The Entropy Effect

His logic did not disappoint him this time. After only a few minutes, Dr. Mordreaux skulked down the hall toward the emergency transmitter, glancing nervously over his shoulder at every other step, stopping short at every faint noise. Over his shoulder he carried a time-changer almost identical to Spock’s.

He placed his hand against the locking panel: he had succeeded in breaking the security circuits, just as Spock would have done. The door slid open. Spock drew his phaser and stepped into the hall.

“Dr. Mordreaux,” he said softly. The professor spun, panic in his face. He grabbed for his own weapon.

“No, wait” he cried.

Spock fired.

He caught Mordreaux before he fell. His phaser had, of course, been set only to stun. He did not wish to kill if he could possibly avoid it. He lifted the elderly man easily and carried him into the courtroom, secured the door from the inside, opaqued the glass walls, and raised the light level so the professor would be able to see when he came to. Spock sat down to wait.

In sick bay, Dr. McCoy worked frantically, afraid too much time had passed, afraid he would fail again, afraid he would have to watch Ian Braithewaite, too, die under his hands.

Spock, he thought, where the devil are you, why don’t you do something? The world’s coming apart at the seams and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

Outside the intensive care unit, Scott and Hunter waited. The erratic tones of the life-support systems could not quite obscure Scott’s voice.

“He was afraid he’d be killed,” he said, his voice strained, and tortured. “He was afraid ...”

The poison was overwhelming Ian’s body despite the support of the critical care machines. His heart trembled into fibrillation and his body convulsed with the shock that restored the beat again.

Fight, you stupid headstrong busybody, McCoy shouted in his mind.

He barely noticed when Hunter left.

8

Hikaru Sulu sat crosslegged on the floor of Mandala Flynn’s cabin, his hands relaxed on his knees, his eyes closed. He tried to recapture any of the feeling he had had in the room when she was alive. But it was as if she had never been here: she had left behind nothing of the sort that makes one’s room into a reflection of one’s own personality. She had put Hikaru’s antique sabre up on the wall, but it hung alone on the bare expanse. Her ring, warm on the inner surface, cool on the outer, circled his finger.

Mandala’s individuality had not been a function of anything she owned. She was gone, and there was no retrieving her except in memory. She lived strong and clear in his mind—he thought for an instant he caught the soft bright scent of her hair—and he began to understand her disinclination to gather possessions. He could not lose his memories of her, and they could not be taken from him.

The bed was still rumpled from their lovemaking.

The power failure startled him from his reverie, and prodded his guilt. Wandering through the Enterprise in a haze of grief, he was no use to Hunter, no use in finding out what had happened. From what Barry al Auriga had told him, every possible explanation dissolved in a mire of peculiar occurrences. Hikaru felt as stunned and angry as Barry, that Mandala was under suspicion.

He stood up slowly, rising all in one motion from the crosslegged position; in the silence the returning hum of the ventilators sounded very loud. Like a ghost passing through the dim illumination of half-power, Sulu left his lover’s cabin.

In the transporter room, Hunter touched the peculiar addition to the console, being careful not to disturb any of its connections or controls. Spock had no place to beam to, not with a normal transporter, but, as Ian Braithewaite had tried to say, this machine was definitely not a normal transporter anymore.

“What is that thing?” Mr. Sulu asked. He had rejoined her as she left sick bay. Hunter was glad of his company, not only because he could be of use to her with his knowledge of ship and crew, but because she had worried about him all alone with his grief. They had talked about Mandala and Jim on the way from Aleph to the Enterprise ; she knew how badly he was hurting.

She returned her attention to the construct in the transporter. “I’m not quite sure.” She itched to open it up and see what its innards looked like. ‘I think I’ll give Dr. McCoy one more chance to tell us what’s going on, and what that thing does, before I start playing around with it.”

She closed the amber crystals back into the transporter, and she and Sulu headed back toward sick bay.

“How are you holding up?” she asked quietly.

“Better than a little while ago,” he said. “And you?”

“When I find out why they had to die I’ll be able to tell you,” she said. “I don’t want it to be for nothing.”

“It isn’t nothing,” Sulu said. “Nobody is acting like I’d expect them to, not Dr. McCoy or Mr. Spock or Mr. Scott, and people don’t just change like that for no reason at all.”

She knew he meant it as a defense, but it could equally be used to accuse them. She did not say so.