"

"Sami."

"My name's Karr."

"Your name's not Karr!"

"Sahib."

"I'm Jasmine."

"No you're not! I'm Jasmine!"

"I'm Ramsi."

"Moshe."

"Peter the Rabbit."

"That's such a stupid name!"

"Peter the Rabbit is a wise name!"

"My name's Forest Gump! People call me Forest Gump!"

"Hold on, now, one at a time," Rand held up her hands, but the kids went straight from barking their names to arguing about what their names actually were. Half of them, evidently, went by pseudonyms that the other half didn't like.

Leila and Nabi silenced it all with a single loud military-style yelp, so fast and so curt that the translator didn't really pick it up. It might have been an obscenity, or maybe just a sharp phoneme the others were trained to follow; either way, the entire room became totally silent, and Leila turned their attention towards something more constructive. "Doctor Ayash says Miri has cancers."

Rand looked at Ayash. The older Doctor nodded, "Doctor McCoy is doing an operation to remove them now. He's very good, you know."

"But what if she bleeds out?" Nabi asked, "Like in TV shows, when they do a operation, sometimes the operation people die."

Ayash stepped back a few paces and pulled a medical kit off the table behind him. He carefully selected several surgical tools and a medical tricorder, and then gestured for Nabi to walk towards him. "I'll show you how easy it is, okay? All of you gather around, you'll want to see this."

The promise of a demonstration was too tempting to resist. In seconds all twenty five children had formed a tight formation around the doctor, and Nabi and Leila were standing in front of him with nervous but excited expressions. "First we use this," Ayash opened the tricorer and took out the scanning head, "It's a little gadget that can see inside you. We can use it to see what's wrong. And you, little Nabi..." Ayash ran the scanning head next to the boy's chin, "Does your tooth hurt?"

Leila answered for him, "He has a bad tooth. It's really painful. Sometimes he wakes me up at night crying like a bit fat baby, always 'aww, aww,'"

Nabi, for his part, just nodded.

"Want me to fix it?"

Nabi shook his head and clenched his jaw shut.

"It won't hurt at all. In fact, it might even tickle."

Nabi grinned, the reluctantly opened his mouth.

Ayash took another scan, then turned the tricorder around so the kids could see, "The machine tells me that Nabi's left bottom molar is dead and it's gotten a little infected. So we're going to do a little operation to fix it."

"An operation?" Nabi looked mortified.

"Yes. Right here."

"Here?"

"Right here. Right now." Ayash took out two surgical tools. Each of them could be mistaken for a simple fountain pen any other day, but Ayash demonstrated the first by using it against the second. "First I'm going to grab it with these forceps here, like this," he aimed the tip of one "pen" at the handle of the second and pushed a button. A faint blue beam sparkled between them, and when Ayash moved his hand, the second tool moved with it, gripped in the air by the implacable force of a short-range tractor beam. "Then I'll take this other tool," he dropped the second pen into his open hand, "And I'll make the tooth wiggly so we can just take it right out. It'll be just like when you were little and you used to get loose teeth."

That didn't seem all that scary. Nabi relaxed, though even he didn't understand how this was supposed to work.

Ayash put both tools down on the table, then before Nabi could ask the question, loaded a hypospray and shot a quick injection into his jaw. Nabi flinched, but before he could even complain Ayash put his hand on the top of the boy's head and aimed the forceps right at the side of his jaw. "Open wide, now."

Nabi opened, and looking straight into his mouth, Ayash adjusted the beam depth until the end of the tractor beam passed through the skin, held it steady until it was poised directly over the offending tooth. Then he locked the beam in place with another button and let it go; the tractor beam held in place, and the forceps hovered in the air, attached to Nabi's jaw by its invisible graviton beam.

"Whoa!" Leila's was the first reaction, followed by amazed gasps and "oohs" and "ahhs" from the kids. It had all the dynamics of a magic trick so far, except for Nabi, who could only get the sense that something really improbable had just happened to the forceps but couldn't tell what.

