The Entropy Effect

As commander of security, Flynn was in no analysis of the hierarchy Sulu’s immediate superior. If she had been, she would never have permitted herself to find him attractive. But she was used to the traditions of the border patrol, where the established crew decided when to invite new people to use informal names. Rank was not a factor. Here was another case where the Enterprise ran along more strictly traditional military lines. Flynn outranked Sulu by a grade.

“I’ll start it, then,” she said. “My friends call me Mandala. Do you use another name?” She had never heard anyone call him anything but Sulu.

“I don’t, usually,” he said “But...”

Mandala waited a few moments. “’But’?”

He glanced away from her. “When I tell people my first name, if they know Japanese, they laugh.”

“And if they don’t know Japanese?”

“They ask me what it means, I tell them, and then they laugh.”

“I can match anyone in the weird name combination department,” Mandala said.

“My given name is Hikaru.”

She did not laugh. “That’s beautiful. And it fits.”

He started to blush. “You know what it means.”

“Sure. Hikaru, the shining one. Is it from the novel?”

“Yes,” he said, surprised. “You’re the only person outside my immediate family I ever met who’s even heard of the Tale of Genji .”

She looked at his eyes. He glanced away, glanced back, and then, suddenly, their gazes locked.

“May I call you Hikaru?” Mandala asked, trying to keep her voice steady. He had beautiful, deep, brown eyes that never lost their humor.

“I wish you would,” he said softly.

The intercom on the wall whistled, startling them both.

“Mr. Sulu to the bridge! On the double!”

Hikaru sank slowly down till he was completely immersed in the hot water. A moment later, he erupted like an outraged dolphin, swung himself out of the tub, and stood dripping on the tile.

“They can find you anywhere!” he shouted, grabbed his towel, and slapped the response button on the intercom panel. “I’m on my way!” He glanced back toward Mandala, who had already got out of the water. “I—”

“Go on,” she said. Her adrenaline level shot up; her heart pounded. “We can talk later. Gods only know what’s happened.”

“Good lord,” he said. “You’re right.” He hurried into the locker room, pulled his pants on fast, and left carrying his boots and shirt. Mandala dressed almost as quickly; she knew security could do very little if the singularity were about to snatch them and gobble them down, but she wanted to be ready for anything.

In the observatory of the Enterprise , Mr. Spock stared thoughtfully at his computer’s readout. It still did not show anything like what he had expected. He wanted to go through the preliminary analysis again, but it was nearly time to take another instrument reading. He was most anxious to obtain as many extremely accurate observational points as possible.

Since he was to report to Starfleet, and Starfleet was based on Earth, Spock thought about the naked

singularity in terms of Earth’s scientific traditions. The theories of Tipler and of Penrose were, in fact, the most useful in analyzing the phenomenon. So far, however, Spock had found no explanation for the abrupt appearance of a naked singularity. He expected it to behave in a peculiar fashion, but it was behaving even more peculiarly than theory predicted. The interstellar dust that it was sucking up should cause it to form an event horizon, but it was doing no such thing. If the singularity was growing at all, it was expanding into and through dimensions Spock could not even observe.

But Spock had discovered something. The wave functions that described the singularity contained entropic terms such as he had never seen before, terms so unusual they surprised even him.

Many scientific discoveries occur when the observer notices an unexpected, unlikely, even apparently impossible event, and follows it up rather than discarding it as nonsense. Spock was aware of this, never so much as now.

If the first analysis of the data held up in replication, the results would spread shock waves throughout the entire scientific community, and into the public consciousness as well. If the first analysis held up: it was possible that he had made a mistake, or even that the design of his apparatus was causing unsuspected error.

Spock sat down at his instruments, centered and focussed them, and checked the adjustments.

The Enterprise approached a gap in the accretion sphere around the singularity, a region where the X-ray storms ebbed abruptly and an observer could stare down into the eerily featureless mystery that twisted space and time and reason.

But as Spock’s battery of measuring devices scanned the singularity, the Enterprise suddenly and without warning accelerated to full power, ploughed back into the disintegrating matter and energy, burst through to deep space, and fled toward the stars.