“How long has it been now?”

“Two hours, forty-seven minutes,” answered Harry Kim from Operations. Kathryn bit back a sigh. It was the third time she’d asked the question, and it was becoming harder and harder to keep the worry and frustration from becoming too obvious.

“Any sign of their commbadges?”

“No, ma’am.”

They’d known the commbadge signals wouldn’t penetrate through the selonite on the surface — it was part of what had killed Randleman — but Chakotay had maintained the hourly check-in schedule until his last call, when he’d said he was going to go into the chambers that Tuvok’s team had found.

We’ll try to keep up the hourly intervals, he’d said. But if we have to go too far in, we won’t be able to get back out that often. We have to be almost all the way up on the surface before we can get through to Voyager.

All right, she’d answered, I’ll give you some time. But don’t make it too long.

She’d almost been able to see the smile that quirked at his mouth; after ten years, she’d come to know that he was perfectly aware of double meanings. Aye-aye, Captain.

“Captain!” called Harry suddenly, startling her out of her thoughts. “I have their commbadges!”

Two weeks ago, she would have sprung up from the chair to join him at his console. Now, she turned to face him. She was learning to live inside her limits.

“Is that confirmed?” she asked.

“Yes, Captain,” said Rollins from Tactical. “The signals are weak, but it is definitely them.” He frowned. “I would think they’d be trying to hail us…”

“Hail them!”

Rollins tried for several minutes, but there was no reply. He finally shook their head. “No response, ma’am, and I’ve lost the signals again.”

Nearly three hours, and now a brief flicker of presence but no check-in. “That’s it,” she snapped. “Harry, you’re with me.”

Tom Paris spun around in his chair. “You’re going down there?”

“Yes.”

“Captain, I don’t think —”

“Objection noted. You’ll be in command.”

“Captain.” He was on his feet now. “May I speak with you in the Ready Room?”

“No time, Tom.” She didn’t really want to hear it anyway, even if it had taken her longer than him to get to her own feet.

“Ma’am.” He drew himself up to full attention. “I think I have to insist.”

His stance was polite, but his expression was determined to the point of being stubborn. “All right. Five minutes.”

She made a point of turning to speak as soon as the doors shut, wanting to get control of the conversation right away. “I know what you’re going to say, Tom, but I’m not an invalid.”

“I’m not suggesting you are,” he answered. “It’s just that —”

“You spoke with Chakotay before they beamed down, didn’t you? And you agreed not to let me do anything…stupid?”

The trapped look in his eyes told her the answer.

“It’s all right, Tom,” she said, using his first name deliberately. “I can walk on my own now.”

“I know,” he said. “But Seven said there’s some pretty lousy footing down there. And you’re still having balance problems. Not to mention staying off your feet more.”

So people were noticing. She looked at him for a long moment and then went to a corner where she picked up her cane. At first, she’d used one that the doctor had given her, but Chakotay had surprised her that morning with another one. This one was wooden with a bright metal tip.

“Will this make you feel better?” she asked.

He sighed and nodded. “I’m sorry. I know it’s a breach of protocol to object —”

“No, you did it because you were told to, and not without reason. I could be a liability.” That was harder to admit than she was willing to let on, but it was also unfortunately true. “I think we’re going to be fine this time, though.”

“I hope so,” he said. “Captain, please be careful. I’ll never hear the end of it if you’re hurt.”

Kathryn smiled. “That I can do. I’ll be okay.”

And, she promised herself, she would.

He woke to pain in his back and legs, and for a moment had a sickening sense of sympathy for his captain. But a second later, he realized he could move and feel just fine. He was just bruised and sore; he must have been carelessly tossed onto the hard white floor beneath him.

Chakotay sat up. “Tuvok? Seven? Neelix?”

“Here, Commander,” said Seven, crouching down next to him. He could see Neelix standing behind her, and Tuvok was across the room, examining a wall that was different from the others. It glittered, like crystal.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“It appears to be a cell of some sort,” she answered. She indicated furniture, a fountain of water, and a table upon which was laid something that looked like food. There was also a walled-off alcove near the back which suggested toilet facilities. “It is, however, not uncomfortable.”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” he said, pushing to his feet. But he agreed that it didn’t look like a prison cell. It seemed more like a holding area.

After a moment to stretch and soothe his still-complaining muscles, he joined Tuvok at the far wall. He was examining a series of openings that were far too small to allow escape, but did permit a view into the chamber beyond the cell. “What have you figured out?”

“Only a little. We woke up just a few minutes before you did. Clearly, though, this area is meant to restrain us in some manner.”