Ayash took the second "pen" and adjusted it the same way, first toying with the beam depth so the guide beam would pass through the side of the boy's jaw until it was at just the right spot on the offending tooth. When he pressed the second button, the beam passed harmlessly through the side of his cheek and began to slowly ablate the tissues around the tooth, literally vaporizing part of the gum and the root of the infected molar. The widest part of the beam could scoop and cauterize the entire root in a milisecond, much faster than the reaction time of his pain receptors, and once his work was done, Ramsi gently lifted the forceps, moved the now-extracted tooth out of Nabi's open mouth and held it in the air for all to see. "How was that, huh?"

"You mean you just to-" Nabi patted his jaw then suddenly smiled, "My tooth doesn't hurt anymore!"

The rest of the children were equally impressed: "That's cool!"

"I wanna be a doctor when I grow up."

"It's, like, magic!"

"One time, I went to a dentist, and he used a big metal drill with a big-"

"My tooth hurts too!"

"Mine too!"

"Me next!"

"Can you put fangs in my mouth?"

"I want a gold tooth!"

"Excuse me, friends!" Rand shouted from the back of the rapidly-exploding formation, "We can't all get operations! Remember, Miri still has to get her tumors taken out, and that will take some time."

Leila asked, "She'll be okay, won't she?"

"Of course she will," Nabi answered, "It's just like taking out my tooth."

"Right. Now," Rand gestured for them all to stand; half of them did, the other half stood only on seeing their peers stand up. "While we're waiting, how about we head down to the cafeteria and get some ice cream? Anyone want ice cream?"

To Rand's surprise, no one showed much excitement about the idea. Which was briefly confusing, until it occurred to her that most of these kids had grown up in the decay and desperation of a dying planet, and the only ones old enough to remember the pre-calamity times were already living in a war zone. Less than a handful of them had any idea what ice cream was. "Come on, friends," Rand started for the door, "Today is your lucky day."

Leila and Nabi shrugged, and followed her out of sickbay. The others followed Leila and Nabi, and in about half a minute the sickbay was empty of anyone but medical staff and a handful of Starfleet patients.

Ayash breathed a sigh of relief, then tapped the intercom button for the surgical suite as he stared through the glass, "How's the patient, Leonard?"

McCoy - who was, at the moment, beaming a walnut-sized tumor out of Miri's chest with a microtransporter - said without looking up, "Separated from the planet, this all becomes ordinary cancer tissue, and alot of it's gotten into her lungs. It's gonna take more microtrans work than usual."

Ayash looked at the patient, sleeping a dreamless sleep under the gentle coaxing of neural calipers on the operating table. She would never truly know how close she came to degenerating into one of the half-mad abominations she'd been fleeing all her life; even Doctor McCoy didn't care to contemplate it. "How much time do you need?"

McCoy shrugged, "Should have it in another four hours. Why don't you have the kids come back after dinner. She'll be up by then."

- 1859 hours -

Captain Kirk arrived in the conference room exactly five seconds before 1900 hours. He hadn't exactly planned it this way, he had simply underestimated the speed of the turbolift and overestimated the walking distance from the lift station to the conference room, two mistakes that cancelled out magically. Spock, of course, was able to deduce this by the Captain's body language and stride, and it mystified him to the point that he almost greeted him with hostility, "Captain. It is agreeable to see you again." And Spock inwardly wondered about human superstitions and what kind of strange mystical force compelled Kirk to always be at exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

"Yeah, I missed you too, Spock. And happy new year." He took a seat next to the computer console - Spock's reserved station - and searched the faces of the assembled staff. Doctor Marcus was opposite both of them, with the balance of the table occupied by Doctor McCoy, Lieutenant York, Lieutenant Sulu, Ensign Chekov, Lieutenant Bailey, Commander Scott and Lieutenant Uhura. "So what have you found?"

Spock summarized his results as succinctly as he could manage, the relevant information already on the conference room screen. "We have now determined the total age of the planet we have come to call Doppelgänger to be approximately one hundred and sixty five Earth years. The remnant of the humanoid civilization we have encountered came into existence between five and ten years ago, only to be ravaged by a cataclysm that caused widespread mutation and political upheaval approximately eighteen months ago, culminating in the events of today. Current readings indicate the planet will be uninhabitable within six months, totally inert within a year."

Kirk stared at Spock in something like awe, but more subdued than that. It was the face of a man who had just been told his car wouldn't start because of a tribble stuck in the fuel line. "What is your support for that conclusion?"

