The Entropy Effect

6

That evening, ship’s time, Dr. McCoy walked nervously toward the transporter room, where Spock had said to meet him.

The whole day had been dreadful. Spock had been squirrelled away working on the time changer.

Scott’s bruised ego had put him into an unholy snit; he replied to nothing but the most direct questions and then only in monosyllables. Ian Braithewaite was skulking around giving the third degree to everyone he came in contact with and inventing heaven alone only knew what sorts of fantastical conspiracies. McCoy chuckled to think what the young prosecutor would do if he managed to stumble onto the truth, but his chuckle carried a certain rueful air. Barry al Auriga was infuriated because in trying to debrief the witnesses to Jim’s murder he kept running into people who had already had their observations overlaid by Ian Braithewaite’s preconceptions. And one of the preconceptions was that Commander Flynn, despite having died trying to protect Jim Kirk, had somehow planned his assassination.

McCoy had a suspicion that al Auriga had had more than a subordinate’s respect for his commander: that he had some feelings he had managed to keep well-concealed till now. But Barry’s nerves were clearly stretched almost to the breaking point. He was trying to stay in control of himself; so far he had succeeded, but McCoy had a feeling the lieutenant was not too far from flinging caution and his temper to the wind, if Braithewaite got in his way one more time.

Apparently McCoy’s warning to the prosecutor had had very little if any effect. McCoy did not want to carry out his threat to confine Ian to quarters, but he was going to have to do it. Morale on the Enterprise was so low it probably could not even be measured; McCoy could not let matters go on unchanged, with rumors and suspicions flying, for much longer.

But Spock had finished the time-changer, so perhaps all McCoy’s worries were for nothing. The doctor stopped in the doorway to the transporter room and there the science officer was, altering a module from the transporter’s innards.

If what he planned succeeded, McCoy would not have to do anything at all. If Spock succeeded, none of this ever would have happened in the first place.

Spock acknowledged his presence. “Dr. McCoy.” He picked up the smaller of two peculiarly organic-looking devices and attached it to the module of the transporter.

“Spock,” McCoy said, “Spock .. . what happens to us ?”

“I do not understand what you mean.”

“If you go back in time and change things around, we won’t exist anymore.”

“Of course we will, Dr. McCoy.”

“Not here, not now—not doing what we’re doing. What happens to... to this probability-version of all of us? Do we just fade out of existence?”

“No, Dr. McCoy, I do not believe that is what will occur.”

“What, then?”

“Nothing.” Spock closed the panel and opened it again, checking that the addition could be concealed in the available space.

McCoy snorted with frustration.

“You see,” Spock said, “if I succeed, this probability-version of us will never have occurred. We will not fade out of existence because we never will have existed in the first place. It is quite simple and logical.”

“Sure.” McCoy gave up. He could feel his pulse accelerating with nervousness, and even fear; he did not even want to think about what his blood pressure must be just now. “Let’s do it and be done.”

“Very well.” Spock picked up the larger device and slung it over his shoulder. It dangled from its strap, glimmering like a cluster of large amber beads.

“Spock, wait—how will you get back ?”

“As you so astutely pointed out,” the Vulcan said, “if I succeed I will not need to come back. But if I should be forced to return, the energy required is far less. In fact, after achieving threshold energy, one is virtually dragged back to one’s own time. One sets up a strain that must eventually be relieved. The changer’s power-pack will be sufficient.”

“Should I wait for you here?—Will you come back immediately after you go? Or—” McCoy could not resist. “Or before?”

“I will endeavor not to return before I leave,” Spock said with perfect seriousness. “Though it would be

an intriguing experiment...” He paused, then returned his attention to the business at hand. “The calculations are far less complex if one remains away as long as one spends in the past. I expect to be gone no more than an hour.”

“I’ll do my best to be here.”

“Dr. McCoy ... if I am gone for an unconscionably long time, it is essential that I, or whatever remains of me, be brought back here, to my own time. Otherwise the conflict between where I am and where I should be could create difficulties; there is also the possibility of a damaging paradox.” He showed McCoy a control on the unit he had attached to the transporter. “The auxiliary changer will pull me back. All you need do is activate it. But this signal cannot be accurately aimed. It is not likely that I would survive if you were forced to use it.”

“Then I won’t.”

“Youmust . If I am gone more than . .. one day, you must.”

“All right, Mr. Spock.”

Spock stepped up onto the transporter platform.

“Goodbye, Mr. Spock. Good luck.”

Spock touched a control on his unit of the time-changer. The transporter hummed to life, but instead of the usual stable beam surrounding the figure on the platform, there was a tremendous flash, like rainbow lightning.

The lights went out. More frightening, the soft sound of the ventilation fans ceased, and the ship lay in a moment of darkness and silence so complete that McCoy thought the explosion had deafened and blinded him.

The Enterprise had lost all power.

Ian Braithewaite suspected instantly what was happening when the power went out: the same thing had happened on Aleph Prime when Dr. Mordreaux began playing around with his time-travel device. That was what had first alerted Braithewaite to the peculiar activities, and what had drawn him into this horrible complicated matter of conspiracy, treachery, terror, and murder. He cursed himself for underestimating Spock and Mordreaux; he cursed himself particularly for being too timid to run the investigation aggressively. He should have called in civilian police from Aleph long before now; he should have called in Starfleet as well. But he had been trying desperately to keep the time-travel capability as secret as possible, as he had been ordered; there was no point in suppressing the work if it were publicized all over the Federation.

Emergency generators brought the ship back slowly to an eerie half-light. Ian flung himself out of his cabin and pounded down the corridor toward Mordreaux’s cabin, fearing that the device had been used to take the professor out of even the absurd semblance of custody he had been in on the Enterprise . He wondered how long it would take before the ship was diverted from its course toward Rehab Seven—an suddenly realized that he had no way of knowing it already had not, except that surely Mr. Scott would know and tell him.

And how long will it be before we’re all told our fate? he wondered. To be sold to the Klingons, or to the Romulans, as hostages, and the starship peddled to the enemy; or were the plans for starship and crew more direct, more private? Ian Braithewaite knew that if he ever had such a creation as the Enterprise in his own hands, he would not let it go for any amount of treasure.

At the junction of two corridors, he stopped. What point to going to Mordreaux’s cabin? He would not be there: Spock had just freed him! But the science officer would have had to use the transporter in tandem with the changer. Ian might be able to catch him, at least. If he hurried.

He changed direction, and ran.

Still dazzled by the sudden flash of the transporter/ changer, McCoy blinked. In the darkness, he wondered if this was what it was like never to have existed at all.

“Mr. Spock?”

He received no answer.

He gradually became aware of the self-luminous dials on the transporter, casting a strange silver glow over his hands. He drew away, into the shadows, and stood quietly waiting for something, anything, to happen.

The darkness crept away in the dim illumination of emergency power. He waited: but nothing changed.

McCoy began to hear the shouts of consternation from nearby crew members: it was always traumatic, on the rare occasions when the power failed in a starship. Everyone was frightened.

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’syou 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 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 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 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 dimension, 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.”

“There’s nae a thing wrong,” Scott said again. “Nae a thing at all. What do ye want? I canna take time to chat.”

All right, you stubborn Scot, McCoy thought, if you want to play at being official, I’ve got years more experience at this game than you do.

“I can see that, Mr. Scott,” McCoy said. “I certainly don’t want to waste your valuable time. Just give me an update on the engines, impulse and warp.”

Scott looked taken aback by McCoy’s response, as if he had been bluffing somehow, and never expected McCoy either to call him on it or take the offensive. McCoy had the feeling, as well, that even so he had not acted as Scott hoped he would, but he was at a complete loss about what Scott did want just now, and as Scott could not take the time to chat, McCoy could not take the time to play armchair psychiatrist, or even have another try at patching up the engineer’s ego.

“The impulse engines are just barely functioning,” Scott said. “If my people work round the clock we’ll be able to decelerate by the time we reach turn-around for Rehab Seven. But the engine room crew ha’ already been working round the clock for days, and they’re exhausted.”

“Do you know what caused the blackout?” McCoy asked, because he thought that was the question he

would be expected to ask.

“A power drain. ‘Tis as if someone fed the current into the transporter and beamed tremendous amounts of electrical energy out into space.”

“Well, it couldn’t be that,” McCoy said quickly, hoping to divert Scott from information the engineer would be better off not knowing. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Nae, it dinna make sense.”

“What about the warp engines?” McCoy asked quickly, before the other subject could go any farther. “Canna decelerate in normal space with the warp engines.”

“That isn’t what I asked. If I go up to the bridge and ask for warp factor four toward—toward Arcturus, would I get it?”

Scott opened his mouth, but no words came. Finally he managed a halfhearted murmur. “Aye,” he said. “Aye, ye would.”

“Thank you, Mr. Scott. That’s all I need to know.”

McCoy realized that Spock would be more than a little conspicuous on Aleph Prime in a Starfleet uniform with Enterprise insignia: he would arrive at the station before the ship was even ordered there. It would be inconvenient at best if Spock were taken into custody and charged with being absent without official leave.

McCoy felt uncomfortable, rooting around in Spock’s wardrobe, and the high temperature in Spock’s cabin made him perspire. But he took a moment to look for a garment of less military cut. Behind the uniform shirts, and the formal jacket, he found several tunics of a more casual style.

He returned to sick bay carrying the fresh shirt bundled up under one arm, hoping no one would ask him about it.

“Spock?”

Spock sat up smoothly in the dimness of the cubicle, wide awake and alert, looking not quite so haggard as when McCoy kept him from falling off the transporter platform. McCoy glanced at Spock’s temple: the skin synthetic was holding well.

“Here’s a fetching outfit for you,” McCoy said, handing him the dark brown tunic. “Less noticeable than starship-officer blue.”

Spock took the shirt, with a quizzical expression, but he did not object to McCoy’s choice.

“Are the warp engines in operating condition?”

“Mr. Scott says they are.”

The clean shirt was made of some silken material, gathered at the cuffs, with a restrained design of gold at wrists and collar. Spock put it on.

“Haven’t seen you wear that before,” McCoy said.

“Wearing it on the Enterprise would not be appropriate.”

“Very becoming. Matches your eyes.”

Spock picked up the time-changer and got to his feet.

“I would not want to frustrate your curiosity, Doctor. My mother gave me the tunic.” He walked past McCoy out of sick bay.

After a moment McCoy followed.

“It is not necessary for you to accompany me, Dr. McCoy,” Spock said when the doctor caught up to him. The science officer began setting the changer’s controls without checking his stride.

“How long will you be gone this time?”

Spock stopped. “I cannot say,” he said slowly. “I had not—It is impossible to estimate.”

“Paging Dr. McCoy,” the ship’s computer said. “Vessel approaching. Dr. McCoy to the bridge, please.”

“Oh, notnow,” McCoy said.

“Best that you reply, Doctor. There will be another blackout of the ship’s power, more serious than the last, and your presence will be required elsewhere. I do not need ... a going-away party.”

“All right,” McCoy said, realizing that his wish to accompany Spock to the transporter had no real logical reason. “But if I have to bring you back, how long should I wait this time?”

“At least twelve hours. But no longer than fourteen, or the time-changer will not provide enough power to return me through the distance the ship will have traveled.”

“Good lord—you mean you’ll materialize somewhere out in deep space?”

