The Entropy Effect

At the junction of two corridors, he stopped. What point to going to Mordreaux’s cabin? He would not be there: Spock had just freed him! But the science officer would have had to use the transporter in tandem with the changer. Ian might be able to catch him, at least. If he hurried.

He changed direction, and ran.

Still dazzled by the sudden flash of the transporter/ changer, McCoy blinked. In the darkness, he wondered if this was what it was like never to have existed at all.

“Mr. Spock?”

He received no answer.

He gradually became aware of the self-luminous dials on the transporter, casting a strange silver glow over his hands. He drew away, into the shadows, and stood quietly waiting for something, anything, to happen.

The darkness crept away in the dim illumination of emergency power. He waited: but nothing changed.

McCoy began to hear the shouts of consternation from nearby crew members: it was always traumatic, on the rare occasions when the power failed in a starship. Everyone was frightened.

McCoy did not blame them. He was frightened, too, and he knew what was going on.

McCoy glanced at the transporter platform, but decided it would be better to return in an hour than to wait for Spock here.

Starting out the doorway, he nearly ran into Ian Braithewaite.

“Damn,” Braithewaite said. “I hoped ...”

He blocked the door. Aside from being more than a head taller than the doctor, he was twenty years younger.

“It isn’t too late, Dr. McCoy,” he said earnestly. “I know what happened last night—I know what kind of stress you were working under. I know you weren’t yourself.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I was awake, when Captain Kirk . . . died. I saw you arguing with Mr. Spock. I know you didn’t want to comply with his demands.”

McCoy stared at Braithewaite, dumbfounded.

“I can’t promise you immunity, not after last night.” He grasped McCoy by the shoulders. “But I know

how much pressure can be brought to bear on someone. I’ve seen what it can do. If you help me I swear I’ll do everything in my power to have this reduced from a capital crime.”

McCoy went cold. He realized—Finally you realize! he thought, it’syou he’s after, you and Spock, not just Commander Flynn or some faceless nameless phantom conspiracy.

Spock was not being so paranoid after all.

“Are you sayin’—” McCoy heard the soft threat again in his own voice. “Are you sayin’ you think Jim Kirk—Just exactly what are you saying?”

“Captain Kirk was still alive. I saw you disconnect the life-support systems.”

“He was dead, Ian. His brain was dead before I took him off the bridge, only I wouldn’t admit it. That’s what Spock and I were arguing about. I couldn’t admit that I couldn’t do anything to save Jim, I couldn’t admit that he was dead.”

Braithewaite hesitated. “You were so drunk you didn’t know what you were doing, how could you know if he was dead or not?”

“Even blind drunk I could have heard the brain-wave sensors. Hear them! My god, I’d been listening to them for hours.”

Braithewaite gazed down at him thoughtfully. “I’d like to believe you,” he said. “But why did you do it in the middle of the night, without contacting his family, or even his executor?”

“The only family he has is a young nephew.I’m Jim’s executor. You can look at his will if you want to. He asked not to be kept alive if there were no hope of recovery. I’d been keeping his body alive for hours, against his wishes, trying to pretend to myself that he might get well. It wasn’t fair, not to anybody, particularly not to Jim.”

Some of the tension left Braithewaite’s stance, and he stepped aside, but he followed McCoy down the corridor.

“The power failure—it was the result of using the time-travel device.”

McCoy did not reply.

“Dr. McCoy, I want to believe your story about Captain Kirk, please believe me. But you’ve got to tell me where—and when—you sent Spock and Mordreaux.”

“I didn’t send them anywhere. What do you mean, ‘when’? Time travel? That’s the craziest thing I ever heard. I told you you can’t talk to Spock till he’s gotten some sleep. But Mordreaux is still in his cabin. Why don’t you go check?”

McCoy was too preoccupied to notice the fury that spread over Ian Braithewaite’s expression when he was confronted again with the pathetic fabrication of Spock’s hibernation, or estivation, or afternoon nap if they wanted to call it that. The falsehood of it had been blatantly demonstrated to him. But Ian knew his own flaws. He was out of his depth in this case, and had been from the beginning, trying to balance his passion for justice against a threat so devastating it was almost incomprehensible, trying to weigh suspicion against his own good faith.

You’re being naive, Ian, he thought. Again.

But it was possible that McCoy himself was being deceived.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll check on Dr. Mordreaux. But you’ve got to come with me.” He was not so naive that he would trust McCoy till he had some proof of the doctor’s innocence.