It was the module that had mystified Sisko when he first saw it. Heisenberg allowed him to puzzle over it for several minutes.

“I give up!” Sisko said finally. “What is it?”

“Only the most amazing holotransmitter not yet known to modern technology,” Heisenberg said. “It’s a little bit of transporter technology grafted onto a great deal of communications wizardry. With this, the admiral and her medical team will be able to accompany you on your journey.”

With that Dr. Selar “appeared” at one of the lab consoles. She glanced up at the three of them as if it were they who had appeared in her space and not the other way around.

“How goes it, Selar?” Uhura asked.

“Progressing, Admiral. We have been able to track some samples of the pathogen by sound using wave transmitters, and consequently to increase the accuracy with which we detect mutations.”

“Excellent…I think,” Uhura said. “I’ll get back to you on that. We’re just testing the holotech at the moment.”

“Understood,” Selar said as she shimmered out of sight.

“Holograms,” Sisko shrugged, unimpressed for the first time. “Fun to play with at close range in real time. But impractical for long-range transmission. They’d be detected immediately.”

Heisenberg and Uhura exchanged glances.

“He’s young,” Uhura admitted.

“O ye of little faith…” Heisenberg shook his head. “You did not hear me say what I’m about to say, but SI’s best comm people and I have created a kind of piggy-back technique that rides existing carrier waves and is virtually undetectable.”

“It’s only a prototype,” Uhura explained. “It’ll be decades before it’s standard issue, but what we’ve developed so far will be tested on this mission. You, Tuvok, and Dr. Selar will physically be on the ship inside the Zone, but with the help of Heisenberg’s wizardry, Dr. Crusher and Dr. McCoy will ‘go along’ as consultants. And I’ll be popping in from time to time as well.”

Sisko looked from one to the other of them. They seemed to think this was the most brilliant bit of technology aboard this old ship, but he was still unimpressed.

“I can’t see how that’s going to help,” he began tentatively. “Or how it can go undetected…”

Heisenberg motioned him toward the controls. “Run a diagnostic right now and tell me if you detect any stray transmissions.”

Sisko did as he was told and, not surprisingly, came up with nothing. “Not now, sir. You’ve shut down the transmission to Dr. Selar. There’s no reason why there should be—”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk!” Uhura said as she shimmered out of sight.

“What the—?” was all Sisko could manage.

Heisenberg was chuckling. “You reported to her office, walked together to the pod bay, got in the shuttle and came all the way up here together. Or so you thought.”

Sisko said nothing.

“She’s been walking through the choreography in her office, son. She was never here. And neither am I.”

Now it was Heisenberg’s turn to disappear.

“But…” Sisko suddenly had to sit down, but he wondered, if he did, whether any seemingly solid surface around him might not also disappear. If the entire ship suddenly vanished out from under him at this point, he wouldn’t have been surprised.

“All right, that may have been a little over the top,” he heard Heisenberg’s voice behind him. The old man—or his holo; who could tell anymore?—came toward him, the same smile on his face, the tiny control for the containers still half-concealed in the palm of his hand. “No more tricks, Mr. Sisko, I promise. This is the real me.”

He held out his hand and Sisko shook it.

“The real me has been running this from the forward cabin until now.”

“But Admiral Uhura—?”

“Never left Earth.”

As if on cue, she reappeared, beaming at them both.

Sisko didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath. He let it out now in a great sigh of exasperation. Then he began to laugh.

Heisenberg was fiddling with the holotransmitter. “I think that means we did good,” he told Uhura. He handed Sisko the tiny control unit. “She’s all yours, Lieutenant. Be good to her.”

With that he winked, gave Uhura a sloppy half-salute, and made his jaunty way along the gangway, ducking his head to get through.

There was a long moment of silence as Sisko studied the control in his hand and considered everything he’d just seen. Uhura was so quiet he all but forgot she was there, until he remembered she wasn’t. This comm thing was going to make him dizzy if he thought about it too hard.

Uhura watched him glance up at the deck plating above them, assessing conduits, listening to the old hulk breathe. Finally he found his voice.

“Does she have a name, Admiral? The ship, I mean?”

It was something Uhura hadn’t considered. “Not as far as I know, Lieutenant. Registry’s got her listed by number, but I don’t believe she ever had a name.”

“Well, she does now,” Sisko said with a grin. “I hereby dub her Albatross,because while she’s not exactly hanging around my neck, I know she’s going to come to haunt me. How long can I spend with her before departure?”

Pleased at his enthusiasm, Uhura smiled back. “The away team meets in my office at 0800 tomorrow. You’re set for departure at 0900. I expect you’ll have this bird in shape to fly by then.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

With a spring in his step, grinning like a kid with his first treehouse, Sisko headed for the engine room.

“Numbers,” Koval said. “Give me numbers.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” the voice on the other end protested. “They’re changing literally by the hour; where the seeds have been activated, entire populations are dropping in their tracks. Why are you asking me? The transmitter you gave me doesn’t have that much range; you’ve got access to more accurate numbers than I possibly could.”

“Not the numbers of dead, you fool!” Koval snapped. “The numbers of seedings necessary to achieve critical mass.”

“Oh, forgive me. This thing is getting on my nerves. I thought by now we’d…here…Green Sector, one hundred four, all activated, Blue Sector, forty-one released, eight activated so far. Inside the Zone—”

“Make that forty-two,” Koval said.

“Say again?”

“Forty-two on the Federation side. One little seed has escaped the main pod all by itself and drifted across the Zone without any help from us.”

There followed a long silence.

“Should I be pleased at that information?”

“Considering where it landed, you should be thrilled,” Koval said, then interrupted before the other could speak. “You won’t lose your nerve now, I trust? I have not cared for the tone in your voice of late.”

“I’ll be fine as soon as I can release my data. When can I release my data? If this thing spreads too far, even the medication won’t stop it, and knowing the Federation, they’ll spend months questioning my data until somebody important dies…”

“Are you squeamish?” Koval wondered half to himself. “Does the thought of all that death weigh on your conscience? Or is it just that you’re greedy for all the accolades that will come your way once you announce your cure? Remember, the disease has to have a name first. It has to kill enough people to be seen as a threat before you can offer a cure.”

“How much longer do you intend to let this go on?”

“Don’t question me.” Koval’s voice, never warm, went colder still. One finger hovered over the toggle that would terminate the transmission. “I find it unpleasant. I don’t believe I need to remind you that you don’t want to give me the least bit of unpleasantness.”

“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” Cinchona muttered to himself, forgetting how acute the woman’s hearing was. “If he’d targeted a planetary leader, someone visible. It should be over by now…”

Boralesh paused in her kneading. “What’s that, husband?”

“The universe, my sweet,” he answered quickly. “The universe is against us. Some of us believe that there is an innate rightness in the way things work. That all we have to do is work hard and we will be rewarded for our labor.”