“Quantum twins?” Gold repeated. “Gomez, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Yes, sir,” said Gomez, wishing the truth was otherwise. “I think that Soloman’s not only found himself. He’s found 111. That’s why he was so eager to reestablish contact.”

“But eager enough to lie? Soloman’s never lied.”

“That we know of. Maybe he didn’t have something worth lying about before.”

“Well, this is a hell of a thing. What do we do now? We can’t just wait around. Ever since he initiated this last link, those wavefronts have increased.”

“That follows. The channel’s open now, permanently, unless we can get Soloman to break off contact.”

“Can we do that for Soloman without harming him?”

“I doubt it. But since we haven’t found anything here, we have to assume that whatever device has initiated, or is potentiating this effect, it’s got to be somewhere else.”

“In this other universe?”

“I’d say that’s likely, sir.”

“What about getting them a message? Ask them to disengage. Can we do that?”

“Maybe they don’t want to either,” said Gomez. She sighed. “Remember, this is a search program. They’re looking for something. So we’re in the dark until we can figure a way to contact it, or them.”

“Well,” Nog scratched a lobe, “I might be able to piggyback a signal. Heck, I might be able to slip in the same way Soloman did.”

“A self-authorizing language?” asked Gomez.

“Worth a try.”

Gold said, “What about destroying Empok Nor’s computer?”

“That’s kind of drastic. If I can get in, maybe I can shut them both down without hurting Soloman.”

“If they’re even willing to lis—” And that’s as far as Gold got.

Suddenly, there was the squall of a red alert—and then a huge boom that was so loud Gomez clapped her hands against her ears. Stunned, ears ringing, Gomez fumbled with her tricorder to see where the problem was on Empok Nor.

Only the problem wasn’t on Empok Nor. Not that they could see. And when they tried to reestablish contact with da Vinci to find out what was going on, they couldn’t.

Because da Vinci was gone.