"The Vanderhaven Paradox"

[Atoz 77]

THE VANDERHAVEN PARADOX

The lunch crowd was a little sparse today in The Leading Edge, the lounge at the bow of the starship Odysseus. At one of the tables near the big glass-steel portholes, three women in gold and black Ops/Engineering uniforms were sitting together. Lieutenant Moira Blackadar was helping Lieutenant (junior grade) T'Pana study for her level five in Transporter Operations, while Ensign Amelia Penner enjoyed a seafood salad.

"Have you ever beamed someone up without their clothes?" Penner asked, apropos of nothing.

The other two women looked up from their data padds warily. Blackadar merely snorted at the unexpected question. T'Pana raised one eyebrow while she thought about it. "It is possible," the Vulcan replied, "but it would require changing the inorganic override settings on panel four."

"I know it sounds silly," Penner said, blushing a little. "When I was about fourteen, I used to worry about that a lot. I never liked to use transporters if I could help it. I just knew that one day I'd materialize stark naked."

"It is a not uncommon fear among adolescents," T'Pana observed, "to be trapped in a situation in which they are vulnerable or exposed. It reflects their anxiety as they find their place in society."

"That's what Miss Vanderhaven said. She was the school counselor. She told me I just needed to find a sport or activity I was really good at. And as I got more confident, those fears would gradually go away."

"Sounds like good advice," Blackadar said, looking up from her padd.

Penner sighed, lost in nostalgia. "If it hadn't been for her, I probably never would have joined Starfleet."

"What a tragedy that would have been for Starfleet," Blackadar said sadly.

T'Pana looked sharply at the Scot. "Wait. That was... sarcasm?"

"That was hyperbole."

Penner stuck out her tongue at her. While the other two went back to their review questions, she picked at her food, trying to think of another topic of conversation. "Hey guess what today is! Christmas Eve!"

T'Pana frowned with mystification. "And what is the significance of this?"

"'Tis a very old custom on Earth," Blackadar explained. "My old dad still puts up a real, live tree in his pub every year. I didn't know it was celebrated on Luna too."

"Of course it is!" Penner gushed. "Well, my mom and dad did at least. OK, we didn't have an actual tree, but we strung lights and tinsel and had the computer play carols."

"A custom which involves... a live tree," T'Pana said slowly, picking her way uncertainly through a concept which was totally new to her, "lights on a string, tinsel and... carols? Is there some underlying mytho-religious meaning behind it all?"

Blackadar and Penner both looked blank for a second, then the Scot said, "It does roughly coincide with the winter solstice on Earth. I think it originally had something to do with the old year giving way to a new one. It was a time to set aside your obsession with material goods and be glad for the intangible things you have, for family and friends."

"For a kid it was a time of magic," Penner said. "There was a character named Santa Claus who would fly around that night in a sleigh pulled by reindeer..."

"Fly?" interjected T'Pana skeptically. "In a conveyance without wheels drawn by quadrupedal ruminants?"

"Well ye know," said Blackadar impishly, "there was traditionally a lot of alcohol consumed around that time. Ye know how Humans are. Any excuse for a party."

"I guess that was the mythical part," Penner conceded. "Supposedly if you saw him, your wishes would come true."

Just then her comm badge chirped, and a female voice seemed to come out of midair. "Ensign Penner, Petty Officer Collins, report to the transporter room on the double!"

"Ohgod is that the time?" the ensign gasped. "I'm on my way, Mr. Vespis!" Penner could easily imagine the Andorian chief engineer's two antennae wriggling with impatience if she were late. Hurriedly she said goodbye to the other two women, sliding her lunch tray into the disposal unit and racing out the door.

[Atoz 77]

Captain's Log, Stardate 52971.8: The Odysseus is in the outskirts of the dark nebula 27462-465, approaching the unmanned monitoring array in orbit ten million kilometers from a T Tauri variable star. With us is Kaelon scientist Nai Kovolin, who is anxious to try out a new method of stabilizing variable stars. Unfortunately the array is not transmitting, so we will have to send over a repair team before we begin our mission here.


The two transporter beams shimmered and glittered like blue tinsel in the dimly lit maintenance compartment as Ensign Penner and Petty Officer Gordon Collins appeared on the little three-person transport enhancer pad. Since the array had no life support, each of them was dressed in a hostile environment suit and carried a small shoulder bag. Once they were solid, the female officer pressed her suit's comm link. "Penner to Odysseus. Transport acknowledged."

