***The Hills of Time***
***by George Pollock, Jr.***

***Chapter 7***
***Unto the Breach***

   Consider the universe.
   It's very big.
   Really.
   No matter what angle you view it from -- even the lower left, its bad side 
-- it's big. Takes up a lot of space.
   Even just a galaxy is full of stuff.
   But if you're inside one, you see it's all spread out. There's a lot of 
nothing between the stuff.
   But even the nothing has something in it.
   Ages later, some Terrans would estimate that each cubic meter of 
interstellar space averaged only one hydrogen molecule each.
   Not that the hydrogen molecules were happy with the arrangement.
   To them, the neighborhood was crowded. Why, you could detect the 
gravitational attraction of the molecule in the next cubic meter over.
   And all that background radiation noise ...
   This is why the universe is expanding:
   All the hydrogen is trying to move to the suburbs.
   And, oy, the hydrogen thought -- those new neighbors ...
   Those brash young molecules -- trillions of them working together -- what 
with their heading around in their shells, warping off to who knows where ...
   And you'd think they'd have some pride, but NO ...
   Like the time that one shell passed through, eons ago -- the 
blue-and-white one with the yellow triangles on the side. All beaten up and 
frozen. Looked like it had been in a big fight and had lost big-time. No 
self-respect. 
   All the hydrogen complained about it.
   Proving that you can't excite atoms as much as you can irritate them ...
   But after passing through the neighborhood aimlessly for what Terrans 
later would call 200,000 years, the shell gently tumbled along and was gone.
   Good riddance, the hydrogen thought.
   To the eyesore and that graffiti scrawled on its side.
   I mean, really ...
   What did "STAR LEAF" mean, anyway?
   Crazy kids ...

*******

   Comets are slow.
   Not that they don't travel fast.
   They just aren't very bright.
   Which is not to say they don't reflect starlight well.
   They're just dumb.
   Ice and dust. Not the sharpest stuff in the void.
   And this comet was the smartest around. Which wasn't saying much.
   It had just been awakened by its star. It had thought about asking for 10 
more minutes of sleep. But when frozen, it thought about as fast as a polar 
glacier moved during a midnight blizzard in winter, so by the time it figured 
out how to ask for extra sleep, the star was too far away.
   ... Damn, it thought over a million miles ...
   ... Gotta ask sooner ...
   ... Next time ...
   It had passed the star's single planet, checking the green-and-brown 
continents and the purplish oceans.
   ... Huh, it thought ...
  ...  They've moved the green and brown around since last time ...
   ... Liked it better last time ...
   ... Not so spread out ...
   It looked around.
   The stars were pretty much the same for this part of its trip. One or two 
new, one or two gone. Par for the course.
   The comet sighed.
   Slowly.
   ... Nothin' much happens 'round here ...
   ... 'Course, there is that bright light comin' up on the right ...
   ... Always looks like space is openin' up ...
   ... Like a shower of light ...
   ... Stays open a while ...
   ... Then it closes up ...
   ... Does it again ...
   ... And again ...
   ... Kinda regular ...
   ... Could set my orbit by it ...
   ... Wonder what it is ...
   The barely perceptible train of thought was derailed by something new. 
That happened a lot. It wasn't hard to do.
   ... Drifting debris, it thought ...
   ... Almost right ahead ...
   ... Small thing. Blue and white ...
   ... Hey ...
   ... Just like me ...
   ... 'Cept for the yellow spots on the side ...
   ... Those are UG-LY ...
   ... Comin' nearly head-on ...
   ... Comin' up ...
   ... Comin' ...
   ... Hey ...
   ... It's gonna pass right under ...
   ... Real close ...
   ... Comin' ...
   ... It's lightin' up ...
   ... Must be my reflection ...
   ... Comin' up ...
   ... Comin' ...
   ... Real close ...
   ... I can see holes in the front ...
   ... Lightin' up the holes ...
   ... I can see inside ...
   ... It's hollow ...
   ... There are things inside ...
   ... Lots of things ...
   ... There's a small thing ...
   ... On one side ...
   ... Its top ...
   ... It's ...
   ... It's ...
   ... What's the word? ...
   ... Lav ... 
   ... Lav ...
   ... Um ...
   ... Really light purple ...
   ... Its top ...
   ... Is really light purple ...
   ... It was ...
   ... Already gone by ...
   ... That was fast ...
   ... Could almost feel it ...
   ... Almost touch it ...
   It looked back. 
   Slowly.
   ... Whoa ...
   ... Musta grazed it ...
   ... Blue and white ...
   ... Spinnin' off crazy ...
   ... Tumblin' ...
   ... Hey ...
   ... The bright light ...
   ... Like space openin' up ...
   ... Shower of light ...
   ... Oh-oh ...
   ... Blue and white's caught ...
   ... It's fallin' into the light ...
   ... There's the flash ...
   ... It's gone ...
   ... And now ...
   ... Now ...
   ... The light's closin' ...
   ... Closin' ...
   ... There ...
   ... Like always ...
   ... Um ...
   ... Hmm ...
   ... Huh ...
   ... Well ...
   ... Won't see blue and white ...
   ... Or lav ... 
   ... Lav ...
   ... Um ...
   ... Really light purple ...
   ... Won't see them again ...
   ... Nope ...
   ... Sure won't ...
   It took a half-billion miles to sigh.
   ... Nope ...
   ... Nothin' much happens 'round here ... 
   ... Sure don't ...