“Possibly. It is more likely, however, that the return beam would be spread out over a considerable volume of intervening space and time—”

“Never mind,” McCoy said quickly. “No longer than fourteen hours.”

“Dr. McCoy to the bridge,” the computer said again. “Dr. McCoy, please reply.”

“Is it my imagination, or do I detect a certain hysterical tone?”

“The integrity of the computer’s data-base has been severely compromised,” Spock said. “And unfortunately I have had no opportunity to repair the damage done by the sudden power failure.”

“Sluffing off on your duties, eh?” McCoy said, and then, before Spock could reply to him seriously, “I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry, I think I’m getting a little hysterical myself.”

“Report to the bridge, Doctor.” The Vulcan turned on his heel and walked away.

“Unidentified vessel approaching,” the computer said. “Phasers on ready.”

“Oh, good grief,” McCoy said, and hurried toward the lift.

Before he reached the transporter, Spock paused to think for a moment. He could go back to Aleph Prime and prevent the Enterprise ’s being diverted; or he could speak to Dr. Mordreaux once more and show him the proof that might persuade him to release Spock from his promise. That was without doubt the most logical action.

By the time Dr. McCoy cancelled the automatic aiming of the phasers, the unknown craft that had alerted the sensors had approached close enough to be seen on the viewscreen unmagnified. It was small and fast, a moving silver speck against the starfield.

“Who is it? Where is it from?” McCoy wondered if Braithewaite had managed to send a message to Aleph Prime to call in reinforcements for his troublemaking.

Both Chekov and Uhura were off duty and McCoy could not remember the names of the younger ensigns who sat in their places.

“We’re receiving a transmission, Dr. McCoy,” the second shift communications officer said.

“Put it on the screen.”

Hunter flickered into being before him. At the edge of the image, McCoy could see Mr. Sulu, silent and grim, a glazed expression of grief in his eyes. Hunter did not look much better. McCoy knew exactly how she and Sulu must feel: the way he had felt the night Jim died. He had a sudden impulse to say to them, to everyone, It’s going to be all right, we’re going to make it all right again. Somehow.

But nothing had happened, nothing had changed. The power had not even gone out again. Where was Spock?

Perhaps nothing ever would change. Perhaps this time track would continue unaltered, with Jim Kirk and Mandala Flynn dead, and if Spock succeeded in doing anything it would be no more than beginning some alternate version of reality. McCoy’s eyes stung with sudden tears, with a suspicion of hopelessness brought on by uncertainty.

“Captain Hunter,” he said sadly. “Hello, Mr. Sulu.”

“Hello, Dr. McCoy,” Hunter said. Mr. Sulu nodded, as if he could not trust himself to speak.

“I’m sorry to have to see you again under such circumstances.”

“It isn’t what I’d hoped for. Permission to beam aboard?”

“Of course,” McCoy said—then realized his mistake. Aside from Spock’s not having left yet, McCoy had no idea whether the transporter was still suited for normal use.

“Captain,” he said quickly, “on second thought you’d better dock with the Enterprise . We just had a massive power failure, and I’d rather not use the transporter till we get things sorted out.”

“As you prefer,” Hunter said.

Hunter rotated her stocky little courier, bringing it in back-to-back with the Enterprise , to join the docking ports smoothly. McCoy was waiting for her when she climbed from her ship into the larger craft’s gravity field. She jumped to the deck.

Sulu followed, more slowly.

“Captain,” McCoy said. “Mr. Sulu.”

“Oh, gods, Doctor,” Hunter said, “I can’t stand that military crap right now. Can we be a little more informal? Hunter. Do people call you Leonard?”

“Sometimes. That’s fine.”

‘Thank you. What happened?”

McCoy sighed. “That will take some explaining, Hunter. Let’s go in and sit down to talk.”

“All right.”

Neither noticed when Sulu left them, long before they reached the officers’ lounge.

Sulu did not think he could stand to listen to explanations. All he knew, all he needed to know, was that Mandala was dead. He stopped at the door of the stasis room, gathering up enough nerve to go inside.

Finally he stepped close enough for the door to sense him, and it opened.

Inside, two of the stasis units glowed softly, their energy fields stabilizing the bodies within them. They were marked, coldly, officially, KIRK, JAMES T., CAPTAIN, and FLYNN, MANDALA, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER. Sulu paid his respects to his former captain silently, brushing his fingertips across the name. Finally, with great reluctance, he opened the unit where Mandala’s body lay.

A shroud of blue light glowed around her.

Spiderweb gave no easy death, and no easy memories to the people left behind. Sulu could see the struggle she had gone through, even in her blank-eyed face. She had fought: to the end of her life she had never given up.

Her hair had come down; it curled in a tangled mass around her face and shoulders.

Sulu pushed his hand through the protective energy field to touch her cheek, to brush back a lock of her hair. Her ruby ring, on his finger, glowed black through the blue light, and its gold highlights flashed.

He wished he could close her eyes. He knew he could not.

Sinking to the floor, pulling his knees to his chest, with his arms wrapped around them, Sulu hid his face.

A long time later, immersed in dreams and memories, he felt a touch on his shoulder. Startled, he looked ^up.

Barry al Auriga crouched down beside him, gazing at him in silence.

“I should have been there,” Sulu said. “On the bridge.”

“To die with her? She would not want that.”

“What do you know about it?” The vehemence of his reaction startled him, and he tried to turn away. Barry’s hand tightened on his shoulder.

“I grieve, too,” he said.

Sulu faced him again.

“It is not proper to fall in love with the commander of one’s section,” Barry said. “And I could see that you ... I could see she wanted you. I could say nothing. But I grieve with you.”

Sulu grasped Barry al Auriga’s forearm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know ...”

al Auriga shook his head. “Nor did she. It does not matter now.” He got to his feet, drawing Sulu up with him. “Come away. This is not the place to remember her.”

Sulu pushed the stasis unit back into place. It was the one last thing too much for him. He stood with his back to al Auriga, both hands pressed hard against the wall, trying to control his silent tears.

“Come away,” Barry said again. He put his arm around Sulu, like a brother: he was crying, too.

Hunter listened, her face a mask. McCoy could not tell what she thought or how much she believed of the tale he was telling her, she was so unresponsive. But he was all too aware of the frazzled edges of his story, the loose ends and dissembling. He finished, and took a long gulp of his drink.

Hunter toyed with her feather-tipped black braid.

“All right, Leonard,” she said. “Now, please, the truth.”

He blinked in surprise. He could not think what to say; her disbelief was too direct.

“You’re a very lousy liar.”

Still he could not reply.

Hunter leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and spoke with angry sincerity.

“I could pilot this ship through the holes in that story. Mysterious accomplices and a disappearing gun and a Changeling with food poisoning? Do you expect me to believe Mandala Flynn would have put up with a second in command who can’t find a single bit of useful information in twenty-four hours? She was far too ambitious to pick an incompetent second—that would make her look like a fool. I assume you’ve been giving al Auriga the same run-around you’ve given me. But there’s a difference, now: you may be his superior, but you aren’t mine. Where’s Mr. Spock? Where’s Ian Braithewaite, for that matter?”

“Well, until Spock gets some rest—”

“Don’t! Not again! His captain’s dead , the crime’s unsolved, he’s in command, and you want me to believe he went off to sleep for three days? Even if he did, there’s been a complete power failure, you’ve got computers crashing all around you—and you want me to believe a Vulcan science officer stayed asleep? Come on!”

“After so long—”

“Dr. McCoy,” she said, and her voice chilled him, “Dr. McCoy, there’s nothing mystical about catch-up sleep. I know the techniques. You could probably learn them yourself. Spock isn’t catatonic, he’s not in some kind of trance that would damage him to come out of. He can wake up—and he would wake up, given the circumstances you’ve described.”

McCoy’s hands felt cold, and a drop of sweat ran down his side. If he told her the truth ... She knew too much about the ship and the people on it to be fooled as long as Braithewaite had been, and he could not confine Hunter to quarters.

But he did not think she would believe him, and he could not take the chance of trying to convince her he was telling the truth. In desperation, he tried once more to mislead her. All he needed to do was give Spock more time. But what was the science officer doing ? With every second that passed, every random noise, McCoy expected the power to fail as Spock departed again. Why was he still on the ship?

“Hunter,” McCoy said gently, “none of us has been acting very rational since Jim died. I know how you feel, truly I do, but I think you’re getting a little bit overemotional—”

Hunter stood up.

McCoy kept on speaking, recklessly.

“I know how close you and Jim were. He told me... the last thing he ever said to me was about you.” Her expression did not change. She gazed at him directly.

“He knew he made a mistake, refusing your partnership’s invitation. He wanted to tell you himself, but when he got hurt, he knew he was dying. He knew he’d never see you again. He asked me—”

Shut up.

“He wanted you to know.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said, her tone completely flat.

“It’s true”

“You haven’t said a true word to me since I came on board,” Hunter said. “Jim trusted you—he trusted you more than he trusted anyone else, including me. But I swear I don’t know why.” She started out of the officers’ lounge.

McCoy jumped up and grabbed her arm. Startled, she spun away and into an attack position so quickly she nearly struck him, but she held back in time, lowered her hands, and turned away from him again.

“Where are you going?”

She did not answer, but McCoy followed. Soon he realized she intended to go to Mordreaux’s cabin.

“There’s no point in trying to talk to Mordreaux.” He spoke all in a rush; his voice sounded even less convincing than the ragged words themselves. “He’s completely incoherent. He’s—”

“Don’t lie to me anymore, Leonard,” Hunter said. “Either tell me the truth, or just be quiet.”

Ian Braithewaite tried again to force open the door of his cabin, and again he failed. The lock no longer responded to his voice. The blocked communications terminal kept him from talking to anyone; he could not contact Mr. Scott. In frustration and fury, he pounded on the door. He had already made himself hoarse by shouting every time he heard someone pass.

McCoy had really got to him, all right, with that sentimental tripe about carrying out his good friend’s last wishes. The man was a consummate actor. Ian supposed that was a talent most doctors cultivated anyway, and McCoy had used the ability magnificently. In a strange way, Ian could hardly help but admire him. He carried out his aims with a certain flair. The prosecutor realized now that McCoy could not be forgiven or excused any of his actions: however upset the doctor had been at the time of Kirk’s death, he had become well reconciled to it. No doubt the potential profits from the hijacking of the Enterprise and the use of the time-changer had soothed his grief and his conscience.

Ian felt completely helpless, as helpless as he had been in al Auriga’s grasp. The security officer had not hurt him, but Ian was at the mercy of McCoy and Spock and Mordreaux. The precariousness of his own position began to grow clear. Until now he had been too angry to worry very much about his own safety. This was the first time since coming on board the Enterprise that he had not had too many other things to think about.

He was not frightened. He considered his possible fate with a certain resignation, a fatalistic attitude. Perhaps they had beaten him. It certainly looked like it now. But if he got one more chance, just one stroke of luck, he would not be so fussy about absolute proof of their guilt.

As far as he was concerned, the only question left to be answered was whether they planned to use the ship and the time-changer for their own benefit, directly, or to take it and the Enterprise , the most advanced example of Federation technology in existence, and auction them off between the Federation’s enemies.

He flung himself down on his bunk and threw one arm across his eyes. His stomach churned; he felt nauseated by tension and anger. He lived his life on the verge of ulcers, a fact he denied. He was convinced that if he could just sort out the events of the last day properly and deduce what would happen next, then he could somehow stop the progression of disaster. But all he could do was think, over and over again, I shouldn’t have trusted McCoy. After everything I’ve seen I should have known better, I shouldn’t have trusted McCoy.

