“Mr. Spock ...” Kirk said, “I received an ultimate override command. I know you haven’t finished your work, but the Enterprise had to respond. I have no choice, with an ultimate. I’m very sorry, Mr. Spock.”
“An ultimate override command ...” Spock said. His expression did not change, but Kirk thought he looked rather haggard. All things considered, that was not too surprising.
“Can you salvage anything from your data? Could you reach any conclusion about the singularity at all?”
Spock gazed at the viewscreen. Far ahead, indistinguishable as yet against the brilliant starfield, an ordinary yellow type G star hung waiting for them. Behind them, the singularity lay within its fierce glow.
“The preliminary conclusions were interesting,” Spock said. He clasped his hands behind his back. “However, without the completed replication, the data are all essentially worthless.”
Kirk muttered a curse, and said again, lamely, “I’m sorry.”
“I can see no way in which you are responsible, Captain, nor any logical reason for you to apologize.”
Kirk sighed. As always, Spock refused to react to adversity.
It would be a relief if just once he’d put his fist through a bulkhead, Jim Kirk thought. If this doesn’t turn out to be extremely serious, I may find something to punch, myself.
“Are you all right, Mr. Spock?” he asked. “You look exhausted.”
“I am all right, Captain.”
“You could go get some rest—it’ll be quite a while before we get close enough to Aleph for me to call general quarters. Why don’t you take a nap?”
“Impossible, Captain.”
“The bridge really can get along without you for a few more hours.”
“I realize that, sir. However, when I began my experiment I psychophysiologically altered my metabolism to permit me to remain alert during the course of my observations. I could return my circadian rhythm to normal now, but it does not seem sensible, to me, to prepare myself for rest when my presence may be required when we reach our destination.”
Kirk sorted through the technicalities of his science officer’s statement.
“Spock,” he said, “you aren’t saying you haven’t had any sleep in six weeks, are you?”
“No, Captain.”
“Good,” Kirk said, relieved; and, after a pause, “Then what are you saying?”
“It will not be six standard weeks until day after tomorrow.”
“Good lord! Didn’t you trust anyone else to make the observations?”
“It was not a matter of trust, Captain. The data are sensitive. The difference between two individuals’ interpretations of the same datum would cause a break in the observational curve larger than the experimental error.”
“You couldn’t have run several series and averaged them?”
Spock raised one eyebrow. “No, Captain.” If I didn’t know better, Kirk thought, I’d swear he turned a couple of shades paler.
Captain’s log, Stardate 5001.1:
We are now a day away from the singularity, but the unease that gripped the Enterprise and my crew throughout our mission there has not faded. It has intensified. We have left one mystery behind us, unsolved, in order to confront a second mystery, about which we know even less. The ultimate override emergency command takes precedence over any other order. The Enterprise is now under way to the mining colony Aleph Prime, maintaining radio silence as the code requires. I cannot even ask why we have been diverted; I can only speculate about the reasons for such urgency, and be sure my crew is prepared to face ... what?
Chapter 1
Aleph Prime’s sun had grown large enough to appear in the viewscreen as a disc rather than a point. The crew stood at general quarters, waiting to face some danger as undefined as the singularity that now lay far behind them. The Enterprise approached the mining station with all shields up, phasers at ready, sensors extended to their limits. Kirk still had no more information than the simple implacable command, and he was still restricted by radio silence.
He glanced up at his science officer.
“The star doesn’t look like it’s in imminent danger of going nova,” he said. Incipient nova was one of the very few reasons an ultimate code could be sent out. “That’s some comfort.”
“Considering its position on the main sequence, Captain, this star is unlikely to go nova now or in the foreseeable future.”
“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 gra
y, 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.
“Aerfen will 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 épée 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.
“Have you 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 with 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.”
STAR TREK: TOS #2 - The Entropy Effect Page 2