*******

  The beings in the wormhole never knew whether they were coming or going.
  That tended to happen when you lived in bidirectional time. One minute -- 
which was a subjective concept to them -- they were in the distant past. The 
next minute -- however long that took -- they were in the far future. The 
only time they got to catch their concept of breath was when they stopped 
time and just sat down.
   So to speak. It was hard to sit down satisfactorily when you were an 
energy-based intelligence that could manipulate the time-space continuum. If 
nothing else, they missed that about their almost-forgotten corporeal 
existence.
   It was during a pause in time -- for them, anyway -- that they first 
noticed the spaceship passing through the wormhole outside their temporal 
bubbles. Tumbling through, actually.
   The ship was blue and white with yellow triangles on the sides. At first 
glance, nothing exciting about it.  The lifeforms that crossed their spatial 
rift in all eras of unidirectional time were always sending things through. A 
nuisance, really -- if the residents of the wormhole stayed around long 
enough to care. Usually, they didn't.
   But this time -- whichever time it was -- they did.
   Because they sensed something.
   Something different.
   Finally, they got too curious not to investigate.
   And they were surprised.
   Three of the beings in the ship were beyond the need for time. The 
residents had encountered that before. Because they lived in all time, the 
residents often wondered what it was like to be beyond time. 
   And they often wondered how beings like these three did it ...
   Four other beings were between heartbeats.
   And that was surprising.
   There was no temporal distortion in the ship that the residents could 
detect. Time was flowing normally toward the future in this continuum. And 
the four beings hadn't entered another dimension that the residents could 
see. The four were existing in the moment they were in.
   Between heartbeats.
   The wormhole residents barely remembered heartbeats. But they remembered 
that they were important. And that you usually couldn't afford to wait for 
the next one ...
   So somehow ...
   Time was different for these beings on the ship.
   And the residents identified with that.
   Of course, there was the final being on the ship. The one with lavender 
hair.
   It hadn't entered another dimension.
   And it wasn't between heartbeats. It had no heartbeat.
   But the residents felt an intelligence in there somewhere.
   Puzzling ...
   At that moment -- whenever that was -- the residents decided they had to 
go to the far future. They had to know what it all meant.
   So they went there.
   And they saw.
   And they understood.
   They looked back at the ship. It was nearly through the wormhole, so very 
long ago. So they came back and watched it pass from their realm.
   Without sadness.
   They didn't question whether they would know of the 
beings-between-heartbeats again. They never wondered about the future.
   Because for the residents, it was never a case of "time will tell."
   For them, it already had.
   For them, it always did.
   For them, it always would.

*******

   They were waiting.
   They were always waiting.
   For what, they never knew.
   But something always showed up.
   And then it would wait, too.
   With the rest of the Wastes.
   Stellar gas. Dust. Ice. Asteroids. Planetary debris. From scores of 
systems, they were cast off when stars were born. Or died. It didn't matter.
   It all ended up in the Wastes.
   As it formed, it became a dense, thick river that, by its very size, kept 
drawing the debris of the quadrant. It flowed slowly, like a broad, deep 
stream with currents and eddies. And it circulated regularly along the 
frontiers of the quadrant. Stay long enough, and you might see the same piece 
of  debris pass by twice.
   Few stayed that long.
   Which was why the Wastes waited. It paid to be patient.
   Eventually, something always showed up.
   Even the occasional artifact of intelligence.
   Like the spaceship.
   Blue, white and battered. Yellow triangles, scarred by micrometeors, 
colored its sides. One day, over centuries,  it had wandered -- cold and dead 
-- into the Wastes.
   One of our own, the Wastes sensed. So they took it into themselves.
   It was worked into the river of debris, nudged into place by other cosmic 
wreckage. And never sternly: The Wastes had all the time there was to 
shepherd a new arrival.
   Finally on track, the ship took millennia to drift away. It sank into a 
current and was lost. But not really lost. Nothing was ever truly lost in the 
Wastes.
   It would always show up.
   You just had to wait.

*******

   From the later Terran perspective, the Wastes were in the Gamma Quadrant.
   Earth was in the Alpha Quadrant, of course. You always considered the 
local neighborhood as the starting point. Everywhere else came after. But all 
civilizations did the same. For this amazing reason, their homeworlds always 
seemed to end up at the very center of their star charts. 
   And in the Alpha Quadrant, too -- far from Earth -- was the single planet 
with green-brown continents and purplish oceans.
   Which a comet passed by regularly.
   Near a wormhole. A regularly opening wormhole.
   Near the planet, where intelligent life evolved.
   Until one day ...
   The intelligence developed spaceflight and reached starward.
   Until one day ...
   Conquest by aliens. Then a brutal occupation and determined resistance. 
And the building of a space station by the conquerers.
   Until one day ...
   The conquerers departed, pressured by a rising power in the quadrant. A 
power that took over the space station at the natives' request, as a 
protector of the planet and a guardian of the wormhole. The wormhole near the 
planet.
   The planet that had come to call itself Bajor.
   Until one day ...

TO BE CONTINUED