"How is that possible?" Bok lunged forward to examine the readings on the helm.

"I don't really know, to be honest," Sloe admitted. "But it's definitely happening. There's a temporal variance of point zero four thr-"

"What caused the variance?"

"I'm not sure, but the only thing the program didn't already take into account is the transporter beam when Challenger Challenger s.n.a.t.c.hed the Starfleeters back." s.n.a.t.c.hed the Starfleeters back."

"What exactly does that mean?"

"It means we're not going to the year we should be going to," she said with a shrug.

Bok's eyes flashed dangerously. "What? How late will we be?"

"Actually, not late at all. The variance is dragging us further back back in time." in time."

Bok straightened, excited. "How much further?"

"Several decades at least, but the effect is exponential. The longer it lasts, the further back we'll be going."

"That means, things will be more primitive, but our knowledge will be even further advanced . . ."

Bok relaxed. In fact he felt a thrill of pleasure. "Grak," he said into his communicator, "destroy the Challenger Challenger by whatever means takes your fancy. And farewell, faithful employee. I'm enabling access to your account dated from tomorrow." by whatever means takes your fancy. And farewell, faithful employee. I'm enabling access to your account dated from tomorrow."

Laughing, Bok sat back to enjoy the flight into yesterday.

21.

Scotty and Geordi bolted from the turbolift and onto Challenger Challenger's bridge. Geordi paused only long enough to grab Leah in a tight hug, to which she didn't protest, and then dropped into the seat at ops. "I'll need to know Intrepid Intrepid's precise heading."

"Patching it through now, Geordi," Hunt said.

La Forge glanced at the numbers, then did a double-take. "Hang on a minute, Scotty, these"-he tapped in the numbers he recalled from Intrepid Intrepid's helm, and a different course projecting was generated-"are the coordinates that Intrepid Intrepid was heading for. They've changed." was heading for. They've changed."

Scotty quickly brought up a display of the Intrepid Intrepid's course, and rechecked the numbers. "You're right, Geordi, it has has changed. They're not quite following their projected course in the wormhole." changed. They're not quite following their projected course in the wormhole."

"No, and it's more than that, Scotty. They're not following their programmed programmed course." course."

"They've changed their program?"

"Not a chance. Once it was engaged, there was no way even for Bok to change the program. Which means it must be an external factor that's affecting their course."

"The gravimetric shear?" Qat'qa offered.

"Their program takes the natural forces in the Infinite into account."

Scotty snapped his fingers. "The transporter beam . . ."

"What? How?"

"It's the only other external factor. I don't know how it could have happened, but it has to be something to do with the transporter."

La Forge looked at the course projection on his console, and the spiral loop around the cosmic string for some of its length. "It looks like it made her get a shade closer to the string, which means she'll take longer to come out of the closed timelike curve . . . She'll be further back in the past! Able to make more changes."

"Aye, maybe . . ." Scotty seemed surprisingly sanguine about the whole idea, but La Forge couldn't take it so calmly.

"There's no maybe about it, Scotty. The further back Bok goes, the more time any ripples from the changes he makes will have to take wider effect."

"Only if he can get out of the CTC at a point where he can do enough harm . . ." An evil glint appeared in Scotty's eye.

"What are you talking about?"

"The transporter! If a beamout affected his temporal course, then maybe locking on the annular confinement beam to the Intrepid Intrepid will keep him stuck for even longer." will keep him stuck for even longer."

"That's a pretty thin idea."

"Not at all. We just saw the transporter beam have exactly that effect when we beamed you out."

"Okay, well, it's the only idea we've got anyway."

"That's the spirit, laddie." Scotty frowned. "But we'll need a stable position on the edge of the Infinite, and they won't want to give us that . . ."

"Separate the ship," La Forge said simply.

"Captain," Grak's helmsman called. "Something strange is happening to Challenger Challenger. It's as if she's breaking up."

Grak felt a moment of exultation. This meant a handsome bonus! "Show me!"

A distant, magnified view of the Challenger Challenger appeared in the main viewing tank. The huge saucer that made up the bulk of appeared in the main viewing tank. The huge saucer that made up the bulk of Challenger Challenger was arcing away from the door-wedge form of the secondary hull. Grak's elation vanished in a heartbeat. "Idiot! It's not breaking up, it's separating into two vessels." He had all but forgotten that many Federation starships could perform such a maneuver. was arcing away from the door-wedge form of the secondary hull. Grak's elation vanished in a heartbeat. "Idiot! It's not breaking up, it's separating into two vessels." He had all but forgotten that many Federation starships could perform such a maneuver.

Grak hesitated, watching the stardrive section come about, while the saucer section of the enemy ship rose out of view. Which target should he engage? "Intercept the stardrive section," he ordered. That part of the ship was more powerful, and thus more of a threat, both to his own vessel and to Intrepid Intrepid.

