The Entropy Effect Read online

  “And the other two possibilities are invasion, or critical experimental failure,” Kirk said. “Not an inviting choice.”

  “There is one final category,” Spock said.

  “Yes,” Kirk said thoughtfully. The unclassified reason, unclassified because unclassifiable: danger never before encountered. “Could be interesting,” he said.

  “Indeed, Captain.”

  “Mr. Sulu, what are you getting on the sensors?”

  “Nothing unusual, sir. A few ore-carriers in transit between asteroids and Aleph Prime, some sailboats—”

  “Sailboats!” People out sailing the solar wind, tacking across magnetic fields, out for a quiet picnic—during such an emergency? Kirk found it hard to believe.

  “Yes, sir. It looks like they’re having a race. But the course is well out of normal traffic patterns.”

  “Thank heaven for small favors,” Kirk said with considerable sarcasm. Hundreds of years had not changed the tradition that an unpowered sailboat, however small, had right of way over a powered ship, though the pleasure boats drifting across the viewscreen would be like motes of dust compared to the Enterprise.

  “Captain Kirk,” Sulu said, “we’re within sensor range of Aleph Prime.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Sulu. Can we have it on the screen?”

  Sulu touched controls and the jewel-like chaos of the station sprang up magnified before them. Its transparent and opaque sections glittered through a rainbow of starlight and refraction. Kirk had never visited Aleph Prime before; he had not expected it to be beautiful. Too many cities were not. But this one was like a congregation of delicate curving glass fibers, and the shells of radiolaria expanded millions of times, and bits of polished semiprecious stones, turquoise and opal, agate and amber.

  “Captain, we’re receiving a transmission.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Uhura. Let’s hear it.” Maybe now he would find out why they were needed. If the station had been under attack, it was infiltration rather than invasion, for Kirk could see no structural damage, nor any of the disruption and commotion he would expect after a fight. He did not know whether to be more worried, or less, but his curiosity was certainly piqued.

  “It isn’t from Aleph Prime, sir,” Uhura said. “It’s from another starship.”

  The second ship curved up from beneath the station, and with a sudden shock of perspective Kirk could see, by comparison with the tiny scarlet speck of the other craft, the sheer immense bulk of Aleph Prime. Of course the station was large, it had to be; it held half a million intelligent beings, human as well as other life-forms. Sulu magnified the approaching ship, and Kirk had a brief glimpse of a tantalizingly familiar shape, painted quite unmilitarily in the colors of a phoenix eagle, before the picture dissolved and the video portion of the communication appeared on the screen.

  “Hunter!” Kirk said involuntarily.

  “ Aerfen to Enterprise ,” said the other starship’s captain. “Come in, Jim, is that you?” She paused. “Captain?” Uhura asked.

  “Maintain radio silence, Lieutenant,” Kirk said, with regret. “We’ll have to leave greetings for later.”

  The starship captain paused a moment, gazing out of the screen. She had changed in the years since Kirk had seen her last. The lines at the corners of her clear gray eyes served only to add more character to her face, not to detract from its elegance. Her black hair was still long, and the lock that fell down her right cheek to her shoulder she still wore braided and tied with a leather thong and a scarlet feather. The black now was lightly scattered with gray, but that merely increased her dignity, her gravity.

  Then she grinned, the grin like a child’s, and she took him back years in memory, back to the Academy, back to the rivalry, friendship, and passion. But he knew her well enough to detect the trace of reticence in her smile, the reticence he had caused.

  “Aerfenwill be at Aleph for a few more days,” Hunter said. “Call me if you’ve got some time.”

  The transmission faded. By now Hunter’s ship had swung far enough up the face of Aleph Prime to present its side to the Enterprise . Sulu magnified it again and gazed at it rapturously.

  “Captain Hunter and Aerfen ,” he said in awe. He glanced back at Kirk. “You know her, Captain?”

  “We . .. went to school together.” Kirk had never seen Sulu in quite such a state of hero-worship; Kirk did not think Sulu could have been more surprised if D’Artagnan himself, flexing his epee and twirling the end of his mustache, had appeared and spoken to him.

