“I’m all over it, sir. Vale out.”

He turned to face Deanna. Taking her hands, he said, “Seems to me we won’t be needed on the bridge until Titanreaches the rift.”

“And how long will that take?” she asked.

He performed a rough calculation in his head. “At least a couple of hours.”

With a sultry smile, she pulled him directly toward the bedroom.

The rift’s most striking feature, Riker thought, was its color. Or rather, its colors.Great loops of energetic orange and iridescent green stretched for hundreds of kilometers from the rift’s invisible core, twisting and entwining themselves about the phenomenon that Donatra had called the Great Bloom. On the bridge’s wide central viewer, Riker could see the sea-green hull of Donatra’s warbird limned in the glow.

“Keep us at station, Mr. Bolaji,” Riker said. “Five hundred klicks from the event horizon.”

“Aye, sir,” replied Chief Axel Bolaji, as he entered a string of commands into the conn station. He was helping fill in for Ensign Lavena while she recuperated in the aquatic environment of her quarters; Lavena had become dangerously dehydrated when her suit had ruptured during the battle over Romulus. “Keeping station.”

“I am still detecting tachyon emissions indicative of a nearby cloaked ship,” said Tuvok, who already looked a good deal healthier than he had during the recent Romulan-Reman skirmish.

“It must be one of Khegh’s ships,” Deanna said.

Riker nodded. “The Klingons certainly would have noticed the Valdoreapproaching us, even if they couldn’t eavesdrop on our conversation with Donatra. And our early departure from Romulus must have made them even more curious.”

“The Klingons must be counting on the rift’s energy discharges to help hide their presence from us,” Vale said. “Lucky for us they underestimated our new sensor nets.”

“There’s a terrific quantity of energy here, Captain,” said Jaza. When he had heard that Titanwas going to get right up close to the rift he had until now been forced to admire from afar, he had come straight to the bridge, insistent upon relieving his gamma-shift counterpart at the science console. “And the intense background radiation signature I’m reading confirms the phenomenon’s probable origin: the detonation of the Scimitar’s thalaron device.”

“Can the sensors image anything at the rift’s center?” Vale asked, seated in the chair at Riker’s immediate right. She seemed as eager as Riker was to avoid dwelling on the thalaron weapon that had killed Data.

“Not yet, Commander,” said Cadet Dakal. “I’m going to increase the gain.” Dakal touched his console, entering a command.

Hell unleashed itself at that precise moment. The placid, glowing tendrils of energy that surrounded the rift’s event horizon suddenly crackled with agitation, like the tentacles of some legendary kraken preparing to strike at its prey. Then the viewscreen was awash in blinding light for an instant, just before the bridge was plunged into absolute stygian darkness.

For a timeless interval, Riker thought he had ceased to exist. The ship’s gravity seemed to have failed along with the lights, and he felt as though he were plunging in freefall through an infinite void.

His command chair grew comfortably solid beneath him, and the sensation of weightless disorientation gradually passed as the dim red emergency lighting kicked in. Alarm klaxons blared. Mercifully, Vale ordered them silenced.

“Ship’s status?” he shouted, then turned to see that everyone was still at their stations, though all present were wide-eyed with surprise. Once again the automatic restraints had activated, and everyone was struggling out of them, Riker himself included. The main viewscreen was working, but displayed only a hash of random static.

After a beat, everyone working on the bridge sounded off. Then, over the intercom, each department head reported in.

“We’ll have power restored in a few minutes, Captain,”Dr. Ra-Havreii reported from the engine room. “I only wish I knew what just happened to us.”

“That makes all of us, Commander,” Riker told Titan’s new, if provisional, chief engineer. “We’ll let you know once we figure it out ourselves.” He turned toward the science console, beside which stood both Jaza and Dakal, the latter of whom appeared to be utterly guilt-stricken. “Any ideas about that, Mr. Jaza?”

The bridge doors slid open before Jaza could answer. Riker turned in time to see Admiral Akaar step out onto the upper level.

Intent on his scanners and monitors, Jaza said, “My best guess is that the rift’s energies somehow interacted with our scanning beams.”

The static that dominated the main viewscreen settled down to the prosaic image of black space, punctuated by countless stars. Riker didn’t recognize any of the constellations. But then, he didn’t expect to, so deep inside Romulan space.

“Meaning what?” Riker asked.

Jaza looked up, his expression mild. “We’ve been drawn over the edge of the rift’s event horizon, Captain.”

“Then—where isthe rift?” Riker asked, gesturing toward the main screen, which stubbornly continued to display nothing but stars and trackless empty space.

Tuvok rose from his tactical station, an almost haunted look on his face. “It appears that the question isn’t where the rifthas gone, Captain. It is where wehave gone.”

Riker was liking this situation less and less. “Meaning?”

“Meaning I have begun running comparisons of the stars in this volume of space with our stellar cartography database. Titanseems to have abruptly shifted position.”

“Shifted,” Riker said, cold fingers of dread clutching at his guts. “Shifted how far?”

“My preliminary estimate is a distance of about two hundred and ten thousand light-years.”

Riker tried to get his mind around that. “That would take us well outside the Milky Way galaxy.” Pointing toward the star-dappled viewscreen, he added, “That hardly looks like intergalactic space.”

Jaza, who had apparently been attempting to check out Tuvok’s findings, straightened up from the console he had been hunched over. “That’s because we seem to be inside one of the Milky Way’s small, irregular satellite galaxies. I’ll want to consult with Lieutenant Pazlar to make sure, but I think we’ve landed smack inside the Small Magellanic Cloud.”

Riker noticed then that Tuvok and Akaar had both turned visibly pale.

“Neyel territory,” Akaar said quietly.

Tuvok nodded. “So it would seem.”

“You two have been here before,” Riker said. He wasn’t asking a question.

“Yes,” Akaar said. “On Excelsior.Over eighty years ago. The Neyel made this place their home centuries ago, long before the Federation came to be.”

“These…Neyel,” said Vale. “Is that what the locals call themselves?”

“Yes,” Tuvok said, impassive but still pale with obvious surprise.

“Humanoid?” Deanna wanted to know.

“More than that, Commander,” Akaar said. “The Neyel are human.”

Riker felt his jaw drop involuntarily, his gaze turning back to the viewscreen. Humans? Out here?

And as Titansailed on through the alien galaxy, her captain wondered what else awaited them among those unfamiliar stars.

THE VOYAGES OF THE

STARSHIP TITAN

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