The Entropy Effect

“No, probably not.” McCoy gave up the argument reluctantly, intending to begin it again at the first opportunity—then reminding himself that if all went well it never would have occurred to start with. “All right, never mind. You rest for a few minutes, hear? I’ll be right back.”

After McCoy left sick bay, Spock lay down on the bunk in the cubicle. He still had to be careful not to sleep, but he needed the physical rest desperately. He would not admit pain. But he could ignore it only so long; it was a physiological sign of danger.

As he rested his body and tried to keep his mind alert, he thought about coincidences, the coincidences that had begun to show their causes. The Enterprise had not been called to Aleph Prime at random; Dr. Mordreaux had devised a way to order it to the station. There was some strong significant relation between the professor’s work, and the entropy effect Spock had discovered as a by-product of his observations of the singularity.

A flash of insight took him, like an electric shock, and he saw how his new factor applied to Dr. Mordreaux’s work. It was a direct result of travel through the fourth dimension, not a by-product at all. The singularity that had been created was merely the spectacular physical manifestation of the one-way trip Dr. Mordreaux’s friends had taken through time. Spock could not see why he had not understood it before. Perhaps he had been too willing to accept the human view of coincidence; or perhaps the connection was too simple to be easy to see. The theoretical connection between naked singularities and the possibility of time-travel, and, conversely, time-travel and the creation of singularities, was centuries old. Discovery of that interrelation appeared to precede the discovery of the principles behind interstellar travel, in virtually all technological societies.

But the entropy effect was something new, and it was the far more disastrous consequence of temporal displacement.

Dr. Mordreaux’s friends must be returned to their own time, to repair the rip through the continuum that their journey had caused.

Spock had no way to estimate how Dr. Mordreaux would take this new information, or even whether he would believe it. He might refuse to accept it, and see it as nothing more than another attempt by Spock to try to make him betray his friends.

The Vulcan began to realize just how high were the stakes against which he had placed his honor.

McCoy stopped just inside the engine room. The air was full of the smell of ozone, singed insulation, and melted semiconductors. Scott sat in his office, bent over his computer console: if things were so bad he could not set to work fixing them immediately—practically by instinct as far as McCoy had ever been able to see—then things were bad indeed.

“Hello, Scotty,” McCoy said. “What a—”

He cut off his flippant remark as Scott went rigid in his chair. McCoy knew the chief engineer was enraged even before he turned around, which he did, slowly, still seated in the swivel chair, pushing with his left hand, which was clamped so tight around the edge of the console that his whole forearm trembled.

“Scotty,” McCoy said gently, “what’s wrong?”

“Nae a thing.”

“Come on. Is it this blasted command business? I don’t want it—I’m sure Mr. Speck didn’t even think about how you’d feel, he just chose the arrangement he thought would be most efficient.”

“There’s nae a thing wrong,” Scott said again. “Nae a thing at all. What do ye want? I canna take time to chat.”

All right, you stubborn Scot, McCoy thought, if you want to play at being official, I’ve got years more experience at this game than you do.

“I can see that, Mr. Scott,” McCoy said. “I certainly don’t want to waste your valuable time. Just give me an update on the engines, impulse and warp.”

Scott looked taken aback by McCoy’s response, as if he had been bluffing somehow, and never expected McCoy either to call him on it or take the offensive. McCoy had the feeling, as well, that even so he had not acted as Scott hoped he would, but he was at a complete loss about what Scott did want just now, and as Scott could not take the time to chat, McCoy could not take the time to play armchair psychiatrist, or even have another try at patching up the engineer’s ego.

“The impulse engines are just barely functioning,” Scott said. “If my people work round the clock we’ll be able to decelerate by the time we reach turn-around for Rehab Seven. But the engine room crew ha’ already been working round the clock for days, and they’re exhausted.”

“Do you know what caused the blackout?” McCoy asked, because he thought that was the question he

would be expected to ask.

“A power drain. ‘Tis as if someone fed the current into the transporter and beamed tremendous amounts of electrical energy out into space.”

“Well, it couldn’t be that,” McCoy said quickly, hoping to divert Scott from information the engineer would be better off not knowing. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Nae, it dinna make sense.”