  And far from being amused, Kirk understood completely how Mr. Sulu felt. He felt that way himself, and with far more reason.

  Sulu moved the Enterprise expertly into a stable orbit around Aleph Prime. Relative to the plane of the star system, Aerfen circled Aleph in a polar orbit. Instead of choosing a vacant level and inserting the larger ship into equatorial orbit, Sulu used a bit of extra time and a bit of extra fuel to position his ship so that, from the bridge, Aerfen would remain in view as long as it kept to its present track. Sulu let its sleek lines fill his gaze. It was much smaller than the Enterprise , for it was a fighter. Its design presented the smallest possible cross-section to an enemy in head-on approach, so it appeared to be streamlined. It was painted a fierce scarlet, with points of black and silver. It looked like a swift, powerful avian predator.

  As he put the finishing touches on the Enterprise’s orbit, the relative orientation of the fighter to the starship changed slightly, and he could see a long bright gash in Aerfen ’s side, where the paint had been vaporized by an enemy weapon.

  “It’s seen some action,” he said softly. Recently, too, he thought. He knew intuitively that Hunter would not let her ship stay scarred any longer than she absolutely had to.

  “Mr. Sulu!”

  Sulu started. “Yes, Captain?” He wondered how many times Kirk had spoken to him before gaining his attention—and he wondered if the captain would chide him for the extra use of fuel.

  Kirk smiled. “I only wanted to compliment you on the orbit.”

  Mr. Sulu blushed, but then he realized that the amusement in Kirk’s tone was far outweighed by both understanding and approval.

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  Kirk smiled again as Sulu returned his full attention to the fast, powerful little fighter. Sulu was right: Aerfen had seen action, and not too long since. Could that be why the Enterprise had been brought here so precipitously? An attack on Aleph Prime, and his ship called in as reinforcement? But that made no sense; Hunter had not acted like a commander on alert, and the rest of her squadron was nowhere in range. Besides, the Enterprise had already circled the station once and Kirk had still seen no evidence of damage. The sensors revealed no other ships that could conceivably belong to an enemy.

  Kirk glanced over at his science officer.

  “Haveyou figured out what’s going on, Mr. Spock?”

  “The evidence is contradictory, but I believe we will not immediately be involved in armed conflict. That is the only justifiable inference I can make with the available information.”

  “Right,” Kirk said.

  “Transmission from Aleph Prime, Captain,” Uhura said.

  Aerfen dissolved from the screen. Sulu sat back, startled by the abrupt change, and his shoulders slumped in disappointment.

  A thin young white-haired civilian appeared.

  “Captain Kirk!” he said. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you’ve come. I’m Ian Braithewaite, Aleph’s prosecuting attorney. Can you beam in immediately?” The official spoke with energetic intensity.

  “Mr. Braithewaite—” Kirk said.

  “The transmitter’s still locked down, Captain,” Uhura said.

  “Open the channel! He asked me a direct question, and I’ll be damned if I’ll beam anybody into Aleph till I know what’s wrong.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. Braithewaite, can you hear me now?”

  “Yes, Captain, of course. Are you having trouble wit
h your transmitter?”

  “Trouble with—! You sent us an ultimate override transmission, we’ve been under radio silence. Technically, I’m violating it right now. What’s going on down there?” “An ultimate?” Braithewaite shook his head in disbelief. “Captain, I’m very sorry, but I just can’t discuss this over unsecured channels. Would it be better if I came up there to talk to you?”

  Kirk considered the possibility. Whatever was happening down inside Aleph Prime, it was clearly neither a system-wide emergency nor an enemy invasion. Still, he did not want to beam anyone, or anything, into the Enterprise till he knew for sure what was going on. He was beginning to believe that what it was was a tremendous mistake. He glanced at Spock, but the Vulcan showed no expression beyond a raised eyebrow. Kirk sighed.

  “No, Mr. Braithewaite,” he said. “I’ll beam down in a few minutes.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” the prosecutor said.

  “Kirk out.”

  The prosecutor’s image vanished. Sulu surreptitiously touched a control and the view in front of the Enterprise , including Aerfen , reappeared.

