29

The complex of buildings slumped across the landscape in disrepair, but still remained standing—everywhere but at its center. There, in a circle roughly a hundred meters in diameter, no hint of a structure existed. Instead, only a gray darkness endured—darkness, and energy.

Nog looked away from the aerial view of the complex on one monitor and over to the accompanying sensor data on another. He reviewed the limited information for the I don’t know how many times,he thought, and realized that he was not going to reach a conclusion different from the one he had already drawn. He peered over at Shar, who stood beside him in the aft section of the bridge, and saw a somber expression on his friend’s face. Although Nog would certainly characterize Shar as a serious individual, the Andorian often wore a smile—as a means of both blending in and warding off unwanted attention, Nog suspected. But serious or not, smiling or not, Shar usually maintained a steady manner, neither upbeat nor down. Since they had departed Deep Space 9, though, Nog had noticed his friend keeping almost completely to himself—not an easy feat, considering that the two shared their cramped quarters. Shar had brightened during the contact with the Vahni Vahltupali, but right now, though Nog doubted anybody else on board would be able to tell, Shar seemed terribly low. And with what the sensor readings from the probe had revealed, Nog could not really blame him.

Shar did not look up at Nog, but continued to study the contents of a padd in his hands. Nog looked to his right, at the rest of the bridge. The sounds of voices and consoles filled the air, an aural mixture not unlike that in Uncle Quark’s bar, he thought—except that the voices in the bar did not often talk about sensor readings, and the beeps and tones of consoles substituted here for the clatter of the dabo wheel. Around the bridge, Nog saw several pairs of crewpeople in conversation: Merimark and Rahim at the tactical console, Cassini and T’rb at sciences, and Vaughn and Dax near the main viewscreen. Nog was sure that, like himself and Shar, they were all discussing or analyzing the data they had finally collected from the planet.

The second probe had successfully negotiated the break in the clouds, and then circled the planet at relatively low altitude, flying as far below the atmospheric cover as reasonable. While the probe had been scanning the surface, the breaks in the clouds had been swept closed, but others had appeared this morning, allowing it to find its way back into space. During its ascent, it had been impacted by an energy surge, but it had survived the incident and returned to Defiant.

Nog turned back to the monitors set into the aft bulkhead. The sensor scans of the planet showed an industrial civilization, but in ruins. There were no life signs beyond those of flora; enough sunlight apparently penetrated the gray sea of clouds to allow plants to survive on the surface. The most important information the probe had gathered, though, concerned the site that Shar had identified as the source of the pulse. Scans had failed to discern anything about the building complex there due to the energy readings at its center, but the energy readings themselves had proven critical in Nog’s analysis. In the hour that the probe had spent circling above the complex and harvesting data, the energy level had increased at a consistent rate—and that had brought Nog to his conclusion.

He peered over at Shar again. “What do you think?” he asked. Shar looked up from the padd. His antennae had a particular crook to them, a certain…attitude. Over time, Nog had learned to read Shar’s mood, at least sometimes, by the position of his antennae. And what he saw now told him that Shar had reached the same troubling conclusion that he had. A moment later, Shar answered Nog’s question and confirmed that suspicion.

“I’ll go get the captain,” Nog said. He walked along the starboard side of the bridge—past Merimark and Rahim at tactical, and Senkowski at the engineering station—and up to Commander Vaughn and Lieutenant Dax standing near the starboard side of the viewscreen. Beyond them, the dead planet hung in space, shrouded in its gray pall. Vaughn and Dax both looked over at him as he walked up.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” Vaughn said.

“Captain,” Nog said, “Ensign ch’Thane and I would like to speak with you; we’ve completed our analyses.” Vaughn gave a short, quick nod, and gestured toward the aft section of the bridge. Nog turned and led the way back, with Vaughn and Dax following. Shar looked up from the padd again as the group approached.

Nog pointed to the monitor displaying the building complex. “As you know,” he said, addressing Vaughn and Dax, “this is where we believe the pulse originated. Specifically, here.” He tapped the center of the screen, indicating the great, shadowy circle at the heart of the buildings. “Because of the energy readings in this area—” Nog worked the controls below the second monitor, searching for the data that would illustrate his words. He found it and pointed it out to Commander Vaughn. “You can see from these scans,” Nog said, “that interference from the energy prevented the sensors from picking up anything for kilometers around the complex.” Vaughn and Dax both nodded.

“Can you tell if the energy is a natural phenomenon,” Vaughn asked, “or artificial?”

Nog looked over to Shar, who said, “No, we can’t.” The science officer reached up to the monitor and traced a circle along the boundary between the complex and the gray patch. “Sections of the buildings here appear to have collapsed, which could indicate a natural phenomenon that the builders of the complex were not expecting. But it may be that this is some sort of energy-production facility, and the builders somehow lost control of it.”

“Either way,” Dax said, “whether the energy occurs naturally or artificially, this must be what destroyed the civilization on the planet.”

“Actually, we’re not certain about that,” Nog said. “Scans around the rest of the planet show it to be perfectly habitable—” Shar passed his padd to him, and he passed it to Vaughn. “—and the pulse appears to have emanated outward and upward from the complex, not along the surface.”

“But the planet is devoid of life,” Dax noted.

“That’s true,” Nog agreed, “but we’re just not sure why.”

“Any idea how we might be able to stop the pulses?” Vaughn asked.

“Not yet,” Nog said. “But from the level of the interference with the sensors, we were able to determine the current magnitude of the energy at the site. And the rate at which it’s changing.”

“Changing?” Dax said.

“Yes,” Nog said. “The amount of energy there is increasing considerably.”

“Why?” Vaughn asked.

“We don’t know,” Nog said. “But we can tell that it is increasing at a combinatorial rate.”

“Combinatorial?” Dax said. She sounded shocked, and Nog thought that she clearly understood that such a rate of change was far greater than either a geometric or exponential progression.

“Yes,” Nog said. “And if it continues increasing like that, then the amount of energy there will soon match the amount in the pulse we encountered in the Vahni system.”

“Meaning that another pulse will launch into space,” Vaughn concluded solemnly.

“We think so,” Nog said.

“How long?” Vaughn wanted to know.

Nog glanced over at Shar again, not for scientific support this time, but for moral support. Nog did not want to answer Vaughn’s question, because he did not want the information he had to be true. But he knew that it was.