“As if they meant to keep us from making another attempt to get into the chambers,” he said, thinking out loud. “That lends credence to the idea of a security room.”

Neelix joined them. “There doesn’t seem to be any sort of restraining field.” He patted the wall. “It’s just this odd quartz-like stuff.”

“More like diamonds,” said Seven. “Quartz is not as rigid as this material.”

Quartz. Diamonds. Something nibbled at the back of Chakotay’s mind, but he pushed it aside for the moment. This wasn’t the time for scientific speculation. “Do we know what the material is?”

“No.”

That was when he realized their tricorders were gone. So were their phasers, but they had their commbadges. He reached up to try his.

“They are not effective,” said Tuvok. “Based on the view outside this wall, I believe we’re still well below the surface.”

“And the selonite deposits. Great.” He looked around. “Any thoughts about options?”

“For breaking through diamond?” asked Neelix.

“Someone put us in here,” said Chakotay, “and transporters don’t work through selonite any more than commbadges. So that means they likely came in here — and then got themselves out.”

It was clear that the Away Team had made it this far; Chakotay’s tricorder was lying on the floor of the security room. Moving carefully and using the cane for balance, Kathryn picked it up. It was closed, but still active.

“Captain?” asked Harry from across the room. “The power generators are online and this console is powered up, but I can’t tell if there was any activity.”

“Be careful,” she said, opening the tricorder and coughing slightly. The air in the room was more than a bit stale, and had an odd smell. “That could have been whatever happened to them. Chakotay wouldn’t have willingly left this behind.”

She’d found the tricorder in front of a wall; he’d been working on a translation of the odd writing it bore. The Universal Translator had apparently taken a while, but it had tagged enough words to provide a rough estimate about some of the sentences.

Do not engage the ——, it said, indicating a word that was still untranslatable. Instead, request that the —— run the last —— file. You must do this quickly, before the ——.

She paced toward the console in the middle of the room, wondering what its purpose might have been. Off to the side, Harry was carefully trying various commands on the alien console.

“Be careful,” she repeated. “These words over here are a warning.”

He nodded, but didn’t look up from his task. She slowly walked around the room, looking for any more evidence of the Away Team’s fate and discovering a phaser in the corner. Its power cell had been completely drained via some artificial means.

This vanished civilization had definitely progressed beyond the primitive level. She wondered if they’d gotten to space flight.

“Welcome to this Sanctuary,” said a new voice behind her. Leaning on the cane for balance again, Kathryn turned around to see an image of a humanoid being behind her. It flickered a little, suggesting a holographic projection.

“You are overdue,” it continued, “but not too late. Please remain where you are. After I have scanned you to confirm your identities, we will proceed to the lower chambers. Please forgive the inconvenience —”

Do not engage, the warning had stated. “Wait,” said Kathryn, thinking quickly. “We don’t wish to go to the lower chambers.”

The projection paused. “Please state your purpose, then.”

She glanced at the tricorder again. “Run the last file.”

“I need clarification. Last historical recording? Last residency record? Something else?” It was couched in normal speech, but the computer-like nature of the request was clear.

She thought for a moment, noticing absently that Harry had eased around to stand behind her. “What’s the last file recorded, of any type?”

The hologram abruptly vanished, and Kathryn looked down at the tricorder again, scanning hurriedly. “Wait,” she repeated. What would be the right command to re-initialize the interface?

Another image flickered to life. It appeared to be the same being, but it was now stooped and the rich crest on its head had become sparse. It looked up, and she saw that its eyes had become hazed over with age.

“My name,” it said, “is Numinda Claari. You’ve reached the last Sanctuary of my people, and you’ve found me — the last of our kind to survive.”

Seven of Nine frowned slightly, concentrating as she knelt next to the crystalline barrier that restrained them in the holding area. Using the hand that still had Borg implants — and, thus, contained exterior metallic content — she cautiously reached out to tap the wall. It rang slightly, with a much higher tone than would be expected for solid rock, duranium or a similar non-crystalline substance.

Pushing back to her feet, she tried it again further up the wall. The pitch of the tone changed slightly, becoming even higher, but the crystals’ echoing effect was still quite obvious. She ran her flesh-covered fingers gently between the two places she’d tapped. There was no discernible change in the substance’s feel.

She frowned again. Why, then, would the tone have changed?

“Seven?” It was Commander Chakotay.

“This method of investigation is…” she hesitated. “Crude, but not ineffective. There is some sort of difference in the nature of the crystal as it gets further from the floor.”

