Ezri’s hands became a blur over her console, evoking for Bashir the stories he had heard about Tobin Dax’s facility with card tricks. “The computer is downloading data. Nog, prepare to purge the system if it looks like anything dangerous.”

“Ready.”

“That power source you detected must be keeping a computer system on-line,” Bashir said to Nog.

“Pretty sturdy hardware,” Nog said, looking impressed as he watched strings of indecipherable alien characters march across one of the cockpit monitors, overlaying themselves across a false-color tactical image of the inscrutable spacebar cathedral.

Bashir felt a tingle of apprehension, recalling a report he had read about a similar alien artifact once having seized control of the computers of Starfleet’s flagship.

“How about it, Nog?” he said. “Is it dangerous?”

Nog shook his head. “Nothing executable. Looks to me like it’s just a text file.”

The information abruptly stopped scrolling. Nog punched in a command that shunted the information into a protected memory buffer.

“A whopping hugetext file,” Ezri said. “Nearly eighty megaquads.”

“So what does it say?” Bashir said, his task at the subspace radio console all but forgotten.

Ezri’s expression was a study in fascination. “It could be the sum total of everything this civilization ever learned about science, technology, art, medicine…”

Nog shrugged. “Or it could be a compilation of their culture’s financial transactions.”

Bashir considered the unfamiliar lines and curlicues still visible on the screen. Before him was something that could be the Gamma Quadrant’s equivalent to the Bible or the Koran. Or an ancient municipal telephone directory.

“It could take lifetimes to puzzle it all out,” Dax whispered, apparently to everyone and no one. Bashir found the idea simultaneously exhilarating and heartbreaking.

Staring half a billion years backward into time, Ezri appeared awestruck, no longer the duranium-nerved commander she had been only moments before. Her current aspect struck Bashir as almost childlike.

“Let’s try running some of it through the universal translator,” Bashir said, intruding as gently as possible on Ezri’s scientific woolgathering. “We can probably decipher some of it by comparing it to language groups from other nearby sectors.”

After a moment Ezri nodded. “What he said, Nog,” she said finally, returning to apparent alertness.

An alarm klaxon abruptly shattered the moment. “Collision alert!” Nog shouted, as he manhandled the controls and threw the Saganhard over to port. Bashir had a vague feeling of spinning as he lost his footing, and his head came into blunt contact with the arm of one of the aft seats.

He struggled to his knees, shaking his head to clear it, holding onto the chair arm. He looked up at the main viewport.

The alien cathedral had suddenly sprouted an appendage. Or rather, a long arm, or tower, or spire had just rotated into normal space from whatever interdimensional realm served to hide most of the object’s tremendous bulk.

Though the spire couldn’t have been more than a few meters wide, it was easily tens of kilometers in length. It had no doubt been concealed within the unknowable depths of interdimensional space until that moment.

And it appeared to be rotating directly toward the Saganvery, very quickly. Bashir felt like a fly about to be swatted.

“Nog, evasive maneuvers!” Ezri shouted, her mantle of authority fully restored.

“Power drain’s suddenly gone off the scale, Captain,” Nog said, slamming a fist on the console in frustration. “The helm’s frozen.”

“Looks like we got a little momentum off the thrusters before the power drain increased,” Dax said calmly. “Maybe we’ll get out of this yet.”

Or maybe we’ll drift right into the flyswatter’s path.Bashir clambered into a seat immediately behind the cockpit and started to belt himself in. Then he stopped when the absurdity of the gesture struck him. We’re either getting out of this unscathed, or we’re going to be smashed to pieces.

He rose, crossed to the subspace transmitter, and tried to open a frequency to Defiant.

Only static answered him. He glanced across the cabin at Dax, who was shaking her head. “Subspace channels are jammed. Too much local interference from this thing.”

“Our comm signals must be going the same place as our power,” Nog said.

Into this thing’s interdimensional wake,Bashir thought.

“Brace for impact!” Dax shouted.

The lights dimmed again, then went out entirely, and a brief flash of brilliance followed. Bashir felt a curious pins-and-needles sensation, as though a battalion of Mordian butterflies was performing close-order drill maneuvers on his skin. Darkness returned, and seconds stretched lethargically into nearly half a minute.

Once again, the emergency circuits cast their dim, ruddy glow throughout the cabin. The forward viewport revealed the alien cathedral hanging serenely in the void, its spire no longer visible, its overall shape morphed into even wilder congeries of planes and angles.

Dax heaved a loud sigh. “Our residual momentum must have carried us clear. Couldn’t have missed us by much, though.”

Bashir couldn’t help but vent some relief of his own. “Thank you, Sir Isaac Newton.”

“Ship’s status, Nog?” Dax said.

“Most of our instruments are still down, but our power appears to be returning as we drift away from the object’s wake. We’ve already got some impulse power and at least a little bit of helm control. And the subspace channels are starting to clear up, too.”

For a moment, Bashir felt dizzy. He assumed either the inertial dampers or the gravity plating must have taken some damage.

“What just happened to us?” he said.

“My best guess is we passed right through the edge of the thing’s dimensional wake,” Nog said. “It’s a miracle we weren’t pulled into wherever it’s keeping most of its mass.”

Bashir had trouble tearing his gaze away from the starboard viewport and the weirdly graceful object that slowly turned in the distance. A miracle indeed. That something like this even exists is something of a miracle, I’d say.

For a moment he thought it was a pity that he didn’t believe in miracles.

A burst of static issued from the cockpit comm speakers, then resolved itself into a human voice. “…mei, come in,Sagan. This is Ensign Tenmei.Sagan, do you read?”

“Go ahead, Ensign,” Dax said, frowning. It was immediately obvious that something was wrong aboard the Defiant.

“I’m afraid we’re in need of Dr. Bashir’s services, Lieutenant,”said Tenmei.

“Is someone injured?” Bashir said over Ezri’s shoulder, the alien artifact suddenly forgotten.

“We have wounded aboard, but they’re not ours.”It was Commander Vaughn’s voice, deep and resonant. “They’re guests, and some of them are in pretty rough shape.”

Bashir wasn’t relieved very much by Vaughn’s qualification. Injured people were injured people, and he was a doctor. “Acknowledged, Captain,” he said as he watched Nog launch a subspace beacon.

Good idea. We’re going to need to find our way back here when we have more time.

Dax took the sluggish helm and gently applied power to the impulse engines. “We’re on our way, sir.”

“Too bad the Defiant’s not carrying an EMH,” Dax said to Bashir as they got under way.

“I far prefer flesh-and-blood help in my medical bay,” Bashir said. Strangely, he felt no urge to explain about the mutually antipathetic relationship he shared with Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, the inventor of the emergency medical holograms that were found on so many Starfleet ships these days. In fact, he found that he was no longer in the mood for conversation of any sort. As the alien cathedral dropped rapidly out of sight, he gathered his energies for the triage situation that he presumed lay ahead.