"Anomalous radiometric and quantum dating results required more detailed analysis of the age of structures and organisms. We determined that certain materials - particularly stones, metals and minerals -showed disproportionate age readings compared to others. Isolating samples from the planet's environment yields still more discrepancies, however a cross-sectional analysis between two clusters of samples, one isolated and the other not, indicates a pattern of chronological disparity. In summation, Captain, this planet is subject to extreme rapid aging."

"We saw this in the cell structure of the reavers," McCoy added, "During mitosis the cells begin to divide normally, but their DNA structures immediately become viral. They form unstable tissues that resemble cancer cells, grown too fast to sustain themselves, so they have to metastasize into surrounding tissues just to keep from disintegrating."

"Similar effects were observed by the inhabitants themselves," said Spock, gesturing to Lieutenant York's report on the monitor, "Our most useful information comes from archival information, amateur videos and news sources compiled by the group of survivors who call themselves 'the Onlies.' This, combined with peripheral information culled from our own field work, captured the rapid disintegration of modern buildings as their supporting structures began to decay at an unbelievable rate. Several independent sources recorded the collapse of the Sears Tower as its load-bearing structure succumbed to rapid oxidation."

"You're saying its things that are accelerated?" Kirk said, "It's not time dilation or any similar phenomenon?"

Spock nodded, "Quantum dating and radiometric dating both depend on the regularity of certain natural processes, either quantum oscillation of g-mesons, or the decay of radioactive elements such as carbon-14. In both cases, the rates of oscillation and decay are accelerated only in surface samples. Most core samples and deep strata specimens remain unaffected."

Kirk nodded slowly, taking this in and accepting it as fact. If Spock had discovered it, no matter how strange it sounded, he knew better than to doubt him. "What could have caused that?"

"Our two competing theories, composed by Doctor Marcus and myself, both assume that that this is a consequence of the technique used in the planet's creation. I believe that this may have been intended by the designers, and that this planet may have been designed to live a short life before destroying itself. For what purpose, I cannot say."

"And Doctor Marcus' theory?" Kirk looked at her coldly, almost as a challenge. Did she have something better than Spock, or was this just a token effort by the resident civilian?

"My theory," Marcus said, "is that these conditions may have resulted from unplanned alien influence. In particular, that Gorn ship in orbit."

"You think the Gorn are responsible for everything that's happening down there?" asked Lieutenant Bailey.

Doctor Marcus shrugged, "Not directly. But based on the information we've collected, the irregularities are most widespread on the North American west coast, close to the Gorn's present fishing grounds. They either did something to the planet that destabilized it, or their very presence is somehow disruptive."

"Doctor Marcus' theory does have merit, Captain," Spock added, "Sensor readings of the Gaza Strip area indicate severe seismic and radioactive anomalies following the departure of our shuttlecraft. The region's atomic clock may have somehow been disrupted by the subspace emissions from our drive systems, in which case even our presence in orbit may be contributing to greater instability."

"Yes, that's an interesting theory, but it doesn't really explain what the hell is wrong with this planet, does it?" Kirk leaned forward, "We've orbited planets before without warping their... atomic clocks, as you put it. Why would it be happening here?"

Spock frowned, "At the risk of stating the obvious, I would say it is because this planet is artificial, and may not be fully formed yet. If it was created through a phased-matter manipulation process similar to our transporters, on a scale this large the planet itself may yet to have completely materialized even a hundred and sixty years after its formation. As with, for example, concrete: it takes a certain amount of time to 'cure.'"

"And the larger the structure," Scotty said, "the longer it takes to cure."

"Precisely. Beaming people or objects, the analogous 'curing' requires a handful of seconds. A planet this size may still be in flux even now."

"So, okay," Kirk rubbed his temples, "The planet is becoming unstable, parts of it are aging too quickly... this explains the mutations?"