"Listen up," replied the voice of Lt. Commander Vespis. "Sensor scans don't show any appreciable external damage to the array itself, so I doubt it's anything major. The star isn't expected to flare again for three hours, so you've got plenty of time."

"No problem, sir," Penner reassured her. As she clicked off the comm link, Collins stepped off the pad and together the two of them looked around the long, L shaped compartment to get their bearings. "First order of business," Penner said briskly, "is to make sure the housekeeping computer is still working and run the logs. I'll do that while you trace the EPS channels."

"Aye-aye sir," said Collins. As he clomped to the rear of the compartment, Penner took a squarish tablet from her tool bag and plugged it into the monitor console.

"Level one diagnostic says all systems are go," she said after a few moments. "That can't be right. I'm going to try following the path backwards."

"Just a second, Ensign," said the petty officer, doing a sweep with his tricorder. "I've got a hunch." He set the instrument down and opened a panel in the rear of the compartment.

"A hunch?" Penner echoed. The enlisted man was probably nine or ten years older than her, which meant that even though she had gone through the Academy Communications School and therefore knew more theory than he did, he had years more actual experience with comm systems than she did. So anything he said was worth listening to.

"The problem is in the antenna assembly itself," Collins said as he picked up the tricorder again and took a reading. "Yep, here it is. The optical fiber cable from the transmitter to the antenna. Looks like a replication flaw."

"Good catch!" said Penner, and she meant it. He had saved them at least half an hour of level two diagnostics.

"You would have gotten there, sir," he said, grinning. "You just would have had to work your way through the whole checklist first. Sometimes jumping straight to the end works."

The problem would take all of ten minutes to fix. "But the procedure is there for a reason," Penner said. "I still want to run the whole checklist, to make sure we didn't miss anything."

"Ensign," he sighed with a roll of his eyes, "it would just be a waste of time."

Penner nearly replied, "We've got the time to waste," but she bit her tongue. Truth to tell, even though she outranked Collins, she felt a little bit intimidated by him. He had so much more experience, and she didn't want to come off looking like a know-it-all. And Lt. Cmdr. Vespis would be impressed if they could report the problem fixed so quickly.

***

Captain Atoz was slumped back in his command chair on the bridge of the Odysseus, brooding as he watched Dr. Kovolin lean over Ensign Polidoro's shoulder at the engineering console. The Kaelon was stout, dressed in a dark purple body suit. Atoz felt vaguely unsettled to have a civilian poking around his ship, even though he realized there was no good reason to feel that way.

"Latest subspace profile of the star, Captain," said Lt. Cmdr. Diane Weir, stepping down from the Sciences station on his other side and handing him a padd. As he glanced at the screen absently, she took note that his attention wasn't really engaged. "Is something on your mind, sir?" she asked quietly.

Atoz smiled without humor. Trust her to read him like a book. "It just goes against the grain to tamper with nature," he said, looking up from the padd. "Yes, I realize it's only a protostar. No planets, no lifeforms, no ecosystems that are going to be disrupted. But still..."

"I understand your concern, sir," she said. "But if this works, it could not only rejuvenate the Kaelons' dying sun, but also stabilize other variable stars, to say nothing of--"

She was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a beautiful young woman dressed in the flowing gown of a Greek goddess. "Captain, Diane," the hologram said, "I am detecting the onset of an unscheduled flare on the star."

"Thank you, Arachne," said Weir, quickly returning to her station. "Can you put it on screen?"

"Working." The main view screen, which had already been showing the star some ten million kilometers distant, now gave them a close up view, although with its brightness filtered so that they could see it comfortably. The promontory arched out from the surface of the star as they watched, flinging a storm of ions in the starship's direction.

"It looks like it's going to be a category 2," Weir said without looking up from the sensor station. "I'm reading high-energy leptons, X-rays and R-Rays. Impact of the main wavefront in approximately sixty-nine seconds."

The hull of the ship itself would give them a certain amount of protection, but not enough. The repair team on the array was a different matter. Atoz tapped the comm button on his command chair. "Transporter room, beam up the repair team." Then turned forward to the helmsman. "Mister Caeli, engage thrusters. Position the ship in between the flare and the array. And stand by to raise the dorsal shields."

***

"Odysseus to away team," came T'Pana's voice over their comm links. "There is an ion flare heading in our direction. Stand by for transport."

"Acknowledged," said Penner promptly. That was perfect timing! They had just finished repairing the cable and securing the panels again. Closing up their tool kits, she and Collins stepped up onto the enhancer pad.