  “Well,” Kirk said. “Mysteriouser and mysteriouser.” He glanced at Spock, expecting a questioning gaze in response to his poor grammar. Kirk did not feel up to trying to explain Lewis Carroll to a Vulcan, much less Lewis Carroll misquoted.

  But then Spock said, straight-faced, “Curious, sir. Most curious, sir.”

  Kirk laughed, surprise allowing him a sudden release of tension.

  “Then shall we go find out what the bloody hell is going on?”

  What Jim Kirk actually wanted to do, now that he was out from under the restrictive communications blackout, was call Hunter. But he could not yet justify taking the time. He and Spock beamed down to Ian Braithewaite’s office deep inside Aleph Prime.

  The tall, slender man bounded forward and shook Kirk’s hand energetically. He loomed over the captain; he was half a head taller even than Mr. Spock.

  “Captain Kirk, thank you again for coming.” He glanced at Spock. “And—we’ve met, haven’t we?”

  “I do not believe so,” Spock said.

  “This is Mr. Spock, my science officer, my second in command.”

  Braithewaite grabbed Mr. Spock’s hand and shook it before Kirk could do anything to stop him. It was the poorest conceivable manners for a stranger to offer to shake hands with a Vulcan.

  Spock noticed Kirk’s embarrassment, but he knew it would be a serious breach of protocol on his own part not to acknowledge the handshake, if the human were this ignorant. Spock endured the grasp. With a few seconds’ warning he could have prepared himself, but there were no extra seconds to be had. Braithewaite’s emotions and surface thoughts washed up against Spock in a wave: normal human thoughts, confused and powerful, with an overlay of unexplained grief. Just as preparing for telepathic communication required time and concentration and energy, so did setting one’s shields against the

  echoes of such communication. Spock could not protect himself constantly against every random touch; he had learned to ignore such things, for the most part. But also, for the most part, his shipmates on the Enterprise knew better than to touch him.

  Trying to return discourtesy with courtesy, Spock did his best not to notice the brief opening into Braithewaite’s thoughts, resisting the temptation to intrude directly and discover why the Enterprise had been called here. He did not seek out any information, and of the thoughts forced upon him, none was useful.

  Spock drew back his hand as he succeeded in sealing his mental shields.

  “Please come into the back office,” Braithewaite said. “It’s a little more secure.” He led the way into the next room.

  “Sorry, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said under his breath. He had seen the muscles harden along Spock’s jaw, a faint change anyone who did not know Spock extremely well would be oblivious to.

  “I will maintain my shields until we return to the ship, Captain,” Spock said tightly.

  Braithewaite dragged an extra chair to the inner room so they could all sit down; the cubicle was furnished barely, but crammed with files, data banks, stacks of memory cassettes, transcripts, and the general detritus of an understaffed office. Braithewaite got Kirk a drink in a plastic cup (Spock declined); the prosecutor sat down, then stood up again; his energy-level fairly radiated around him. He paced a few steps one way, a few steps the other. He made Jim Kirk nervous.

  “Ordinarily my job is fairly routine,” Braithewaite said. “But the last few weeks ...” He stopped and rubbed his face with both hands. “I’m sorry, gentlemen. A friend of mine died last night and I haven’t quite...”

  Kirk stood up, took Ian by the elbow, led him to the chair, made him sit down, and handed him the plastic cup.

  “Have some of that. Relax. Take your time, and tell me what happened.”

  Braithewaite drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It hasn’t anything to do with why you’re here, I just can’t keep Lee out of my mind. She didn’t seem that sick, but when I stopped by the hospital this morning they said she’d had hypermorphic botulism, and ...”

  “I understand, Mr. Braithewaite,” Kirk said. “I see why you’re so upset.”

  “She was Aleph’s public defender. Most people expect defense counsel and prosecutor to be enemies, but that’s hardly ever true. There’s a certain amount of rivalry, but if there’s any respect, you can’t help but be friends.”

  Kirk nodded. Spock watched the emotional outburst dispassionately.

