The Entropy Effect

“Captain Kirk,” Sulu said, “we’re within sensor range of Aleph Prime.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sulu. Can we have it on the screen?”

Sulu touched controls and the jewel-like chaos of the station sprang up magnified before them. Its transparent and opaque sections glittered through a rainbow of starlight and refraction. Kirk had never visited Aleph Prime before; he had not expected it to be beautiful. Too many cities were not. But this one was like a congregation of delicate curving glass fibers, and the shells of radiolaria expanded millions of times, and bits of polished semiprecious stones, turquoise and opal, agate and amber.

“Captain, we’re receiving a transmission.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Uhura. Let’s hear it.” Maybe now he would find out why they were needed. If the station had been under attack, it was infiltration rather than invasion, for Kirk could see no structural damage, nor any of the disruption and commotion he would expect after a fight. He did not know whether to be more worried, or less, but his curiosity was certainly piqued.

“It isn’t from Aleph Prime, sir,” Uhura said. “It’s from another starship.”

The second ship curved up from beneath the station, and with a sudden shock of perspective Kirk could see, by comparison with the tiny scarlet speck of the other craft, the sheer immense bulk of Aleph Prime. Of course the station was large, it had to be; it held half a million intelligent beings, human as well as other life-forms. Sulu magnified the approaching ship, and Kirk had a brief glimpse of a tantalizingly familiar shape, painted quite unmilitarily in the colors of a phoenix eagle, before the picture dissolved and the video portion of the communication appeared on the screen.

“Hunter!” Kirk said involuntarily.

“ Aerfen to Enterprise ,” said the other starship’s captain. “Come in, Jim, is that you?” She paused. “Captain?” Uhura asked.

“Maintain radio silence, Lieutenant,” Kirk said, with regret. “We’ll have to leave greetings for later.”

The starship captain paused a moment, gazing out of the screen. She had changed in the years since Kirk had seen her last. The lines at the corners of her clear gray eyes served only to add more character to her face, not to detract from its elegance. Her black hair was still long, and the lock that fell down her right cheek to her shoulder she still wore braided and tied with a leather thong and a scarlet feather. The black now was lightly scattered with gray, but that merely increased her dignity, her gravity.

Then she grinned, the grin like a child’s, and she took him back years in memory, back to the Academy, back to the rivalry, friendship, and passion. But he knew her well enough to detect the trace of reticence in her smile, the reticence he had caused.

“Aerfenwill be at Aleph for a few more days,” Hunter said. “Call me if you’ve got some time.”

The transmission faded. By now Hunter’s ship had swung far enough up the face of Aleph Prime to present its side to the Enterprise . Sulu magnified it again and gazed at it rapturously.

“Captain Hunter and Aerfen ,” he said in awe. He glanced back at Kirk. “You know her, Captain?”

“We . .. went to school together.” Kirk had never seen Sulu in quite such a state of hero-worship; Kirk did not think Sulu could have been more surprised if D’Artagnan himself, flexing his epee and twirling the end of his mustache, had appeared and spoken to him.

And far from being amused, Kirk understood completely how Mr. Sulu felt. He felt that way himself, and with far more reason.

Sulu moved the Enterprise expertly into a stable orbit around Aleph Prime. Relative to the plane of the star system, Aerfen circled Aleph in a polar orbit. Instead of choosing a vacant level and inserting the larger ship into equatorial orbit, Sulu used a bit of extra time and a bit of extra fuel to position his ship so that, from the bridge, Aerfen would remain in view as long as it kept to its present track. Sulu let its sleek lines fill his gaze. It was much smaller than the Enterprise , for it was a fighter. Its design presented the smallest possible cross-section to an enemy in head-on approach, so it appeared to be streamlined. It was painted a fierce scarlet, with points of black and silver. It looked like a swift, powerful avian predator.

As he put the finishing touches on the Enterprise’s orbit, the relative orientation of the fighter to the starship changed slightly, and he could see a long bright gash in Aerfen ’s side, where the paint had been vaporized by an enemy weapon.

“It’s seen some action,” he said softly. Recently, too, he thought. He knew intuitively that Hunter would not let her ship stay scarred any longer than she absolutely had to.

“Mr. Sulu!”

Sulu started. “Yes, Captain?” He wondered how many times Kirk had spoken to him before gaining his attention—and he wondered if the captain would chide him for the extra use of fuel.

Kirk smiled. “I only wanted to compliment you on the orbit.”