Inexplicably, McCoy groaned. “That’s it! Out!”
Spock glanced down at his hands. He did not understand Captain Kirk’s remark, for if the captain were, for whatever peculiar reason, to think of Spock’s thumbs, he must surely note that they were, in fact, slightly green.
“Spock,” Kirk said, serious again, “you’re not telling me everything, and I don’t much like that.”
“Captain ...in the vicinity of a singularity, the only thing one can predict is that events will occur that one could not predict.”
“I take it you don’t care to elaborate on the nature of these unpredictable events.”
“I would prefer not to, Captain.”
Kirk scowled, and Spock thought he was going to refuse to give him the remains of the time-changer. Abruptly, Kirk grinned again and held the device out to the science officer.
Spock accepted it.
“All right, Mr. Spock. I trust you, and I trust in your judgment that whatever you can’t explain won’t affect the safety of this ship or anybody on it.”
“Your trust will not be betrayed,” Spock said.
McCoy folded his arms across his chest. “Now that you two have exchanged expressions of undying confidence, I want you—” he glared at Kirk—”to get out of here, and I want you—” he transferred his irritated gaze to Mr. Spock—“to go back to sleep. Right now. That’s an order.”
Jim laughed. “Okay, Bones. Mr. Spock, can we get out of here?”
“Yes, Captain. My observations are complete.”
“Good.” Kirk stood up and turned to leave. Spock pushed himself up on one elbow. “Captain—Jim—” Kirk glanced back.
“Thank you,” Spock said.
As he rounded a corner, Jim Kirk saw Mr. Sulu ahead of him, walking toward the turbo lift.
“Mr. Sulu!” he called. The helm officer did not turn around; Kirk called to him again.
Sulu stopped short, and faced him. “I’m sorry, Captain. I was .. . thinking about something.”
They continued down the hall side by side.
“Are you going up to the bridge?”
“Yes, sir. I go on duty in ten minutes.”
“I’m glad it’s your watch,” Jim said. “Mr. Spock’s work is finished and we can get out of here. I’d rather have you at the helm than any of the other helm officers, when we’re maneuvering near a singularity.”
“Why—thank you, Captain,” Sulu said, obviously astonished by the spontaneous compliment.
Sulu’s been looking preoccupied lately, Kirk thought. And he needs a haircut very badly. He’s starting a mustache, too—what’s this all about? He’s beginning to look like he belongs in the border patrol, not on a ship of the line. Of course, he has been under a lot of stress ...
He almost made a joke about Sulu’s hair, a joke that Sulu would of course take as a suggestion to get at least a trim.
Why do you want him to cut his hair? Jim Kirk asked himself. It doesn’t make any difference to his work; it isn’t as if he’s going to get it caught in the rigging.
He thought, again, Grow up, Jim.
“Are you happy on the Enterprise , Mr. Sulu?” he asked.
Sulu hesitated. His tone, when he answered, was as serious as if he had been thinking the question over very hard for a very long time. “Yes, Captain. It’s a better assignment than I ever hoped for, and the best I’m ever likely to have.”
Kirk started to demur, to shrug off the implied compliment, but he saw an alternate interpretation for what Sulu had said. Kirk knew Sulu’s record well; he knew how a desk-bound bureaucrat would look at it. “Insufficient variety of experience” would be the most likely analysis, despite the fact that no one could ask for more variety of experience than serving on the Enterprise provided. Unfortunately, the record
was what counted, and Sulu knew that as well as anybody.
Kirk realized abruptly: If he wants to advance, it’s almost inevitable that he’ll transfer off the Enterprise . You’re going to lose the best helm officer this ship has ever had, if you don’t do something, and do it fast.
“I’ve been thinking,” Kirk said. “And what I think is that it’s about time we talked about making sure your record reflects all the responsibilities you have, not just the formal ones. It would be a damned shame if somewhere down the line you wanted a position and it went to some semi-competent instead just because they went up the ladder in the usual way and you didn’t.”