He heard the door open; he lay very still, pretending to be asleep. Light crept past the folds of his sleeve. He wondered if McCoy had come to dispatch him, as he had got rid of the captain, or if Spock had come to poison him, as he had somehow poisoned Lee, and Judge Desmoulins, and the security guard. Footsteps approached. He prepared himself to fight, trying to tense his muscles without appearing to move.

“Mr. Braithewaite?”

The tension went out of Ian in a rush. He pulled his arm away from his eyes and sat up quickly.

“Mr. Scott—thank god!”

“I had to override the lock,” Scott said. “I tried to reach ye on the communicator, but I couldna get through.”

“They’ve cut me off,” Braithewaite said. He sprang to his feet. “I tried to give McCoy another chance, and he had me arrested.”

“Aye,” Scott said dully.

Ian took Scott by the shoulders. The engineer did not meet his gaze.

“I knew I could trust you,” Ian said. “I knew there had to be somebody on this ship who would make a difference. My god, if you weren’t here—”

“Dinna remind me,” Scott said. “Dinna tell me compliments. There’s naught but shame in all of this.”

“We’ve got to try to recapture Spock and Mordreaux. They’ve both left the ship but they might have overlooked some kind of clue. They were working in Mordreaux’s room—come on!”

He plunged out into the corridor, oblivious to being seen or recaptured. Scott followed.

Dr. Mordreaux hunched down in a chair, his arms crossed over his chest. He glowered at Spock.

“Dammit, no!” he said again. “Iknew this would happen if I helped you, I knew it. You’ll never be satisfied till you manage to impose your own will and your own ethics on mine!”

“I assure you, Dr. Mordreaux—”

“Shut up! Get out! Do whatever you want, I don’t care.”

“Do you release me from my bond?” “No! Your actions are on your own head. If you do this, I’ll expose you for the liar you are.”

Spock gazed down at the time-changer. Dr. Mordreaux’s threat was trivial enough: If Spock broke his promise and kept the professor from being arrested, the promise technically would never have been made; if Spock failed, the professor would be taken to the rehabilitation colony, and no one would pay attention to what he said. But even if the threat were a compelling one, it would not control the Vulcan’s actions. Spock alone had to decide whether he must break his word, and whether he could live with himself afterward if he did.

The door to Dr. Mordreaux’s stateroom slid open.

“Ye said they’d escaped” Mr. Scott said to Ian Braithewaite.

Braithewaite stared at Spock and Mordreaux, his stunned expression changing to relief and triumph. “It doesn’t matter, we’ve caught up to them. Get that thing away from Spock. It’s—it’s a weapon!”

“Mr. Scott,” Spock said, “have you been looking for me?”

“Mr. Spock... Mr. Braithewaite has made some serious accusations against you, and against Dr. McCoy. I ha’ some questions I canna work out in my mind. I think we must talk.”

Braithewaite snorted in disgust.

“Are you giving me an order, Mr. Scott?” Spock asked.

“I dinna wish to put in a formal charge of unfitness against ye, but I will if ye force me to it.”

“You will be charged with mutiny.”

“Will ye no’ just explain?” Scott cried. “Ye willna answer my questions, ye’ve lied to me—”

“For gods’ sakes, Mr. Scott!” Braithewaite yelled. “This is no time to argue over your hurt feelings!” He lunged toward Spock. “Give me that—”

As Braithewaite grabbed for the time-changer, Spock pushed him aside and fled. He shouldered his way past the two security officers at Dr. Mordreaux’s door, but Scott and Braithewaite followed him on the run, and the taller man closed the distance quickly.

“Stop him!” Scott shouted, and the sounds of confused voices and running footsteps intensified into chaos.

Spock raced through the corridors of the Enterprise . He spun around a corner and ran headlong into Dr. McCoy and Captain Hunter. But Hunter had no reason to try to stop him; he escaped again and abandoned McCoy to the confusion as Scott and Braithewaite caught up to them. He could hear everyone shouting at each other, cursing, yelling conflicting orders and explanations, with McCoy doing his best to complicate matters further. But after a moment the muddle broke up into a string of pursuers again. As Spock plunged into the transporter room, Ian Braithewaite put on a final sprint, launched himself at Spock, and rammed into the Vulcan’s knees. They went down in a tangle, Ian clutching at the time-changer and trying to drag it away.

Spock clamped his fingers around the muscle at the base of Ian’s neck, seeking out the vulnerable nerve. The prosecutor collapsed in an angular heap. Spock freed himself and lurched to his feet. Without taking the time to double-check the settings of the changer, without stopping to think whether he should try to go farther back than he originally planned, all the way to the beginning, Spock leaped onto the transporter platform. Hunter appeared in the doorway, her energy-pistol drawn. She aimed it: it would not stun; it was a killing weapon.

Struggling halfway to consciousness, Braithewaite groaned. “Stop him,” he said. “Stop him, he murdered Jim Kirk.”

But she hesitated. As Mr. Scott and two bewildered-looking security officers rushed into the transporter room, followed a moment later by Dr. McCoy, Spock pressed the controls and felt the rainbow light engulf him, crush him, and rip him away into the continuum.

Dr. McCoy felt the warp engines shudder into unwilling resurrection, feeding their power through the time-changer. The drain was too great. As the lights faded, the doctor watched Hunter lower her energy-pistol.

She had plenty of time to fire, McCoy thought.

“What the hell did he do?” Hunter said.

“He made a fine botch of my repairs again, for one thing,” Scott said from the darkness, his old self for a moment.

“Emergency power should come on line in a minute or so,” McCoy said. “Like I told you, we’ve been having some problems—”

“You’ve got more than problems,” Hunter said, in a tone that silenced him.

The quiet movement of the air returned, and the lights glowed dimly back to life around them. The voices of frightened crew members jumbled together in an erratic crescendo. The computer began to babble, then lapsed into fuzzy white noise.

Mr. Scott helped Ian Braithewaite to his feet. Dazed, the prosecutor almost fell again. McCoy hurried forward, but Ian jerked away from his help.

“Keep your hands off me.” He sat down on the transporter platform and buried his face in his hands.

“All right, Ian,” McCoy said mildly. He turned to the security officers. “Is anyone guarding Dr. Mordreaux?”

“I—I guess not, Doctor.”

“You better get back there then, both of you. Everything’s under control here.”

They looked skeptical. McCoy did not blame them.

“Out!” he yelled.

They left, reluctantly, to return to their post. McCoy folded his arms and regarded Braithewaite.

“You’re supposed to be in your quarters, Ian,” he said. “What are you doing out?”

“I freed him, Dr. McCoy,” Scott said. “I dinna ken what’s happened to this ship, I dinna ken what’s happened t’ye and Mr. Spock since all this started. But Mr. Braithewaite has asked questions that need answering, and you willna answer them.”

“Scotty, you disobeyed my direct orders—”

“Your orders! Ye are no’ a command officer! What business had he leaving ye in command?”

“Spock left the doctor in command because it was the only way he could carry out his plans,” Braithewaite said. “He had to keep you out of the way.”

“Now just a minute,” McCoy said.

“Stop it, all of you.”

The three men fell silent, recognizing the tone of someone who had earned obedience and respect.

“I outrank all of you, including Spock,” Hunter said, “and if I have to pull rank to find out what’s going on, then consider it pulled. Dr. McCoy, do you have anything to say now?”

He started to answer her—but Spock had got away, and perhaps he needed only a few minutes to put everything right, but if he failed again and returned, he would be stopped if his plans were known.

McCoy could not take the chance of revealing what they were trying to do. He shook his head in defeat.

“Mr. Scott?” Hunter asked.

“I dinna ken what has happened. Dr. McCoy said Mr. Spock was deep asleep. He isna asleep, you saw that for yourself. That didna look like any transporter beam I ever saw before, either—and where could he go? I canna make his actions come out to make any sense in my mind. Unless Mr. Braithewaite’s suspicions are correct. I dinna want to believe them—but if they’re no’ true, why does Dr. McCoy want to go to Arcturus?”

“Arcturus!” Hunter said.

“Where’d you get the idea I wanted to go to Arcturus?” McCoy asked, baffled.

“Ye told me ye did,” Scott said, and then, when McCoy shook his head, “Ye said, if ye asked for warp four to Arcturus, would ye get it.”

“I didn’t mean it,” McCoy said. “I just picked the first example I could think of. But so what if I did want to go to Arcturus? What possible difference could that make?”

“Leonard,” Hunter said, “Arcturus is almost exactly equidistant from Federation, Romulan, and Klingon space. It’s neutral—most of the time, anyway. People go to Arcturus to make deals.”

“I don’t want to go to Arcturus,” McCoy said again. “I only wanted to know if the warp drive was on line.”

“He doesn’t even make up decent excuses!” Ian said.

“No, Mr. Braithewaite,” Hunter said, and she looked as if she were about to burst into laughter. “You’re right about that, Dr. McCoy doesn’t make up good excuses. But what do you have to say?”

“Spock’s been trying to free Mordreaux,” Braithewaite told her. “He was on Aleph right after the trial, I saw him. And he was monkeying around with the transporter just before Kirk was murdered. But Spock couldn’t get Mordreaux away, so he settled for escaping himself once things began to fall apart on him. He’d already drawn Dr. McCoy into his scheme. The security commander was involved, but they got rid of her—”

“The security commander? You can’t mean Mandala Flynn!”

“Yes—She wanted to command a ship like this so badly she could taste it. It was no secret, she even told Kirk. But he laughed at her. He must have known that a stateless person had no chance of advancing that far in Starfleet.”

“You’ve got some pretty strange ideas, Mr. Braithewaite.”

“But that’s what happened! Spock probably offered her the Enterprise in return for her help. They had to get rid of Kirk first. Dr. Mordreaux tried to kill him but failed, so Spock pressured McCoy into letting Kirk die.”

“Dammit, Braithewaite, he was dead! He was already dead!” McCoy’s voice broke and he turned away. In the following silence he managed to collect himself again. “I carried out his wishes. I followed the terms of his will. You can look at it if you want.”

“I intend to,” Hunter said. “Whatever you did or didn’t do afterwards, that doesn’t change the fact that Jim was assaulted.”

“You could have stopped them!” Ian cried. “Why didn’t you shoot Spock when you had the chance?”

Hunter glanced down at the pistol still in her hand, and slowly holstered it. “Do you think I’d kill a person on your say-so?”

Ian stood up and started toward the transporter console. “It still isn’t too late! We can still—” He halted just as McCoy was about to leap at him to prevent his revealing the time-changer’s auxiliary unit. Ian swayed, a lost, confused look on his face.

“What’s the matter?” Scott said. “Ian—”

The prosecutor collapsed, his body completely limp.

“The nerve-pinch—” Scott said.

“It isn’t that,” McCoy said, on his knees on the floor beside Braithewaite. He recognized the symptoms immediately, this second time in as many days. “It’s hypermorphic botulism! Help me with him, there isn’t time to wait for a stretcher!”

In the grip of the changer, Spock felt time pass. The sensation was very different from that of the

transporter alone, which was nothing more than a brief moment of dislocation at the end of the process. This felt as if he were falling through space, through hard vacuum, buffeted by every eddy of the solar wind, every current of each magnetic field, tossed by gravity waves, by light itself.