It had been a number of years since he had piloted the Enterprise Enterprise's saucer section on its own, but La Forge still remembered how it was done. "I hope we can trust Tyler to keep that marauder off our backs." Challenger Challenger's XO, Qat'qa, and Nog had been a.s.signed to take control of the stardrive section.

"If anyone can, it's Mister Hunt." Scotty bent over the ops console. "We need to be within transporter range of the Infinite, or at least the wormhole's threshold.

La Forge was already pushing the saucer to full impulse, and trying for a little bit beyond that. The deck was beginning to vibrate slightly as they plunged through the gravimetric distortions radiating from the Infinite. "I can take us to the edge of the wormhole, but I don't dare get too close to its spatial manifold. If we cross that, either we'd be history, or we'd be in in history." history."

"We'd be completely banjaxed," Scotty agreed. "The saucer section doesna have the warp power needed to fly a course around the string and into a CTC."

The battle bridge was smaller than Challenger Challenger's main bridge, and its walls and floor were all bare plastiform and metal surfaces. There was only a single command chair, which Hunt had dropped into. The other consoles were a lot closer together. Overall, the whole room was almost as cramped as the bridge of the Intrepid Intrepid.

Qat'qa could feel the difference between flying the whole ship, and just the stardrive section. Freed both from the ma.s.s of the saucer section, the need to expend energy shielding it, and the tactical implications of the vulnerable civilians aboard it, Challenger Challenger's stardrive section was a leaner and meaner fighting machine, faster and more agile, with power to spare.

Veritable waves of torpedoes were spraying out from the marauder's mandible-like forward section, while the claw-like disruption emitters on her rear section fired lance after lance of searing energy at the Challenger Challenger.

Qat'qa flipped the stardrive section from side to side, neatly dodging the beams, but couldn't quite avoid all of the torpedoes. One exploded against the rear quarter of the port shielding, and the port nacelle flickered. "What the h.e.l.l are you people doing to my engines?" "What the h.e.l.l are you people doing to my engines?" Vol called up from engineering. Vol called up from engineering. "b.l.o.o.d.y philistines! Don't you know these are cla.s.sics?" "b.l.o.o.d.y philistines! Don't you know these are cla.s.sics?"

Hunt ignored him, but couldn't resist a grin. "We need to get in closer," he shouted. "Don't give them time for a torpedo run."

"That sounds like a plan," Qat'qa agreed. She dipped the front end of the stardrive, and ducked under the on-coming marauder. This time, her maneuver was, ironically, too quick. Before anyone knew it, the stardrive section of Challenger Challenger was right under the marauder's bow, and almost literally in its jaws. was right under the marauder's bow, and almost literally in its jaws.

The collision alert sirens exploded into life, and Qat'qa threw the ship into a spin. Tyler Hunt ducked instinctively, even though, intellectually, he knew it wouldn't make a difference.

He was too late, anyway.

There was a tremendous booming sound, and the rear port quarter of the ceiling was plowed clean through by the edge of the marauder's scoop-like forward hull. Nog instinctively gripped his console, hanging on like grim death, and Qat'qa managed to wedge her legs under her flight console, but not without being buffeted backward by the fleeing air. She yelled, a mix of pain and rage, as she fought to stay wedged in her seat, at the risk of having her thighs broken.

Hunt was even less fortunate. Caught in midstep, he was hooked under the armpits by an unraveling cable. Before he could even start to untangle himself, the cable slithered up and away into the blackness, taking the struggling man with it.

"Where's the emergency forcefield?" Qat'qa shouted, barely audible over the scream of outrushing air.

"It's failed!" Nog cried. "Trying for . . . the override!"

Nog hauled himself across the tactical console, trying to reach the emergency override control on the environmental board a few feet away. The ship's ventilation system was pumping breathable air into the bridge as fast as it could, to try to keep the chamber pressurized while a forcefield automatically sealed the breach. With the forcefield not activating, however, the air was a torrent grabbing at Nog and Qat'qa, trying to hurl them out into the void.

Nog could feel himself being prised away from the console, his arms and shoulders aching with the strain as his body was pulled upward. He was acutely aware of the danger of reducing his grip on the console by the tiniest fraction, and his fingers clamped onto the edges of it as if they were trying to dig their way through it. He had to fight the instinctive grip, knowing that if he didn't get the forcefield up soon, then the air supply being pumped in would eventually run out, and they all would die.

With every instinct in his being telling him that the short-term risks outweighed the long-term gains to be made, he forced himself to take the opposite view. It was a choice of speculate to acc.u.mulate, versus certain loss. Spurred by the thought of the latter, he flung himself forward and wrapped his forearm around one corner of the console as his feet left the floor.

