The Entropy Effect

In sick bay, Ian Braithewaite lay unconscious and surrounded by the critical care machines. The sensors showed his life signs stable, Hunter noted with some relief: she had expected him to die.

McCoy and Scott sat in silence in McCoy’s office, neitheir glancing toward the other. Hunter sat on a corner of the doctor’s desk, and Mr. Sulu stood just inside the doorway.

“Is Mr. Braithewaite going to be all right?”

“I don’t know,” McCoy said.

“He was afraid he’d be poisoned,” Scott said.

“Will you stop saying that? He wasn’t poisoned here! Somebody fed him the toxin encapsulated. The matrix has been dissolving for a couple of days. Since before he came on board.”

“Since he saw Mr. Spock on Aleph, before the Enterprise ever reached it, just as I saw Mr. Spock where he couldna have been!”

“Braithewaite was probably already hallucinating—”

“Are ye saying I’m hallucinating, too? D’ye meant I’ve been poisoned, too?”

Hunter was willing to let them argue if the result was some useful information, but this was ridiculous.

“Dr. McCoy,” she said, “I just found something very strange in the transporter. A bioelectronic addition.”

Scott glanced sharply at her. “Bioelectronic! So was the gizmo Mr. Spock had wi’ him when he disappeared—some kind o’ weapon, Mr. Braithewaite said. Nae thing like that should be in the

transporter!” He stood up.

“Stay here, Mr. Scott,” Hunter said, without looking at him, keeping her gaze fixed on Leonard McCoy. The doctor lied with his expression no better than with words. His face turning slowly very pale, he stared at her. “I don’t want to take it apart, Mr. Scott. Not yet. Leonard, do you want to tell me what it is?”

“Not very much, no.”

“Then I’ll tell you something about it. It boosts the beam. And it alters it into ... something else. The most interesting thing about it is the return control.”

“You didn’t touch it—!”

“No. Not so far. But if I engage it, and Mr. Spock still has the gadget’s mate with him, it will bring him back. From wherever he is. Isn’t that right?”

“Maybe.”

“Damn it! Will you just tell me what the hell is going on!”

“Give Spock a little more time,” McCoy said. “Please.”

“How much more time?”

“He said he’d try to come back within twelve hours. He’s been gone almost two.”

“Do you really expect me to do nothing for twelve hours? Without a reasonable explanation? Or even an unreasonable one?”

McCoy shook his head. “If you didn’t believe me before, there’s just no chance you’d believe what I’d tell you now.”

“Leonard,” she said, “what have you got to lose?”

“Everything.”

In the uncomfortable pause, Mr. Sulu stepped forward. “Dr. McCoy,” he said, “please trust her. How can she trust you if you don’t give her a chance?”

McCoy looked up at the helm officer, buried his face in his hands with a groan, and, finally, raised his head again.

“If you turn on the thing in the transporter,” he said slowly, “you might bring Spock back. But more likely you’d kill him.”

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

He drew in a deep breath, let it out, laced his fingers together and pressed his palms against his closed eyes, and started to tell a story so much more preposterous than even the one Ian Braithewaite had constructed that Hunter listened, fascinated despite herself.

When he finished, Hunter and Scott and Sulu all stared at him.

“I’ve no’ heard a crazier story in my life!”Scott said.

“Scotty, you know time-travel is possible,” McCoy said.

“Aye ...” The engineer withdrew into himself.

“Either Dr. Mordreaux wasn’t as loony as I thought,” Hunter said, “oryou have gone stark staring mad.”

McCoy sighed. “I know how it sounds, especially now after I’ve spent so much time trying to mislead you. I kept hoping Spock would succeed, if I just gave him the chance.”

“And now you want me to give him the chance.”

“Hunter—you could have stopped him, before. You didn’t.”

“I wouldn’t kill Spock because you lied to me any more than I’d do it because Ian Braithewaite wanted me to.”

“Don’t kill him now. Just give him a little more time. It’s all the truth, I swear to you.”

Hunter leaned back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “I couldn’t do anything for Jim anymore, but he was Jim’s friend, and that is the real reason I didn’t stop him.”

“Hunter,” Sulu said intensely, “it’s a little time—against the chance that Mandala and the captain won’t be—wouldn’t be—killed after all. It’s a risk worth taking!”

She laughed softly. “Not if we’re wrong, it isn’t.” She shook her head, surprised at herself. “I think I’ll spend the next ten years hanging by my thumbs in a military prison for this, but Spock can have his damned twelve hours.”

Lying on the bench in the courtroom, Professor Mordreaux groaned. Spock went to his side, and, when his former teacher had fully regained consciousness, gently helped him sit up.

“Spock? Mr. Spock, what are you doing here? How...?” He glanced beyond the Vulcan to the time-changers. “Oh, no,” he said, and began to laugh.