The Entropy Effect

He stood before her, downcast. Mandala wanted to hug him, to take away some of that lost hurt look, but she knew she would not want to stop with a hug. Aside from the absurdity of trying to caress someone while they were both dressed in padded fencing jackets and standing in the middle of a public gym, she did not want to take the chance of embarrassing Hikaru again.

“I just don’t think ...” He paused, and started again. “It seemed so cold, to respond to you when the chances were I’d be taking off almost immediately.”

Mandala took his hand, and stroked the hollow of his palm. “It isn’t fair toyou,” she said. “Hikaru, nobody ever makes long-term commitments on the border patrol. It’s too chancy, and it’s too painful. We used to say to each other: for a little while. I’m not used to anything but that. But you ... I think you’d rather have something that lasted a long time.”

“Itis better,” he said tentatively.

“That’s up to you. It’s fine. I understand, now. You’ve been under one hell of a lot of stress these last few weeks, and you’re under more because of thinking about transferring off the Enterprise . I think you’re right not to want to make it any harder on yourself.”

“I guess that’s part of it.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you,” he said. He hugged her, and she returned the embrace until she was embarrassed herself, by her own response. She drew back, and picked up her foil.

“Come on—I want my lesson.”

They saluted each other with the foils. Hikaru put his mask on.

“Hikaru,” Mandala said, “if you change your mind, let me know.” She pulled her own mask down and slipped into a smooth en garde position.

After several hours of fruitless work, Mr. Spock finally broke the communications link to Aleph Prime. He had tried every conceivable route toward the information he wanted, and every conceivable route dead-ended. He could do nothing more on board the Enterprise .

Before closing down his terminal he pulled up the duty roster to find someone familiar with the bridge who was still on board. Mr. Sulu’s name was first on the list.

Paging the helm officer, Spock reached him in the gymnasium. Sulu appeared on the screen; he pushed his fencing mask to the top of his head. Sweat dripped down his face. Spock ordinarily found Sulu among the easiest of his colleagues to work with. But the other side of the lieutenant’s character, the one that emerged when he was in the grip of his very deep streak of romanticism, Spock found virtually incomprehensible.

Mr. Sulu wiped off the sweat, put down his foil, and became once more the epitome of a serious, no-nonsense, one-track-minded Starfleet junior officer.

“Yes, Mr. Spock?”

“Mr. Sulu, can you interrupt what you are doing?”

“I’ve just finished giving a lesson, sir.”

“I must return to Aleph Prime for a short while, and I do not wish to leave the bridge unattended.”

“I can be there in ten minutes, Mr. Spock.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sulu. Spock out.”

But as he reached for the controls he saw Sulu make an involuntary gesture toward him. Spock paused with his hand on the reset button.

“Yes, Mr. Sulu? Is there something else?”

“Mr. Spock—” Sulu hesitated, then spoke all in a rush. “Did the captain say—do you think it’s possible—will Captain Hunter come on board?”

Spock gazed impassively at Sulu for several moments.

Sulu would, at that juncture, have given almost anything to recall his outburst. Mr. Spock was perhaps the only person on the Enterprise who would not, or could not, understand why he had asked the question. As far as Sulu had ever observed, the most effusive reaction Spock ever offered anyone was respect, and that infrequently. He had certainly never shown any signs of hero-worship. Sulu was under no illusions concerning his own feelings about Hunter: they were hero-worship, pure, blazing, and undignified. Hunter had been one of Sulu’s heroes for half his life. Though he had been born on Earth, his

mother was a consulting agronomist and his father was a poet; Hikaru Sulu had spent his childhood and adolescence on the frontier, on a succession of colony planets. His longest stay anywhere was on Ganjitsu, a world far out on the border of a sector that had long been harassed by renegades—the Klingons claimed they were renegades, though of course no one ever believed them—and at the mercy of pirates who were all too human. The Ganjitsujin resisted with inadequate means; for a long time they wondered if they had been forgotten or abandoned. Then Hunter, a very young officer with her first command, swept in like a hunting hawk, beat the pirates back into the hands of the Klingons, and bested the Klingons themselves at their own game.

Sulu had seen things on Ganjitsu that he still had nightmares about, but Hunter had stopped the nightmare-reality. Sulu doubted he could make Mr. Spock understand how he felt about her, even if he had the opportunity to explain. No doubt he had lost the science officer’s confidence forever. Sulu wished mightily that he had waited to ask Captain Kirk about Hunter. The captain understood.