“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 almost 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 s
ensed 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 Spocks 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.
“Whatdid 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.
“Hardly shows,” he said, rather pleased. “I’ll want to check it every day or so... His voice trailed off as Spock raised his eyebrow again.
“Right,” McCoy said. “You won’t be here. I won’t be here. I hope.”
Spock rose. “I must find out about the warp engines—”
“You’re asleep, remember? Spock, this is an order. You lie down, right here, and stay here till I get back. I’ll find out about the warp drive and I’ll get you some clean clothes. Do me a favor and tell the computer to let me into your cabin so I don’t have to figure out the override procedure for the lock.”
“The computer does not lock my cabin, Dr. McCoy.”
“What?”
“My cabin is not locked. Vulcans do not use locks.”
“You’re not on Vulcan.”
“I am aware of that. But I see no reason to behave differently in the matter of locks, any more than I see any reason to change my behavior in other respects.”
McCoy looked at him incredulously. “Most everybody on the Enterprise is fairly honest, but it seems to me you’re pushing your luck.”
“Luck is not involved. I have observed that human beings behave as they are expected to.”
“Most of us, maybe, but—”
“Doctor, do we have time for a philosophical discussion?”
“No, probably not.” McCoy gave up the argument reluctantly, intending to begin it again at the first opportunity—then reminding himself that if all went well it never would have occurred to start with. “All right, never mind. You rest for a few minutes, hear? I’ll be right back.”
After McCoy left sick bay, Spock lay down on the bunk in the cubicle. He still had to be careful not to sleep, but he needed the physical rest desperately. He would not admit pain. But he could ignore it only so long; it was a physiological sign of danger.
As he rested his body and tried to keep his mind alert, he thought about coincidences, the coincidences that had begun to show their causes. The Enterprise had not been called to Aleph Prime at random; Dr. Mordreaux had devised a way to order it to the station. There was some strong significant relation between the professor’s work, and the entropy effect Spock had discovered as a by-product of his observations of the singularity.
A flash of insight took him, like an electric shock, and he saw how his new factor applied to Dr. Mordreaux’s work. It was a direct result of travel through the fourth di
mension, not a by-product at all. The singularity that had been created was merely the spectacular physical manifestation of the one-way trip Dr. Mordreaux’s friends had taken through time. Spock could not see why he had not understood it before. Perhaps he had been too willing to accept the human view of coincidence; or perhaps the connection was too simple to be easy to see. The theoretical connection between naked singularities and the possibility of time-travel, and, conversely, time-travel and the creation of singularities, was centuries old. Discovery of that interrelation appeared to precede the discovery of the principles behind interstellar travel, in virtually all technological societies.
But the entropy effect was something new, and it was the far more disastrous consequence of temporal displacement.
Dr. Mordreaux’s friends must be returned to their own time, to repair the rip through the continuum that their journey had caused.
Spock had no way to estimate how Dr. Mordreaux would take this new information, or even whether he would believe it. He might refuse to accept it, and see it as nothing more than another attempt by Spock to try to make him betray his friends.
The Vulcan began to realize just how high were the stakes against which he had placed his honor.
McCoy stopped just inside the engine room. The air was full of the smell of ozone, singed insulation, and melted semiconductors. Scott sat in his office, bent over his computer console: if things were so bad he could not set to work fixing them immediately—practically by instinct as far as McCoy had ever been able to see—then things were bad indeed.
“Hello, Scotty,” McCoy said. “What a—”
He cut off his flippant remark as Scott went rigid in his chair. McCoy knew the chief engineer was enraged even before he turned around, which he did, slowly, still seated in the swivel chair, pushing with his left hand, which was clamped so tight around the edge of the console that his whole forearm trembled.
“Scotty,” McCoy said gently, “what’s wrong?”
“Nae a thing.”
“Come on. Is it this blasted command business? I don’t want it—I’m sure Mr. Speck didn’t even think about how you’d feel, he just chose the arrangement he thought would be most efficient.”
The Entropy Effect Page 18