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“It has not been without its complexities, Lieutenant, though hearing your voice at so propitious a moment is most welcome. Seven of Nine is not with you then?”

“No. She’s working with the locals to figure out what happened to you. So, tell. What happened to you?”

They talked for several more minutes, and though Kaytok considered himself a clever individual, he understood very little of what was discussed. The gist of the conversation was that B’Elanna Torres’s ship was trapped in some kind of cross-dimensional fold and they needed her help not only to coax some dangerous substance out of the engines, but also to fire the shield generator a second time. “By now,” B’Elanna said, “I expect Seven will have altered the shield generator so that it’s more efficient, which means it won’t produce precisely the same wave pattern.”

“Then contact her and tell her to change it back,” a new voice, a woman’s, responded.

“She probably already knows.”

“What?”

“Never mind, Captain. I’ll explain later.”

“So you’re clear on what you need to do?”

“Yes,” B’Elanna said, touching several switches in quick succession and plunging the shuttle back toward the ground. “Shrink the sun. Save the ship. Et cetera.”

“Very good.”

“Is Harry ready to listen to my instructions on how to get trilithium?”

“I’m here, B’Elanna.”

“Harry!” And here B’Elanna broke out into a wide grin. “This is the craziest idea I’ve ever heard! And that includes all of Tom’s!”

“Tell the captain when you see her. Start talking.”

Kaytok had been confused before when they were talking about spatial anomalies, but now B’Elanna and her comrade were on the more familiar terrain of engineering rooted in the real. Well, semi-real. When they began speaking of matter-antimatter mixing technology, they passed into realms Kaytok had never imagined. Listening, the concepts began to seep into his mind and Kaytok began to grasp some small part of what they were discussing. The only way to harness the incredible energies mixing matter and antimatter would unleash was to inject them into a substance with some kind of fourth-dimensional matrix properties. The dilithium they spoke of seemed to be such a substance; however, if the residue of spent dilithium was mixed with other unspecified substances, the product was an explosive compound that could halt atomic processes in a fusion reactor, even a sun.

How can they stand such responsibility? Kaytok wondered, and yet B’Elanna discussed these matters with the same ease he, Kaytok, would bring to…to…to his own work on the shield generator, which many of his countrymen considered an insane, even illicit project. The Monorhan sighed. Judgment would have to be suspended.

“Have you got all that?” B’Elanna asked.

“Yeah, I think,” Harry replied.

“You think?” She threw the shuttle into another sharp banking turn. She had taken the long route to the station in case the Emergency Council was attempting to follow them, but while they had been flying, she had coaxed the main computer into dumping some more analysis and maintenance time into the shields. While they weren’t up to full, they were capable of deflecting a radar signal, which, Kaytok had assured her, was basically what the Monorhans used.

“I’ve got it. Basically, you want me to pump trilithium resin into a magnetic bottle, but first we have to disable most of the sentry systems Starfleet built into the engines to prevent exactly what I’m trying to do.”

“Only one sentry system really.”

“Why only one?” Harry asked.

“Because I disabled all the others months ago.”

Harry did not reply for several seconds, then finally said, “By various hand gestures, the captain has conveyed her desire to speak about this when you’re back on the ship.”

“Well, now I’m motivated.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much. This probably won’t work anyway.”

“Don’t be pessimistic, Harry. I think this is fabulous. Seven loves it. She’s been listening in.” And the weirdest part was that B’Elanna was certain Seven had been listening