Twilight

When Vaughn had closed to within twenty meters, the man held up his hand, palm out. Vaughn stopped. The man peered around, then gestured again, this time pointing across the corridor.

Corridor?Vaughn thought. The man pointed across the street.Vaughn looked there and saw nothing, but a sense of déjà vu overwhelmed him. It seemed ludicrous to even consider that he had lived a sequence of events like this before, but the feeling remained strong. Suddenly, without thinking, Vaughn lifted his empty hand and pointed past the man. The man nodded, as though acknowledging Vaughn, and then he came out from behind the building and into the corridor.

Street,Vaughn told himself, but already his thoughts had moved past that. The man was wearing a Starfleet uniform. An oldStarfleet uniform.

And Vaughn recognized him.

The man turned and started ru

Vaughn raced toward the cross street, already knowing what he would find when he got there. He would look where the man had run and see nothing. The man would have vanished, leaving no trace beyond Vaughn’s doubting of his own mental state.

Vaughn reached the intersection, stopped, and peered down the cross street. Almost a block down, the man continued to run, his footsteps still resounding. Vaughn took a step, preparing to follow, but then stopped again. He did not have time for this. Unless and until he could demonstrate that chasing the man would provide a means of stopping the pulse, he had to go on. For all Vaughn knew, he was imagining this entire encounter. And maybe that, some form of mass delirium, had been what had carried the people of this world to their ends.

Vaughn raised his tricorder and sca

In the dust coating the streets, Vaughn saw a set of footprints leading away from him, in the direction the man had taken. Vaughn followed them back down the street, tracing them to where the man had emerged from the beside the building. The footprints ended there.

Transporter?Vaughn thought. But that would hardly explain everything. Time travel? Holograms? Illusions or delusions? A sensor sweep revealed no residual energy readings, other than those present everywhere on the planet. No transporter signatures, no chroniton particles, no photonic emissions.

He replayed the scans that he had initiated when he had first started toward the man. He saw the same readings: a healthy, fifty-year-old human male. Then he played back the visual record the tricorder had captured. He worked the controls in order to display a magnified image of the man’s face. Vaughn recognized it at once: the long, narrow countenance, the angular features, the graying hair above the ears. He remembered the day— What? Sixty, sixty-five years ago?—when he and the man had run down the corridor of a starship together, making the same gestures they had just made in the street of this dead city. And Vaughn remembered all that had been lost back then, so many years ago.

He doubted his perceptions, and even his sanity. But he also suspected the technology ru

Vaughn turned back in the direction he had been traveling before he had seen the man, and started walking again. He would be out of the streets in another hour, back into open land. He had to focus on his journey now, on reaching his intended destination and stopping the pulse from launching into space.

And still, as his footfalls bounced between the wasted buildings of this wasted city, he could not banish from his mind the image of the man he had just seen: Captain John Harriman of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

44

Kira reviewed the list of food and drink for the reception. She sat at the desk in her office, tapping at the padd, which emitted tiny electronic tones as she paged through the entries. The Bajoran selections pleased her, and included alva,shrimp, hasperatsoufflé, and mapabread with mobajam, along with several bottles of spring wine and a variety of teas. One other item at the end of the list caught her attention. “How did you get foraiga?”she asked. The delicacy was very difficult to obtain, even on Bajor itself.

“Colonel, I’ve been doing business in this system for more than a decade,” Quark said. “And I’m a Ferengi. I know how to get things.” He stood across from her, waiting for her to authorize his catering menu.

“You know how to get things,” Kira told him, “and you also know how to overcharge for them.” His greed never slackened, she thought as she looked at his charge for the foraiga.

“Fine, take it off the list,” Quark said, with what Kira took to be feigned nonchalance. “I thought Minister Shakaar would enjoy it, but if you think it’s too expensive…” He left his statement dangling, obviously probing for information.

“I never said Shakaar would be at the gathering,” Kira reminded him, offering a cold smile.

Quark patted his chest with one hand. “My mistake,” he said. “I guess I just assumed that all of this fine Bajoran food wouldn’t be for just you and Lieutenant Ro.” His voice seemed to catch when he mentioned Ro, but the sound was so slight that Kira might have imagined it. Perhaps the security chief had been giving Quark a particularly difficult time lately—something she would have to laud Ro for, if true. “Besides, you don’t usually wear your dress uniform.”

“All right. The foraigais fine,” Kira said, choosing to ignore Quark’s observation, and moving on to the rest of the menu. She could have—and probably should have—delegated this responsibility, but she liked Quark to know that she personally kept her eye on him. And with the importance of the summit, she wanted to ensure that the reception this evening would be a success. Of course, Kira knew virtually nothing about Alonis or Andorian or Capellan food, and Jadzia’s tastes had ranged well beyond her homeworld of Trill. “What’s this?” Kira asked, spying another item with a sizable price. “Kaga