CHAPTER 11

IT HAD BEEN two years since he had had a new uniform. These days, replicator rations for nonessentials were nearly impossible to obtain. But while the words “nearly impossible” might be a roadblock for some Starfleet captains, to a Ferengi Starfleet captain they were a challenge. So two days ago, beginning with a priceless bottle of Picard champagne—vintage 2382, the last great year before the Earth's destruction—Nog had begun a complex series of trades that had not only resulted in his obtaining enough priority replicator rations to requisition ten new uniforms, but he had also acquired use of one of the last remaining private yachts in Sector 001.

Technically, the Cerulean Star was the property of the Andorian trade representative in New Berlin. But since the trade mission didn't have access to adequate civilian antimatter supplies, the yacht had not been used in ten months, and the New Berlin representative was certain that no one at her consulate would miss it—provided Nog returned it in three days and left enough Starfleet antimatter in the ship to reach Andor.

Given his transit time to Starbase 53, that left Nog thirty hours to pick up his passengers and warp back to Mars. There would then be ten days left until the end of the universe.

“But at least I'll face it wearing a new uniform,” Nog said aloud.

He stood in the surprisingly large stateroom of the Andorian yacht, in standard orbit of a heavily shielded Class-B asteroid in the lifeless Largo system, checking his virtual reflection in the holographic mirror that circled him. Over the past year, he had noticed how his old uniforms had begun to fray, but not how the color at his shoulder had faded. This new uniform was an impressively rich black—it showed every speck of dust and lint—and its shoulder was a vivid, saturated crimson. Not quite a dress uniform, but it would do. Because for what he was about to attempt, he was determined to look his best.

Satisfied that the uniform was as perfect as he had time to make it, Nog donned a matching crimson headskirt and tapped his combadge.

“Captain Nog,” he said. “One to beam down.”

There was no verbal acknowledgment of his request, but he was on schedule, and three seconds later the Andorian stateroom dissolved into light, then reformed as the transporter room in Starbase 53's main ground installation, deep within the asteroid's core.

As Nog had arranged, Captain T'len of the Augustus was waiting for him.

“Captain,” Nog said as he stepped down from the pad, “it is good to see you again.”

T'len kept her hands folded behind her back. “This is most irregular.”

Nog hid a smile. He liked Vulcans. They never wasted time—an attribute he had come to appreciate during his Starfleet career. “I agree,” he said.

T'len raised an eyebrow. “I refer to your request, not the overall situation.”

Nog was ready for that. “If it were not for the overall situation, I wouldn't have made my request.”

T'len angled her head slightly in the Vulcan equivalent of a shrug. “Point taken.” She gestured to the door, and Nog hung back a step to let her lead the way. Though they shared the same rank, T'len was also a starship commander, and in the subtle, unwritten traditions of the Fleet, that gave her greater privilege.

Nog followed in T'len's wake as she turned left outside the transporter room and walked toward the turbolift. Automatically, he noticed yet discounted the poor state of repair of the walls—sizable dents, repair patches of differing colors, irregular stains from cracked conduits that had leaked in the past. Starfleet had been operating under extreme wartime conditions for more than ten years. Mere appearance, like frayed uniforms, was not at the top of anyone's list of problems to solve.

“How have they adjusted?” Nog asked T'len, as they neared the turbolift alcove.

“Impossible to characterize except on an individual basis.”

“So, some of them have adjusted better than others?”

Nog caught T'len's swift sideways glance at him. “If their state of adjustment varies according to each individual, then logic suggests that of course some have adjusted better than others. You will find out for yourself in just a few minutes.”

“I'd like to be prepared.”

The Vulcan seemed to accept that explanation. “Then you should be prepared for the human civilian Vash. I have recommended that she remain in custody here, until . . . the end of hostilities.”

What a euphemism, Nog thought, and he wondered who had first used it. Hostilities would end in less than two weeks, either with Starfleet's being successful in obliterating most of Bajor or with the end of the universe. At the end of hostilities, either Vash would be released, everyone would have new uniforms, walls would be painted, planet-wide celebrations would be held . . . or else nothing would ever matter again.

But the end of the universe was not a topic of conversation in which Starfleet officers engaged. Quite properly, official directives stressed that all personnel were to focus on the mission, not the consequences.

“What's Vash likely to do?” Nog asked. “Escape?”