Sulu’s expression gave Jim considerable excuse for self-congratulation.
“The solution isn’t to normalize your record,” he said. “It’s to make it unique, so you have to be judged on your own terms. I think a good first step would be a field promotion to lieutenant commander. There’s no question but what you’d get the promotion anyway in a few years, but a field promotion is unusual enough to stand out even to a red-tape shuffler.”
“Captain ...” Sulu sounded rather stunned.
“It would mean more responsibility, of course.”
“That would be all right,” Sulu said. “I mean—it would be wonderful!”
“Good. Let’s get together and talk about it. You give fencing lessons in the afternoons, don’t you?”
“On alternate days. The other times I take a judo lesson from Lieutenant Commander Flynn.”
“What time are you finished?”
“About sixteen hundred hours, sir.”
“Then, what do you say to seventeen hundred, tomorrow, in the officers’ lounge?”
“I’ll be there, Captain! Thank you, sir.”
Kirk nodded. They reached the turbo lift, got on, and started upward toward the bridge.
“By the way, Mr. Sulu, I think that’s going to be a very distinctive mustache once it gets a little longer.” Color rose in Sulu’s cheeks.
“I mean it,” Kirk said.
“I wasn’t sure that you’d approve, sir.”
“I grew a mustache myself, a few years ago.”
“You did? Why didn’t you keep it?”
“I’ll tell you if you promise not to tell anyone else.”
“Of course I promise, sir.”
“It came in red. Brick red. Most ridiculous thing I ever saw in my life.”
He laughed, and so did Sulu.
“I don’t think mine will come in red, Captain,” Sulu said.
The lift doors opened and they went out onto the bridge. Kirk grinned at Sulu.
“No, I don’t suppose you’ll have to worry about that possibility.”
Kirk took his place; Sulu relieved the junior helm officer and checked over the controls.
“Mr. Sulu,” Kirk said, “plot us a course out of here.”
“Yes, sir!”
It took him only a few seconds: he had been prepared to get the ship away from the singularity at almost any moment; he was ready for any sort of emergency.
“Course entered, sir, warp factor one.”
“Thank you, Mr. Sulu.”
Like a freed bird, the Enterprise sailed out of the grasp of the singularity, through the flaming curtains of disintegrating matter that surrounded it, and out into deep space.
Captain’s log, Stardate 5001.1:
We are now a day away from the singularity, and the unease that gripped the Enterprise and my crew throughout the entire mission there has faded, leaving In its place a feeling of relief and even contentment. Morale Is better than it has been in some time, particularly in the security section: though I personally find the new commander rather prickly, she does her job splendidly.
I have decided to take the Enterprise through the border region between Federation space and Klingon territory, which Is guarded by Captain Hunter’s fleet. The Klingons have been more aggressive than usual; they have inflicted some losses on the squadron, and until replacements arrive, the appearance of a ship of the line in the area cannot do any harm.
Administrative notes: I have forwarded to Starfleet my recommendation for Mr. Sulu’s field promotion to lieuten
ant commander. As this will make him one of the youngest officers of that rank without formal front line experience, I may have to wrestle down a few bureaucratic hair-splitters in order to get it approved; on the other hand, If serving on the Enterprise doesn’t qualify as some form of front line experience, I don’t know what does.
On the recommendation of Lt. Commander Flynn, I have also approved the transfer of Ensign Jenniver Aristeldes from Security to Botany, and Mr. Spock has asked her to take charge of a project he wants to begin, that of growing more bioelectronic components. Before now, Aristeides always seemed to me to be hardly any more the emotional type than Mr. Spock, but she is clearly delighted by her new job.
Mr. Spock is recovering from severe overwork. He has assured Starfleet that the singularity will soon wipe itself out of the universe. My science officer shows no more sign than before that he is willing to discuss the “unpredictable events” that occurred during his observations. Despite a certain temptation to ask him if this is Information we were not meant to know—a question that would undoubtedly grate upon his scientific objectivity—I’m not inclined to press him for more answers. It’s possible that he simply made some sort of mistake that would humiliate him to reveal.