"The leading edge of the storm is inducing a magnetic variance in the structure of the array," T'Pana said. "It would be better to take you one at a time."

"No sweat, sir," said Collins, as he made as if to step back down off the platform.

Penner bit her lip. She was the officer here, and that made Collins' safety her responsibility. "No, wait." She set down her toolkit and climbed off the platform. "You go first."

"Are you sure, sir? Because--"

"Don't argue with me, crewman." Penner tapped her link as the petty officer got back in his place. "OK, lieutenant. Energize."

She watched as the blue shimmering transporter beam dematerialized Collins and carried him away. As soon as the last traces were gone, she stepped onto the platform herself. "OK my turn," she said, clicking her comm link. "T'Pana? T'Pana, are you there?"

"Where else would I be?" said the cool voice of the Vulcan in her ears. "Locking on. Energizing." Privately she didn't like the way all this anti-lepton interference was causing the A bank synchronization to fluctuate, but the wavefront of the flare was almost upon them and there wasn't time to null the buffers and try again.

T'Pana heard the phase coils whine as she brought in auxiliary circuits to compensate for the interference from the radiation. Petty officer Collins descended from the platform and came to watch, but there was nothing he could do to help. The emitters over the pads flashed in an irregular rhythm as T'Pana rebooted the pattern buffers and let her fingers skim over the sliders. But there was nothing.

"Transporter room?" came Captain Atoz' anxious voice over the comm system. "Do you have them?"

T'Pana was a Vulcan. Whatever feelings were going through her mind, they did not show up in her voice. "I am afraid not, Captain. Ensign Penner's pattern has been lost."

Captain Atoz, on the other hand, was a Human. "What the hell do you mean, her pattern's been lost?" he snapped. "Try again!"

"Impact in five seconds," said Weir and Arachne simultaneously.

Atoz looked up at the bright band of radiation rapidly approaching on the main view screen. It was a bitter pill to swallow. "Raise the shields, Mr. Rosh."

***

After a timeless interval, Penner opened her eyes and saw that she had materialized. But instead of the four familiar walls of the Odysseus' transporter room, she found herself standing on the open platform of a public transport station at a busy city intersection, surrounded by people. And she was stark naked!

[Atoz 77]

Her first thought was that this had to be a nightmare. She recognized the place right away of course. It was Luna! Specifically the square at the intersection of B street and Fourth, in front of Edwin Aldrin High School. Overhead was the white polyduranide dome. There was that hideous sculpture that had been commissioned for Bicentennial. Beyond it, she could see the open gallery that looked out across what used to be the Sea of Tranquility and was now called (since the terraforming project in the early years of the 24th century) Lake Armstrong.

Unfortunately, her situation was painfully real. A couple of dozen people had stopped to gawk and laugh at her, while she hunched up into an embarrassed crouch to cover as much of her as possible. Desperately she looked around for someplace to hide, or failing that at least something to put on. "MISS PENNER!" said a disapproving male voice suddenly. "What do you think you're doing?"

"M-m-mister Arbogast?" Oh great! The Principal! And behind him she could see the faces of Britney, Gina, Kara, all the cool girls, smirking at her. "It's really... um... simple to explain, sir..."

"I suppose you think this is funny?"

"Not as funny as a tribble on a turntable!" It slipped out before she could stop herself, the standard comeback that was all the rage the year she was fourteen. The girls tittered, while Penner gasped at her own audacity.

Mister Arbogast was not amused. "That's one Tardy and one Detention," he said coldly, pulling his epadd from the pocket of his suit jacket as he turned on his heel. "Come along, girls, or you'll be late for class."

The crowd moved on, and Penner was in no hurry to follow them. There was no attendant at the transporter control kiosk – it was one of the automatic models which only allowed beaming between a set menu of preprogrammed destinations. But you had to have a key card to operate it, and Penner obviously didn't have hers with her. She sidled between the three upright panels that screened the platform from the street, and there she found a pink sweater vest someone had left. As she snuggled into it gratefully, she caught sight of her reflection on the back side of the panel.

"This can't be happening," she said to herself. She had just about decided that she really was fourteen, and that her entire career in Starfleet had been just a pleasant dream. But her face was still that of her twenty-one year old adult self. Cautiously she flicked open her sweater for a second. That was not the chest of a fourteen year old girl!

"Oh I get it," she said out loud. "I'm delusional. I'll bet I'm in Sickbay right now, suffering from transporter psychosis or something."

"Well then," said a voice, as a hand clasped her shoulder, "I suppose I'm a delusion too?"

