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Far away in the background, outside the emptiness he was in, McCoy could hear Fraser screaming as she spoke. He could hear all of them.

The Nothing and you. Salah’s burly form loomed over McCoy.

“Our options were limited,” McCoy said defensively.

We wanted to get away from the distortions! Bouchard said.

McCoy was determined to find a way out of this for all of them. He sat up on the bed and picked one of the espers—Bouchard—and looked him in the eye. “I’ve had enough of this.” They recoiled from him, surprised by his sudden resolve. “Any doctor knows that there are times you have to confront your pain. There are times you have to grit your teeth and push through it.”

McCoy gave them all a hard look. He thought they understood what he was getting at, because they nodded, despite the agony on their faces.

As one, they opened their mouths, uttering once again a shared scream that overwhelmed his senses. McCoy covered his ears, but he might as well not have bothered. It was impossible to block out the sound. It was everywhere at once—in his mind, in his heart, in his bones.

The entire ship tilted. It happened so quickly that McCoy wasn’t able to grab the bed’s edge in time. He rolled right off the bed, and then his head hit something.

He told himself that this was only an illusion. He’d barely finished the thought when he passed out.

Stardate 4758.4 (0914 hours)

Kirk felt the entire ship slip underneath his feet, the stars whirling in circles in the display. “Mister Chekov, what’s happening?” he shouted.

“Attempting to stabilize, sir!”

Kirk watched as Chekov manipulated the controls, giving occasional orders to Giotto at the next console. The stars stopped swirling and the deck leveled itself out. Kirk let go of the pole he’d been holding on to. “Wormhole effect?” he asked.

“We have run aground into normal space, sir,” said Chekov. “This is very similar to the phenomenon Lieutenant Uhura reported.”

“And the other ship?” There was no sign of it.

“A little bit ahead of us. They did not cut power as fast as we did, and their warp drive suffered greater damage.”

Neophyte space travelers—like the New Planets Cousins—wouldn’t recognize a spatial distortion, and they certainly wouldn’t know how to deal with it. Thankfully Chekov had his wits about him. The captain asked, “How far did we get?”

Giotto hit some buttons. “About a hundred light-seconds.” A new view on the heads-up display showed Farrezz behind them, now nothing more than a bright dot.

“James-Kirk-Enterprise!” Horr shrieked. “Report: engine damage. Functional impairment.”

“The other ship is worse off,” Chekov said. “However… they are resetting their engines.”

“Are they insane?” Giotto asked.

“No,” Kirk said, “just inexperienced. What will that do?”

“If that ship tries to go to warp in these distortions with a damaged warp drive,” Chekov said, “it will be ripped apart.”

Killing thousands of innocent Farrezzi. Kirk needed to stop them, without weapons. He looked back up at the HUD, at the small dot of Farrezz. “How much time do we have?”

“Ten minutes.” Chekov grimaced.

Something was stirring in the back of Kirk’s mind, even as he strained his neck looking at the tiny little planet. “Mister Chekov, can you magnify the planet?”

“Yes, sir.”

The planet grew bigger, with only a slight jitter that told Kirk the computer wasn’t entirely able to compensate for the spinning. “Increase magnification.”

Now the planet took up the entire display, the continents clearly visible under the spotty cloud cover. Many island chains dotted the oceans, where submerged mountain ridges poked through the water’s surface.

“Can you show me the satellites?” Kirk asked.

“That’s a bit more difficult. They’re small, and fast.”

Kirk grinned. “My point exactly.”

McCoy let off an involuntary groan. His body ached all over—he was acutely aware of the number of bumps and bruises it had taken over the past day. What had happened? Everything was still fuzzy.

He was on the deck. Blocking his field of vision was the broad base of a biobed. With what amounted to a