“Difference?”

She tapped the two different places again but he shook his head. “I don’t hear anything.”

“There’s a forty-megahertz increase in the pitch.”

“Only forty? No wonder; I don’t have perfect pitch. But it could just be a natural variation.”

Seven reached over her head to tap even higher on the wall. This time, even Chakotay could hear the difference in pitch. He leaned back on his heels to study the wall. “Hmm. Do you think the crystal is weaker toward the top?”

“I am unable to determine that,” she answered. “It’s only indicative of some sort of change in the internal structure.”

“Still.” He considered the wall for a few more minutes, and she wondered if he could see something she couldn’t. Then he shook his head, and she realized he likely hadn’t been looking at the wall at all.

It wasn’t always easy to tell when other humans were and weren’t paying attention.

He removed the commbadge from his uniform, and she frowned again. “Commander? We’ve already established that those don’t function in this environment.”

“Yes they do; they’re just not reaching Voyager. But,” he continued, prying off the cover, “it occurs to me that if there are different structures in the crystal, it might respond to harmonics. Hand me yours.”

She complied, and he began disassembling that one too. “We should be able to cross-circuit these and create some sort of a vibration.”

Tuvok had come over to join them. “An interesting theory.”

“It’s as good as I can come up with at the moment.”

Seven thought about this and then started rolling up her sleeve. “We will need a means of controlling the harmonics. Perhaps one of my implants —”

“Won’t that hurt you? I thought the doctor removed anything he could.”

“The damage will be repairable,” she said, thinking that it was also preferable to continued confinement. While the chamber was comfortable, the temperature was lower than optimal, particularly for her. And while the ship was surely looking for them by now, there was no way to tell if they’d ever be able to penetrate the caverns to this level.

Escape was going to be up to them.

“Who are —” Kathryn began.

The image of the alien didn’t respond or even acknowledge. “Our astronomers,” it began, “identified the star-storm in my grandparents’ time, though it was not widely accepted until I myself began final studies. The life of a star seems eternal when compared with ours, after all. How could a star die?”

“A nova,” said Kathryn softly. “That’s the end of a star’s life cycle.” Without taking her eyes off the image, she lifted her tricorder and instructed it to begin scanning through the data they had on the local star systems.

“And if stars are really just collections of burning gases, how could the death of a star not our sun have such an impact on us? Wouldn’t the star simply burn itself out the way a fire would?”

She’d done her doctoral research on a type of stellar remnant, so she knew the answer to that. From the stance of the person in the image, it likely knew the answer as well: no. Novae could cause upheavals for a long way before their shock waves dissipated.

The tricorder beeped softly. It had found a match. Three million years ago, there had been a nova about seventy light years away.

“By the time I finished my training in astronomy,” the image continued. “the first effects were being felt. Our skies danced with color, even during the day, and compasses had become unreliable. It was about this time that the magnitude of our problem became clear, and our society began to fragment.

“One faction — mine — realized that it had already been far too late to save our entire population even had we begun work in our grandparents’ time. But it wasn’t too late to save our civilization. We began quietly assembling knowledge and preparing these Sanctuaries. We knew we had to work in secret, because there would eventually come a time when we, as a people, had to decide who specifically would survive and who would not.”

The person in the image paused for a long moment, and its eyes briefly became distant. “But it was inevitable that word would eventually get out. I’m not sure who was more surprised: our society as a whole, or those of us who’d already begun preparations.

“Because not everyone wanted a place here.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Kathryn could see that Harry was just as captivated as she was.

“Some, of course, maintained their denial of the situation even as our world itself began to turn on us. Others speculated that the Sanctuary movement, as we had come to be called, would be simply a gathering of the elite. They also questioned whether life in the caves below the surface would be a life worth living.

“It was a difficult time, and differences of opinion ran high. We split and fractured, friend against friend, parent against child, even brother against sister.” The image paused again and took a sharp breath. Its voice dropped to a whisper of pain. “Even brother against sister.

“My own brother, Numinda Saan, believed that the Sanctuary movement was a pointless and futile exercise. He insisted that our time had simply come and that acceptance was the better path. It was simply fate. Of course I disagreed.

“But I also digress.” The speaker — who no doubt was a sister, Kathryn realized — took a long, steadying breath. “Needless to say, our society dissolved into near-madness, and extensive security became necessary within the Sanctuaries. But we accomplished our goal: a massive collection of knowledge and preservation of a sufficient number of people to provide the genetic diversity we’d need to rebuild our population once the star-storm passed.