Penner spun around. "Miss Vanderhaven! What are you doing here? I mean, I don't know what's happening!" Instead of the understated pastel suits Penner remembered so well, her old school counselor was wearing a dark green velvet dress that went all the way to the ground, with white fur at the cuffs and the bodice. A wreath of holly was around her head. "This is a new look for you, isn't it?" Penner said.

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past," Miss Vanderhaven said solemnly. "Come along."

"OK, but this had definitely got to be a dream," said Penner as she followed.

***

The doors slid open with an impatient hiss as Atoz strode into the transporter room. "Give me a report," he snapped. "What happened?"

Lieutenant T'Pana was down on one knee at the open rear panel of the main console, but before she could reply, chief engineer Vespis looked up from input buffer stage next to the platform itself. "So far, all the equipment checks out, Captain," she said. "We did turn up a .004 micron discrepancy in the Heisenberg compensator, but it's probably--"

"I didn't ask you what didn't cause a problem, commander. I asked you what happened!"

The Andorian flushed, her antennae twitching. "And I'm trying to tell you, sir!" she seethed, holding her temper with difficulty. "We don't know what happened! The transporter was working perfectly, Lt. T'Pana followed all the procedures flawlessly. Her pattern just disappeared."

The bosun's whistle chose this moment to sound. "Doctor Kovolin is getting impatient, Captain," said Weir's voice from the bridge. "He's asking if he can begin the experiment."

"Not now," Atoz said shortly. "The array still isn't transmitting, is it?"

"He says that it's not absolutely vital, sir. The Odysseus can gather all the data he needs to--"

"I'll get back to him, commander," Atoz said dismissively. He turned to T'Pana.

The Vulcan knew that Humans and Andorians were creatures of emotion. It was something she had a difficult time adjusting to. She herself had been quite fond of Ensign Penner and felt a profound emptiness at the prospect of her loss. The others, especially the Captain, seemed consumed with hurt and anger, as if Penner's death were a personal affront inflicted on them by a malicious universe. She could see him making an effort to choke it down and speak to her sensibly.

"Once again," he said. "Tell me what happened."

"There was quite a bit of elementary particle interference, sir," T'Pana told him, "creating a charge field in conjunction with the diburnium framework of the array. But I compensated for it. I did everything according to the book. I cannot explain how Ensign Penner's pattern was lost."

As Atoz digested this in silence, the Vulcan felt that in this situation a Human would probably add a few words about how sorry she was. She opened her mouth to say something of that nature, but closed it again, afraid that she would say the wrong thing and make him feel worse than he already did. Emotions were such fragile things.

"Arachne," said Atoz, and the computer's Greek goddess image instantly appeared next to him in response to his summons. "How long can a person exist as a disembodied transporter pattern?"

There was only a brief pause. "My database contains no record of any such study being done, Captain," she said. "But it would be a fascinating research."

***

Christmas Eve, 2362. Amelia Penner was eight. She had made a skinny "tree" in Crafts out of acrylic tubing and lumps of green phosphorescent plasmoid gel. It leaned crookedly on the table of their apartment, but her mother had loyally said that it was beautiful. Neither of them was looking at it now, because her mother was holding the eight year old Amelia, who was sobbing her heart out. "Ohgod," whispered the grown-up Penner, standing unobtrusively in the corner with Vanderhaven in her role as the Ghost of Christmas Past, "why did you remind me of this?"

"Kawa sahd I cowdn't seng in the pwogwam," the girl choked out in between her tears. "She cawwed me Dummy!"

"Sweetheart, you're not," Agnatha Penner cooed, rocking the child back and forth, caressing her head soothingly. "You know you're not!" From her vantage point, Penner could see the pain on the woman's face more clearly than the little girl could. It was the pain any mother feels when her baby is hurting, when the other children make fun of her and she can't understand why.

"Kawa towd me--"

"What does Kara know?" her mother interrupted. "She's the daughter of a municipal administrator. You know what your father says about administrators? They couldn't find their own bottoms if someone drew them a map complete with LPS coordinates." She kept on speaking, knowing that most of what she said was lost on Amelia, who thanks to a birth defect had been practically deaf since birth. It was the tone that mattered, the warmth of her voice, the feel of her words as much as the feel of her hand stroking the girl's hair. At school she had to use an amplifier, a slim box that she held to the side of her head so that she could pick up sounds by bone conduction. And because she could barely hear her own voice, her speech was slurred. That was the worst, as far as the other children were concerned.

