“Newaerth,” Frane said. Troi realized then that he was familiar with the arrangement of oceans and coastlines of this world.

“Our guest,” Donatra said, nodding toward Frane by way of explanation, “would also have us believe that the Great Bloom—the spatial rift—caused a world and its entire system to vanish mere weeks ago. We have trained the Valdore’s long-range sensors on the coordinates Frane provided for this system. Other than a few stray subatomic particles, there’s no evidence that anything at all ever existed there.”

“So where did this image come from?” Tchev asked, gesturing at the blue holographic planet.

His huge hands folded primly on the table before him, Akaar chose that moment to speak. “Mr. Jaza and Lieutenant Pazlar have accessed the long-range mapping data gathered eighty years ago by Excelsior.”He pointed toward the slowly turning blue sphere that hovered over the table. “This image was obtained then. Since that time, this world and its system have indeed disappeared. You may review Excelsior’s detailed survey logs at your leisure.” Seated beside him, Akaar’s former Excelsiorshipmate Tuvok nodded quietly, though his coal-dark eyes remained focused straight ahead.

Donatra shrugged. “Even if we were to accept this incredible story at face value, it would provide us with only one thing: yet another good reason to hasten our departure for Romulan space.”

Troi had to admit that the Romulan commander had just made an excellent point.

“If we understood the mechanics of emerging protouniverses better, I’d say you were right,”Dr. Cethente said, his synthetic, wind-chime-like voice slightly startling Titan’s guests, but only for a moment. “But we don’t currently understand this process very well at all. The damage this protouniverse will cause as it fully forms will no doubt be widespread.”

“Again, a damned good reason to get out of here,” Dekri said. “Now.”

Cethente chuckled, a sound like winter icicles falling from the poinciana trees at Lake Cataria. “And that might also be a fine way to spread that damage back to Romulan space.”

“And perhaps far beyond,” Jaza said.

“How can you possibly know that?” Tchev said, jabbing a thick finger toward the Bajoran. “You don’t witness the births of these so-called ‘protouniverses’ every day.”

“No,” Jaza said, his patient, level tone calming everyone somewhat. “But Starfleet personnel accidentally brought a very similar phenomenon into the Bajor sector from the Gamma Quadrant about ten years ago. That protouniverse threatened to destroy both Deep Space 9 and the Celestial Temp—” He caught himself, and paused for a moment before continuing. “—the Bajoran wormhole, until DS9’s crew safely relocated the phenomenon.”

Dekri threw her hands in the air. “Why don’t we simply do something like that? Transplant this thing. Hook on a couple of tractor beams and drag it back to wherever it came from in the first place.”

“I’m afraid this particular protouniverse is already at far too advanced a stage of development for that approach to work,” Jaza said, shaking his head sadly. “If we were to attempt to move it with a tractor beam, we might well accelerate its spread. Or create another chaotic energy interaction just like the one that brought us all here in the first place.”

“What if we had more power?” Will asked. “Say, the amount of power that could be generated by all of Commander Donatra’s missing ships?”

“That would give us considerably more options,” Jaza said. “With a couple of dozen warp fields operating in tandem, we might be able to coax the protouniverse back across the rift and into the same extradimensional space where it formed in the first place.”

“But we don’t even know where my ships are,” said Donatra. “We might or might not recover them. So unless it would somehow jeopardize our ability to use the rift to return home, we may well have no option other than simply destroying this thing.”

“Good answer,” Tchev grunted. Troi surmised that the Klingon captain took personally the severe damage the rift had inflicted on his ship, and that he wasn’t above taking a bit of revenge. “A brace of Titan’s quantum torpedoes ought to be ideally suited to the task.”

Jaza and Pazlar exchanged worried glances, and the Bajoran then busied himself by restoring the holographic image of the colorful spatial rift, its bright energy tendrils slowly rotating in the space above the center of the conference table in place of the defunct planet.

“Maybe, or maybe not,” Jaza said. Troi noticed that his emotional aura was growing increasingly jangled as he appeared to consider the risks of poking and prodding the phenomenon. “The truth is, we don’t know what effect destroying an emerging protouniverse would have on the rift itself. Or on the space that contains our ships, for that matter. Or even on the space on the Romulan Empire side of the rift. I have to agree with Dr. Cethente—we can’t do anything that might risk taking this thing’s destructive potential back home with us.”

“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 ofthis universe as the emerging protouniverse expands and develops.”