Brightly colored party balloons adorned with the faces of cartoon characters flitted lazily past the Shirley’s forward window. Inside, a burly squat being in an antiquated and tattered space suit with a cracked visor seemed vaguely relieved when Soloman politely denied him permission to take the craft’s copilot seat and wandered, by chance, out of reality.

Soloman was concentrating very hard on piloting the shuttle, trying not to be distracted by the increasing density of strangeness, such as when his heads-up display became a VR game featuring fairy princesses chasing after winged unicorns. The Drive had said they were being held in an “infinite-probability field,” an area where there was every chance of anything happening. It no doubt had calculated such extreme odds as being necessary to prevent the da Vinci from doing anything it deemed a danger, but, as a winged creature of a species he could not identify wheeled overhead, screeching out its mating call, Soloman could only wonder how well the Drive was functioning. It was, after all, an ancient system, perhaps no longer able to properly calculate, control, or manipulate probability.

“This is the Shuttlecraft Shirley, of the U.S.S. da Vinci,” Soloman said into the communicator. “Requesting permission to dock with the Minstrel’s Whisper.”

There had been a brief debate on the da Vinci over whether Soloman should have transported over to the other ship, but the Bynar had not been thrilled with the odds of having his molecular structure scrambled and successfully reassembled under current conditions. He would take his chances in the shuttle…a decision he thought he might soon regret.

The response came in the form, Soloman was fairly certain, of Romulan light opera. The translator chose to convert it into a haiku in a Ferengi dialect. “Please repeat, Minstrel’s Whisper. Your transmission was…garbled.”

The ship itself was faring little better than its attempts to communicate. As Soloman approached in the slow-moving shuttle, the Whisper randomly changed position every time he looked at or attempted to get an instrument lock on it. The Uncertainty Principle, he thought. The observation of a particle changes how it acts. What were the chances he would ever get to witness this subatomic phenomenon on a macro level?

About fifty-fifty, he supposed.

“Shuttlecraft Shirley. Calculation of danger to Minstrel’s Whisper under current probability level: sixteen to the twenty-third power. Permission to dock granted. Please follow indicators.”

The Minstrel’s Whisper had apparently decided to once again occupy just a single place in the universe and stayed where it was as Soloman piloted the Shirley toward it. A line of blinking lights pulsed along the side of the silver craft, directing him toward the slowly opening maw of the cargo bay. And, in case he missed that, two unprotected dog-faced beings in greasy coveralls floated improbably in space on either side of the docking doors with brightly shining torches, pointing him to his destination.

Soloman found setting the Shirley down on a deck that couldn’t quite decide its position or density the most nerve-wracking experience of the brief journey, but soon he was down and shutting down the shuttle’s systems. Which, at the moment, apparently required the removal, from beside the thruster controls, of an old-fashioned key attached to a pair of large fuzzy, stuffed dice.

Soloman sighed. “Well,” he said out loud, to himself, “at least the dice are appropriate.”

The Bynar stepped from the shuttle onto a long red carpet that ran the length of the docking bay, flanked on either side by rows of formally attired footmen. Soloman tapped his combadge and said, “Soloman to da Vinci. I have arrived safely aboard the Minstrel’s Whisper.”

“The number you are calling is no longer in service,” replied a metallic, mechanical voice. “Please check the number and dial again.”

Soloman frowned. “Hello?”

“We read you, Soloman,” came Gomez’s response.

“Good,” he said. “I’d hate to feel like I was all alone in—”

Soloman’s next step sent him plummeting down a hole that appeared, impossibly, in the metal deck-plate before him. He landed on his back in a twisting, slanted tube and proceeded to slide down this dizzying—and impossibly long—path, like a child caught on an amusement park ride.

“Soloman?”

Before he could catch his breath to answer, the slide leveled off and dumped him out into a plain, unmarked corridor lined with a series of short, round hatchways.

“Ow.”

“Are you okay, Soloman?”

Rubbing his posterior, the Bynar rose to his feet. “Yes. I just rode a rather improbable alternative to a lift.”

“I’m sure. Any sign of the Uncertainty Drive?”

One of the rounded hatches burped open and a giant green humanoid with a single eye where it’s nose should have been started trying to squeeze through it. Soloman stared in surprise as the fingers on his left hand were briefly replaced by sensor probes. A line of game fowl from Naftali honked in chorus as they waddled past him down the corridor, disappearing around the bend.

“No doubt I’m close,” Soloman said carefully. He looked around, brushing the web of an Arctyrrian narco-spider from his head. “Hello, Minstrel’s Whisper,” he called.

“Please enter.”

Soloman shrugged. “Enter where?”

“Probability of choosing correct portal: one hundred percent.”

He thought he understood now. Whichever door he chose to enter would be the one that lead to the Drive. The Drive itself had altered the odds to make it a certainty.

Soloman approached a door at random and, when it opened, he stooped to fit through it into the chamber housing the core of the Uncertainty Drive.

He could feel the world around him returning to normal. Creatures from other worlds and ancient times ceased scurrying and flapping around him. His limbs and digits no longer became something else, his uniform remained on his back, and things were no longer becoming other things for no reason other than probability allowed for it. Here, in the presence of the Uncertainty Drive, the odds ceased to conspire against sanity.

The Drive itself was hardly impressive. All that was visible in the low-ceilinged, ten-foot by ten-foot chamber—which, along with the evidence of the small portals, led Soloman to speculate that the creators of the Minstrel’s Whisper had been a race short in stature, if not long on scientific know-how—was a floor to ceiling tubular chamber, transparent and filled with a bubbling gold liquid. It took him only a moment to realize that the bubbles traveling up and down the chamber did so in patterns.

“A protein solution containing organic memory matter?” Soloman asked.

“Analysis correct. I am Minstrel.”

Soloman slowly circled the chamber. “I am Soloman.”

“Yes. I calculated a ninety-nine point seven-two-three probability that you would be the one sent to interface with me.”

The S.C.E. computer expert nodded, knowing he had to be careful until he had a sense of the Drive’s operating parameters. “Where is your crew, Minstrel?”

“Insufficient data. I was briefly offline and rebooted to find the crew gone.”

“Didn’t you find that…odd?” Soloman asked.

“Improbable,” the Drive corrected. “Minstrel’s Whisper’s log contains incomplete data; analysis of probability incomplete.”

“Do you know how long you were offline, Minstrel?”

“Insufficient data.”

“Do you know your current location?”

“Insufficient data.”

Soloman found it interesting that an artificial intelligence of this obvious sophistication and complexity had made no attempt to fill in the gaps in its data. It could have easily requested the information from the da Vinci’s computers, or even taken simple star readings to determine the time and its location, yet it was strangely content to do nothing.

“I’ve come to assure you that the da Vinci has no hostile intentions toward you and ask to be released from your infinite-probability field,” he said. “We wish only to remove obstacles blocking our space lanes.”

“Probability of hostile action by da Vinci: fifty point zero-zero-three percent. Da Vinci will remain in infinite-probability field until taken into custody by the Empire.”

On a mere three one-hundredths of a percentage point of chance, the Drive had determined the da Vinci to be a threat. Soloman wondered exactly what this intelligent computer that could not seem to figure out how to read a star chart to calculate its location or the passage of some million years of time was using to calibrate its determination of the odds.

“While we’re waiting for the Empire to take me into custody,” Soloman said, producing a deck of playing cards from his tunic, “might I interest you in a small game of chance?”

It was time he found out.