"Fawa?" the eight-year-old Amelia said, looking up. Somehow she had picked out that one word.

Her mother smiled. "Your father! What does your father care what Kara says? Your father loves you, just like I do! Love you with all my heart!" She hugged her daughter close again, while her eyes drifted to the complink screen, currently set to streaming news headlines. Amelia's father was a constable. Another Christmas Eve with him on duty at the space central hub, directing traffic and patrolling for the inevitable smugglers trying to bring in Romulan ale and Klingon blood wine.

"I'd forgotten this," the grown-up Penner said quietly. "I had totally forgotten!" Her early childhood had been a struggle with playmates she couldn't understand and who couldn't understand her, who amused themselves playing pranks on her. It was only after the operation when she was twelve, introducing a program of nanite clusters to completely rebuild her cochlea and auditory nerve from scratch, that she was able to have a normal life. That procedure had essentially given her artificially grown bionic ears. Now she could hear a pin drop across a crowded room, and pick out any given conversation at will. Almost overnight she had gone from being a figure of fun to one of the most popular girls in school.

"Do you remember another Christmas, oh, five or six years down the road?" Miss Vanderhaven lilted. "You were fifteen."

"So what?" said Penner, wiping teardrops from her eyes.

"The field trip to the Fra Mauro highlands?" her guide prompted. "The oxygen plant? Chuga?"

A slow smile spread across Penner's face. "The Tellarite girl who started school that year! Of course I remember her! She was the daughter of... don't tell me... Elo Dag, the visiting atmospheric engineer."

"Got it in one," said the Ghost, tilting back her head. "You were the only one in your class to reach out to her. You invited her home for Christmas."

"Well that was no big deal," Penner shrugged. "I knew what it was like to be made fun of because you're different." The spirit was silent, but it was a deliberate kind of silence. "Well look, it wasn't just me, you know! Kara invited her to her New Years Eve party, and after that the other girls--"

"After that," said Miss Vanderhaven

"Are you trying to make a point or something?"

"Who says there has to be a point?"

"Anyway it was you who told me--" Penner broke off as the entire room went dark. A sinister black shape passed across the apartment window. The mother and daughter didn't notice a thing out of place, but suddenly Penner felt a cold shiver run up her spine, as if someone had walked on her grave. "What was that?"

"Nothing," said Miss Vanderhaven. "We have some more ground to cover. Shall we be getting on with it, then?"

[Atoz 77]

Atoz stepped off the turbolift onto the bridge, heading straight to his command chair. Weir looked up from her Sciences station, immediately saw the look on his face, and realized that he was not in the mood to talk. On the other side of the bridge, Dr. Kovolin hurried forward before she could move to stop him.

"Captain, is everything ready now?" he said. "The modified torpedoes are armed and loaded. I saw to that personally. I'm most anxious to get started."

Atoz sighed, pausing to clutch the back of his command chair. Even if he had lost a crewman, he still had duties to perform. "Yes, Dr. Kovolin," he said, looking around the bridge. "I think we're all set. Lieutenant Blackadar, did we ever manage to get an uplink with the monitor array?"

The Scot had taken over the tactical station from Lt. Rosh. "No, sir," she reported. "The computer on the array seems to be operating, but it refuses to respond to any telemetry commands."

"Is the array in any danger where it is?" Atoz asked the Kaelon scientist.

"Oh no, not at all," Kovolin responded. "If all goes well, the torpedoes will stabilize the star's fluctuations. We may see an intense burst of radiant energy, X-rays and the like, but at this distance, we'll be perfectly safe. It won't become a nova, if that worries you."

"I see." Atoz stood there for a moment, still hesitating. He looked across at Weir, then made up his mind. He circled his command chair and sat down in it. "Very well. All stations stand by. Lieutenant Blackadar, target the torpedoes."

The tactical officer's fingers moved across her console. "Aye, Captain. Torpedoes targeted."

"Fire one."

***

Along the long curving corridor of the Odysseus, crewmen were passing by and around (and in a few cases through) Miss Vanderhaven and Ensign Penner as if they weren't there. Penner felt as if she were a hologram, although an invisible one, but she kept her sweater vest wrapped tightly shut, just in case.

Up ahead, someone was humming Christmas carols. "This is Deck 5," said Penner, reading the door markers as they passed. Enlisted crewman's territory. They were traveling anti-clockwise around the outer corridor of the secondary hull, F section. In due time they came to the open doorway of the port side lounge, and that was where the music was coming from.

