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“What’s this ‘t’ variable?” Harry asked.

“Thought,” Tom replied simply.

“That’s impossible.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“You have the results right in front of you, Harry!” Tom snapped, rising to replicate some fresh melon to follow his dinner.

Harry read and reread the equations before him. By the time Tom had returned to his seat, Harry had pushed the food in front of him away and begun to modify Tom’s equations into something resembling reality as he knew it.

Finally he muttered, “Dazhat’s Theorem.”

“I beg your pardon,” Tom replied.

“Dazhat was a Cardassian defector,” Harry explained. “He gave a lecture at the Academy just before I graduated.”

“How many people were in the audience?” Tom joked.

“Not many,” Harry conceded. “He had spent most of his life studying the Breen.”

“From a safe distance I hope,” Tom interjected.

“The Breen use organic ships, and are capable of achieving warplike fields without antimatter. He was relegated to a minor role in the Cardassian scientific community because all they were interested in were the weapons that were attached to the ships, but Dazhat believed that the ultimate strength and greatest vulnerability of the Breen might lie in their reliance on the organic component of their ships’ navigation and propulsion systems.”

“And this has exactly what to do with…” Tom began to ask.

“Dazhat detected traces of tetryon particles in the wake of Breen ships going into their version of warp. The Federation has never delved too deeply into the use of tetryon particles because they are so unstable. Dazhat believed that the instability was a result of the interaction between space and time in the presence of tetryons. It wasn’t that the tetryons were unstable, it was that they made space-time unstable.”

For the first time since Harry had mentioned the name Dazhat, Tom was intrigued.

“In concentrated quantities, tetryons actually created curves in space-time reality. The Breen ships weren’t actually moving through space, or subspace as we do. Their propulsion system actually bent space. No one has ever been able to prove this, but his analysis showed that it was theoretically possible.”

“You think these transporters are bending space?” Tom asked.

“I do. And I know why your inorganic experiments aren’t working.”

Now it was Tom’s turn to push his plate of food away.

“Monorhan space can’t be bent to accommodate the tetryon field. We can’t even create a stable warp field in this system. The array seems to be immune to the system’s anomalies, and as long as Voyager is aboard the array, the space inside our ship is too. But no matter how many times you try, you aren’t going to be able to use the array’s alcoves to transport anything from this ship into Monorhan space.”

“But beyond Monorhan space…” Tom began.

“Exactly,” Harry finished his thought.

“But how do we teach a probe to think?” Tom went on. “Even if we can transport something outside the system and track it on our sensors, we still aren’t past the ‘t’ factor.”

“Yes, we are,” Harry said rising. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

Harry and Tom returned to the shuttlebay. Less than twenty minutes later, with a little help from B’Elanna, they had completed their first successful probe transport.

Assylia’s first request after her introduction to Chakotay was that they speak privately. After instructing Seven to create a holographic seating area filled with the low cushions the Monorhans preferred, Chakotay dismissed the other officers and joined the rih-hara-tan in what was for him an extremely uncomfortable half-squatting position on the pillows. Chakotay was relieved to see that she seemed content and surprisingly at ease as she began to pepper him with questions. Although he did not immediately warm to her, her carriage and demeanor demanded that he respect her right off the bat.

“How did this vessel discover the space city?” was her first question.

“One of our crewmen left the ship while we were in orbit around Monorha. He did not