“In a manner of speaking. She is intent on returning to her own time.”

Nog knew better, but couldn't resist. “Would that be so bad?”

T'len stopped and turned to him. “If Vash returned to her time and revealed what she had learned of our time, history would be changed.”

“I ask the question again: Would that be so bad?”

Nog was not naive enough to interpret T'len's expression of surprise as evidence of her abandonment of all pretense of Vulcan selfcontrol. “Captain Nog, you are the Integrated Systems Manager for the Phoenix.”

Though not quite sure why T'len was stating something so obvious, Nog waited, gambling on her explaining herself without his having to interrupt.

“Thus you understand the logic of time travel,” she said.

Nog frowned. “Some would say there is no logic to time travel.”

T'len looked away for a moment as if gathering her thoughts—as if a Vulcan ever needed to do that. “If Vash—or indeed, if any of the crew of the Defiant —are allowed to return to their present, only two end results are possible. One, Vash changes the past, and we will no longer exist as we are, and the billions of beings born in the past twenty-five years will likely never exist at all. Two, Vash changes the past, and in so doing she creates a new timeline while we remain in ours—exactly as it is, unchanged.”

Nog shook his head. “Think of the billions who have died in the past twenty-five years,” he said. “Think of Earth. Of Cardassia Prime.”

T'len eyed Nog with what Nog felt could only be disappointment. “Captain Nog, in each generation are born a mere handful of great beings. Your Admiral Picard is surely one of them. Perhaps one other starship captain in all of Starfleet's history has matched his accomplishments. But if only one example of his brilliance is required, then we need look no further than Project Phoenix. To change history without changing our timeline is a concept as revolutionary as Hawking's normalization of the Heisenberg exceptions.”

Suddenly, T'len's attitude, however subtly, seemed to Nog to soften. “Even as a Vulcan,” she said, “I do understand what you are about to experience will be fraught with emotion. You are about to open a door to your own past. But do not allow yourself to be trapped by it. Jean-Luc Picard has given us a true phoenix. Trust in him, Captain. As a Starfleet officer, you can do no less.”

“Trust me, Captain,” Nog said emphatically. “I have no intention of doing anything else.”

Nog's eyes deliberately met and held the Vulcan's as steadily as if he were negotiating difficult delivery dates with a recalcitrant supplier. And he was certain that Captain T'len in no way detected the lie he had just brazenly uttered.

It's good to be a Ferengi, Nog thought proudly, and not for the first time in his long Starfleet career. His people's four-lobed brains were resistant to most forms of telepathy, and negotiation skills continued to be taught to Ferengi youngsters at an age when most other humanoid babies were only learning to say their first words.

T'len nodded once as she led the way to the turbolift, and they rode the rest of the way to the conference room in silence. It was the Vulcan way. And Nog was glad of it.

In the command conference room of Starbase 53, Jake Sisko knew he was the most nervous of all the temporal refugees from the Defiant. Which wasn't to say that tension wasn't high for all the other survivors—officers and civilians, humans and Bajorans alike.

At first, this trip into the future had been just an adventure. Highrisk and demanding, but when hadn't space exploration been that way?

But that had all changed only hours after he and the other survivors on the Augustus were shown the suspicious briefing tape. Right after viewing that tape, he and the others had been called to another briefing, this time at the request of Worf and Jadzia. The revelations in that second gathering had concerned the past twenty-five years' worth of history in this timeline that they had missed. Suddenly, all that had been left unsaid in the first briefing came into focus for Jake.

In the bluntest of terms, what the people of this time faced was nothing less than the impending end of the universe.

Until the moment Jadzia and Worf and Captain T'len had related this incredible news, almost every pair of captives on board the Augustus had already been engaged in planning an escape or an attempt to seize control of the surprisingly deficient ship. Because Worf and Jadzia had been first to take action, they had been the first to learn the truth.

Now no one was planning to escape. Except maybe Vash.

What appeared to be holding the others together at this moment, in Jake's view, was the shared opinion that if the end of the universe were approaching, it was because of what had been done and not done by all present during the last days of Deep Space 9. Although no one was talking about this upsetting conclusion, Jake felt certain that everyone believed in its truth.

Which meant in a way, he realized, that the fifteen temporal refugees from his time were now feeling responsible for everything that had happened in this time during the past twenty-five years, and which was now leading to disaster. How could they not stay here, in this time, to do everything they could to try and reverse what they had set in motion?