Several off duty crewmen were there, some decorating an artificial evergreen tree, while others just watched. Petty Officer Gordon Collins was among the latter, leaning against the glass-steel portholes with a cup of coffee in his hand. "She was nice, I'll give her that," he was saying. "Bright, too. For an officer."

"Yeah," agreed one of the women, a crewman first class hanging tinsel on the tree. "A lot of ensigns come out of the Academy thinking they already know everything." A round of nods went around the room, even from a crewman third who was just out of training school himself.

"Really nice legs," mused a senior chief petty officer lounging at one of the tables. Everyone looked at him funny. "What? She wears those miniskirts and I'm not supposed to notice? It doesn't mean I didn't respect her as an officer."

"Who are they talking about?" whispered Penner, noticing the past tense. Miss Vanderhaven simply held up a finger to her lips.

"She was a smart girl," Collins added. "Smart enough to learn sense. When I suggested a troubleshooting shortcut, she followed my lead. No questions. That's what I like to see in an officer."

Penner's heart sank. Is that what he really thought of her? A compliant girl who wouldn't ask questions?

Miss Vanderhaven spoke. "Remember what I told you about having confidence in yourself?"

"You told me to be good at something," Penner replied morosely. "So I studied hard and I got into the Academy. But these people have more experience. Where do I get off thinking I know as much as they do? Maybe he's right. I should just keep my mouth shut and do what they tell me."

"Who told you to reach out to Chuga?"

"Nobody," said Penner. "That was different."

"Was it?" said the counselor. "You don't achieve confidence by following someone else and by doing whatever they tell you. You have to have the courage to make your own decisions, and believe in who you are."

"But if you could do that, you'd already have self-confidence!"

"I didn't say it was easy. That's the Vanderhaven Paradox."

Penner digested this. And as she did, another thought occurred to her. "Hey, wait a second. If I'm in Sickbay hallucinating all this, how come I can hear what they're saying about me? Am I having an out-of-body experience?" She turned to see the sad smile on her companion's face as an even worse thought struck her. "Am I dead? I'm not dead am I? Please, Miss Vanderhaven! Please tell me I'm not dead!"

An unexpected movement caught her attention. Something dark was moving silently outside the porthole, eclipsing stars as it came closer and closer. Abruptly it fluttered against the glass-steel itself, a black hooded shape, flapping its great cloak like a pair of wings. Its face was a bare skull.

"No!" Penner gasped, backing away by reflex, her heart thumping like a snare drum. "Please! It can't be! I can't be dead!"

"Amelia," Miss Vanderhaven said soothingly, "it's all right. Just let go. It won't hurt a bit..." Behind her, the black shape stepped right through the thick metal hull of the starship as if it didn't exist. The living people didn't even notice. It turned its head one way, then the other, then it advanced straight for Penner, its bony hand reaching for her.

***

Vespis and T'Pana marched into the Chief Medical Officer's office adjacent to Sickbay. "What is it, doctor?" the Andorian engineer demanded impatiently. "I'm a busy woman."

Ben Pierce leaned back in his chair as he looked up at them. "The Captain told me to make out a death certificate for Amelia Penner. I don't sign death certificates unless I can see the body in front of me. Where is it?"

The Andorian's antennae writhed. Behind her, T'Pana stood quietly, but then Vulcans were always quiet. "There is no body," Vespis said bluntly. "It was a transporter accident. Her pattern was lost. End of story."

"Not good enough, **** it!" said Pierce. "Where a Human life is concerned, not good enough by a long shot!"

"What do you want me to say?" Vespis snapped. "She's gone! She didn't materialize anywhere inside the ship, or in the array, or in the space outside. Without the matter stream alignment field of the transport beam, her pattern would disintegrate instantly according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. She's been outside for over half an hour. I can't put it any plainer than that! I wish it weren't true, but--"

"Anti-leptons," T'Pana said suddenly. The other two looked at her curiously. "There was anti-lepton interference."

"Yes, of course," Vespis scowled. "Because of the R-rays refracting off the tritanium hull of the ship."

The Vulcan slowly shook her head. "This was before the wavefront arrived."

"But in that case... there's only one other place anti-leptons could have come from. Arachne!"

The holographic goddess avatar appeared instantly among them in Pierce's office. "Good day, Lt. Commander Vespis," she said. "Is there something I can do for you?"

"Run a duotronic activity scan on the monitor array."

"My main and secondary sensors are both focused on the T Tauri star. We are in the middle of--"

"Then use the laterals! Anything! Display the results here." With a smooth motion, the Andorian brushed Pierce aside and activated his desktop computer screen. She and TPana leaned forward, shoulder to shoulder, for a closer look.

