STAR TREK: TOS #2 - The Entropy Effect

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  McCoy did not blame them. He was frightened, too, and he knew what was going on.

  McCoy glanced at the transporter platform, but decided it would be better to return in an hour than to wait for Spock here.

  Starting out the doorway, he nearly ran into Ian Braithewaite.

  “Damn,” Braithewaite said. “I hoped ...”

  He blocked the door. Aside from being more than a head taller than the doctor, he was twenty years younger.

  “It isn’t too late, Dr. McCoy,” he said earnestly. “I know what happened last night—I know what kind of stress you were working under. I know you weren’t yourself.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I was awake, when Captain Kirk ... died. I saw you arguing with Mr. Spock. I know you didn’t want to comply with his demands.”

  McCoy stared at Braithewaite, dumbfounded.

  “I can’t promise you immunity, not after last night.” He grasped McCoy by the shoulders. “But I know how much pressure can be brought to bear on someone. I’ve seen what it can do. If you help me I swear I’ll do everything in my power to have this reduced from a capital crime.”

  McCoy went cold. He realized—Finally you realize! he thought, it’s you he’s after, you and Spock, not just Commander Flynn or some faceless nameless phantom conspiracy.

  Spock was not being so paranoid after all.

  “Are you sayin’—” McCoy heard the soft threat again in his own voice. “Are you sayin’ you think Jim Kirk—Just exactly what are you saying?”

  “Captain Kirk was still alive. I saw you disconnect the life-support systems.”

  “He was dead, Ian. His brain was dead before I took him off the bridge, only I wouldn’t admit it. That’s what Spock and I were arguing about. I couldn’t admit that I couldn’t do anything to save Jim, I couldn’t admit that he was dead.”

  Braithewaite hesitated. “You were so drunk you didn’t know what you were doing, how could you know if he was dead or not?”

  “Even blind drunk I could have heard the brain-wave sensors. Hear them! My god, I’d been listening to them for hours.”

  Braithewaite gazed down at him thoughtfully. “I’d like to believe you,” he said. “But why did you do it in the middle of the night, without contacting his family, or even his executor?”

  “The only family he has is a young nephew. I’m Jim’s executor. You can look at his will if you want to. He asked not to be kept alive if there were no hope of recovery. I’d been keeping his body alive for hours, against his wishes, trying to pretend to myself that he might get well. It wasn’t fair, not to anybody, particularly not to Jim.”

  Some of the tension left Braithewaite’s stance, and he stepped aside, but he followed McCoy down the corridor.

  “The power failure—it was the result of using the time-travel device.”

  McCoy did not reply.

  “Dr. McCoy, I want to believe your story about Captain Kirk, please believe me. But you’ve got to tell me where—and when—you sent Spock and Mordreaux.”

  “I didn’t send them anywhere. What do you mean, ‘when’? Time travel? That’s the craziest thing I ever heard. I told you you can’t talk to Spock till he’s gotten some sleep. But Mordreaux is still in his cabin. Why don’t you go check?”

  McCoy was too preoccupied to notice the fury that spread over Ian Braithewaite’s expression when he was confronted again with the pathetic fabrication of Spock’s hibernation, or estivation, or afternoon nap if they wanted to call it that. The falsehood of it had been blatantly demonstrated to him. But Ian knew his own flaws. He was out of his depth in this case, and had been from the beginning, trying to balance his passion for justice against a threat so devastating it was almost incomprehensible, trying to weigh suspicion against his own good faith.

  You’re being naive, Ian, he thought. Again.

  But it was possible that McCoy himself was being deceived.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll check on Dr. Mordreaux. But you’ve got to come with me.” He was not so naive that he would trust McCoy till he had some proof of the doctor’s innocence.

  McCoy sighed. “Whatever you want, Ian,” he said. His voice was uneven. He was shaking, from being forced to relive Jim’s death. He went with Braithewaite toward Mordreaux’s cabin, getting angrier and angrier at the attorney. He doubted that seeing the professor would allay the young busybody’s suspicions, and suppose Ian discovered that it was Spock, not Mordreaux, who was missing? The only safe thing to do was to get him out of the way long enough for Spock to do his work.