“So, you know this big shot?” Vash suddenly asked him.

Jake knew his uncertain smile betrayed his nervousness. He had always known that Nog would do well in Starfleet, and he was gratified to learn that his childhood Ferengi friend was a captain now. But he was having some difficulty thinking of Nog as a “big shot.” And it was odder still to think that in just a few moments the doors were going to open and his old friend was going to step through them. Twenty-five years older.

“He's—he was—my best friend,” Jake told Vash.

“Really.” Vash ran her hands along her newly supplied gray-and-black uniform. The gesture was clearly meant to be provocative.

“Nice uniforms, hmm?” she said with a smile, as his eyes involuntarily followed the seductive movement of her hands.

Jake snapped his eyes back to Vash's face with an effort. All fifteen refugees had been given Starfleet uniforms of the day to wear. The Starfleet officers among them had received their equivalent rank and specialty markings. The Bajorans and civilians had been given a variant of the uniform that reminded Jake of what cadets used to wear. Instead of being mostly black, the main uniform was a ribbed gray fabric, leaving only the shoulder section black. The supply officer had explained that the uniform identified them as civilian specialists within the Fleet, subject to Fleet regulations.

Jake had been surprised that the uniforms were issued from a storeroom and not a replicator station, and even more surprised that nothing fit as well as it should—though he supposed that was to be expected when clothes weren't replicated with the benefit of a somatic topography scan.

But whoever had given Vash her specialist uniform must have expended some extra effort in determining her size, because to Jake it fit her to perfection. And she obviously knew it.

“Sorry,” Jake stammered, having no idea what to say next. “I . . . yeah, Nog's my best friend.” What an idiot I am, he thought.

“How old are you?” Vash asked with a frank grin.

“I'll be twenty next month.”

“Nineteen . . . what do you think your father would say if we . . .” Vash let her voice trail off suggestively.

Is there even a chance? Jake thought in amazement. He, like everyone else who knew them, had assumed that Vash and Dr. Bashir were . . . He abruptly stopped that line of thought and shifted direction. “Um, I . . . uh, dated a dabo girl once. A couple of years back. That was okay with my dad . . . he even made us dinner.”

Vash studied him as if she were really listening to him. “A dabo girl. How educational for you.”

Jake nodded, watching her carefully for any signs that she was making fun of him. It actually had been, but not in the way Vash meant. Or did she—

“And after dinner,” Vash continued, “was your date arrested, or did she just leave the station?”

Jake frowned. “Uh, Mardah left, yeah. She was accepted at the Regulus Science Academy.”

“Let me guess. Your father wrote her a great letter of recommendation.”

Jake sighed. “Look, I didn't mean to—”

“It's okay, Jake. We'll be friends. We'll go to . . . dinner a couple of years from now. We won't invite your father.”

Jake nodded, half-disappointed, half-relieved, then suddenly added, “A couple of years from now. . . . So you think we're going to make it through this?”

Vash pointed to someone standing behind Jake. “Don't ask me. Ask him.”

Jake turned to see whom Vash meant. A Ferengi standing in an open doorway beside Captain T'len. A Ferengi who looked like Nog, but wasn't.

This man was about five kilos heavier, with even larger earlobes, and his face seemed drawn, the brown skin weathered and wrinkled around the careworn, sunken eyes and—

“Jake,” Nog said in the voice Jake remembered from only four days ago on DS9, “it is me.”

Jake suddenly felt even more uncomfortable than when Vash had teased him into staring at her. He just knew that a look of shock had swept over his face, with his realization that this grizzled veteran was his friend, and that his friend was now so . . . so old. In the waves of emotions that broke over him, the strongest was one of sorrow. For all the time passed and not shared.

“Nog. . . .” Jake couldn't say anything else. His throat was suddenly swollen shut.

But Nog shook his head as if in understanding, and stepped forward and hugged him strongly, slapping his back, then looked up at him, beaming. “Just as I remember you. Not a day older. Not a day . . .”

Jake saw Nog's old-young eyes begin to glisten as if filling with tears. But then his friend looked away, bared his artfully twisted fangs and called out, “Dr. Bashir! Commander Dax!”

Jake broke away from Nog as his friend greeted all the others, the Ferengi's salutations ending with an awkward pause as he came face-to-face with Worf.

