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Soran glanced up; Picard sat nonchalantly on a nearby rock, and waited until the scientists attention was once again divertedthen tossed a second pebble with the determination of a child skipping stones. This one, too, was repelled by the forcefield.

He looked up to see Soran staring at him with irritation. Dont you have anything better to do?

He said nothing; merely waited once more until Soran returned his gaze to the launcher control panel, then threw another pebble toward the arch.

This one did not miss. The stone struck the sand, then gave a little bounce forward and rolled beneath the arch … inside the forcefield.

Picard did not permit his expression to shift, but looked up casually as the scientist finished his work at the launcher controls.

Soran stepped down from the control panel and gazed smugly at Picard. Sure you wont come with me?

Quite sure.

Soran shrugged, but there was a faint wistful look in his eye. Your choice. Now, if youll excuse me, Captain, I have an appointment with eternity and I dont want to be late.

He turned and began to climb up the scaffolding toward the top of the rock face.

There was no time for further appeals, no time for subterfuge. Picard dropped to the ground, rolled onto his back, and wriggled headfirst beneath the arch. He expelled all the air from his lungs, used his feet and legs to press his body as hard into the sand as he could.

There was little room. He got his head through to the forcefields other side and slipped his shoulders beneath the arch when the field flashed blindingly in front of his chin. The jolt this time was agonizingly intense; as the field crackled, he thrashed involuntarily, then stilled himself, panting, and directed his clearing gaze upward, toward the scaffolding.

A blur of black and white, Soran paused in his climbing.

Picard pushed hard with his feet and slid forward through the sand, but it was too late. Atop the scaffolding, Soran wheeled, then pulled an object from his hip.

A disruptor, Picard realized with a rush of adrenaline.

He tried to roll, tried to wriggle free. But the rock trapped his feet, and held him fast as the world around him once more faded into brilliant, deadly white.

Geordi ran through the corridors of engineering on pure adrenaline. Yet despite the chaos before himthe blur of fleeing bodies, the shouts, the screaming klaxonhe heard nothing but his own ragged breath and the pounding of his heart. His mind seemed detached from his body, which operated on pure instinct; the faster he moved, the more time seemed to slow, the more he became overwhelmed by the sense of unreality.

In his time aboard the Enterprise, he had lived through experiences he could not have anticipated in his wildest flights of fantasy. But in spite of all the drills, of all his preparation for this terrible moment, he had never believed it could happen: never believed that he would ever see the deadly plume of white-hot gas spewing from the warp core, that he would be the last to duck beneath the emergency isolation door as it descended.

His body was cold with fear, but his mind was utterly calm, perceiving each instant with almost unbearable clarity. He saw each millimeter of bulkhead, of deck, each console as he passed with the acute awareness that he would never see it again. He had confronted his own impermanence against a backdrop of darkness, broken only by Sorans soft voice and the ticking of a watch; and he thought himself prepared now for deathbut he was not prepared for the thought that the Enterprise herself was mortal, that engineering, the part of the ship in which he had spent the best years of his life, was about to be destroyed in a blinding millisecond. He remembered suddenly Montgomery Scott, and how the old engineer had once spoken of the grief hed experienced at losing the original Enterprise …

Beyond the stream of moving uniforms in front of him, a buzzer sounded as a second isolation door began slowly