  At Mordreaux’s cabin, Barry al Auriga stood talking to the two guards on duty. All three security officers looked up.

  “We’ve come to see Dr. Mordreaux—if he’s still here,” Ian said.

  al Auriga frowned, but kept his temper. “He’s here.”

  “Unlock the door.”

  “No, Barry,” McCoy said. “Don’t.”

  Everyone stared at Dr. McCoy; Ian Braithewaite turned pale.

  “I was right,” he whispered. “You are ...”

  “That’s enough out of you,” McCoy said. “Barry, would you please take Mr. Braithewaite into custody, and lock him in his room till he learns some manners?”

  “Dr. McCoy,” al Auriga said, “it will be a pure pleasure.”

  “Gently, please.”

  “I’ll handle him with gloves of softest silk.”

  Ian tried to back away from the huge, massive security officer, but he was trapped between him and McCoy, and the two other guards stood at ready.

  “You don’t understand! Mordreaux is gone! McCoy and Spock helped him escape!” He had to look up to meet al Auriga’s glare: it was years since he had encountered anyone taller than he was, and the effect of al Auriga, looming over him, was terrifying. He pressed his hands flat against the cool bulkhead behind him.

  “They killed Jim Kirk!” Ian said. “The security commander helped plan it, but she wanted too much so they killed her, too—”

  al Auriga reached out and grabbed Braithewaite by the throat.

  “Barry—” McCoy said.

  “I won’t hurt him,” al Auriga said. “I won’t—” His voice broke. “Unless he says another word.” He bent down and looked at Braithewaite straight on, pinning him with the glare of his incredible scarlet eyes. “If you say another word against Mandala, I’ll kill you.”

  Braithewaite set his jaw and met al Auriga’s gaze, in silence, but without flinching.

  Well, McCoy thought, he’s got some backbone, I’ll say that for him.

  al Auriga marched him down the hall, around the corner toward his cabin, and out of sight.

  McCoy appreciated the fact that Barry had refrained from saying, “I told you so.”

  Spock materialized on the transporter platform in a blaze of rainbow light. He paused for a moment before stepping down, for the transfer had wrested him through time and space, twisting the continuum and brutalizing him as well. Every muscle in his body felt wrenched.

  It took him a moment to dispel the pain, a moment longer than he thought it should. When he moved he felt stiff; he tried to hurry but found it nearly impossible.

  “Mr. Spock?”

  Spock froze for no more than a second, then turned calmly toward the chief engineer, pushing the changer back behind him on its strap so Scott could not see it.

  “Mr. Scott. I should have ... expected you.”

  “Did ye page me? Are ye all right? Is something wrong wi’ the transporter?”

  Spock said the first thing that came to mind, realizing, after he spoke, that he was telling Scott what Scott claimed Spock had said in the transporter room.

  “I simply noticed some minor power fluctuations, Mr. Scott,” Spock said. “They could become reason for complaint.”

  “I can come back and help you,” Scott said, “as soon as I’ve reported to Captain Kirk about the engines.” He frowned.

  “That is unnecessary,” Spock said. “The work is a
lmost complete.” He did not move. Scott remained in the doorway a moment longer, then turned on his heel and left Spock alone.

  Spock waited until he knew the chief engineer was out of sight of the transporter room. Scott would enter the turbo lift with Ian Braithewaite and the captain, and then a few minutes later Scott would come back down again. After that it should be possible for Spock to enter the lift unobserved—no one else had come into the bridge before Dr. Mordreaux appeared—and wait inside to intercept the professor’s deranged future self. Spock touched his phaser. He would prefer not to be forced to use it, but he did not quite see any other way of stopping Mordreaux permanently. Stopping him now would be useless if he were simply to return in time again, somewhere else, and murder the captain there.

  Spock concealed himself near the lift, around a corner and in shadows.

  “Ah, Spock, I thought you came after me.”