“Commander,” Nog said formally, “Starfleet has missed you. And so have I.”

“You are a captain,” Worf replied gravely. “You do honor to your family and to your father.”

And then Starfleet formality between Klingon and Ferengi broke down as Nog spread his arms again and Worf embraced the diminutive officer in a bearhug that Jake knew could fell a sehlat.

Finally Worf released his grip, and Nog dropped a few centimeters to the floor, then tugged down on his jacket and turned to face everyone. He cleared his throat noisily. “My friends . . . oh, my friends . . . I almost don't know where to begin.”

But Jadzia did. “Captain T'len,” the Trill officer said, “has been very efficient in bringing us up to date. We understand the danger threatening . . . everything. And we know that you're here to make a proposal to us about how we can help Starfleet destroy Bajor.”

Jake grimaced. Intellectually, he knew he was in a different time, with a much different Starfleet. But emotionally, he was still having a very hard time understanding how anyone from Starfleet could say something like that. His thoughts flew back to when he was a small child in San Francisco and his mother and his father had first explained the Prime Directive to him. He remembered his favorite interactive holobooks, in which Flotter and Trevis had helped children discover the need for the Prime Directive in the Forest of Forever. But in this future—Nog's future—it was as if the Prime Directive had never been issued.

“Still,” Jake heard Nog say to Jadzia, “I can imagine how strange, even upsetting all of this must seem to you.”

“We are Starfleet officers,” Worf said simply. “What is your proposal?”

Nog immediately turned to Captain T'len, and now she stepped all the way into the conference room so that the doors to the corridor slid shut. Then she entered a code into the wall panel, and Jake saw a security condition status light on the panel begin to glow. He had once thought that DS9 had become overly militarized during the course of the Dominion War. But what had happened to the station in no way compared with the battle conditions under which the Augustus and Starbase 53 operated.

Nog wasted no time in beginning. “The art of making fancy speeches has declined in the past few years,” he said crisply, “so I will state my proposition plainly. You do not belong in this time. Starfleet will not attempt to send you back to your own time. However, given your situation, Starfleet is willing to allow whoever among you wishes to volunteer, a chance to make another journey in time.”

“That's not possible,” Jake blurted out. He looked at Jadzia. “Didn't you say we couldn't establish a second Feynman curve from this time?”

Jadzia nodded to him, but then turned back to look at Nog. It was obvious to Jake that she was interested in what more Nog would say to them.

The Ferengi smiled at him. “Jake, I . . . don't remember you as a scientist,” he said.

“Jake and I have had discussions recently,” Jadzia said quickly, before Jake could respond, “about the possibilities of going back.”

“I see,” Nog said. He paused, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Then—in terms of your using a different time-travel technique to return to your own time—yes, that's right. You could not slingshot around a suitable star and expect to survive a transition back to your starting point in 2375.”

“So,” Jadzia said, “you're obviously proposing a transition to a different time.”

“Correct,” Nog agreed.

“But doesn't that entail the same risk to us?” Jadzia asked.

Nog shot a sidelong look at Captain T'len, and Jake could see that twenty-five years older or not, his “old” friend was nervous about what he was going to say next. “Not if the temporal length of your second Feynman curve is sufficiently greater than your initial starting point.”

Jake didn't have the slightest idea what that meant. He looked to Jadzia for some explanation. She was nodding her head as if she understood, even if the frown on her face indicated to Jake that she did not agree with Nog's reasoning.

“For what you're suggesting, Nog—Captain—the temporal length of our second transition would have to be longer than our first by a factor of . . .” Jadzia looked up at the conference room's ceiling, as if performing a complex calculation in her head.

“A factor of three,” Dr. Bashir unexpectedly said.

Jake felt his stomach tighten. That couldn't be right. “Twentyfive thousand years?” He stared at Nog in disbelief.

But his best friend merely shrugged. “That's exactly right.”

Now all the temporal refugees around Jake were exchanging looks of unease. Murmurs of protest began to fill the Starbase 53 conference room.

“It's called Project Phoenix,” Nog said, waving aside their concerns. “Created by Admiral Jean-Luc Picard.”

The name alone brought silence to the group.

“Jean-Luc?” Vash asked. “Is he still . . . ?”

“Yes,” Nog confirmed. “He's frail. In poor health. But . . . he has given us hope that the Ascendancy can be stopped before . . . before it's too late.”

