While Riker and the
Enterprise respond to a Romulan ship's distress call,
Picard, Troi, Geordi, and Data are traveling in a
long-range shuttlecraft known as a Runabout. Suddenly,
while in a conversation, everyone except Troi freezes in
mid-motion. Seconds later, things return to normal.
Baffled, she attempts to describe the experience to the
others when she inexplicably becomes frozen in time
herself for over three minutes. Then, almost without
warning, the starboard nacelle cuts out from lack of
fuel, and instruments show it has been in continuous
operation for over 47 days. Picard then notices some
rotten fruit and his fingernails quickly grow half an
inch. Data discovers they are in a temporal disturbance
where time is moving approximately 50 times faster than
normal. Their vessel is surrounded by dozens of
irregular temporal fragments, and inside each, time is
going at different rates. They head around the fragments
and eventually find the Enterprise, but are shocked to
discover it trapped in the center of a huge disturbance,
face-to-face with a Romulan Warbird, which is firing a
disruptor beam at the Enterprise, whose shields are
half-raised. However, the entire scene is like a
photograph — everything is frozen in time.
The four officers adapt their emergency transporter
armbands to generate skin-tight forcefields which will
isolate them from the temporal fragment's effects.
Picard, Data, and Troi then beam onto the Enterprise's
bridge, where everything and everyone around them is
motionless.
Picard enters the
transporter room and finds three Romulans were being
beamed aboard by Worf. Picard and Troi join Data in
Engineering, where he discovers that the source of the
power surge is a warp core breach in progress — the
beginning of a massive explosion that is, in fact,
expanding. Time is not really frozen as they first
believed, but moving forward at an infinitesimal rate,
and Data estimates that the explosion will consume the
Enterprise in just over nine hours. Suddenly, Picard
experiences severe emotional changes, laughing
uncontrollably, becoming dizzy, then panicking. Geordi
immediately transports the three back to the Runabout,
where they determine that the captain experienced a form
of temporal narcosis. Geordi beams over with Data and
Troi to the Warbird's engine room, where they see
several Romulans frozen in the middle of an Evacuation
Alert, trying to shut down a power transfer originating
from the Enterprise. Meanwhile, Picard watches from the
Runabout as the Enterprise, now in normal time, explodes
from the warp core breach, then moments later, comes
back together. Back on the Warbird, the scene goes
backward as well, then freezes right where it began.
Geordi, Troi, and Data are stunned.
As they look for more
clues, the strange Romulan male attacks Geordi, who goes
into neural shock, dying, until Troi removes his
armband, freezing him in time. The other two return to
the Runabout with the being, who appears to be totally
alien to their time continuum. The being tells them that
he was attempting to rescue a nest of his species'
young, which mistakenly was placed by them in the
Romulan core, causing the engine failure. When the power
transfer from the Enterprise made contact with the nest,
the ruptures in time were created. Before Picard learns
anything else, the alien fractures in a kaleidoscope
effect and vanishes.
Data adjusts his
tricorder, causing the aperture to make time reverse
itself to a point before the warp core breach occurred,
then go forward again. Data is then attacked in
Engineering by the Romulan woman, really another alien
being, who inadvertently prevents him from stopping the
power transfer. He attempts to protect the warp core,
which delays the breach long enough for Picard to take
control of the Runabout from a console and maneuver it
directly into the transfer beam, interrupting It. The
vessel explodes, and the Warbird and the alien disappear
in a kaleidoscopic effect. Troi is able to rescue
Beverly, Geordi is saved, the warp core breach has been
prevented, and Picard attempts to explain everything to
a confused Riker. |
