The Red King - Michael A. Martin [47]
“To say nothing of the risk of getting us all vaporized because we’ve gone off half-cocked,” Pazlar added. “We’ve already seen the damage the rift’s chaotic energy discharges can do to nearby ships.” Troi heard grumbling coming from Tchev, whose ship and crew had already learned that lesson the hard way, as Pazlar continued. “We need more information before we can do much of anything.”
Vale caught Donatra’s eye. “Speaking of more information, Commander Donatra, I’m curious to hear what your crew has learned about our current, ah, situation. And yours, Captain Tchev.”
“We’ve had little opportunity to do scientific research here,” Dekri said acerbically. “Our ship was incapacitated almost immediately.”
Donatra shook her head. “I’m afraid we’ve uncovered very little data of concrete value either, at least so far.” She turned toward Will and grew more serious. “Other than our scanner readings, which we’ve already transmitted to your staff, everything we’ve learned so far about the Bloom—about the spatial rift, rather—has been rather…metaphysical in nature.”
Jaza looked surprised, and Troi could tell that his curiosity was roused. “Metaphysical?”
Donatra turned and fixed her gaze squarely upon Titan’s sole Neyel guest. “Mr. Frane?”
Frane, who had been studying a tall, red chess piece he had apparently picked up from one of the nearby game boards, returned Donatra’s stare warily, his hooded eyes large.
Setting the piece on the tabletop before him, he looked around the diversely populated room, clearly still overwhelmed by so much alien contact in such a short span of time. Though Troi sensed that her proximity to him was having a calming effect, being called upon to speak was bringing to the fore all of the young man’s intense feelings of trepidation and vulnerability.
His moment of indecision having passed, Frane rose, apparently taking his cue from Jaza, who had remained standing as he oversaw the briefing.
To Jaza, Frane said, “You claim that this…spatial rift is giving birth to a new universe.”
The Bajoran smiled, but shook his head slowly. “Not precisely. Our best hypothesis is that a new universe is emerging from outside the boundaries of this universe—from the same ‘ocean’of de Sitter space on which our own universe ‘floats,’so to speak.”
“De Sitter space?” Donatra asked as the Klingons exchanged blank glances.
“De Sitter space is a meta-etheric medium. A sort of ‘overspace’ that contains this universe, as well as countless others,” Cethente said in clear, crystalline tones. “Federation scientists have named it after the Terran physicist who first hypothesized its existence several centuries ago. At any rate, the rift has become an entry point for a newly formed universe, one that will soon displace a significant volume of this universe as the emerging protouniverse expands and develops.”
“New universe form in this manner all the time, by the way,” Jaza added. “They’re a little bit like bubbles that form in water. They come into being somewhere virtually every nanosecond, expanding countless orders of magnitude as they develop. As they grow, these ‘baby universes’ sometimes pass through portions of our universe, or other universes, depending on a given universe’s particular interactions with de Sitter space. An interspatial rift like the one that brought us here represents such a passing interaction.”
“It’s hard to believe,” Tchev observed, looking at Donatra. “Your mad praetor’s thalaron weapon creates a spatial rift in Romulan space, which just happens to toss our three ships here, along with a new universe, only a few weeks later. That sounds like quite a coincidence.”
Cethente chimed in, as it were. “Not really, Captain Tchev. Not when you consider the subspace topology of this region of our universe in relation to many others. Neyel space is ‘downhill’ from our respective origin points,