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As he injected it into her arm, she let off a sigh. “Thanks, Doctor.”

“Last one,” said McCoy.

Uhura nodded. “Understood.”

To her right, Singh looked up from his controls. “Lieutenant, we’re set.”

Uhura hit some buttons on his console, watching as readouts popped up on the main screen. “It looks good to me,” she said. “Tell Lieutenant DeSalle that we’re ready to go.”

“Is that real-space bubble working?” asked McCoy.

An eager, high-pitched voice jumped in from the starboard alcove. “Really well!” Ensign Padmanabhan said. “But it’s making it hard to get data on the other universe—we’re overwriting it with ours.”

“Things have stabilized, Doctor,” Uhura said. “We’re going to try to move forward again.”

“Is that wise?” McCoy didn’t particularly fancy plunging into another reality.

“Ensign Padmanabhan had the idea of extending the real-space bubble forward of the ship by a few thousand kilometers,” Uhura said, sounding confident and optimistic. Apparently, the boy’s relentless enthusiasm was contagious. “It should smooth our flight path enough to make travel safe.”

“We’re not going to warp again, are we?”

“No, Doctor,” Singh grumbled. The lieutenant struck McCoy as being uncomfortable with so many people around, filling up the control room. Uncomfortable and tired. Like Uhura, Singh and the others could probably use some stimulants.

“It would be impossible,” Padmanabhan pointed out with surprising fervor. “We can’t use the warp drive—not for propulsion—when we’re using it to make a real-space bubble!”

McCoy injected Singh, who simply humphed in response, and then Padmanabhan, who nearly leapt out of his chair. Maybe the kid was a little too excited to need the stimulants. He made his way back to Uhura. “Is it wise?”

“We get a signal out; everything just bounces back. It’ll be a week before anyone at Starfleet realizes we haven’t reported in.” Uhura took her chair. “It could be a whole month before they can send a starship to investigate.”

“What are the risks?” McCoy asked.

Uhura pursed her lips. “It’ll still be rough, and we’ll still experience some computer problems.”

“A euphemism for explosions?”

“We hope not. It should be like the earlier distortions—a little rough, but not terrible. The computers might flicker, but they should be fine.”

McCoy reflected that Uhura didn’t have a choice. It was this or wait for the ship’s power to dwindle away. So going forward it was, then. “What about my patients?” he asked. “How will it affect them?”

“Have you figured out why they’re ill yet?”

“No,” admitted McCoy reluctantly.

“Then I don’t know,” Uhura said. “I’ve got Padmanabhan focusing on how this affects the ship.”

“These are the lives of five men and women we’re talking about.”

“I have to think about the lives of four hundred. I’m sorry, Doctor.”

This was just more impetus to solve the problem. As if he needed it. “Well, I’d better get back to sickbay.”

He began to leave, but Uhura stopped him, her hand on his arm. “How are you doing?” she asked.

“I told you,” he replied. “I haven’t been making much progress.”

“That’s not what I asked,” she said. “How are you?”

For a moment, McCoy wanted to tell her everything. Tell her that he’d started hearing things and moved on to seeing them. Tell her that he was having conversations with people who weren’t there. Tell her that he had no idea what was happening to him, no idea at all. He smiled but was pretty sure it looked fake. “I’m just tired. But I’ll be fine.”

Karen Seven Deers had seconds. Kologwe was at the helm, with Tra beside her at navigation. Saloniemi sat next to Seven Deers, but he was an anthropologist. It was up to her to restore Columbus’s phasers.

She’d opened an access hatch in the deck to the phaser components. The emitter crystal from a phaser rifle was wired into a slot much too large for it. The connections were sound. Why wasn’t it working? Commander Scott was listing possibilities over her communicator, but with her head still a little woozy, his constant stream