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“Horr, my friend,” he said, “I think you should explain.”

“Affirmation!” said Horr, turning to address its people. “Greeting of joy and sorrow! Fear and surprise! Status: perpetrator location purpose. Betrayal by New Planets Cousins, spaceship slavery-commerce.”

The sleepers began to squeal, all at once, too much for Kirk’s universal translator to keep up with. But Horr kept talking, trying to calm them down.

Eventually, after a few minutes of agitated squealing and gesticulating, the noise level decreased significantly. Horr shuffled back over to Kirk. “James-Kirk-Enterprise. Partial belief/disbelief. Requirement: superior proof.”

How could he convince a group of Farrezzi that they were en route to an alien slave market? A thought occurred to him, and he grabbed Rawlins’s tricorder, tabbing through it until he found what he was looking for: DATASOURCE REPLAY. He selected it, and the device began playing back the UT’s first encounter with the Farrezzi language, from the slavers in the underground chamber. It seemed like ages now. “Play them this,” he said, handing the tricorder to Horr.

The Farrezzi took the tricorder back to the group of Farrezzi. “Horr!” Kirk called after him. “How did you calm them all down so quickly?”

Horr wriggled one of his tentacles. “Experience calm-induction agitation surplus. Specialty: crowds.”

“What did you do before you went to sleep?” Kirk asked.

“Occupation: educator. Specialization: youngchild age-group.”

Apparently Kirk had underestimated the uses of a kindergarten teacher.

“There.” McCoy switched off the dermal regenerator and handed it to Nurse Chapel. “All done.” They had finally finished their treatment of the compound fracture cases.

“Which is good,” Santos said, the most recent addition to his chorus of distracting voices. “Because you’re not getting anywhere finding us a cure.”

McCoy turned to snap at her, but stopped when he remembered Chapel was right there.

“Is something the matter, Doctor?”

McCoy looked back at Chapel, the others forgotten. “Nothing, Nurse. Why?”

“You seem distracted.”

The compound fractures hadn’t been difficult to treat, but Chapel had had to bring his attention back to the patients on more than one occasion. “Just tired, I suppose,” he said. “It’s been a long day and a long night.” It was after 0500. It had been twenty-one hours since he’d reported to sickbay.

“It’s more than that,” Chapel insisted. “I’ve seen you tired, but this—”

The door of the examination room hissed open, and they both turned to see who was coming in now.

It was Lieutenant Uhura and Ensign Padmanabhan with an antigrav cart, on top of which sat a pile of portable computer consoles. They pushed the cart right past him and Chapel.

Uhura stepped over to him. “Doctor, a moment, please.” McCoy followed Uhura through his office into his lab, which was unused at the moment. Padmanabhan began setting up the consoles on the central table, while Uhura started switching them on. “What is this?” McCoy asked.

“This,” said Padmanabhan, pointing, “is a mobile sensor…”

“Ensign,” Uhura snapped.

“Why are you here?” McCoy asked.

“We’re setting up a tertiary control room,” said Uhura, checking the status of each computer.

“What happened to auxiliary control?”

“When the portside computer banks exploded, we were lucky—” Uhura paused.

“Lucky?” McCoy offered.

“The waveform from the explosion bounced back from the other universe.”

“And—” McCoy prompted.

“The backlash established a permanent rupture between the universes,” Padmanabhan said quickly. “The other reality is slowly leaking into ours. The readings I’m getting—I’ve never seen anything like them before! They are simply amazing.”

“Homi…” Uhura took a deep breath. “We got the real-space bubble back up. Our equipment isn’t working around the edges of the ship. These distortions keep on getting stronger even though we’ve shut down any power they can feed on.” Uhura’s voice grew grave. “There must be some force pushing