He materialized two meters above the ground, in Aleph Prime’s core park, and fell the rest of the way. He landed hard enough to knock the wind out of him, and he had to fight to keep from losing consciousness.

It could have been worse. He knew he could not calibrate the device with total precision—getting from a moving starship to the place where Aleph had been several days before was accomplishment enough—so he had chosen to appear in open space. That way he had a better chance of not reincorporating inside a wall. He would have preferred to appear in the emergency transmitter room, but felt the chances against succeeding were too large to challenge. He got up, brushing himself off, glancing around to discover whether or not he had been seen.

He had chosen darkness as well as open space: the park mimicked a diurnal cycle, and right now it imitated night. An artificial moon hung in the dull black starless sky.

Leaving the park behind, Spock entered one of the maze of corridors that formed Aleph Prime. He passed a public information terminal and requested the time: he had arrived, as he intended, approximately an hour before the emergency message to the Enterprise had been transmitted.

In the pre-dawn hours, even revelers on leave from the ships and transports and mining operations centered around Aleph had mostly gone to their beds, but the few beings Spock did pass paid him no attention. McCoy had been right about the uniform; it would have made him more conspicuous. He was well aware of the human penchant for comparing assignments, ships, commanders: had he been in uniform it would not have been long before some overfriendly inebriated human raised more questions than he could answer.

The small government sector was even quieter than the rest of the station. He knew where the emergency transmitter was, but it was inaccessible to anyone without the proper code. He walked slowly down a hallway lined with glass-walled offices, all dark and deserted: customs, security, Federation, Starfleet, the public defender’s office, the prosecutor’s office—

The lights flicked on; Ian Braithewaite left an inner chamber and entered the main room. Spock froze, but it was too late to get out of sight. Clutching briefcase, portable reader, and a handful of transcript flimsies, Braithewaite came into the hall. The lights faded out when he closed the door. He noticed Spock only when he nearly ran into him; he glanced down distractedly.

“Sorry,” he said. “Can I help you? Are you looking for somebody?”

Of course, Spock thought. He has not met me yet; he does not know who I am, and he has no suspicions about me. Tomorrow, when the Enterprise arrives, he will remember that he has seen me.

Does this mean I fail here, too?

“Where is the Vulcan consulate?” Spock asked.

Braithewaite pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Oh. Right. You’re in the wrong sector, all the consulates are in a higher-class part of the station entirely.” He gave directions to an area in Aleph Prime’s north polar region. Spock thanked him, and Braithewaite left, reading one of the

transcripts as he walked. It was no wonder it took him time to recall where he had seen Spock before.

Once the prosecutor was out of sight, Spock tried the door to the emergency transmitter. It was, of course, locked, and the computer that guarded it demanded identifications. He was careful not to speak to it or palm the sensor; he did not want it to have legally admissible proof of his presence.

For a moment he thought about returning to the public information cubicle, accessing the computer, and breaking through its guards to open the transmitter room. He had deceived the Aleph Prime systems before, or, more accurately, he would do it in the future; he could do it now.

But that was exactly what Dr. Mordreaux would do. It was the simplest, most direct way of getting to the transmitter, which the professor had to do if he were to order the Enterprise to Aleph. Al Spock had to do was find a place of concealment, wait, and capture him when he arrived.

Cautiously, Spock tried each door along the corridor. Somewhat to his surprise, one of them opened. Inside it was dark but he did not wave up the lights. He could see well enough: it was a small, empty courtroom, perhaps the one in which Dr. Mordreaux had been convicted, sentenced, and denied any appeal.

Tout comprendre c ’est toutpardonner, Spock thought: a philosophy difficult to express in Vulcan. He could understand why the humans faced with Dr. Mordreaux’s research had been so terrified of it, so determined to suppress it that they would subvert justice to succeed. It was hardly his place to forgive them, though; he could only wish they were not so utterly certain to misuse what the professor had discovered. Had he been on Vulcan, had Vulcans been the only beings involved, they would have studied the principles and honored the discoverer; and they would have agreed, by ethical consensus, never to put the principles into use.

He knew it. He was certain of it. Almost certain.

Concealing himself inside the small darkened courtroom, where he could look out but not be seen, he waited.

His logic did not disappoint him this time. After only a few minutes, Dr. Mordreaux skulked down the hall toward the emergency transmitter, glancing nervously over his shoulder at every other step, stopping short at every faint noise. Over his shoulder he carried a time-changer almost identical to Spock’s.

He placed his hand against the locking panel: he had succeeded in breaking the security circuits, just as Spock would have done. The door slid open. Spock drew his phaser and stepped into the hall.

“Dr. Mordreaux,” he said softly. The professor spun, panic in his face. He grabbed for his own weapon.

“No, wait” he cried.

Spock fired.

He caught Mordreaux before he fell. His phaser had, of course, been set only to stun. He did not wish to kill if he could possibly avoid it. He lifted the elderly man easily and carried him into the courtroom, secured the door from the inside, opaqued the glass walls, and raised the light level so the professor would be able to see when he came to. Spock sat down to wait.

In sick bay, Dr. McCoy worked frantically, afraid too much time had passed, afraid he would fail again, afraid he would have to watch Ian Braithewaite, too, die under his hands.

Spock, he thought, where the devil are you, why don’t you do something? The world’s coming apart at the seams and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

Outside the intensive care unit, Scott and Hunter waited. The erratic tones of the life-support systems could not quite obscure Scott’s voice.

“He was afraid he’d be killed,” he said, his voice strained, and tortured. “He was afraid ...”

The poison was overwhelming Ian’s body despite the support of the critical care machines. His heart trembled into fibrillation and his body convulsed with the shock that restored the beat again.

Fight, you stupid headstrong busybody, McCoy shouted in his mind.

He barely noticed when Hunter left.

Hikaru Sulu sat crosslegged on the floor of Mandala Flynn’s cabin, his hands relaxed on his knees, his eyes closed. He tried to recapture any of the feeling he had had in the room when she was alive. But it was as if she had never been here: she had left behind nothing of the sort that makes one’s room into a reflection of one’s own personality. She had put Hikaru’s antique sabre up on the wall, but it hung alone on the bare expanse. Her ring, warm on the inner surface, cool on the outer, circled his finger.

Mandala’s individuality had not been a function of anything she owned. She was gone, and there was no retrieving her except in memory. She lived strong and clear in his mind—he thought for an instant he caught the soft bright scent of her hair—and he began to understand her disinclination to gather possessions. He could not lose his memories of her, and they could not be taken from him.

The bed was still rumpled from their lovemaking.

The power failure startled him from his reverie, and prodded his guilt. Wandering through the Enterprise in a haze of grief, he was no use to Hunter, no use in finding out what had happened. From what Barry al Auriga had told him, every possible explanation dissolved in a mire of peculiar occurrences. Hikaru felt as stunned and angry as Barry, that Mandala was under suspicion.

He stood up slowly, rising all in one motion from the crosslegged position; in the silence the returning hum of the ventilators sounded very loud. Like a ghost passing through the dim illumination of half-power, Sulu left his lover’s cabin.

In the transporter room, Hunter touched the peculiar addition to the console, being careful not to disturb any of its connections or controls. Spock had no place to beam to, not with a normal transporter, but, as Ian Braithewaite had tried to say, this machine was definitely not a normal transporter anymore.

“What is that thing?” Mr. Sulu asked. He had rejoined her as she left sick bay. Hunter was glad of his company, not only because he could be of use to her with his knowledge of ship and crew, but because she had worried about him all alone with his grief. They had talked about Mandala and Jim on the way from Aleph to the Enterprise ; she knew how badly he was hurting.

She returned her attention to the construct in the transporter. “I’m not quite sure.” She itched to open it up and see what its innards looked like. ‘I think I’ll give Dr. McCoy one more chance to tell us what’s going on, and what that thing does, before I start playing around with it.”

She closed the amber crystals back into the transporter, and she and Sulu headed back toward sick bay.

“How are you holding up?” she asked quietly.

“Better than a little while ago,” he said. “And you?”

“When I find out why they had to die I’ll be able to tell you,” she said. “I don’t want it to be for nothing.”

“It isn’t nothing,” Sulu said. “Nobody is acting like I’d expect them to, not Dr. McCoy or Mr. Spock or Mr. Scott, and people don’t just change like that for no reason at all.”

She knew he meant it as a defense, but it could equally be used to accuse them. She did not say so.

In sick bay, Ian Braithewaite lay unconscious and surrounded by the critical care machines. The sensors showed his life signs stable, Hunter noted with some relief: she had expected him to die.

McCoy and Scott sat in silence in McCoy’s office, neitheir glancing toward the other. Hunter sat on a corner of the doctor’s desk, and Mr. Sulu stood just inside the doorway.

“Is Mr. Braithewaite going to be all right?”

“I don’t know,” McCoy said.

“He was afraid he’d be poisoned,” Scott said.

“Will you stop saying that? He wasn’t poisoned here! Somebody fed him the toxin encapsulated. The matrix has been dissolving for a couple of days. Since before he came on board.”

“Since he saw Mr. Spock on Aleph, before the Enterprise ever reached it, just as I saw Mr. Spock where he couldna have been!”

“Braithewaite was probably already hallucinating—”

“Are ye saying I’m hallucinating, too? D’ye meant I’ve been poisoned, too?”

Hunter was willing to let them argue if the result was some useful information, but this was ridiculous.

“Dr. McCoy,” she said, “I just found something very strange in the transporter. A bioelectronic addition.”

Scott glanced sharply at her. “Bioelectronic! So was the gizmo Mr. Spock had wi’ him when he disappeared—some kind o’ weapon, Mr. Braithewaite said. Nae thing like that should be in the

transporter!” He stood up.

“Stay here, Mr. Scott,” Hunter said, without looking at him, keeping her gaze fixed on Leonard McCoy. The doctor lied with his expression no better than with words. His face turning slowly very pale, he stared at her. “I don’t want to take it apart, Mr. Scott. Not yet. Leonard, do you want to tell me what it is?”

“Not very much, no.”

“Then I’ll tell you something about it. It boosts the beam. And it alters it into ... something else. The most interesting thing about it is the return control.”

“You didn’t touch it—!”

“No. Not so far. But if I engage it, and Mr. Spock still has the gadget’s mate with him, it will bring him back. From wherever he is. Isn’t that right?”

“Maybe.”

“Damn it! Will you just tell me what the hell is going on!”

“Give Spock a little more time,” McCoy said. “Please.”

“How much more time?”

“He said he’d try to come back within twelve hours. He’s been gone almost two.”

“Do you really expect me to do nothing for twelve hours? Without a reasonable explanation? Or even an unreasonable one?”

McCoy shook his head. “If you didn’t believe me before, there’s just no chance you’d believe what I’d tell you now.”

“Leonard,” she said, “what have you got to lose?”

“Everything.”

In the uncomfortable pause, Mr. Sulu stepped forward. “Dr. McCoy,” he said, “please trust her. How can she trust you if you don’t give her a chance?”

McCoy looked up at the helm officer, buried his face in his hands with a groan, and, finally, raised his head again.

“If you turn on the thing in the transporter,” he said slowly, “you might bring Spock back. But more likely you’d kill him.”

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

He drew in a deep breath, let it out, laced his fingers together and pressed his palms against his closed eyes, and started to tell a story so much more preposterous than even the one Ian Braithewaite had constructed that Hunter listened, fascinated despite herself.