"Parts of their cells are aging at accelerated rates, yes. The discrepancy is only a matter of milliseconds, but it is enough to cause mutations and aberrant behaviors. In other cases - those of buildings and artificial structures - the acceleration is more marked. For another example, several days ago we identified an American naval vessel - the USS John McCain - sitting abandoned in its dry dock in San Diego." Spock put an image of that vessel on the viewscreen, showing an orbital image of a rusted but otherwise intact vessel sitting half-collapsed on a giant concrete platform near the shore. "This is the same vessel an hour ago," and this time, the ship was gone; in its place was a pile of reddish soil hundreds of feet high, the results of an iron hull completely decomposed into rust, a process that should otherwise have taken hundreds of years. "Curiously, this phenomenon is not entirely consistent. The USS John C. Stennis, docked only a quarter mile away, remains in relatively good condition, despite being infested with reavers and some of their male counterparts."

"Radiometric data from the rocky mountains," Doctor Marcus added, "Shows a timeslip of almost five thousand years, while the Swiss Alps show almost no timeslip at all. And based on deep strata samples we beamed aboard, the planet's mantle is at least thirty million years older than the crust."

Kirk looked around the table, wondering if this was about to become the Spock and Carol show. "Mister Sulu."

"Sir?"

"Your friend, the Runner. What was his take on all of this?"

"He seemed troubled by the changes the planet was going through. They're not exploring it like we are, but they're definitely curious."

Kirk nodded, then turned to his communications officer, "How about news sources? What did the locals know about all this?"

"The Onlies did a pretty good job of compiling the records, considering their limited resources. The first mention of the mutations seems to coincide with the arrival of a Gorn ship some time in the year 1998, first as conventional but extremely unusual cancer cases, but as these cases increased it lead to the first reports of the Reaver phenomenon in 2000. But even as early as 1996, there are some confused reports of age anomalies, structures weakening in days that are supposed to last for years, reports of airplanes fresh off the assembly line collapsing from metal fatigue..."

"The age distortion is along a pattern of geologic time," Spock added, "the more recently something formed, the less susceptible it is to age distortion. It remains a possibility that the creation of this planet one hundred sixty five years ago was of a ground-up approach, accelerated by degrees in order of which structures took the longest to form. Complex life took less time and was therefore subject to less acceleration. Humanoid life, less time still, same again for intelligence, technology, social structure..."

"But that doesn't explain the mutations," Marcus said, "If this was all according to design, something must have gone wrong."

Spock folded his arms, "This type of rapid development method does not take into account the presence of necessary developmental dead ends, processes and structures that develop slowly, but at a specific time have a large effect on other processes. Many human characteristics, for example, develop slowly over a period of years and undergo final development abruptly at the onset of puberty. To reverse this process - with rapid development of body features followed by extremely slow maturation - evidently results in the extreme distortion of the genotype, resulting in physical deformities and behavioral abnormalities. Now, having said that," Spock lowered his head, "Logically, I must concede the fact that some triggering factor must be responsible even for this."

Kirk stiffened, "Why?"

"It seems evident that the mutagenic cataclysm occurred at a pivotal moment, possibly when the planet neared the completion of its intended form. Something interrupted that completion, and the entire planet began to mutate. The Gorn may have introduced a contaminant, or some other factor we are not aware of."

"So your theory," Kirk said, "is that this planet was created - somehow - a hundred and sixty five years ago. That furthermore, this planet was supposed to become what it was meant to become three years ago, but something interfered. Am I getting all that, Mister Spock?"

"In summation, Captain, yes."

Chekov added, "But isn't it possible the planet did achieve its final form? Think about this: perhaps the planet was only programmed to have a normal evolution up to a certain point, and beyond that point the program terminates and what we're seeing now is the leftovers?"

"Completed, neglected, and fallen into disrepair..." Spock nodded, "That, also, is a possibility."

Kirk said, "But it still leaves us with three basic questions: who created this planet, why did they do it, and how did they do it."

Spock sat up a little, "We are somewhat closer to the how, Captain. Circumstantial evidence suggests massive application of some type of quantum replication technology or similar transporter device on a massive scale..."

"That's still circumstantial. I want something solid. The Federation Council wants to know why, Starfleet wants to know who, and the science ministry wants to know how..." Kirk shot a glance at Doctor Marcus, "and I suspect they already have in mind who they want to replicate the process once how becomes known."

"Or develop their own, inspired by it. And I don't mind telling you, Captain, this entire mission has been pretty damned inspiring."

