The Entropy Effect

And that, of course, as always, is my main concern.

Captain James T. Kirk sprawled on the couch in the sitting room of his cabin, dozing over a book. The lights flickered and he woke abruptly, startled by the momentary power failure and by the simultaneous lurch in the Enterprise ’s gravity. The main shields strained to the limits of their strength, drawing all available power in order to protect ship and crew from the almost incalculable radiation of another X-ray storm.

Kirk forced himself to relax, but he still felt uneasy, as if he should be doing something. But there was nothing he could do, and he knew it. His ship lay in orbit around a naked singularity, the first and only one ever discovered, and Mr. Spock was observing, measuring, and analyzing it, trying to deduce why it had appeared, suddenly and mysteriously, out of nowhere. The Vulcan science officer had been at his task nearly six weeks now; he was almost finished.

Kirk was not too pleased at having to expose the Enterprise to the radiation, the gravity waves, and the twists and turns of space itself. But the work was critical: spreading like a huge carcinoma, the singularity straddled a major warp-space lane. More important, though: if one singularity could appear without warning, so might another. The next one might not simply disarrange interstellar commerce. The next one might writhe into existence near an inhabited planet, and wipe out every living thing on its surface.

Kirk glanced at the screen of his communications terminal, which he had been leaving focused on the singularity. As the Enterprise arced across one of the poles, the energy storm intensified. Dust swirled down toward the puncture in the continuum, disintegrating into energy. The light that he could see, the wavelengths in the visible spectrum, formed only the smallest part of the furious radiation that pounded at his ship.

The forces, shifts, and tidal stresses troubled everyone in the crew; everyone was snappish and bored despite the considerable danger they were in. Nothing would change until Mr. Spock completed his observations.

Spock could have done the work all by himself in a solo ship—if a solo ship were able to withstand the singularity’s distortion of space. But it could not, so Spock needed the Enterprise . Yet Spock was the only being essential to this mission. That was the worst thing about the entire job: no one was afraid of facing peril, but there was no way to control it or fight it or overcome it. They had nothing to do but wait

until it was over.

Kirk thought, with unfocussed gratitude, that at least he could begin to think of the assignment in terms of hours rather than weeks or days. Like the rest of the crew, he would be glad when it was finished.

“Captain Kirk?”

Kirk reached out and opened the channel. The image of the singularity faded out and Lieutenant Uhura appeared on the screen.

“Yes, Lieutenant?—Uhura, what’s wrong?”

“We’re receiving a subspace transmission, Captain. It’s scrambled—”

“Put it through. What’s the code?”

“Ultimate, sir.”

He sat up abruptly. “Ultimatel”

“Yes, sir, ultimate override, from mining colony Aleph Prime. It came through once, then cut off before it could repeat.” She glanced at her instruments and fed the recording to his terminal.

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

The unscrambling key came up out of his memory unbidden. He was prohibited from keeping a written record of it. He was not even allowed to enter it into the ship’s computer for automatic decoding. With pencil and paper, he began the laborious job of transforming the jumble of letters and symbols until they sorted themselves out into a coherent message.

Lieutenant Commander Mandala Flynn changed into her judo gi and hung her uniform pants and shirt in her locker. For once, her long curly red hair had not begun to stray from its tight knot. She knew she ought to cut it. The border patrol, her last assignment, encouraged a good deal more wildness in appearance, and behavior, than was customary on the Enterprise : customary, or, probably, tolerated. She had only been on board two months, and most of her time and attention so far had centered on putting the security team back into some semblance of coherent shape. Consequently, she had not yet felt out the precise informal limitations of life on the Enterprise . She did not intend to fit in on the ship, she intended to stand out. But she wanted her visibility to be due to her professionalism and her competence, not to her eccentricities.

She wondered if Mr. Sulu were tired of their half-joking agreement, that she would not cut her waist-length red hair if he would let his hair grow. So far he had kept up his end of the bargain: his hair already touched his shoulders, and he had started a mustache as well. But Flynn did not want him to feel trapped by their deal if he were being harassed or even teased.

She went to the ship’sdojo , stopping just inside to bow in the traditional way.