When he finished, Hunter and Scott and Sulu all stared at him.

“I’ve no’ heard a crazier story in my life!”Scott said.

“Scotty, you know time-travel is possible,” McCoy said.

“Aye ...” The engineer withdrew into himself.

“Either Dr. Mordreaux wasn’t as loony as I thought,” Hunter said, “oryou have gone stark staring mad.”

McCoy sighed. “I know how it sounds, especially now after I’ve spent so much time trying to mislead you. I kept hoping Spock would succeed, if I just gave him the chance.”

“And now you want me to give him the chance.”

“Hunter—you could have stopped him, before. You didn’t.”

“I wouldn’t kill Spock because you lied to me any more than I’d do it because Ian Braithewaite wanted me to.”

“Don’t kill him now. Just give him a little more time. It’s all the truth, I swear to you.”

Hunter leaned back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “I couldn’t do anything for Jim anymore, but he was Jim’s friend, and that is the real reason I didn’t stop him.”

“Hunter,” Sulu said intensely, “it’s a little time—against the chance that Mandala and the captain won’t be—wouldn’t be—killed after all. It’s a risk worth taking!”

She laughed softly. “Not if we’re wrong, it isn’t.” She shook her head, surprised at herself. “I think I’ll spend the next ten years hanging by my thumbs in a military prison for this, but Spock can have his damned twelve hours.”

Lying on the bench in the courtroom, Professor Mordreaux groaned. Spock went to his side, and, when his former teacher had fully regained consciousness, gently helped him sit up.

“Spock? Mr. Spock, what are you doing here? How...?” He glanced beyond the Vulcan to the time-changers. “Oh, no,” he said, and began to laugh.

Spock had expected as much, though he had hoped for some semblance of rationality. He would no more be able to reason with this version of Dr. Mordreaux than the last.

The professor jumped to his feet. “How long have I been unconscious? Maybe there’s still time!” He rushed toward the door but Spock caught and stopped him before he had gone three steps.

“Mr. Spock, you don’t understand! There’s no time to lose!”

“I understand perfectly, sir. If we wait a few more moments, at least one event in this time-stream will have changed, and perhaps the Enterprise will not be diverted.” “But that isn’t me! I mean I’m not him!” He made an inarticulate noise of pure frustration and drew a deep breath. He closed his eyes and opened them, and began again.

“You’re stopping the wrong person,” he said. “I’ve come here to try to stop myself—my mad self—from calling you away from the singularity. I know everything that’s happened. You’re here to keep Jim Kirk from being murdered. I’ve been chasing myself through the time-streams for... ” He stopped, and laughed again, still on the edge of hysteria. “Of course duration is meaningless. Don’t you understand, Mr. Spock? I’m trying to stop myself, to save myself—”

Spock rushed past him, out of the courtroom and across the hall. The door to the transmitter room stood wide open. Spock plunged through it, Dr. Mordreaux right behind him,

A second Dr. Mordreaux turned away from the subspace transmitter. The tape spun through the machine with a high-speed whine.

“Too late!” Dr. Mordreaux, in front of him, cried with glee.

“Too late,” Dr. Mordreaux, behind him, said softly. “Too late.”

The professor by the transmitter touched his time-changer. Spock’s hands passed through his insubstantial form, and then he was gone.

The future Dr. Mordreaux and Mr. Spock stared at the transmitter. They both knew the message could not be countermanded or overridden. That was part of its fail-safe system.

“Damn,” Mordreaux whispered. And then, “Let’s get out of here before somebody comes along. If they recognize me they’ll probably shoot me on sight.”

They retrieved the time-changers from the courtroom, left the government sector of Aleph Prime, and walked together in silence to the core park. It was deserted now, at dawn, and probably the safest place Dr. Mordreaux could be. They sat down on a bench. Mordreaux buried his face in his hands.

“Are you all right, Professor?”

After a bit, he nodded. “As well as can be expected, considering that the universe keeps proving to me how much easier it is to create chaos than order.”

“One can prove easily enough that chaos is the primary result of all that has occurred.”

Mordreaux looked up at him. “Ah. You’ve seen the connection between your work and mine. We aren’t fighting me, we really are fighting chaos. Entropy.”

“I believed at first that I had made some error in my observations,” Spock said.

“No, they were all too accurate. Ever since I started to use the time-changer, the increase of entropy really has been accelerating.”

“I found the destructive potential difficult to accept.”

“Yes. I find it so, too. For a million years human beings have done their best to discover the ultimate weapon. It was left to me to invent the one that really can destroy our universe.”

He ran his hands through his hair, a habit that had not altered through all the years.

“It’s getting very bad by my time, Mr. Spock. The universe is simply .. . running down. Well. You can imagine.”

“Indeed.”

The false moon vanished behind a painted hillside on the far wall, and streaks of incandescent scarlet sunlight streamed out of the wall behind them.

“Why did you let it go so far, professor? Or have you been attempting to change things back for a long time?”

“A long time, yes. But I couldn’t even begin until I recreated my work. The virus program was very efficient, Mr. Spock. All my papers dissolved away. One could search memory bank and library and seldom even find a reference to my name.”

“You could have contacted me. You must know of my respect for your work. You must have known I would keep copies safe.”

Mordreaux reached out to pat Spock’s hand, and the Vulcan did not flinch from his touch. All the emotions he received from his old teacher were of sympathy and appreciation, and to his shame Spock felt himself in serious need of the unwanted feelings.

“Ah, my friend, but you did not survive the accusations made against you. You were sent to rehabilitation, though the authorities must have known what that would mean for you. I’m sure they did know you would resist their efforts to reprogram your mind... .”

Spock nodded. Many humans had been sent to rehabilitation and come out obedient, complacent, but living; only a few Vulcans had ever received such a sentence, and all of them had died. Knowing he was that much closer to Vulcan than human gave Spock a peculiar sort of comfort.

“What about Dr. McCoy? And Captain Hunter?”

“Starfleet forced Hunter to accept a dishonorable discharge. She divorced her family to protect the children from shame, and she joined the free commandoes. She was killed on the border a few months later. One of her officers committed suicide in protest at the treatment Hunter received—”

“Mr. Sulu!” Despite himself, Spock was surprised. Sulu had never seemed the type to go quite as far as hara-kiri .

“Sulu ...? No, the name was Russian. I forget exactly what it was. I think Mr. Sulu entered the free commandoes as well.” Dr. Mordreaux shrugged. “Little difference, only a slower method of suicide. As for Dr. McCoy ...” The professor shook his head. “I tried to keep track of him. But after they released him he disappeared. Even before they began the sentence he had lost heart. He was convicted of murdering Jim Kirk, you see.”

“Yet you came out with your mind intact, that is clear.”

“They had second thoughts about me,” he said. “They realized how valuable I could be, doing exactly what I was convicted of.”

“How did you escape?”

“After I went mad I was of very little use to them, and they stopped watching me quite so carefully. It took me some time to bring myself back to sanity . .. thence here.”

“I cannot understand why your other self murdered Captain Kirk. You said—on the bridge, yesterday, tomorrow—that he had destroyed you. But all he had done was respond to the orders you sent yourself”

“I know. But in the time-track in which he didn’t die, he defended your proposal—that I was too valuable to destroy—all too well. After I went mad, I thought it would have been better if I had been sent through rehabilitation. I would have been docile and happy and no one would have persecuted me. So I decided to go back and prevent him from saving me.”

“How many time-tracks are there?”

“They multiply, Mr. Spock, like lemmings. The main track split several ways when I sent my friends back in time; it split again, after my trial, when a particularly murderous future version of me came back and started a campaign of revenge—”

“The defense counsel? And the judge?”

Dr. Mordreaux nodded. “And Ian Braithewaite, but he came last.”

The imitation sun had risen high enough to cast shadows, and their silhouetted images stretched far down the hillside.

“Another track just split off, when I sent that message. There’s the one in which you finish your observations and the change is traced back to me and I’m persecuted for it, and the one in which I prevent your finishing, and realize the entropy effect myself in several years.” He glanced quizzically at Spock. “You see how complicated it gets.”

“And they all evolve from your first use of the time-changer.”

“Yes. I’m afraid so.”

“What happened when you tried to alter those events?”

“I’ve tried once so far. I went back to persuade myself not to demonstrate time-travel. I stayed only a moment. Because I saw one of my friends kill me—another me, I mean, one from my future, or another time-track . .. I’ve been afraid to try again. I know I must, eventually, but...”

“Your chances of altering events from so far in the future are negligible.”

“I have to try.”

“I am not so far removed.”

“You’d go back again—and try to stop me?”

“I promised you not to interfere with your friends.” Spock looked away. “My oath seems ... a trivial matter, compared to what will occur if I do not break it.”

“I doubt your oath is ever trivial to you, Mr. Spock,” Dr. Mordreaux said. “May I release you from your promise?”

“I cannot say. Are you the same being I gave it to?”

“I think I must have been. So much has happened, and my memories of the time before I went mad have grown foggy. But it sounds familiar, and it’s certainly something I would have demanded of you, when I was younger and more foolish. Mr. Spock, I beg of you to let me release you from your promise. I swear to you that to the best of my knowledge, I have the right.”

“I must go back to the start of the unravelling,” Spock said, “whether you have the right to permit me to do so or not. I am grateful for your oath, and I will try to accept it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Spock.” Dr. Mordreaux hesitated. “There’s something else I have to tell you, though.

It wouldn’t be fair not to.”

“What is it?”

“The farther you go, the more often, the more damaging it is to your system. It isn’t only the continuum that’s thrown into disarray. You’ve noticed the effects of time-travel on your body?”

“I have experienced ... some discomfort.”

“Discomfort, hm? Well, everyone knows Vulcans are hardier than humans. Still, it is dangerous and it is cumulative. It’s only fair to tell you that, before you decide what to do.”

Spock did not even pause. “The choice is between travelling farther back in time, or returning to my own time to face dishonor, shame for my family, and death. I do not see that that is a particularly difficult decision to make.” He picked up his changer.

Mordreaux picked up his, too. “Maybe I should go with you.”

“That is both unnecessary and irrational. You would be jeopardizing your life, though your chances of accomplishing anything approach zero.”

Mordreaux rubbed his fingers over the amber-bauble surface of his changer. “Thank you, Mr. Spock. The more often I’ve moved through time, the more frightened I’ve gotten of it. I don’t look forward to dying.”

Dr. Mordreaux led Spock to his own rooms in Aleph Prime: the rooms of the earlier Dr. Mordreaux, the one now in the hospital awaiting transfer to the Enterprise . He had lived in an older section of the space station, midway between the core park and the glimmering outer shell. Asteroids formed the substructure of the city: here the corridors resembled tunnels, the rooms, caves.

Dr. Mordreaux’s possessions lay in a shambles. Books and papers littered the floor, and the screen of the computer terminal blinked in the way self-aware machines have when their memories are ripped out

or scrambled. The furniture had been overturned, and shards of crockery covered all the floors.

“It appears you objected strenuously to your arrest.”

“Maybe I’m not in the same track I thought I was,” Mordreaux said. “But I don’t remember any where I didn’t go quietly.”

He shuffled through the destruction, to the back room, the laboratory, where the disorder was less extensive. The transporter did not appear damaged. Mordreaux glanced into its workings.

“They’ve taken the changers, of course,” he said, “but the rest of it looks all right.”