Qat'qa was snarling curses as she began to be dragged out of her seat in spite of the way she had braced herself in position. Nog looked across at her, seeing another a.s.set about to be lost. As his head moved, the rushing of air suddenly left a vortex over his left ear, and he could feel something pop inside. It felt as if someone had jammed a spike into the side of his skull, and as if his brain was leaking out.

The back of the helm seat broke with a loud crack, under the leverage that Qat'qa's effort to stay in place was exerting. Suddenly Qat'qa was flying upward, and Nog hurled himself across his console with a scream of frustrated anger, throwing himself bodily at the environmental console, and the forcefield control on it.

As soon as he was moving, he began to rise, as quickly as Qat'qa, and he stabbed an arm out, willing it to stretch far enough, even if it had to take his shoulder with it, to reach the panel.

Cold smooth plastic rapped his knuckles, stinging more than he would have expected, and then he was, mercifully, falling.

He slumped against the environmental console with relief, as Qat'qa slammed to the floor with a m.u.f.fled curse a few feet away. Overhead, the emergency forcefield had finally come on, and blue static was sparkling across the hole in the ceiling.

Nog pulled himself up, to see Qat'qa dart back to the helm seat. "Are you all right?"

She looked back, her expression fevered and wild. "Yes!"

"Where are they?"

"Behind us." She flipped the vessel, and suddenly the marauder's huge, curved engine section was upside down, right in front of Nog's eyes on the main viewer.

Nog had a sudden flash of inspiration. "Vol? Are you all right down there?"

"Ish." He sounded a little shaky and sickly. He sounded a little shaky and sickly.

"Good enough. Can you transfer all our power reserves, and as much drive energy as you can spare, through the main deflector?"

"What, now?"

"Yes, now!" The marauder was already starting to turn.

"All right, you've got it."

Nog saw the energy levels on his tactical console light up with more power than he'd ever seen on a weapon.

He stabbed at the firing control.

The Challenger Challenger's main deflector dish flared up, and speared a solid beam of energy right into the port quarter of the marauder's engine section.

The marauder simply disappeared, exploding into nothingness in a single nova-like flash. A few moments later, pieces of debris rattled what was left of the stardrive section's shields, but this last a.s.sault by the marauder wasn't enough to do any damage. The pieces were too small.

Nog caught his breath and leaned on his console, trying to disguise the fact that he needed it to prop him up. Qat'qa let out a long shuddering breath, and slumped in her seat. "So, which of us is in command now?"

"Good question," Nog admitted. He shrugged. "You know what you need to get the ship back together, so I suggest you just tell me what you want done."

Qat'qa held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. "I'm setting a course to rendezvous with the saucer section."

Scotty was happier than he had been in days, lying on the floor of a transporter pad, his head and shoulders down in the workings of it. Leah knelt next to him, working on the circuitry behind a wall panel. Geordi had dismantled half the console on the other side of the room, and was trying to lock on to the Intrepid, Intrepid, but he sounded frustrated as he worked. "The transporter just doesn't have the range to reach into the Infinite and down the closed timelike curve." but he sounded frustrated as he worked. "The transporter just doesn't have the range to reach into the Infinite and down the closed timelike curve."

Scotty levered himself out of the hatch he was in. "What we need is some kind of booster."

"Transporter pattern enhancers?"

Scotty scoffed at the idea. "What? Just fire them out of the torpedo tubes or something?"

"A shuttle, then? We could use the shuttle's transporter system as a relay?"

"It'd be a suicide mission."

"Actually it'd be a one-way trip, but into the past."

"That's worse," Scotty grumbled. "It'd mean someone else with a chance of changing things. Anyway, a shuttle would never survive the stresses of the Infinite, let alone the trip through the CTC. We need a transporter relay, just like we used to bring Mister Barclay home from the Voyager Voyager fleet for this mission." fleet for this mission."

"You adapted the Pathfinder project to bounce a transporter signal between relays, rather than just compressed data like a holoprogram?" Scotty nodded an affirmative. "And Reg agreed to that?" La Forge was amazed.

"Aye, but he still got beamed through under sedation. Now we need something that can handle a lot of transmission power and bandwidth over a very long range."

"The Romulan probe," Leah said slowly. "It is designed to handle a wide range of transmission bands."

"And it has the range." Scotty agreed. "It's set up to transmit all the way to Romulan s.p.a.ce."

"We can ignore most of the probe's systems anyway. We only need it to support a carrier signal." She jumped to her feet. "I'm on it."

Minutes later, her voice came through in the transporter room. "The probe's ready, and in the tube." "The probe's ready, and in the tube."

"Fire," Scotty ordered, and he imagined he heard a distant thud as the probe was launched.