“We didn’t count on the effects of the star-storm rendering our world nearly uninhabitable. Nor did we realize that they’d extend into the caves themselves. The radiation didn’t kill us the way it did those on the surface. But it did render all of the females infertile.

“We didn’t escape our fate. We only prolonged it.” The woman’s crest was completely flat by now. “But I reached my goal. I was the foremost proponent of the Sanctuary movement, and I’ve survived until the end of my normal life expectancy.

“I’m old, and I will not live much longer. But I have lived long enough to see the end of my people, and realize that my brother was right. It might have been fate, or a terrible random coincidence, but acceptance was a far healthier reaction than a futile fight against the limits of time and fate.

“That,” concluded the image of Numinda Claari, “only results in bitterness and regret.”

The image flickered and died, and Kathryn realized she had tears in her eyes. She blinked them away before Harry could see. “Ensign, can you access the database?”

“I couldn’t before. There were too many safeguards.” But he tried the console again. “They’re gone now, Captain.”

Neither of them, she realized, were surprised.

“Ready?” asked Neelix.

“As ready as I think I’ll be,” answered Chakotay. “Tuvok? Seven?”

“Preparations are complete,” answered Seven.

Tuvok nodded. “There is nothing left now but to make the attempt.”

“Okay.” Chakotay bent over their makeshift radio and touched a slender wire to two points, completing an electrical circuit. With a jerk, it began to hum. Neelix took the bottom of it and they moved it over toward the weakest part of the wall — an area near one of the openings — together. Chakotay was careful not to let the circuit break back open.

As they’d hoped, the edge of the opening began to vibrate fractionally. Seven placed two fingers against it. “It is reacting in sync with the harmonic frequency.”

“Let’s hope it’s the right frequency,” he answered.

The hum continued, with no visible effects, for some time. Chakotay felt his hands beginning to shake, and Neelix’ face was starting to show evidence of his effort as well. Tuvok, watching them, came over and slid his hands underneath the apparatus.

With a sigh, Neelix let go and rubbed his hands. “Thanks, Mister Vulcan. I’ll just need a minute.”

“Logic indicates we should share the burden.”

In response, Seven reached over with her free hand toward the wire but Chakotay shook his head. “I’m fine. Is there any change to the vibration?”

She frowned briefly in concentration. “I am not able to perceive a change. But it’s possible that it is too subtle for me to recognize it using this rather crude manner.”

“We’ll keep trying.”

Several minutes later, there was no change except that the hum had become softer. “I think we may be running out of power.”

“The power cell is limited,” answered Tuvok, who had since relinquished his burden back to Neelix. “We have no way of telling how fast we are drawing from it.”

“Seven?”

“I still do not detect any difference.”

“Okay, then, well, we shouldn’t run the power cell completely out.” He disconnected the wire with a flick, and the apparatus fell silent. Neelix lowered it to the floor with a sigh of relief. “Any other ideas?”

They looked at each other, but nobody spoke. Chakotay tried not to admit that an edge of despair was forming in his mind. Would they be found? Could they be?

Tuvok frowned. They’d been brainstorming new solutions for approximately fifty-six minutes if he included the periods of silence when nobody on the Away Team could think of something new. It was imperative that they develop a means of escape, however. If nothing else, the food supply in these abandoned caverns must be finite.

He had no intention of starving to death, though he knew that might still be a possibility if Voyager couldn’t find a source of dilithium crystals soon.

“Perhaps,” he said into the most recent spate of quiet, “we should wait for our captors to return and determine their method for entering and exiting this holding cell.”

“But they might never come back!” retorted Neelix, and Tuvok had to suppress a grimace at the Talaxian’s vociferous emotionalism. “It’s been at least six hours, and they haven’t come to check on us yet.”

“The day here is longer than a day on Earth,” he countered. “It’s possible an appropriate interval, in the aliens’ eyes, simply has not yet passed.”

“At the same time, it’s logical to think that they’d know about when we would wake up.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Oh? How do you figure that?”

But he didn’t respond. He had realized that the faint tapping sound he’d identified some three point eight minutes ago was getting louder, and had taken on the rhythm similar to, but not quite the same as, human or Vulcan footsteps. “Mr. Neelix, this argument is pointless. It may also be moot in just a few minutes.”

Chakotay joined him at the opening he’d chosen. “Do you hear something?”

“Yes.” He lapsed into more silence to concentrate. “It is similar to footsteps, but there are also some differences —”

“Perhaps it’s the way the aliens walk.” The first officer turned back around and gestured for Seven to sweep away the evidence of their earlier attempts to escape. “Look sharp.”