Doctor McCoy said, "Jim, I've been talking with those kids we beamed up from the surface. Most of them were born after the mutations started, but the two oldest mentioned some things that made my hair stand up. They say that a few years ago there were rumors about an alien invasion in Japan..."

"Speaking of which, Doctor," Kirk asked, "How are they holding up? I'm told a few were injured on the planet."

"They all checked out. Especially Miri, the oldest. I had to remove about five kilograms of tumors, but she'll make a full recovery in a day or so," McCoy turned to Spock, "if we'd gotten to her a few hours later, she'd be eating carrion off the streets by now. Whatever's happening to these people, the effect only lasts as long as they're near the planet."

Kirk nodded. "Sorry to interrupt, go ahead."

"Well," McCoy went on, "I had Scotty and Uhura check the media archives we pulled from Miri's hard drive..." he glanced at Uhura.

"They confirm a slew of UFO sightings in the Pacific region not long before the mutation period," Uhura finished.

"They must have spotted the Gorn," Doctor Marcus said.

"That's what I thought at first, but the most detailed reports describe, and I quote," Uhura pulled up a note file on his palmcomp and red it aloud, "'The total eclipse of the sun by an unknown object other than the moon.'"

"That's a little unsettling..."

Uhura went on, "Yeah, but then I had York compare press releases between real Earth and this Earth. They're identical until the time of that incident, and until the mutations start to manifest there are only three one major discrepancies. Firstly, the entire satellite communications network became totally inoperable, all GPS and communications satellites ceased to function in an instant. It was believed to be related to the eclipse event. But that issue slipped into the background with the second discrepancy: an almost global panic at a certain point when ground observers suddenly noticed the presence of the second moon."

Kirk raised a brow, "Doppelgänger has two moons..."

"Right, but remember that other report mentions the moon. Meaning that prior to that point, the people on this world believed they had a single moon. They didn't seem to notice the second until after that anomalous eclipse event, and after that they observed that both moons were significantly different from the one they..." Uhura hesitated on this point, "The one they landed on in the 60s."

"Did they land on the moon?" Sulu asked, "Constellation's report emphasizes that there were no spacecraft or satellites in orbit of the planet..."

"They seem to remember that they did, but it's unlikely it really happened."

Spock added, "I suspect a certain amount of development time would be required, even if this planet was created instantly in its completed form. The inhabitants were probably programmed with the memories and experiences of real humans of the early twenty first century. The current group of survivors shares no memories in common with any real person, they were all born during or after the onset of decay, yet are not themselves immune to it."

"That's very unsettling," Kirk said, "Replicating a planet is one thing, but replicating an entire society right down to individual memories..."

"Captain," Uhura interrupted, "The third major discrepancy before the mutations comes from an activist group called the Sea Shephards Conservation Society, a group of volunteers opposed to illegal whaling in the Southern Oceans. Those reports indicated the complete disappearance of Humpback whales after that species seemed to be recovering, followed shortly by the disappearance of the entire Minke species."

"How is that significant?" Marcus asked.

"Earth records show the Humpback was hunted to extinction in the 2040s after anti-whaling laws became un-enforceable, and the Minke was never threatened with extinction in the first place. Timeslip aside, this planet is in the equivalent year of about 2009, so they shouldn't be extinct yet. But three days of sensor passes and oceanic probes, there's no sign of the Humpbacks or the Minkes anywhere on the planet."

Commander Scott smiled. Then he faintly laughed.

"Mister Scott?" Spock looked at him sideways.

"Our first candidate for 'why' Mister Spock," Scott said with a grin, "This planet was created because someone in this wide galaxy wanted some whales."

Marcus snorted, "With that kind of technology, they could have just replicated them."

"Yeah. That's exactly what they did." McCoy's eyes twinkled, "Think about it, Spock. We can clone tissues in a laboratory, we can even stimulate them to grow faster, but you still have to incubate those tissues somewhere, and the best incubators always mimic that tissue's natural environment. And if you were to clone an entire species - even if you meant to transplant them elsewhere - wouldn't you want to do it on a planet that most closely resembled its native environment?"

"Especially if one intended to breed clones with natural specimens," Spock nodded, "A very distinct possibility, Doctor."

Kirk turned his chair towards Doctor Marcus, "Okay. That's weird, but it's a possible why. Now are we prepared to speculate as to whom?"