“Even assuming you have the technology to send us back twentyfive thousand years—” Jadzia began.

“And we do,” Nog said, but Jadzia kept talking.

“—any change we make in the timeline to prevent the Ascendancy from arising will either erase this current reality, or create a parallel one, leaving this one unchanged and still facing destruction.”

“Ah, but that's where you're wrong,” Nog said triumphantly. “There is a third solution. Admiral Picard's solution. A way to go back into the past and make a change that will not take effect until after the ship has departed, thus preserving our timeline.”

Dr. Bashir suddenly laughed. The unexpected sound was almost shocking to Jake, as was the observation he so clearly stated next. “A time bomb. You want us to place a literal time bomb.”

And Nog confirmed it.

“Basically, that is correct,” the Ferengi said. “In the past five years, Starfleet has expended enormous effort on the two critical components of the admiral's plan. The first is the U.S.S. Phoenix —the largest Starfleet vessel ever built in your time or ours. The second is the deep-time charges, made of a brand-new ultrastable trilithium resin together with advanced timekeeping mechanisms of incredible accuracy.”

“So we use the Phoenix to go back twenty-five millennia,” Bashir said, “plant the deep-time charges on Bajor, and some time after we leave for the past, the charges detonate. Presumably destroying the Ascendancy.”

Like everyone in the room, Jake watched and listened as his best friend outlined the unbelievable mission.

“—And also destroying Kai Weyoun, the Red Orbs of Jalbador, and the center of Ascendancy rule,” Nog said.

In the utter silence that followed Nog's list of targets, one of the Bajoran civilians gasped, and the following instant Jake understood why. “B'hala . . .” the civilian said. B'hala was the most sacred city on Bajor. It had vanished from Bajoran knowledge twenty thousand years ago, until Jake's father discovered it buried deep beneath the Ir'Abehr Shield.

“Again, correct,” Nog said. “Admiral Picard's first love is archaeology, and he has researched the matter in precise detail.”

The Ferengi pressed on, even though the flood of details was beginning to sweep over Jake like a thought-smothering wave, and he knew the overload had to be affecting the other survivors of his time the same way.

“We know,” Nog continued, “that the first structures of the city known as B'hala were built approximately twenty-five thousand years ago. Approximately twenty thousand years ago, general knowledge of the city's location was lost for about five thousand years. Then, about fifteen thousand years ago, the last temple was built on the site, and it was swallowed by landslides. Until,” Nog nodded at Jake, “Captain Sisko rediscovered it less than thirty years ago.

“According to our latest intelligence estimates, less than onethird of the city has been excavated under the Ascendancy, which means whoever goes back to the city's beginning will know exactly where to hide the deep-time charges in the remaining two-thirds to ensure that they will not be discovered over the millennia to come.”

A question broke through the fog of disorientation in Jake. “Nog, why twenty-five thousand years? Why not go back ten years? Or a hundred?”

“A fair question,” Nog said. “First of all, the Phoenix would have to go back at least a thousand years, to be sure that no early Bajoran space travelers or astronomers detected the ship arriving at warp speed or orbiting the planet for the three weeks it will take for the deployment of the deep-time charges.”

“Okay, then go back fifteen hundred years,” Jake said.

“And you wouldn't need a large starship for that kind of trip,” Jadzia added.

Nog shook his head at the both of them. “No. The point is not merely to go back in time and deploy the charges. It's to go back and deploy them without introducing any changes in the timeline. That means B'hala must remain a lost city until Captain Sisko finds it in 2373.

“Remember—a team of Starfleet engineers will be working in the Ir'Abehr Shield for three weeks, and they have to be able to do so without attracting any attention. Admiral Picard has told us that the only way to be sure that our activities won't inadvertently lead to the early discovery of B'hala is to go back to a time before B'hala.”

At that, Captain T'len stepped forward as if she were impatient. “The targeted time period is most logical.”

“And what about the choice of crew?” Worf asked sternly. “Is that also logical?”

Jake saw something in Worf's eyes that made him think there was more to the question than there appeared to be. Captain T'len's hesitation in answering confirmed his suspicions.

“That argument can be made,” she said at last.

Then Bashir again articulated what Worf must already have guessed. “It's a one-way trip, isn't it.”

Nog drew himself up, a gesture at once like and unlike the Nog familiar to Jake. “Most likely,” the Ferengi said stiffly—but proudly, too, Jake thought. “Yes.”