"What are we looking at?" said Pierce, hovering behind them. On the screen was a real-time image of the array, looking like a corrugated rectangular box, with two arms sticking out at angles to support sensing devices. Over this was a random pattern of lights, roiling and surging like lightning in a thundercloud. Pierce was reminded of a brain activity scan.

"Duotronic activity," Vespis explained without looking up. "It looks like every device on the array is active. Panoptical scanners, subspace field antennae, everything. The computer is in a diagnostic and maintenance cycle. That's why it won't respond to outside commands. But this is the main thing." She pointed to a cubical apparatus in the heart of the object. "The fusion reactor is locked in a feedback loop, which is why it's spewing out anti-leptons like there's no tomorrow."

"Is that bad?" the doctor asked.

Vespis shrugged. "It will probably go critical, unless we can figure out a way to--"

T'Pana spoke suddenly. "Computer, isolate and display the isodynamic frequency pattern."

"What is this for?" asked Vespis, as Arachne obeyed the order and opened an inset window with the appropriate display. To Pierce it looked like an insanely complicated wiggly line in four different colors.

"Computer, now display Ensign Amelia Penner's latest transport pattern." Another wiggly line appeared beside the first.

"Holy Zarkhon!" Vespis gasped. The two patterns were identical.

[Atoz 77]

Penner backed against the lounge bulkhead, terrified by the apparition in black reaching for her. Its shadowy cloak rippled as if by an unseen wind. Its white skull was fixed on her. Its bony hand was almost to her. Maybe she should just do as Miss Vanderhaven said and let it take her. If she was already dead...

NO! She wasn't dead! She was Amelia Penner, Agnatha Penner's baby girl, and she wasn't going give up without a struggle. "Leave me alone!" she screamed, tearing out the open doorway at a dead run.

Once outside the lounge, she became aware of a red, throbbing light which filled the corridor. She slowed to a stop uncertainly. A dull, hollow pounding noise was coming from deep within the ship, like the beating of a giant's heart, loud enough to rattle the very walls. Penner couldn't imagine what it could possibly be, but her instincts said it meant danger. With the Angel of Death right behind her, she didn't have much choice. She started running in that direction.

***

The torpedoes had penetrated the photosphere of the star and detonated. A class one probe, sent into low orbit just behind them, was relaying data back to the Odysseus. On the bridge, Weir had given up her Sciences console to Dr. Kovolin, who was sitting in her chair. Captain Atoz, in the command chair, was understandably having a difficult time keeping his mind focused on dry astrophysics. He let their conversation wash over him.

"Luminosity holding steady..." Kovolin was saying. "Convective zone rising to 91 hundred Kelvin... intragranular pressure is..."

"Eight point eight," said Weir, standing behind him and reading the answer from the secondary monitor at her eye level. "So far it's conforming precisely with your simulation, Dr. Kovolin. Congratulations."

"Thank you," the Kaelon said breathlessly. "But we've yet to reach the crunch. If the pressure holds steady at 9.9 without the temperature rising above 9,500 K... then we'll see what happens."

Lieutenant Blackadar at Tactical made an impatient sound. "Captain, the monitor array has fired its positioning thrusters. It's accelerating toward the ship at 1 G."

Atoz sat upright. What the devil? "Try once again to send the control codes, lieutenant."

The Scot rapidly tapped keys on her console. "No response at all, Captain. Velocity is now over 500 meters per second and still accelerating. Impact in four minutes. And sir, I'm getting some very strange readings from the array's fusion core."

Atoz frowned. They didn't need a distraction like this just now. He heard the turbolift doors hiss open behind him as he said, "Lock starboard phasers onto the array, Mr. Blackadar. Charge to--"

"NO!" Vespis shouted, tumbling out of the lift and skidding to a halt on the arm of his chair. "I mean no, sir," she corrected, breathing heavily. "Don't fire the phasers!"

"Tractor beam, Mr. Blackadar," Atoz said. "Keep it at a distance. Would you like to explain, Mr. Vespis?"

The image of the array and the duotronic scan appeared on the main view screen, as Arachne's holographic avatar also appeared next to command chair. "That," said Vespis, pointing to the image, "is Ensign Penner's transport signature. Somehow she has become melded with the array's isolinear components."

Weir turned away from the Sciences station, her brows furrowing as she studied the scan. "How is that possible?"