He tightened a few connections while Spock worked out the coordinates he would need to use to go back before the track of maximum probability began to split into multiple disintegrating lines.

“The transporter’s set,” Dr. Mordreaux said. “How about you?”

“I am ready,” Spock replied. “What will you do, sir?”

“As soon as you leave, I’ll return to my own time. If I can.”

Spock stepped up on the transporter platform, holding his time-changer in both hands.

“Goodbye, Dr. Mordreaux.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Spock. And thank you.”

Spock replied by touching the controls of the changer. The two energy fields interacted in a rage of light, and Spock vanished.

From Spock’s viewpoint, the cavern-like back room of Dr. Mordreaux’s apartment faded out through spectral colors, red-orange-yellow-green-blue-purple to blazing ultra-violet as the energy increased; Spock felt himself being pulled through a void, then thrust back across the ultra-violet energy barrier, through the rainbow, into normal space. He felt himself materialize again, one molecule at a time, as the beam wrenched him back into existence.

He staggered, lost his balance completely, and crashed to the stone floor, falling hard, barely managing to curl himself around the time-changer so it was not damaged. He rolled over on his back, staring upward, momentarily blinded. He started to get up, but froze with an involuntary gasp of pure flaming agony.

Startled voices surrounded him, then shadows: he was still dazzled by the assault of ultra-violet light. He flattened his palms against the cool floor and shut his eyes tight. The pain had become too great to ignore or put aside.

He tried and failed to free any single voice from the tangle around him. He could hear and sense consternation, surprise, outrage. The Aleph Prime authorities must have followed him and Dr.

Mordreaux, or kept the room under surveillance: now they had come to arrest them, more important, to stop them, and nothing would ever convince anyone that he and Dr. Mordreaux were attempting something utterly essential.

One voice threaded through the mass of noise.

“Mr. Spock? Are you all right?”

He blinked slowly several times and his vision gradually returned. The professor bent over him, frowning with concern.

“How did you get here? What are you doing here?”

Spock pushed himself upright, a lurching, graceless motion. Cramps reverberated up and down all the long muscles of his body and he felt as though the room were spinning around him. He refused to accept that perception; he forced his eyes to focus on Dr. Mordreaux, sitting on his heels beside him.

It was not the Dr. Mordreaux he had just left: it was a far younger man, a man who looked nearly the same as he had years before, when Spock knew him at the Makropyrios. In a month he would have aged ten years, after the stress of accusation, trial, and sentencing.

“May I help you up?” Mordreaux asked courteously. He extended a hand but did not touch Spock, and Spock shook his head.

“No. Thank you.” He got to his feet, awkwardly but under his own power. The time-changer thumped against his side.

“Where in heaven’s name did you get that?” Mordreaux asked. “And where did you come from?”

“What’s wrong?” someone called from the other room, and one of the two people standing in the doorway turned back to answer.

“Somebody just materialized on the changer platform.”

“Well, Mr. Spock, it’s been a long time.” Dr. Mordreaux gestured toward the changer. “Longer for you than me, I think, if we count from the Makropyrios.”

“I came to warn you, Dr. Mordreaux,” Spock said. His voice sounded weak and he could not halt the shaking of his knees and hands. He straightened up, forcing away the pain, confronting it directly. Several of the people from the sitting room crowded in at the doorway: Dr. Mordreaux’s friends, the people whose dreams had sent him on a fatal course. Spock had hoped to arrive when Dr. Mordreaux was alone.

“Come sit down,” the professor said. “You look like death.”

Even for Spock there came a point where he had to admit his limits. He limped into the adjacent room and took the chair Dr. Mordreaux offered.

The people in the doorway moved aside for him, and stood together in a suspicious circle: six adults, four children.

“What does he want, Georges?”

“Well, Perim, I don’t know yet.” He motioned for everyone to sit.

“Are you a Vulcan?” one of the children asked.

“This is Mr. Spock,” Dr. Mordreaux said. “He was one of my very best students when I was a physics teacher, and now he works on a starship. At least I believe he does now —but he may have begun to do something else by the time he comes to us from.”

“No,” Spock said. “I still serve on the Enterprise .”

One of the younger people, no more than student age himself, handed Spock a glass of water. He sipped from it.

“That’s about enough of old times and afternoon tea,” said Perim. He took the hand of the child who had spoken and drew her away from Spock and Mordreaux. “What’s he doing here? It’s a damned inconvenient time to visit. Unless he’s come to stop us.”

“Is that why you’re here, Mr. Spock?”

“Yes, sir, it is.” He glanced from one face to another, wondering which person had reacted—would react—with such fear and violence when the future Dr. Mordreaux attempted what Spock was about to try now. The group of time-travelers drew together, and Spock felt their rising anger and apprehension.

“Sir,” Spock said, “within a month, you will be accused of murdering all these people. The charge will be proven against you, as will the charge of unethical experimentation upon intelligent beings. Your work will not be vindicated; it will not even be classified and controlled. It will be suppressed. It engenders such apprehension among judicial and executive officials that they will see no other way to restrain what you have created. You will be sentenced to rehabilitation. The Enterprise is assigned to transport you. During the voyage, you cause the deaths of the commander of security and of Captain James T. Kirk.”

“That’s preposterous!”

“It is true. You must not continue this experiment. It leads only to disaster.”

“Wait a minute,” said one of the time-travelers. “You’re saying we shouldn’t go. You want us to stay here.”

“You must.”

“We can leave a record of our plans so Georges won’t get into trouble—we’ve all agreed to try out his theories.”

“Agreed, hell,” said a middle-aged woman perched on the back of a couch. “We talked him into letting us do it.”

“Several of you do leave records,” Spock said. “They are used as evidence of his persuasive abilities.

Of his power over you, if you wish.”

Dr. Mordreaux flung himself into a chair. “I thought I had taken enough precautions to avoid that difficulty,” he said. “But certainly I can take other measures.”

“They will not be sufficient,” Spock said. “Or, rather, perhaps they would be, but you must not carry out this plan. Your fate, the fate of these few people—that is relatively trivial compared to the wider

implications of the work. The displacement of your friends permanently into the wrong continuum creates a strain that space-time cannot withstand.”

“Good lord,” Perim said. “You sound like you’re talking about the end of the universe.”

“In time, that is what it amounts to.”

“In time that’s what everything amounts to!” said the middle-aged woman.

“Not in less than one hundred Earth-standard years.”

Silence.

“What a load of crap,” the woman said sharply. “Listen, Mr. Spock, whoever you are, wherever, whenever, you’ve come from, I don’t care how terrific a physics student you used to be, I’ve been through those equations myself and I don’t see any opportunity at all for the creation of torsion in the continuum.”

“You have erred. The error was inevitable, but you have erred nonetheless.”

“Georges, dammit—” She turned toward Mordreaux.

“It’s true, Mr. Spock. I worried that the transfer might cause some distortion. But it just doesn’t happen. Nothing in the equations shows it.”

“You have erred,” Spock repeated. “Your plans distort reality to such an extent that the increase of entropy accelerates. The effect is not large at first, of course—but within twenty years larger stars have begun to nova. Precarious ecosystems have begun to fail.”

“Prove it,” said Perim.

Spock glanced toward the computer terminal in the corner of the room. “I will show you the derivation,” he said.

He worked at the keyboard for half an hour. The children played games in another corner. After a few minutes most of the other adults drew back, unable to follow the progression of a proof far out of any of their specialties, but the middle-aged woman, Mree, and Dr. Mordreaux watched carefully. Perim, the young girl’s father, loomed, arms crossed over his chest, at Spock’s left shoulder.

Spock gave himself some clear space in the middle of the screen and typed in a new equation.

“What the bleeding hell is that?” Mree said.

“Profanity is not necessary,” Spock said. “I will explain anything you find beyond your comprehension.”

“It isn’t beyond my comprehension,” she said angrily. “It’s a correction factor, that’s obvious enough. You can prove any damned thing you please if you throw in correction factors.”

“Mree,” Dr. Mordreaux said, “please let him finish before you get angry. And Mr. Spock, Mree built the time-changer in the first place. If you could hold down the sarcasm a bit I think we’d all be happier.”

“I intended no sarcasm,” Spock said.

“All right. But it’s safe to assume that both Mree and I can follow whatever you put on the screen, as long as you don’t pull anything out of thin air, which as far as I can tell is exactly where you got that.”

Spock sat back, resting his hands on his knees and gazing at the video screen. “That is the equation I derived from observations I am, in this time-stream, preparing to begin. As you can see, the current numerical value is extremely small, but as you can also see, it is dependent on the value of t minus t1, squared. In short, its value not only increases, its increase accelerates.” He bent over the keyboard again and showed how the correction factor fit into the original equations.

Dr. Mordreaux whistled softly.

“Georges,” Mree said, “there isn’t a shred of evidence for that factor!”

“That’s quite true,” Mordreaux said. “What about it, Mr. Spock?”

‘There is no evidence for its existence because it does not yet exist. The value of t is dependent upon the moment at which you begin to distort the temporal continuum by sending people back in time, and leaving them there.”

Mree muttered something profane and disbelieving. “That’s the stupidest argument I ever heard. It’s completely circular.”

“Dr. Mordreaux has created the circle,” Spock said.

“You’re trying to save James Kirk’s life, aren’t you?” Mordreaux glared at Spock, his mood changing from calmness for the first time. “Of course, it’s obvious. He must be an exceptional person. I admire your loyalty, Mr. Spock, but it isn’t any reason to ruin the plans of all my friends. You’ve warned me and that’s sufficient—I won’t allow myself to be arrested after I’ve sent Mree and the others back. I’ll go back myself if necessary.”

“Been trying to persuade you to do that all along,” Mree said.

Spock stood and faced his old teacher. “Dr. Mordreaux, Vulcans do not lie. The entropy effect caused me considerable ... distress—” It took a great deal of effort for him to admit that, true as it was—“when I discovered it. I believed I had made a mistake. But you—a future version of you, who has been trying to repair the continuum even as I have tried—assured me I had not. He comes from the time when the effects are having serious consequences.”

Mordreaux scowled at him. “Vulcans say they don’t lie, but for one thing the statement isn’t necessarily true and for another you aren’t a Vulcan. Not entirely. And human beings are the best liars in the universe.”

“I... I have endeavored to enhance the Vulcan elements of my background, and suppress the human characteristics.”

“Why won’t you just accept my compromise? You won’t be involved in what I’m doing, your ship will never be called to Aleph Prime, and your captain will be safe.”

“The fate of James Kirk is not involved with what I have told you. Whether he lives or dies has nothing

to do with what will occur if you go through with your plans.”

“Where’s this fabled version of me, then? Why doesn’t he come back and tell me all this himself?”

Spock started to answer. But behind him, Perim suddenly grabbed him, catching him in a headlock and dragging him off-balance.

“We can’t let him stop us! Help me tie him up and let’s go—”

Spock let himself be pulled back until Perim himself was off-balance, then the Vulcan ducked down and around and threw the larger man over his shoulder, to the floor. Perim lay stunned, no longer a danger, and Spock turned back toward Dr. Mordreaux, satisfied that he had discovered which of the professor’s friends had a quick temper.

“You tried,” Spock said. “You tried at least twice. The second time—”

An instant too late, he felt the hand grip his shoulder.

The fingers dug in, seeking and finding the vulnerable nerve before he could react. All feeling left him. He stayed on his feet another moment, swaying, then collapsed.