“Most likely?” Bashir repeated incredulously.

Nog's voice took on a more determined tone. “The Phoenix, Doctor Bashir, is the largest starship ever constructed. It will survive a twenty-five-thousand-year temporal slingshot. But all our simulations show that neither her spaceframe nor her warp engines will survive the stresses of a return trip.”

That was when Jake saw the logic of it for himself. He and the others

from the Defiant were already misplaced in time. So what would it matter if they were misplaced somewhere—sometime—else?

And he wasn't the only one to reach that realization.

“So we're expendable,” Vash said angrily. “That's it, isn't it? We're a danger to you in this time, so you want to send us off on some high-risk wild norp chase and get rid of us.” She leaned forward to jab her finger against Nog's chest. “Well, you can tell your Starfleet admirals that I'm not going.”

With a forcefulness Jake knew the Ferengi would never have attempted in Jake's time, four days ago on DS9, Nog grabbed the anthropologist's hand and pushed it aside. His answer to her was almost a growl. “It is a volunteer mission.”

“Captain,” Jadzia said quickly, diplomatically defusing the sudden increase in tension in the room and returning their attention to what must be faced, “there still has to be more to the mission than what you've described. Once the charges are deployed, what are we . . . what is the crew of this new supership—the Phoenix —supposed to do? They certainly can't interact with any culture in the past.”

“Absolutely not,” Nog agreed, with a grateful glance at the Trill officer. “But Admiral Picard did suggest a course of action that might allow you, or perhaps your children or grandchildren, to return to the present.” He looked over at Bashir. “As I said, Doctor, it is likely that the mission of the Phoenix will be one way. But it is not certain.”

Then Jake, together with the others, listened intently as Nog described Picard's plan as confirmed, he said, by extensive studies conducted by the Federation's leading surviving experts in archaeology, biology, and ancient astronomy.

The essence of it, Jake realized, was that almost fifteen hundred years ago—and 7,000 light-years from Earth—a main-sequence star had gone supernova. The expanding gas cloud from that awesome burst of energy became known to Earth astronomers as the Crab Nebula. But to the astronomers of Erelyn IV, that same cosmic explosion was the last thing they or their fellow beings ever saw.

Erelyn IV itself was a Class-M world, home to a race of humanoids that was one of the first to develop interstellar travel—though not warp drive—in the present epoch of the Alpha Quadrant. But—and Nog emphasized this point—the planet was only twelve light-years from the Crab supernova, and the radiation released by that star's explosion had been lethal to all life-bearing planets within fifty light-years.

Jake remembered learning about Erelyn IV in school. His instructors had referred to the lifeless, crumbling cities and vast transportation networks of that planet to stress the importance of exploration and discovery. Because the radiation had sterilized Erelyn IV without destroying the buildings, libraries, and technology of its people, the Vulcan archaeologists who had studied the planet for generations had been able to reconstruct Erelynian history in unprecedented detail.

Sadly, the Vulcans also learned that at the time of the supernova, the Erelynians had a prototype warp engine under construction in orbit of their world. Had the funding battles their scientists fought against their world's shortsighted politicians been successful only a few years earlier, faster-than-light probes to the Crab star would have revealed the existence of the supernova before the radiation had reached their world, giving them time to construct underground radiation shelters. Had Erelyn IV's politicians permitted warp research to proceed a mere fifteen years earlier, that would have been enough time for the Erelynians to establish colonies on planets outside the sphere of lethality and to build shelters.

Fifteen lost years. The lesson had been taught to all children in the Federation: that such a short period of time could be all that might stand between planetary extinction and survival. The moral had been clear: Between thinking about one's next term in office and thinking about the next generation was a difference in attitude that could save an entire world—or condemn it.

The people of Erelyn IV had paid the ultimate price for their leaders' lack of vision. But they had left a poignant treasure trove of almost ten thousand years of their history—including, Nog explained, a complete map of the Crab star's solar system as it had existed before the supernova, as charted by sublight robotic probes.

“The Crab star had seven major planets,” Nog now explained. “The second from the star was Class-M. The Erelynians' long-range scans showed a standard Gaia-class oxygen atmosphere, indicating a biosphere. But the scans they made also showed no signs of industrial pollutants; nor did they record any electromagnetic or subspace communications.”