She hastily began to work. Neelix crossed over to the table to assist.

Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap.

The slow speed at which the aliens approached was almost maddening. At the same time, he reflected, this phenomenon could also be indicative of the possibility he’d heard them from some distance off. That suggested that the crystalline walls extended for some difference.

Chakotay was also listening, and he straightened suddenly. “You’re right. Not quite footsteps. I think that’s someone walking with a cane.”

“A cane?” He was Vulcan; he would not allow his hopes to rise. But it was unlikely that the aliens, even if they were still present, would be making use of such items.

“Yes.” From the other man’s demeanor, Tuvok understood that he wasn’t the only one who had thought about someone who would be using a cane.

Although he was aware that barely an additional minute passed, it still seemed like an interminable time before the approaching persons came around a corner. Chakotay pressed himself against the opening. “Captain! It is you!”

“Finally.” She stopped, face betraying exhaustion, and leaned heavily on the cane. “The schematics didn’t tell us how far down this place was.”

“Schematics?” asked Tuvok.

“Yes. They were stored in the security room’s database.”

“How were you able to access them?”

She hefted the tricorder. “The translation matrix finally locked on to those words on the wall. They were instructions for bypassing the security systems.”

“Did the information in the database include the method for releasing the occupants of these…” Tuvok looked around, searching for the best description “…holding cells?”

“Yeah,” said Lieutenant Kim, who had accompanied the captain. He tapped commands into the tricorder. “It’ll just take me a minute to find them — whoa. Wait a minute.”

“Lieutenant?” asked the captain.

He wordlessly handed the tricorder to her, and her eyes widened.

“This wall,” she said, voice not quite even, “is made out of dilithium. Unaltered dilithium.”

“I think I can use it,” said B’Elanna as she examined the now-shattered remains of the wall. “The lattice structure is normal. But I’d like to take a few samples up and test them before we spend too much effort getting all this out of here.”

“Agreed,” answered Kathryn, and the chief engineer began collecting them.

The current theory was that the radiation and upheaval from the nova had affected the surface too greatly for any of the dilithium in the crust to be useful. But here, only slightly above the planet’s Mohorovicic discontinuity, they’d finally gotten deep enough that the rock had stopped the effects.

She stood in awe of the planet’s long-dead civilization. Creating a livable space so deep within the crust was quite the feat of engineering; Earth’s own Moho was uninhabitable for humans without full-time refrigeration and stabilizing force fields.

Of course, this planet’s boundary was much higher than Earth’s.

Chakotay joined her. “I’m having the team take archaeological scans. These people were fascinating; it seems the majority of their technology was based on the use of crystalline structures. That could explain at least part of how they were able to do this.” He gestured to the walls around them.

“We certainly have a lot to learn from them,” she answered. “If B’Elanna is able to adapt the dilithium, it’ll take a few days to mine enough to build up our supplies. That’s enough time to do a limited study.”

“Randleman would be begging for it,” he answered quietly. “I’ll find his notes and bring down some people from the science team.”

“Good,” she answered. “I’ll be joining them.”

He sighed audibly. “You should know that I’ve already spoken with Tom.”

Kathryn frowned. “Don’t start, Commander.”

“I’d be remiss if I didn’t. How long did it take you to get down here from the surface?”

She shook her head. “It’s not relevant. We were running a search; that always takes more time than going straight to a location.”

He met her eyes. “How much longer?”

But I’m the captain, she almost said, but a part of her realized that she’d already become defensive. She broke eye contact to begin studying the tricorder readings again.

“I’m glad you’re the one who found the dilithium,” he said, and she blinked at the non sequitur. “It’s only fair, considering what it took from you.”

Kathryn looked up.

“It cost you part of the use of your legs, and Randleman’s family will deserve whatever answers we find in the survey. And I’m not insensitive to the fact that we’d have been trapped much longer if you hadn’t come down.” He sighed again. “But I think you know as well as I do what could have happened if you’d run into more trouble.”

She hadn’t considered that. “I suppose you’re right.”

Chakotay met and held her gaze again. “There’s no shame in admitting that you have some restrictions. Everyone does, even me.”

She remembered Numinda Claari’s words. Acceptance is a far healthier reaction than a futile fight against the limits of time and fate. That only results in bitterness and regret.

It seemed this planet had other lessons for her as well.

“All right,” she said quietly. “But that means I’m going to ask you to help me get back up to the beam-out point.”

He chuckled and held out an arm.

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