Through a haze of paralysis, Spock saw Mree bend over him. “He’ll be okay, Georges,” she said. “But Perim’s right—Let’s get out of here before it’s too late.”

Spock struggled to regain control of his body, but Mree’s understanding of the aggressive move was thorough, and she had incapacitated him just short of unconsciousness. He could not help but admire her for mastering the technique: humans who tried it usually either failed to produce any effect at all, or used it so aggressively that it proved fatal. Only an unusually proficient student could produce immobility with consciousness.

Dr. Mordreaux hesitated. Spock could see him at the edge of his vision, but he could neither turn his head nor speak.

“All right,” Mordreaux said abruptly.

They filed into the laboratory. Spock struggled unsuccessfully to regain some feeling, some power of movement.

A wash of rainbow light, a dazzle of ultraviolet energy, told him he had failed again. They were fleeing, to some place he would never find, and he could come back again and again and again, earlier and earlier, further fragmenting the very substance of the universe as he attempted futilely to repair the damage being done. But he would always fail, he knew it now, something would always happen to cause him to fail. Entropy would always win.

As it must.

He cried out in despair.

Fighting the hopelessness that washed over him, somehow he flung himself over onto his chest. Every nerve and muscle in his body shrieked as he reached to drag himself along the floor like the crippled creature he was, like the first primordial amphibian struggling for breath on the shores of a vanishing lake, knowing instinctively in the most primitive interconnections of his brain that he would probably die, if he continued, that he would surely die, if he stayed, that his only chance was to keep going, to try.

Hunter wandered into sick bay, wishing she were almost anywhere else in the universe. She stopped in the doorway of McCoy’s office.

“Leonard,” she said, “Mr. Spock’s twelve hours are nearly up.”

“I know,” McCoy said miserably. “Hunter, he told me he had an outer limit of fourteen hours—”

“Oh, gods,” Hunter said, exasperated. “Leonard—”

“Wait—” McCoy looked up. “Did you hear—it’s the sensors!” He jumped up and ran past her into the main sick bay.

In the critical care unit the signals had fallen to zero, but not because the toxin had finally overwhelmed Ian Braithewaite’s life. Hunter took one look at the empty bed and ran out into the corridor. She caught a glimpse of Ian disappearing around the corner.

“He’s trying to get to the transporter!” McCoy said.

Hunter raced after Ian. He was still very weak and she narrowed the gap between them, but he stumbled into the lift. Hunter launched herself toward him and crashed against the closed doors, an instant too late.

“Damn!” She waited seething; McCoy caught up to her as the lift returned. They piled inside, and as soon as it stopped again Hunter rushed out and after the prosecutor. He had already reached the transporter room, already opened the console: he stared down at the bioelectronic construct that bulged up out of the module like a glimmering malignant growth.

“Don’t, Ian! Gods, don’t!”

“It’s the only way,” he whispered.

Supporting himself on his elbows in the doorway of the laboratory, Spock whispered, “Dr.

Mordreaux...”

The small group of time-travelers parted, turning to look at him, all of them startled to hear his voice.

And all of them were there.

Spock could not force his eyes to focus properly: he thought he was seeing double. But then the second Dr. Mordreaux stumbled off the transporter platform and fell, as Spock had, and the first Dr.

Mordreaux, the one who belonged in this time, this place, knelt beside him and turned him over. The older professor groaned.

Using the doorjamb for support, Spock dragged himself to his feet. Mree looked from one Mordreaux to the other, then back at Spock.

“Sir—” Spock said.

“Nothing changed,” Mordreaux said. “Nothing . . . changed ...” His voice was like sand on stone, skittering, dry, ephemeral. “I waited, but the chaos ...”

Spock forced himself across the few meters of space between him and the professor, and fell to his knees. The present Dr. Mordreaux stared down at himself.

“They are determined to go, sir,” Spock said. “I tried to show them what would happen—”

Mordreaux’s hand clamped around his wrist. “I don’t want to die like this,” he said. He looked back at himself. “Believe him. Please believe him.” He sighed, and his eyes closed, his hand fell limp beside him, and the life flowed slowly from his body.

The present Dr. Mordreaux sat back on his heels.

“My god,” Mree whispered. “My god, look.”

The future Dr. Mordreaux faded gradually to dust, and the dust dissolved toward nothingness. As it collapsed into subatomic particles, Spock snatched up the time-changer, reset it, and flung it into the dust. Attuned to the molecules that had formed Dr. Mordreaux’s body, it pulled them with it as it quivered and vanished back to its own time. Spock wondered why he had bothered to make the repair in space-time, since it appeared that he would fail to prevent the more serious damage that was about to occur.

He stood up slowly, aching with fatigue. “Do you believe me now?” His fa9ade of control and emotionlessness began to crack. “He knew he would die if he came back this far again. He knew it! He feared it. By his time, the changes you have caused have become so intolerable that he deliberately chose death, to try to stop you!”

“What about us?” Perim cried. “That’s years in the future! Our hopes—”

“And the hopes of your children?” Spock glanced at the curious little girl who had asked if he were a Vulcan—he realized that no one had adequately answered her question—and she gazed solemnly at him, as if she understood everything that had happened. Perhaps she did, better than he or anyone else. “Far in the future, when your child is grown, and the universe is nothing but chaos—what then? You will go back, you will be safe.” He looked at each member of the group, adults and children alike. “Your children will take the consequences.”

The present Dr. Mordreaux rose. “Mr. Spock ...”

His voice shook. “Perhaps—”

“Georges!” Perim took one step forward, his fists clenched. “You can’t—”

Mree clasped his arm, gently, it seemed, but he stopped and fell silent.

“I think we’re going to have to find other hopes,” she said.

“No!”

“Perim,” Mree said, “Spock is right. We’ve been selfish—we knew that all along, but now we know what the results of our selfishness will be.”

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Mordreaux said. He looked around at his friends, Mree and Perim and the others who had watched, unbelieving.

The young student who had given Spock water had tears streaming down his face. “It would have been—” He could not finish.

“My friends, I’m sorry,” Mordreaux said. He went to the transporter and began to disconnect the additions. Perim and one of the others tried to stop him, but Mree and the other three adults prevented them from interfering. Mordreaux finished the dismantling, then, tears running down his face, too, he hugged each of the other people. “I can never make this up to you,” he said when he got to Perim. “I know it.”

Perim pulled back from the embrace. “You’re right,” he said, his tone nearer a growl than any human sound. “You can’t.” He picked up his child, and fled.

Ian Braithewaite stabbed at the control button on the time-changer. Hunter and McCoy reached him at the same time, but too late: they pulled him away from the transporter control as the strained warp engines rumbled into operation, so out of sync that the Enterprise itself shuddered. The light spilling across the transporter started its rainbow flux, red-orange-yellow—McCoy groaned in grief and despair.

—green-blue-violet—

The ship went dark; the beam faded, and McCoy found himself lying sprawled on the floor. When he opened his eyes the lighting was perfectly normal, and he was all alone. He pushed himself to his feet; he was as stiff as if he had been lying there for hours. Something terrible had happened, but it was like a dream that he grasped for as it slipped through his fingers. Something had happened: but he did not know what.

“What am I doin’ here?” he muttered. He looked around the empty room one last time, shrugged, and returned to sick bay.

In the sitting room, after the others had left, Dr. Mordreaux looked ruefully at Spock, then at Mree. “I suppose I’d better not publish my last paper,” he said.

Despite all that had happened, Spock felt more than a twinge of guilt and unease at the idea of suppressing knowledge. Again he wished for a society as settled as that on Vulcan.

“I guess not,” Mree said. “I sure won’t mention it. Damn. The idea was great while it lasted.”

“Might any of the others try to force one of you to rebuild the time changer?” Spock asked.

Mordreaux shrugged. “They might. Who knows? What’s ever certain? But I think that’s our problem, not yours, Mr. Spock.”

“I hope I didn’t hurt you,” Mree said. “I’m sorry.”

“Your technique is flawless,” Spock said. “I congratulate you.” “Thanks,” she said.

Mordreaux glanced toward the doorway into the laboratory, where his other self had collapsed to dust. “Will you be all right, Mr. Spock? Can you get back to your own time, without...”

“Your other self had made many more trips than I.”

“The physiologies are different.”

“I have no choice, Dr. Mordreaux. I can no more stay here than you can send your friends back to the times they would prefer to live in. I am aware of the risks.” He stood up. It was pointless to remain, pointless, and, quite possibly, dangerous. Every moment he remained increased the chances that he would inadvertently commit some act whose effects would cascade into disaster somewhere in the future. “I must go back,” he said. He picked up the time-changer. It was smooth and cool in his hands.

“Mr. Spock—”

“I must go back,” Spock repeated. “I must go back now.” His fingers tightened convulsively on the time-changer, because he wanted nothing more than to throw it as far away from him as he could, and never touch it again. He did not want to travel through time again. He was so tired, and he did not want to fight the pain anymore ...

He was afraid.

“Goodbye,” he said, and touched the controls.

He heard their voices bidding him goodbye as the changer’s power pack built up threshold energy around him, and then all sound faded as he was dragged into a drowning riptide. Ultraviolet lanced into his vision.

For all his assurances to Dr. McCoy, he was not certain within himself thathe , this time-stream’s self-aware version of himself, would continue to exist once the journey ended.

The Enterprise materialized around him: he had only a moment to be sure of that, before he slipped down into such pure agony that it was the only sensation his mind could perceive.

The rainbow light faded, and Mr. Spock was gone. Georges looked at Mree; she gazed at the transporter platform and shook her head.

“Do you suppose he’ll be all right?”

“I hope so. We’ll have to wait a few weeks until he gets home again. Then I can put in a call to the Enterprise . If he doesn’t remember what happened, I can just say hello.”

“Are you going to call him from here?”

Georges frowned. “What do you mean?”

Mree took his hand. “If Perim is angry enough, he might easily start threatening you. You could be in a lot of danger.”

Georges thought about that for a few moments, and then said quizzically, “ /could be in danger?”

Mree shrugged.

“I suppose I could put the changer together by myself,” Georges said. “But Perim knows as well as I do who actually built it.”

“Yes,” she said. “But I’ve been planning to leave Aleph anyway. I don’t guess it makes that much difference whether I travel through the fourth dimension, or the normal three.”

“You think I should leave, too.”

“That’s right.”

“Run away?”

“Like a jackrabbit,” she said. She paused, and then, more seriously, she said, “Georges, what do you have here to stay for?”

“Not very much,” he admitted. The seconds stretched out as Mree and Georges looked at each other, remembering other conversations very much like this one.

“I asked you to come with me enough times before,” she said. “Shall I ask you again, or are you wishing I wouldn’t?”

“No,” he said. “You don’t have to ask me again. Wherever it is that you’re going ... do you suppose they’d have any use for a mad scientist?”

“Sure,” she said. “As long as you’re teamed up with a mad inventor.” She gestured toward the time-changer. “Think of the projects we can handle. Why, we can’t go wrong.”

They laughed together, ruefully, and hugged each other very tight for a long time.

Shouting incoherently, Jim Kirk sat up in his bunk. He clutched at his face: something was trying to get at his eyes—

The lights rose gradually in response to his motion; he was in his cabin, in his ship, he was all right. It was nothing but a nightmare.