Lieutenant Bailey shrugged, "There are no known aquatic life forms with this kind of technology. The only ones who even come close are the Xindi Aquatics and the Tiburon Covenant and neither of them have the industrial capacity for anything this big."

Sulu asked, "Why an aquatic life form? If they're transplanting whales, they might be cultivating them for food just like the Gorn."

"For that matter," Chekov said, "Maybe the Gorn have created it?"

"We don't know enough about the Gorn, but that's unlikely given what little we know of their technology. As for sustenance... it is possible. If the development period is analogous to germination, then the whales may have been harvested at a time when the planet had sufficiently ripened to remove them from it."

"But apart from the Minkes, they didn't take any other cetacean species," Uhura said, "I checked with the oceanic probes. As best we can tell, they're all accounted for at roughly 2009 numbers..."

Bailey leaned forward, "Captain, can I make a suggestion?"

"By all means, Mister Bailey."

"All this speculation is getting us nowhere. We need solid information from a direct source."

Kirk looked slightly annoyed. "We know that, Mister Bailey. Unfortunately, Mister Spock won't know how to travel though time for another hundred and twenty eight years, so direct observation is out of the question."

Emotional control on the brink, Spock almost rolled his eyes.

"Yes, Sir, I understand... but I think there might be a way."

Kirk tilted his head invitingly, "You have a suggestion, I'm all ears."

"One hundred sixty five years, right Mister Spock?"

"Approximately sixty thousand four hundred and thirty eight days, Lieutenant."

Bailey pretended to understand how or why that was relevant and went on, "From a far enough distance, we could view the creation through a telescope."

Sulu said, "We don't know the exact date of the planet's creation. It would take us weeks of warping back and forth between observation points to figure out the exact moment of creation. Plus, we'd have no way to monitor the progress of the planet..."

"We could arrange for another starship to take remote readings from that distance. Get a before and after shot of what the system looked like one hundred and sixty five years ago."

Kirk glanced towards the computer console. "Spock?"

"There are no Federation vessels in the appropriate range. The closest is the USS Edinburgh, which can be in proper position within two to three months. However, there are a number of foreign organizations in the region we could open communications with. The Breen Confederacy, the Ferengi Alliance, and the Cardassian Union."

"Bregna's probably out of the question," Kirk said, "and we have no diplomatic contact with the Ferengi and I seriously doubt we ever will... what was the third one?"

"The Cardassian Union," Bailey said.

"Never heard of it."

"The starship Achilles made first contact eighteen years ago. They have had good initial relations with the Federation, despite some internal economic problems."

"What sort of problems?"

"Well, they're at a technical level equivalent to late 20th century Earth, except for having recently developed warp drive and some computer technology that's surprisingly advanced even by our standards. Their home world is resource-poor, so most of their space service is geared for energy exploration. They have a few outlying colonies and deep space telescopes, a handful of ships capable of high warp. But their homeworld is relatively close by, less than a hundred parsecs I think."

"That might work." Kirk drummed his fingers on the table, "Uhura, under my authority, contact the Cardassian government, explain the situation to them and offer to share any information we have in exchange for their cooperation."

Uhura squinted at him, "Are we authorized to do that, Sir? I thought this mission was classified?"

"Technically it is, but our five-year mission is public knowledge, isn't it?"

"Good point..."

"So, if they want to send a ship to join the effort, give them my permission."

"Aye, Captain."

"They'll probably divert the Grazine to join us, Captain," Bailey said, "It's their most advanced starship, the only one outfitted for deep space missions. Her top speed is only about warp five, so maybe three weeks to get here if they have a good navigator."

Kirk squinted at him, "Mister Bailey, are you the local expert on Cardassians or have you simply memorized the specs of every primitive space fleet in the quadrant?"

Bailey shrugged, "I was assigned the Draco Quadrant for my thesis, Captain. Cardassia is one of the planets the ancient Bajorans are believed to have colonized."

"Then you'll be our liaison officer when they arrive. Until then," and Kirk addressed it to the entire room, "Continue your analysis, make sure we cover all possible leads before we bring in our partners. Any more questions?" when no one answered after a few moments, Kirk said, "Dismissed."