"It's a fascinating situation," said Arachne. "The array has been monitoring this star for eight years, one month, and 17 days. During that time period, dark matter from the nebula has evidently bonded with the nitrium alloy in the array's components and power conduits. This would normally be harmless, but the high energy leptons from the flare induced a quantum hypermagnetic field in the material. This field has intercepted Ensign Penner's matter stream and is holding her signature in suspension."

Atoz leaned forward intently. "Do you think she's aware of it?"

"It's not likely, sir," said Weir thoughtfully. "She's still only a quantum pattern, after all. The physical structures of her brain from which consciousness emerge exist only as a virtual potential."

"That's what Dr. Pierce said," Vespis agreed, her antennae flexing with tension. "But we can't really know because as far as we know this has never happened before."

"How do we get her back?" demanded Atoz.

"Well... that's a problem," the Andorian engineer admitted. "The hypermagnetic field is about a 21 gauss equivalent. I know the transporter won't penetrate something like that"

"The field could be disrupted by a quantum torpedo burst," Weir added, gently shaking her head, "but if we did that, Penner's pattern would instantly be lost."

"Easy," said Dr. Kovolin, finally looking up from the Sciences station. "In my work, I deal with fields in the hundreds of gauss. A field-modulated anti-proton stream from your main deflector would drain it enough your transporter could penetrate. Twenty-one gauss? No problem."

"Mister Caeli," Atoz said without hesitation, "yaw the ship around to bring the main deflector to bear on the array. Diane--?"

"I'm on it, sir," the Science Officer replied, moving to the Tactical station to program the deflectors.

"You mean right now?" the Kaelon scientist protested. "But Captain, I need the main sensors focused on the star! All my work--"

"Doctor Kovolin," Atoz replied, "I think this is slightly more important."

***

As Penner ran from the Angel of Death, she took a sharp turn to the left, into the straight transverse corridor leading toward section E. Even with the red light, the corridor was much darker than it should be, and totally deserted. Abruptly it changed into a narrow tunnel of dark, unfamiliar metal. The pounding heartbeat grew louder and louder.

Without warning the tunnel dead-ended in a huge chamber, filled with archaic metal pipes and fixtures emitting puffs of steam. Great toothed wheels like torture devices sprouted at random intervals like some Gothic nightmare. In the heart of it all was a cube-shaped structure, with a control panel dotted with flashing warning lights. "It's gonna blow," Penner said to herself, although how she knew that was a complete mystery. "It's gonna blow any second." Frantically she looked over the panel, searching for something, anything that looked at all familiar. There! A long manual lever, painted red like one she had seen once in a museum on an old-fashioned steam engine! She reached for it...

Something slammed into her, knocking her down. The cloaked figure of Death stood over her. As its body hand reached down, a bright blue light beam suddenly snapped on, stabbing downward from the ceiling. It was blindingly bright, throwing wavering shadows across the Gothic chamber. Penner didn't stop to think. She slipped between the Grim Reaper's legs, grabbed the lever with both hands, closed her eyes, and put her whole weight against it. And just then the whole universe seemed to explode.

A second later, when she opened her eyes again, she was lying flat on her back, feeling as if she had just run a marathon. It was very disorienting. Three fuzzy shapes were hovering over her. Faces. They had to be faces. People were talking, but what they were saying didn't make a lot of sense.

"Her acetylcholine levels are dropping," said a female voice. It sounded like Nurse Miller.

"Another point two," said a deeper voice. It had to be Dr. Pierce. "Come on! That's it Amelia! Keep trying, sweetheart. Don't quit on me now."

Penner blinked. There was a collective sigh of relief from the faces above her. "You scared the willies out of me, for a second there," said Pierce, as he removed a small device from her forehead and did a sweep with his feinberger. The faces slowly swam into focus. The first one she saw was Pierce, then Nurse Miller, both kneeling over her and smiling. Behind them was T'Pana, just rising to her feet and going back to the transporter control console. Being a Vulcan, she wasn't smiling, but she somehow gave the impression that she wanted to.

Penner realized that she was in the Transporter room, lying on the platform where she had materialized. She was still in her hostile environment suit, although the helmet had been taken off. "That was a bumpy ride," she said.

"You'll never know how bumpy," said Pierce, as he and Miller set about shifting her to an anti-grav stretcher.

Penner inclined her head a little, the closest she felt like coming to a nod. She swallowed. "I'll bet. You know, I had the strangest dream..."

Ten million kilometers away, the T Tauri star suddenly burst forth a brilliant corona of pure whiteness, lighting up the dark nebula and pushing away the shadows.

THE END