All attempts to restart the warp core had failed.

Everyone in Engineering had tried to lend a hand to Lieutenant Z’Xak, who needed none and declared the task to be impossible within the current configuration of the warp nacelles.

Commander Mir Durbus had taken Iskander aside.

“Aside from the warp nacelle, what do we have to be worried about, Lieutenant?” she had asked, the severity of the situation overshadowing her usual cordiality.

“The fact that we are apparently stranded and have not yet received any communication about in how much danger we are from the bridge?” he ventured.

“You morose scoundrel” she replied. “Exclusively engineering problems, I want to hear. Let the bridge sort out the dangers.”

“The ODN system. As Z’Xak said, some parts of the ship are getting time dilations in the order of picoseconds per second. If that rate were to increase – anything in the microsecond would throw the computer in a feedback shutter.”

“A feedback shutter – and a non-linear Lovelace cascade if that’s not addressed” she added, while redressing her uniform in an automatic and nervous gesture. “While everyone is bothering Z’Xak, I want you to get Sirti-nei-Plex here and do a thorough diagnosis of the computer periferics.”

Iskander nodded. Sirti-nei-Plex was the Computer Specialist on board, but was in Gamma shift and so had missed the excitement until now. Iskander guessed that he’d be alert anyway.

Commander Durbus had to leave to attend a senior staff meeting.

______________________________________________

Mir Durbus came back to Main Engineering after some half an hour in company of the Chief Science Officer, Therese Siouinon. The tall woman looked as aggravated as she always did.

Not happy with one meeting, Durbus immediately called a meeting for the senior engineering staff. It was rare for a member of another department to attend one of these meetings, and it was the first time that Commander Siouinon herself did: in the small room, crowded with equipment and engineers, she didn’t have to speak loudly to make herself understood.

Siouinon started by showing a map of the outside: the Redding was in some sort of orange space filled with debris.

“The Redding has fallen in a sort of phenomenon called the Underspace” she said, sounding neutral. “Like transwarp conduits, it is a sort of adjunct metric dimension to direct space. It is artificial in nature, having been created by – ”

She raised her PADD and searched the information.

“ – by someone. Nobody cares. They’re dead. It’s under the control of some hostile Delta quadrant species. Once again, I don’t care unless they show up. Our priority is to get out, and we know how to do it, but we need the warp core.”

“Have we made any progress, Lieutenant Z’Xak?” asked Mir Durbus, kindly.

The big spider tapped briefly on their thorax. Iskander had heard that tapping enough many times to know that it was a no even before the communicator translated.

“What is causing the desynch?” asked Lieutenant Sirti-nei-Plex. He had answered Iskander’s call to come to Engineering as he was about to go under water; as a consequence his skin looked positively dry.

“The Underspace itself” answered Siouinon. “Time does not flow at the same rate everywhere in it. The part of the Underspace we are into is particularly fragmented: the dilation factors are not large – one part in a billion slower or faster – but the Tuegg domains are meter-sized and their decoherence time is within the half second. The randomness in its recohering makes it not only a Tuegg break but a Tuegg foam.”

What, though Iskander. He wasn’t very good in physics aside from what was needed for transporters.

“Can you reformulate that, please?” asked Lieutenant Sirti-nei-Plex.

Siouinon looked slightly aggravated.

“Example. Where I sit, time goes two-parts-per-million faster than the average. One meter away – say, where you sit – time goes three-part-per-million slower than the average. Time is fragmented on the scale of the meter.”

“Ok.”

“But, say, half a second later the story will be different. Where I sit time will be suddenly going half-a-part-per-million slower, and where you sit time will go four-parts-per-million slower than average; the pattern will change in a random fashion. Every part of the ship, at any given time, can be impacted by any time dilation.”

“And the warp nacelles are more than 50 meters long” remarked Mir Durbus. “They can be affected by up to fifty different time dilations. The elements of the nacelle must be synchronized within the picosecond, so this prevents us from forming a warp bubble.”

“Can it be compensated for? Surely you can make it so that each element of the warp nacelle generates its field at a different speed.”

“I do not predict a successful compensation,” tapped Z’Xak. “I-and-you would not manage to synchronize the entire nacelle before I-and-you would have to restart a process because Tuegg foam.”

Iskander raised an eyebrow. It was a side remark, but the Ukarimi language didn’t have a plural – the big spiders were almost entirely non-social and they hadn’t developed more than the pronoun I and you. Z’Xak had started using I-and-you as a we, but did so very rarely.

“Anyone more optimistic than that?” asked Siouinon.

“No” said Iskander. “The single elements can’t change their work frequency fast enough, as Lieutenant Z’Xak implied.”

“We have to get out of the… foam, whatever that is… or to get rid of it… before we can go to warp” proclaimed Mir Durbus. “We still have impulse engines: they’re solid, almost prehistoric technology.”

Siouinon nodded slowly and stood. In doing so, she knocked a box of isolinear chips off the table, and looked annoyed.

“I’m going to discuss with the Captain. Do expect to hear from us.”

“We’ll be here thinking about possible solutions, dear” replied, perfectly cheerful, Mir Durbus.

The day ended without any solution at the horizon.