Problem sorting results

Hi
I have the following logs :

conn=805 op=1 SORT description (*)
conn=805 op=1 RESULT err=0 tag=101 nentries=35 etime=2.513000 notes=P,A

What does the (*) means ? Instead of * it should be "the number of candidate entries that were sorted"
And the etime seems to be very big for 35 entries...

What could be the cause ?