  “I think I can keep hold of myself now,” Braithewaite said. He managed a faint and shaky smile, but it faded immediately. He leaned forward, intense and somber. “You’re here to take charge of the case I just finished prosecuting. It’s like nothing I’ve ever faced before. It started out nasty enough—ten people disappeared and it looked like a murderous confidence game. But it was worse than that. It turned out to be unauthorized research on self-aware subjects.”

  “What kind of research?” Spock asked.

  “I’m not allowed to say, beyond proscribed weapons development. It doesn’t affect the case, it isn’t what the conviction was for. This way it caused less publicity. And publicity would have been awkward. Federation headquarters has classified everything to do with the case.” He smiled wryly. “They’re not too pleased that I know so much about it. I knew they were concerned, but I didn’t expect them to send a ship like the Enterprise to take the prisoner to Rehabilitation Colony Seven. It’s certainly a secure transport, though.”

  “Wait a minute,” Kirk said. “Wait a minute!” All his sympathy for Ian Braithewaite fled. He was raising his voice but he did not care. “Do you mean to tell me,” he shouted, leaping to his feet, “that you diverted the Enterprise —you diverted a ship of the line, with a crew of four hundred thirty-five people—to ferry one man the width ofone star system?”

  He was leaning over Braithewaite, shouting into his face. He straightened up and stepped back, stopping his outburst but not for an instant regretting it.

  The empty plastic cup crumpled loudly in Braithewaite’s clenched fist. “I didn’t choose the ship, Captain Kirk,” he said. His face had turned nearly as pale as his colorless hair. “Federation HQ said they’d send a ship, and when the Enterprise howled in at warp nine I assumed you were it.”

  “The transmission did not come from Federation Headquarters,” Spock said calmly. “Nor from Starfleet Command.” He had sat, unperturbed, through Braithewaite’s story and Kirk’s tantrum. “It did not even come from a Starbase. It came directly from Aleph Prime, with the ultimate override coding that has only been used five times, to my knowledge, in the past standard decade.”

  “I honestly don’t know how that happened, Mr. Spock,” Braithewaite said.

  “The override is reserved for planetary disasters, unprovoked enemy attack, or unforeseen occurrences in scientific investigation. It is not intended to help deal with petty criminals.”

  Ian Braithew
aite’s puppydog intensity vanished in stronger, angry determination. “Petty criminals! Aside from everything else the man’s a murderer!”

  “I beg your pardon,” Spock said, in precisely the same tone he had used before. “Perhaps I misspoke myself.”

  Braithewaite nodded sharply.

  “It is not intended to deal with criminals at all,” Spock said. “In fact there are criminal penalties attached to its misuse—as you must know.”

  Despite himself, Kirk grinned. Spock would deny it, but the science officer was inducing a far more emotional effect with cold facts than Kirk had got by shouting at the top of his lungs. Kirk hoped that somewhere, down in the repressed human half of himself, Spock was enjoying his revenge.

  “But/ didn’t use the code,” Braithewaite said.

  “The communication originated in your office and bore your signature.”

  “If you’ve been diverted unnecessarily, I’m very sorry,” Braithewaite said with honest sincerity. “I’ll try to find out how it happened. Obviously, yes, you should never have been called on the override code.”

  “Good,” Kirk said. “That’s that, then. We can be on our way.” He stood up.

  Braithewaite jumped to his feet and loomed over them. “Captain, you don’t understand the problem. We’re isolated here, and official ships are few and far between. We simply haven’t got the facilities to detain anyone as ruthless and charismatic and intelligent as Georges Mordreaux. If he escaped, he could easily drop out of sight, he could even stow away on a commercial ship and get completely out of the system. There’d be nothing to stop his beginning all over again somewhere else. The man’s dangerous: he makes people believe he can fulfill their dreams! It’s essential that he be sent to the rehabilitation center before he gets a chance to deceive anyone else. If he gets away—”

  “Your neck would be on the line, for one thing,” Kirk said.

  Braithewaite slowly flushed. “That goes without saying.”

  “Captain,” Spock said. “I believe we should accede to Mr. Braithewaite’s request.”

  Astonished, Kirk faced his science officer.