Nog turned back to face Vaughn and Dax. “Three and a half days,” he said.

Before Vaughn issued his final order, he glanced down at the padd on his desk. In the upper right corner of the display, a flashing icon denoted the active link to the ship’s library computer, and in the middle of the screen, a blue progress indicator had almost reached the three-quarters mark. The download of the Vahni data, together with the translation algorithms for their written language, was taking some time.

Vaughn looked back up at the figure of Lieutenant Dax standing across from him. Her soft, round features had drawn into a tense expression, but she wore it well, he thought; the situation warranted concern, and she seemed neither panicked nor unsure, despite the tremendous responsibility being thrust upon her. “If something should happen on the planet,” Vaughn told her, continuing their conversation, “if we’re not back in eighty hours, I want you to take Defiantout of here.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. To her credit, she spoke without hesitation, although Vaughn knew that even the idea of abandoning three of the crew must have troubled her, particularly after the loss of Ensign Roness. It would have bothered any officer. Vaughn had certainly left enough people behind in his career to know that it never got any easier. And sometimes,he thought, you end up leaving yourself behind… or pieces of yourself.

Vaughn stood up and walked around the desk. “Lieutenant,” he said, locking eyes with his first officer, “I want to be very clear about this.” As much as he could, he would ease this burden for her by making this decision now, and not requiring her to make it later. “I don’t want Defianthere even a minute past the deadline I’ve given you. Even if we can’t save the Vahni, we’re at least going to save the crew.”

Dax straightened, her bearing changing subtly. She nodded slowly and seriously, her hands slipping out of sight behind her back. The expression on her face appeared to belong momentarily to somebody else. “I understand,” she said in a voice that also seemed only partially her own. “I won’t wait.”

“Good,” Vaughn said, and he circled back behind his desk again. “Believe me, though,” he went on, “if we can’t stop the next pulse from launching into space, I don’t intend to be on the planet for it. There are buildings still standing down on the surface, but there certainly aren’t any people.”

He leaned to his right and checked the padd again, his fingertips brushing the smooth, glassine desktop. The progress indicator had edged up toward the eighty percent mark, he saw.

“Sir?” Dax said, and now her voice sounded exclusively like her own again. “What about the Vahni Vahltupali? If you can’t stop the pulse on the planet, and we can’t stop it in space, then should we contact them? Should we contact them now and tell them about the situation?”

Vaughn sighed. He had thought about this himself during the past few hours. “My decision would be not to,” he said, sitting back down. “If the next pulse is even as powerful as the last one—and the Vahni records tell us that it will be more powerful—then they have virtually no chance of surviving. At the very least, the quakes that will wrack their planet will decimate their civilization. They don’t have starships, and none could arrive from the Alpha Quadrant in time to evacuate them.”

“So what good would it do to tell them that their society was facing annihilation?” Dax asked rhetorically, answering her original question. She brought her hands out from behind her back and clasped them together in front of her waist. “There would be panic.”

“Panic,” Vaughn agreed, “and fear and sorrow and pain. I see no reason to visit that upon them.” What he did see, though, was an opportunity to further demonstrate his confidence in Dax’s leadership. She had learned a great deal and performed well in the few months since she had chosen to pursue the command path, and his belief in her was tacit in his having assigned her as Defiant’s first officer for this mission to the Gamma Quadrant. At the same time, the Starfleet crew on DS9 were not exactly overburdened with command personnel, a circumstance that had obviously contributed to Dax’s rapid rise to a position of such authority. Vaughn certainly felt her capable, but because of the fast and dramatic increase in her responsibilities, he endeavored to demonstrate his faith in her whenever the chance arose. “If I’m not on Defiantwhen it departs, though,” he told her, “then whether or not to contact the Vahni will be your decision. If we don’t make it back to the ship, the only order I’m binding you to at that time is to get the crew to safety.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“In the meantime, keep Lieutenant Nog and Ensign T’rb focused on finding a means of defeating the pulse in space,” he said. “Maybe if we can’t shut it down at the source, they’ll be able to find some way of dealing with it up here.”

“Both the engineering and science staffs are already working on the problem,” Dax said.

“I know,” Vaughn said. “Defianthas a fine crew.”

Dax nodded her agreement. “One last thing, Captain,” she said. “What about the Sagan?Should I keep a team working on it?” The necessary repairs to the shuttle would still take another five to eight days to complete.

“Yes,” he said after a moment’s thought. “Unless those personnel are specifically needed for the effort to stop the pulse. We’re not that sure of our facts; maybe the energy buildup will start to diminish, or the rate of increase will, and we’ll end up here for more than three days. In that case, the second shuttle might be of some use to us.” Vaughn did not need to dwell on the fact that, once he took Chaffeedown to the planet’s surface, he and the shuttle crew would be isolated from Defiant—and from any assistance, should they require it. Neither communications, sensors, nor the transporter could penetrate the energy in the cloud cover. Lieutenant Dax and Dr. Bashir had already raised concerns about that issue, but Vaughn had quickly decided that whatever potential risk there would be to the shuttle crew was easily offset by the almost certain danger to the Vahni.

“Understood,” Dax acknowledged.

“Is there anything else, Lieutenant?” Vaughn asked.

“No, sir,” she said. “Except…good luck, Captain.”

“And to you, Lieutenant,” Vaughn said. “I know I’m leaving the ship in good hands.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

Dax started for the door, but she stopped when a voice sounded over the comm system. “Ensign ch’Thane to Captain Vaughn.”

Vaughn tapped his combadge. “Go ahead, Ensign,” Vaughn said.

“The shuttle is ready to go,”he reported.

“Very good,” Vaughn said. He glanced down once more at the padd. The progress bar had now passed the eighty-five-percent point. “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes,” he said. “Vaughn out.”

Dax nodded and continued out of the ready room. Vaughn watched her go, the deck’s main port corridor briefly visible beyond her as the door opened and closed. He turned in his chair to the computer interface on his desk. With practiced movements, he quickly accessed the file of sensor readings the probe had recorded at the source of the pulse. Vaughn really had no idea what they would be able to do once they got down there, even if they were able to learn more from a closer examination. The best hope, of course, lay in the notion that the pulse might be the product of a mechanism that could be shut down, or that they could destroy with the shuttle’s phasers. Somehow, Vaughn doubted any solution would turn out to be that simple.

Not for the first time, the prospect of unleashing the phaser cannons and firing a salvo of quantum torpedoes occurred to him. In his mind, he saw the powerful weaponry pounding the planet, the surface collapsing and eventually liquefying amid a hail of light and explosions. But for all they knew, the energy of the phasers and torpedoes—if they could even penetrate the cloud cover and be delivered accurately to their target—might hasten or even strengthen the next pulse.