  The Vulcan spun around: and came face to face with Dr. Mordreaux, the same, slightly older Georges Mordreaux who had appeared on the bridge of the Enterprise, dressed in the drab gray prison uniform his other self wore, carrying the same vicious-looking gun he planned to use in a few moments.

  “I should have known better than to involve you at all, but I had to get you away from that damned singularity, you caused me more trouble than Braithewaite and Kirk and the whole Federation put together.”

  “I do not understand what you mean, Dr. Mordreaux.” Spock let his hand move slowly toward his phaser.

  Dr. Mordreaux gestured with the muzzle of his pistol. “Please don’t do that. I never meant to hurt anyone, I was only trying to keep myself out of more trouble. But you have no idea how complicated things can get. You make one change, it sets in motion a whole series of others that you couldn’t predict ...”

  “Professor, you are seriously disturbed. You must not carry out the action you plan. It is exactly as you say: it will start a whole chain of events that you do not wish to happen.”

  “No, no, this one will fix it.”

  He gazed at Spock a moment longer, and the science officer realized neither of them had any choice anymore. If Spock could not stop the professor, the professor was going to kill him. And Jim Kirk.

  Throwing himself to one side, Spock drew his phaser. As he aimed it he heard the pistol go off, and he felt the impact of the bullet. It slammed him against the bulkhead and he slumped to the deck, still trying to aim the phaser.

  He failed.

  Spock’s vision clouded over as he opened his eyes. He knew it as a symptom of spiderweb. He tried to ignore the prospect of his own death, he tried to do something, anything, perhaps he still had time to save Jim’s life, to stop Professor Mordreaux ...

  He saw and felt the tendril reaching out toward his outflung hand, tickling his palm. He jerked away, rolling to escape it, and ended up on his knees, panting, blood running down his face and into his eyes from the bullet graze at his temple. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and his vision cleared.

  The spiderweb bullet had imbedded itself in the bulkhead, not in his body. It had begun to grow downward, seeking warmth and nerve cells. As he watched the mass of fibers still reaching toward him, they shivered, glimmering in the light like a skein of silver thread. All of a sudden the fibrils contracted, pulling themselves up into the main body of the growth, and then they relaxed again and the sheen and movement faded.

  The spiderweb was dead, and this one had lost its prey. Spock wiped the blood from his face and eyes and concentrated for a moment on stopping the flow from the bullet wound. He was drenched with sweat.

  Dr. Mordreaux was on his way to the bridge.

  Already running, Spock grabbed up his phaser from where it had fallen and headed toward the turbo lift, no longer caring if anyone saw him and wondered where he had come from. The lift seemed to take hours to arrive. He plunged inside.

  After an eternity, the lift slowed and stopped at the bridge. The doors slid open.

  Spock took one step forward, and halted.

  He could smell the human blood, and hear the labored breathing of his mortally wounded friend.

  Dr. McCoy worked frantically. No one looked toward the open lift.

  Again, Spock felt caught up by the chaos; again, he felt the medical team trying to save the captain.

  He felt the tubes and needles enter him, and damped down the fresh surge of scarlet pain as oxygen flooded his body. But all the physical manifestations of the world were peripheral. Despite Spock’s strength, Jim was slipping away. Spock’s mind and Jim Kirk’s were melded together, but all the force of Spock’s will could not prevent the dissolution of his friend’s consciousness. It was being crushed out of existence, and he could not hold it together against the destructive force.

  “Spock?”

  “I am here, Jim.” He did not know if he heard the words or sensed them directly; he did not know if he spoke or thought his answer. He felt himself slipping away with Jim.

  “Spock ...” Jim said, “take good care ... of my ship.”

  “Jim—”

  With a final, agonizing effort, nearly too late, Jim Kirk dragged himself away from Spock, breaking off the terror and despair.

  The physical resonance of emotional force flung Spock back against the railing. He slumped to the deck.

  He and Jim Kirk were both alone.

  When the lift doors automatically closed, shutting Spock off from the scene he had hoped to stop, he realized he actually had fallen backwards. His body trembled uncontrollably. The turbo lift waited patiently to be told which deck to take him to. But there was nothing to be done here, nothing at all that he could do.