He lay down again and rubbed his face with both hands. He was soaked with sweat. That was the most realistic dream he had had in a long time. The terrorism he had seen at the very beginning of his Starfleet career had haunted him for years, in dreams just like this one. A shadowy figure appeared, pointed a gun at him, and fired, then, as if he were two separate people, he watched himself die and felt himself die as a spiderweb slowly infiltrated his brain. The dream always ended as silver-gray death clouded his hazel eyes.

He rubbed his chest, right over the breastbone, where the bullet had entered, in this dream. “Could at

least have killed me instantly,” he said aloud, reaching very far for even bitter humor, and failing to grasp any.

The dream before the nightmare, though, that was different. It was another dream he had not had for a long time: he had dreamed of Hunter. He tried not even to think of her, most of the time. He had so nearly destroyed their friendship with his immaturity; he had certainly destroyed their intimacy.

Why don’t you grow up, Jim? he thought. Your dreams don’t just come along to entertain you, they’re there to give you good advice. You’ve been warned of your mortality, though if you’re lucky you’ll have a better death than that one. But you are mortal—and so is she. She’s in more danger than you are, more of the time: what if something happens to her and you’ve never told her how you feel, or at least that you know you were a damned fool?

He ordered the lights out again and lay in the darkness trying to get back to sleep. But he knew that in the morning he would not forget the dreams he had tonight.

In her darkened cabin, Hunter looked up from the backlighted reading screen and shivered. Had she dozed off? She did not think so. She leaned back, stretched, rubbed her temples, and returned her attention to the reader. The paper it displayed was hard going, all these years past her formal physics training, but the work was bizarre enough to interest her. She had always thought Georges Mordreaux was a little crazy, and this work confirmed her suspicions. The fourth paper in a series of five, it had a publication date two years past. Hunter could find no reference to any succeeding monograph, to paper number five.

She wondered what had happened to Mordreaux after he quit the Makropyrios in a fit of pique and bruised ego. He always signed his papers, but never added any location.

Hunter felt too restless to concentrate on physics. She turned off the reader, folded it against the wall, and went up to the cockpit to prepare Aerfen for docking with Aleph Prime.

Her crew needed replacements even worse than Aerfen needed fixing, but Starfleet had her request and had not yet deigned to answer. Every time Hunter ran into the bureaucracy, which she did more and more frequently the more responsibility she earned, she daydreamed about resigning. She could always join the free commandoes. Or just go home and stay for a while. She was not due for a sabbatical for two more years; the best she could hope for in the meantime was a few weeks home with her family, with her daughter; and a few days by herself, in the mountains, to renew her friendship with the phoenix eagle who had watched over her while she found her dream-name.

Hunter shook her head. She could get hopelessly sentimental sometimes; if she got any more maudlin she would start thinking about Jim Kirk, and that would bring on a bad case of “if onlies.”

If only he were a completely different person, Hunter thought. If only I were, too. Then it would have worked out perfectly.

Strolling toward his office, Ian Braithewaite stopped and stuck his head into the office of Aleph Prime’s public defender.

“Hi, Lee, how you feeling today?”

“Better,” she said. “I must have started to get a bug, but it’s gone now.”

“Good.”

“Anything interesting coming up?” she asked. “I’m tired of pleading fines for drunken miners. Why don’t you turn up a good smuggling case?”

“Don’t I wish,” he said.

“Want to go for coffee later?”

“Sure,” Ian said. “I’ll meet you after court.”

He went on down the hall and to his office, to start in on his moderately heavy load of massively boring cases, day after day, always the same.

Without a sound, without a motion, Mandala woke. She went from deep dreaming sleep to complete wakefulness in an instant. She felt cold, with the sweat of fear.

Almost as quickly as she awakened, she remembered where she was: her own cabin, on the Enterprise , her new assignment. Not back in the patrol, not in the midst of a fire-fight. She rubbed the ache beneath the scar on her left shoulder. She must have strained the old break during a workout. She really should find time to regrow the bone. It was silly to put up with the discomfort. And this time the twinge of pain had prodded memory and brought on her nightmare.

But it was just a nightmare. She had faced and overcome its dangers just as she had beaten other perils, real ones, and the struggle and victory had suffused her with a fierce joy.

Hikaru slept peacefully beside her. The faint light gleamed on his shoulders. He lay face-down with his head pillowed on his arms, turned toward her. Yesterday, they had both realized they wanted, and needed, to spend as much time together as they could, even if he were soon to leave the Enterprise .

He was so gentle ... Mandala did not like to think of him hardened by the violence he would encounter in his next assignment. But she could not say so to him. Her reasons were too selfish; and she would, in effect, be telling him to give up his ambitions.

He might be strong enough to come through the experience unchanged. It was possible. But it was about as likely as his chances of advancing farther without making the transfer at all.

She pushed away the depressing thoughts, for she still felt exhilarated by her dream. Her heart beat quickly; she was excited. She leaned down and kissed the point of Hikaru’s shoulder. She kissed the corner of his jaw, his ear, his temple. His eyes opened, closed, opened.

He drew in a long breath. “I’m glad you woke me up.”

“I’m glad you woke up.” She brushed her fingertips languorously up and down his back. He shivered. “You got me out of some nightmare,” he said.

Bad?

“It seems like it... but I can’t remember anything about it, now.”

She moved closer to him and put her arm around his shoulders, cuddling him. He hugged her tight, burying his face in her long loose hair, until he had shaken off the unease, and began to respond to her.

She leaned over him, letting her hair fall down in a curtain around them. When it tickled his neck and shoulders, he smiled. She caressed him, drawing warm patterns with her fingers and cool ones with her ruby ring.

“You are so beautiful,” Mandala said, and bent down to kiss him again before he could think of anything to say.

Jenniver Aristeides and Snnanagfashtalli sat across from each other in the duty room, playing chess.

They both preferred the classical two-dimensional board to the 3-D versions; it was somehow cleaner and less fussy, but it retained its infinite complexity.

“At least if I ask Mandala Flynn for a transfer she won’t spit in my face,” Jenniver said.

“No,” said Fashtall. “She is not like the other one, she is not the spitting type.”

“It’s just that I have such a hard time getting anybody to believe I don’t like to pound people into the ground every chance I get.” Jenniver shrugged. “I guess I can’t blame them.”

Fashtall raised her sleek head and gazed across the table at her, the pupils in her maroon eyes widening.

“ Ibelieve,” she said. ‘They will not say they do not believe you, when I am around. And no one will spit in your face.”

“He never actually did, you know,” Jenniver said mildly. “He couldn’t reach that far anyway.”

“Mandala Flynn’s predecessor is gone,” Fashtall said. “And Mandala Flynn is our officer. If she does not give you a transfer to Botany, she will tell you a reason, at least. I do not think she will hold you in place longer than she must, if she knows you are unhappy.”

“I’m scared to talk to her,” Jenniver said.

“She will not hurt you. And you will not hurt her. Have you watched her, at judo? No ordinary human on the ship could defeat her, not even the captain.”

“Could you?” Jenniver asked.

Fashtall blinked at her. “I do not play fair, by those rules.”

The Changeling laughed. Reflecting that Fashtall had far more sense of humor than anyone else gave her credit for, Jenniver moved her queen’s pawn.

After a moment, Fashtall growled.

Jenniver smiled. “You’re not even in check.”

“I will soon be. Driven by a pawn!” She made another irritated noise. “You think a move farther ahead than I, friend Jenniver, and I envy you.”

She suddenly turned, the spotted fur at the back of her neck rising, bristling.

“What is it?”

“Something fell. Someone. In the observatory.”

Fashtall bounded out of the duty room on all fours, and Jenniver followed, running easily in the absurdly light gravity. She passed Fashtall and reached the observatory first.

Mr. Spock stood swaying in the middle of the dimly-lit room, his eyes rolled back so far they showed nothing but white crescents, his hair disarrayed, blood running down the side of his face from a gash in his left temple, and, most strangely of all—once Jenniver noticed it—out of uniform, wearing a flowing, dark-brown tunic rather than his uniform shirt. She hurried toward him: her boot crunched on a shard that cracked like plastic. She hesitated, afraid as she often was that she had inadvertently damaged some fragile possession of the frail people around her. But the floor was littered with the amber fragments: whatever the damage was, it was not something she had caused.

Spock’s knees buckled and Jenniver forgot the broken bits around her: she leaped forward and caught the science officer before he fell. She held him up. Fashtall rose on her hind legs and touched his forehead.

“Fever,” she said. “High—much too high even for a Vulcan.”

Spock raised his head. “My observations ...” he said. “Entropy ...” There was a wild, confused look in his eyes. “Captain Kirk—”

“Fashtall, you go wake up Dr. McCoy. I’ll help Mr. Spock to sick bay.”

Snnanagfashtalli’s white whiskers bristled out: a gesture of agreement. She sprang over the broken instrument and disappeared into the corridor.

“I am all right,” Spock said.

“You’re bleeding, Mr. Spock.”

He put his hand to his temple; his fingers came away wet with blood. Then he looked at his sleeve, brown silk, not blue velour.

“Let me take you to sick bay,” she said. “Please.”

“I am not in need of assistance!”

She thought she was being cruel but she could not think of anything else to do but obey him. She was supporting most of his weight: she let him go, as slowly as she dared so he would have as much chance as she could give him to keep his feet. But as she had feared, his legs would not support him. He collapsed again, and again she kept him from falling.

She looked at the wall across the room, not meeting his eyes: if she pretended she had not noticed, perhaps he could pretend she had not seen.

“I am going to sick bay,” she said. “Will you come with me?”

“Ensign Aristeides,” he said softly, “my pride does not require quite so much protection. I would be grateful for your help.”

Leonard McCoy paced back and forth in his office, wondering what he had done to deserve such insomnia. The inexplicable period of unconsciousness in the transporter room, whatever that was all about, had done nothing to alleviate his tiredness; it only made it worse. And it made him worry about it more. He felt as if he had gone on a binge such as he had not indulged in since he was a peach-fuzzed undergraduate, despite his reputation—and his pose—as a hard drinker of the old southern school. But he had not had anything stronger than coffee—and precious little of that since he had begun having trouble sleeping—since coffee and brandy at the officers’ reception for Mandala Flynn: hardly an indulgence to come back and haunt him two months later.

“Dr. McCoy!” Snnanagfashtalli rose up gracefully on her hind legs from the running position. “Mr. Spock is ill. Fever, at least three degrees Centigrade—”

“He always has a fever of at least three degrees Centigrade.”

“As do I,” Snarl said, flattening her ears. “In human terms.”

Snarl was not a being to trade witticisms with; McCoy grew very serious very quickly.

“Where is he?”

“He remained conscious, so Ensign Aristeides is helping him to sick bay.”

“Good. Thank you.” McCoy felt relieved when Snarl pricked up her tufted ears again.

Jenniver Aristeides strode in, carrying Spock. The Vulcan lay unconscious in her arms, his long hands limp, his head thrown back. Every few seconds a drop of blood spattered on the floor.

“He passed out just a minute ago.” Though the ensign loomed head and shoulders over McCoy, she spoke hesitantly. “I thought it was better to bring him than wait for a stretcher.”

“You showed good judgment.” McCoy sighed. “I was afraid of this, he’s worked himself right into a fit of the vapors.”

The quotation on page 47 is reprinted from The Iliad ofHomer , translated by Richmond Lattimore, by permission of The University of Chicago Press. Copyright 1951 by the University of Chicago.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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