“Whatever it is, it looks pretty benign from this far out,” Ezri said after studying the thing in silence for a few minutes.

“I wonder why we didn’t see it sooner,” Bashir said.

Dax stared thoughtfully through the viewport.“Maybe the object’s own subspace distortions are turning the surrounding cometary bodies into a natural cloaking device of some kind.”

“Well, now that we can see the thing, what do you suppose it is?” Bashir repeated.

“The Divine Treasury?” said Nog, his eyes as wide as deflector dishes.

“I certainly hope not,” Bashir said.

“Why’s that?” Ezri wanted to know.

“Well, don’t most Ferengi believe that the Divine Treasury is the first thing they’ll see after dying?”

Nog swallowed hard. “You’re right. I hereby withdraw the comment.”

“Whatever it is,” Ezri said as she glanced at a readout, “it’s about four times bigger than a Galaxy-class starship—at least it is at the moment.”

“I’m not sure I’m following you,” Bashir said. “Are you saying that its sizeis changing?”

Ezri nodded, evidently fascinated by the numbers she saw scrolling past. “As near as I can tell, it’s turning on some sort of interdimensional axis, and different amounts of its mass are peeking through into our universe at different times. It might be a four-dimensional object moving through five spatial dimensions, or it might have an even higher number of macroscopic dimensions. We’re seeing just the shadow it casts in three-dimensional space. And that shadow changes as the thing rotates through higher-dimensional space. We almost flew right into its interdimensional wake.”

“Well, that’s certainly a relief,” Bashir said.

“That we weren’t accidentally swept away into the nth dimension?” Ezri asked, cocking an eyebrow in his direction.

“No.”

“What then?”

He smiled. “It’s one of the conceits of the genetically enhanced, I’m afraid. Unless something is out-and-out incomprehensible, we generally expect to be able to figure it out, and usually rather quickly. So it’s comforting to learn that the thing is an imponderable—like the birth of the Inamuri entity we witnessed shortly after the Defiantentered the Gamma Quadrant.”

Ezri smiled as she returned to her readouts. “I’m not letting you off the hook that easily, Julian. We’ll figure out what this thing is, eventually. The incomprehensible just takes a little longer.”

“Well, we don’t need to know what it is to figure out what it’s doing,” Nog said. “From these sensor readings, it seems pretty clear that this object is the source of all the dimensional distortions we’ve been picking up.”

“Our cosmic concertmaster,” Bashir said, staring appreciatively out the fore viewport at the ever-shifting vista that lay before them. “I wonder how long it’s been out here, waiting for us to come along and discover it?”

“I’ve already started running analyses on the hull materials,” Nog said. “I don’t have anything conclusive yet, but it’s old. Something like half a billion years old.”

Bashir was speechless. Any civilization capable of building such an enigmatic structure had to be far more technologically advanced than the Federation. But why had they built it? And what had become of the builders?

Ezri’s eyes locked with Bashir’s, and he immediately recognized Jadzia’s quirky I-love-a-mysterysmile.

“Like I said, the thing doesn’t look so dangerous now,” she said. “Any objections to my ordering a closeup inspection?”

Since the Defiant’s Gamma Quadrant explorations had begun, there had been times when Bashir had thought it strange to be taking orders from a lieutenant— who also happened to be the woman he loved, as well as Commander Vaughn’s first officer. But more recently he had begun learning to sit back and enjoy the ride.

He grinned at Ezri. “You’re in charge, Lieutenant.”

Ezri grinned back at Bashir before turning toward Nog. “Lieutenant, let’s have at it.”

Nog parked the Saganin a close orbit, only about fifteen kilometers from the nearest part of the continually changing alien structure. Ten minutes of exterior scans revealed that the hull materials did indeed contain a fair amount of gold, platinum, and other precious metals, along with a number of transuranic elements that Bashir had never seen before. And he still had yet to see a precise repetition of any of the weirdly morphing structure’s surface features—which presumably meant that they had yet to see it make an entire revolution on its axis through higher-dimensional space. Though he wasn’t a specialist in higher-dimensional topology, it was obvious to him that the artifact’s surface convolutions had to be incredibly complex.

Bashir found himself pacing back and forth in the cabin behind Ezri and Nog, who busied themselves at the sensor consoles.

What’sinside the bloody thing?

“Keep trying the deep interior scans, Nog,” Ezri said. “And watch the subspace horizon line. We don’t want to get close enough to that thing’s dimensional wake to fall over the edge.”

“Aye, sir. Compensating.” Nog sounded frustrated as he touched various controls. “I just wish this thing’s shifts in mass and gravity were easier to predict.”

“Over the edge?” Bashir said. “I don’t understand.”

Ezri gestured toward one of the cockpit gauges. “I’ve noticed that the object seems to be causing a very slight drain on the Sagan’s power. I’d bet all the raktajinoon Qo’noS that it’s because the energy is dropping off into whatever dimension the object is moving through to get here.”

Bashir didn’t like the sound of that. “Is it dangerous?”

“It’s negligible so far,” Dax said. “But we don’t want to get much closer to it than this, or it might not stay that way.”

“Oh,” Bashir said. He was gaining a deeper appreciation of Jadzia’s expertise in physics. He wondered if Ezri was aware of how easily she had stepped into her predecessor’s scientific boots.

“Are the sensor beams still just bouncing off?” Ezri said.

Nog nodded. “Mostly, though I’m reading several large, empty chambers a short distance beneath the hull. I think I’m reading a residual power source of some kind deep inside, but I can’t be sure. And scans for life signs are inconclusive.”

Bashir suddenly stopped pacing when the idea came to him. “Why don’t we just knock on the front door?” he said quietly.

Ezri turned toward Bashir and looked at him as though he had just sprouted a pair of Andorian antennae.

“Let’s hail them,” Bashir said by way of clarification. “Maybe somebody’s still home.”

After half a billion years, that may be a wee bit optimistic,he thought. Galactic civilizations tended to have life spans lasting centuries or millennia; those capable of enduring for hundreds of millions of years were rare indeed. But, nothing ventured…

After a moment’s consideration, Ezri nodded toward Nog. “I can’t see the harm in that. Lieutenant?”

“Opening hailing frequencies,” Nog said as his fingers moved nimbly across the console. He looked relieved that no one had suggested that they beam inside to take a look around. “Sending greeting messages in all known Gamma Quadrant languages.”

Thirty seconds passed in silence. A minute.

“I don’t think anybody’s home after all, Julian,” Ezri said with a faint I-told-you-sosmile. “Why don’t you contact the Defiant?Tell them we’re on our way back with the data we’ve gathered so far.”

“Aye, Captain,” Bashir said with a deferential nod, then crossed to a subspace transmitter console on the cabin’s port side.

“Charity!” Nog’s exclamation stopped Bashir in his tracks. Ezri looked at the engineer quizzically, evidently unfamiliar with that particular Ferengi vulgarity.

“Excuse me,” Nog said, composing himself. “I think the doctor might have been onto something. Looks like somebody ishome. Or some thing.”