  His hand shaking, he touched the changer control that would rebound him back to where he belonged; he vanished from this time-stream.

  Jim Kirk was dead.

  Rebound dragged Spock back through the continuum with the same muscle-wrenching force as he had left it. He materialized on the transporter platform and fought to keep his balance. When he staggered, McCoy caught and steadied him.

  “Good lord, Spock, what happened?”

  “I failed,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “I watched Jim die again.”

  McCoy hesitated for a moment, trying to think of something to say. He fell back on practicality.

  “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  He pulled Spock's arm over his shoulder and helped him out of the transporter room.

  “Mr. Spock!”

  The sight of Spock, his face and shirt covered with half-dried green blood, startled Christine Chapel. “What happened?”

  “He fell out of bed,” McCoy said shortly, and immediately regretted his tone. “I’m sorry, nurse. I didn’t mean to snap. Please get me a tray and see if you can find that hybrid skin synthetic I mixed up.”

  He made Spock sit down. Chapel brought the instrument tray and left it without a word.

  Well, McCoy thought, I deserve a cold shoulder.

  He slipped the changer’s strap free and laid the device aside, then started to clean the blood from Spock’s face.

  “What did happen? This looks like a bullet graze.”

  “It is,” Spock said without meeting McCoy’s glance. “I encountered the future Dr. Mordreaux. I failed to stop him.”

  “It looks like he nearly stopped you.” McCoy suddenly realized what must have happened. “Spock—he didn’t shoot at you with the same gun—?”

  Spock nodded.

  McCoy whistled softly. “You were lucky. But you did see him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure ...”

  “That he was from the future? Yes, Dr. McCoy. I had more opportunity to observe him on this occasion. He was ... a different Dr. Mordreaux.” He glanced at McCoy quizzically. “Did you doubt that was what I would find?”

  “Well, it’s nice to have some confirmation.”

  Spock fell silent for a few moments while McCoy cleaned the bullet wound.

  “I must go back again.”

 
McCoy started to protest, but nothing he could say, from pointing out that Spock had probably lost nearly a liter of blood to telling him they were both under suspicion of murder, treason, and proscribed weapons research, would be likely to delay him long enough for him to fully recover. Besides, at this point probably their only chance was for him to go back and try again. McCoy would have to stay here, cover Spock’s tracks, and—under different circumstances McCoy would have been able to laugh at this—give him time.

  “Are you going back to the same place again?”

  Spock considered his choices, a limited number.

  “No,” he said finally. “The future Dr. Mordreaux said something which leads me to believe that he is responsible for calling the Enterprise to Aleph Prime. My observations on the singularity correlate with his work, somehow, apparently to his disadvantage.”

  “You mean it wasn’t Braithewaite or Starfleet after all who diverted us—but Dr. Mordreaux?”

  “The future Dr. Mordreaux. Yes. I believe that to be true.”

  “Can you go that far? It’s quite a distance, besides being a long time. When you left before, you blacked out the ship.”

  “If I cannot draw power from the warp engines, I will have to turn the Enterprise around and return to Aleph Prime—that is, to the position in Aleph’s orbit from which the signal came.”

  Christine Chapel came in and put down the packet of skin synthetic; McCoy and Spock fell abruptly silent. She gave them a strange look and went away again.

  “Scotty isn’t going to be thrilled when he hears you want the warp drive back on line. And we’re going to have a hard time explaining why we want to backtrack.”

  “I do not intend to inform Mr. Scott of my plans; if he has finished repairing even one of the warp engines it will not be necessary to obtain his permission to tap its power. Nor do I see any reason why I should explain a change in the ship’s course except to say that it is necessary.”

  McCoy opened the packet and drew out the skin synthetic with sterile tweezers. This was the first time he had had a chance to try it, and he was anxious to see if it worked. If the cells had fused properly Spock’s body would not reject the skin, as it did skin synthetic for either humans or Vulcans. Since Spock was the only Vulcan/human cross around—at least the only one McCoy knew of—null grafting tissue for his unique immunological system was not exactly common. He covered the long graze and sprayed on a transparent bandage.