Whatever did happen seems to have involved only Spock himself; whatever It was, it has not affected the Enterprise at all.
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.
On the judo mat, Mr. Sulu completed a sit-up, hands clasped behind his neck, elbows touching knees. But there he stopped, and let his hands fall limply to the floor.
Flynn sat on her heels beside him. “You okay?”
He did not look up. “Ms. Flynn, I’d rather beat off Klingons with a stick than balance a starship around a naked singularity. Not to mention balancing it between Mr. Spock and Mr. Scott.”
“It’s been entertaining,” Flynn said. “Walking innocently along and all of a sudden you’re floating through the air.”
Mr. Sulu stretched his body and arms forward in a yoga exercise, touching his forehead to his knees.
“Mr. Scott doesn’t think the gravity fluctuations, or the power hits, or the rest of the problems are all that funny,” he said in a muffled voice. The quilted jacket of his gi had hiked up around his ears. He sounded as though he would just as soon stay bundled up as ever come out again. “Mr. Scott’s convinced the next time we go through an X-ray storm, the overload on the shields will explode the engines.” He grunted in pain and sat up slowly. “All Mr. Spock wants, of course, is a perfectly circular orbit, storms or not.”
Flynn nodded in sympathy. It was not as if the danger were something one could stand up to. The responsibility for their course, and therefore for their safety, lay almost entirely on Mr. Sulu’s shoulders. He was overworked and overstressed.
“Do you want to skip your lesson?” Flynn asked. “I hate for you to stop when you’re doing so well, but it really wouldn’t hurt.”
“No! I’ve been looking forward to it all day. Whether it’s your fencing lesson or my judo lesson, they’re about the only thing that’s kept me going the last couple of weeks.”
“Okay,” she said. Taking his hand, she rose and helped him to his feet. After they had warmed up, Sulu, t
he student, bowed to Flynn, the instructor. Then they bowed formally to each other, opponent to opponent.
In fencing, Mandala Flynn was just getting the feel of parry six with the foil; Mr. Sulu could get through her guard with ease. In judo, their positions were reversed. Flynn had a fifth-degree black belt in the art, while Mr. Sulu was not too far past the stage of learning how to fall safely.
But today, the first time he came out of a shoulder-throw Flynn felt the position going wrong. She tried to catch him, but she had not expected clumsiness from him. Mr. Sulu hit badly and hard without rolling or slapping at all. Flynn glared down at him, her fists clenched, as he stared blankly up at the ceiling.
“Dammit!” she said. “Have you forgotten everything you’ve learned in the past two months?” Immediately sorry, she damped her anger. Learning to control her violent temper was one of the reasons she had taken up the discipline ofjudo. Usually it worked. She knelt beside Mr. Sulu. “Are you all right?”
He pushed himself up, looking embarrassed. “That was dumb.”
“I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” Flynn said, embarrassed herself. “Look, this is no good, you’re way too tense, you’re going to hurt yourself if we keep it up.”
She started to rub his back and shoulders. He made a sound of protest as her thumbs dug into knotted muscles.
“I thought I’d warmed up,” he said.
“Warming up wouldn’t help.” She made him take off his jacket and lie face-down on the mat, then straddled his hips and began to massage his back and neck and shoulders.
At first he flinched every time she kneaded a muscle, but gradually the tightness began to ease and he lay quiet under her hands, his eyes closed. A lock of his glossy black hair fell across his cheek. She would have liked to reach out and brush it back, but instead continued the massage.
When the fierce tautness of his body had relaxed, and her own hands began to cramp, she patted his shoulders gently and sat crosslegged beside him. He did not move.
“Still alive?”
He opened one eye slowly, and smiled. “Just barely.”
Flynn laughed. “Come on,” she said. “You need a good long soak a whole lot more than you need to be thrown around the gym for an hour.”
The Entropy Effect Page 25