“So that's where you want us to go,” Bashir said. He wasn't asking a question, and Nog didn't bother to do more than nod in response.

It was clear to all present that Nog was coming to the final part of the plan.

“The Phoenix will be able to make the voyage between Bajor and the Crab star in under two years. The ship is stocked with industrial replicators, nanoconstructors, and complete plans for building a duplicate vessel to bring you home.”

“How long?” Worf asked bluntly. “For the nanoconstructors to build a ship without a shipyard and Starfleet work crews.”

Jake saw an almost invisible wince twist Nog's features. “Our best estimate is . . . forty-eight years.”

Now Jake understood why Nog had said their children or their grandchildren might make it back.

“A great many things can go wrong in forty-eight years,” Worf said.

“Which, obviously, is why they picked that world,” Bashir said lightly. “If something goes wrong and we can't travel back to this present, then even if our descendants spread out across the world, in the year 1054 C.E. everything turns to superheated plasma in any case when the sun explodes. As long as we stay on that world, we will have no interaction with the march of history throughout the rest of the galaxy.”

“Exactly,” Nog said. He turned to Captain T'len, as if he had said all that was necessary for now.

But Worf had another question. “You have not thought of every eventuality. What if we fail to build a second Phoenix, and our descendants first revert to more primitive ways, then develop a spacefaring civilization of their own. Twenty thousand years is more than enough time for that to happen, and for our descendants to travel to Qo'noS or Earth and change history.”

“Commander Worf,” Nog said with what Jake thought was an odd formality, “I assure you that we have thought of every eventuality. And what you describe cannot happen.”

Jake didn't understand, but it seemed Bashir felt he did. “There's another bomb in the Phoenix,” the doctor said. “Set to go off . . . a century . . . ?”

Startled, Jake looked from Bashir to Nog. His friend's face was sad but resigned. Bashir's guess was true.

“. . . After we leave,” the doctor said slowly as he spoke his thoughts aloud. “Probably something that would set up an energy cascade in the atmosphere of the second planet, killing all higher animal life-forms in that world, but leaving the bulk of the ecosystem unharmed.”

But now Jake was thoroughly confused. “But . . . why would we leave the Phoenix anywhere near the planet if we knew it could kill us? Or our descendants?” he added.

“Because,” Captain T'len said with a stern glance at Nog, “everyone who takes part in this mission will understand and accept the importance of not changing the timeline. As Commander Worf stated, many things can go wrong in forty-eight years. Thus the crew of the Phoenix will leave their ship in close orbit of the planet as a fail-safe backup, to ensure that none of their descendants survive to form their own civilization.”

The room fell silent once more, and Jake knew that everyone in it was contemplating as he was the enormity of what was being proposed to them.

After a few moments, Nog spoke again. “Admiral Picard set this all in place almost five years ago, and the plans have been continually refined and perfected ever since.”

Jake looked over at Bashir, but the doctor seemed not to have anything more to say. Everyone else from the Defiant, with the exception of Vash, was making silent eye contact with their fellow temporal refugees. Vash simply glared at Nog and T'len as if they were personally responsible for thwarting her.

“Captain Nog, we would like time to consider your proposal,” Worf said.

“I understand,” Nog agreed. “But I would ask that you make your decision within the next fifty hours, so we can arrange passage to Utopia Planitia and I can begin your training.”

Jake heard something odd in Nog's voice then. “Nog, are you going?”

“On the Phoenix? Yes.”

“So you think it's going to work.”

For the first time in the session, Nog smiled broadly. “I have absolute faith in Admiral Picard. I have reviewed all the operational plans and contingencies. I have no doubt that the mission of the Phoenix will succeed, and there will be no need to worry about the safeguard time bombs. I am completely confident that someday I and the crew . . . or our descendants . . . will be able to return to the present and the universe we will have saved.”

Nog then said his good-byes, explained that he had meetings to attend, and hoped that he could meet everyone again at 1900 hours for a meal. Then, with the unsmiling Captain T'len at his side, he left.

Instantly a buzz of responses filled with new hope swept through the room. But Jake didn't join in, although Nog's presence on the Phoenix did change the equation for him personally.

Jake was in the midst of trying to comprehend the best thing to do.

Because he had seen his Ferengi friend give that same assured smile at least a thousand times in the past. And it had always meant only one thing.

Nog was lying.

So the Phoenix was already doomed.

And with her the universe.