Starplex

The three of them exited the bay, and took a lift up to the docking control room, which had angled windows that overlooked the interior of the cavernous hangar. Azmi took a seat in front of a console and began operating controls.

Under his command, a motorized flatbed rolled into the bay, carrying a cylindrical payload carrier. Mechanical arms mated the cube to the clamps on the front of the Carrier.

"Depressurizing the bay," said Azmi.

Shimmering forcefield sheets started to close in from three of the four walls and the floor and ceiling, forcing the air in the bay out through vents in the rear wall. When all the air had been swept up and compressed into tanks, the forcefield sheets collapsed, leaving an interior vacuum.

"Opening space door," Azmi said, operating another control. The segmented curving outer wall began to slide up into the ceiling.

Blackness became visible, but the glare of the bay's internal lighting washed out the stars.

Azmi touched some more buttons. "Activating time-capsule electronics."

He then tapped a key, initiating a preprogrammed sequence for the tractor-beam emitter mounted on the rear bay wall. The payload carrier lifted off the flatbed, flew over the floor plates, passed the spindly form of a repair skiff that was parked inside the bay, and headed out into space.

"Powering up carrier," said Azmi. The cylinder's end lit up with the glow of thrusters, and the contraption rapidly receded from view.

"And that," said Azmi, "is that."

"Now what?" asked Keith.

Azmi shrugged. "Now just forget about it. Either this will work, or it won't — probably won't."

Keith nodded. "Excellent work, guys. Thank you. It's-"

"Rissa to Lansing," said a voice over the speakers.

Keith looked up. "Open. Hi, Rissa."

"Hi, hon. We're ready to take our first whack at communicating with the dark-matter creatures."

"I'm on my way. Close." He smiled at Azmi and Hek.

"Sometimes, you know, my staff is almost too efficient."

Keith rode up to the bridge and took his seat in the center of the back row. The holographic bubble was filled not with the normal space view but rather with red circles against a pale white background, a plot of the locations of the dark-matter spheres.

"Okay," said Rissa. "We're going to try communicating with the dark-matter beings using radio and visual signals.

We've deployed a special probe that will do the actual signaling. It's located about eight light-seconds off the starboard side of the ship; I'm going to operate it by comm laser. Of course, the dark-matter beings may already have detected our presence, but, then again, they may not have.

And just in case the dark-matter beings turn out to be the Slammers, or something equally nasty, it seems prudent to have their attention drawn to an expendable probe rather than Starplex itself."

"'Dark-matter beings,'" repeated Keith. "That's a bit of a mouthful, no? Surely we can come up with a better name for them."

"How about 'darkies'?" said Rhombus, helpfully.

Keith cringed. "That's not a good idea." He thought for a second, then looked up, grinning. "What about MACHO men?"

Jag rolled all four eyes and made a disgusted bark.

"How does 'darmats' sound?" asked Thor.

Rissa nodded. "Darmats it is." She addressed everyone in the room.

"Well, as you all know, Hek has been cataloging the signal groups he's picked up from the darmats. On the assumption that each group is a word, we've identified the single most commonly used one. For the first message, I'm going to send a looping repeat of that word. We assume it's innocuous — the darmat equivalent of 'the,' or some such.

Granted, the repetition will convey no meaningful information, but with luck the darmats will recognize it as an attempt to communicate." She turned to Keith. "Permission to proceed, Director?"

Keith smiled. "Be my guest."

Rissa touched a control. "Transmitting now."

Lights flashed on Rhombus's web. "Well, that certainly did something," he said. "The conversation level has increased dramatically. All of them talking at once."

Rissa nodded. "We're hoping they'll triangulate on the probe as the source."

"I'd say they've figured it out," said Thor, a moment later, pointing at the display. Five of the world-sized creatures had begun to move toward the probe.

"Now the tricky part begins," said Rissa. "We've got their attention, but can we communicate with them?"

Keith knew that if anyone could pull it off, it would be his wife, who had been part of the team that had first communicated with the Ibs.

That effort had started with a simple exchange of nouns — this pattern of lights meant "table," that one meant "ground," and so on. Even then, there had been difficulties. The Ib body was so different from the bipedal human design that for many concepts they had no terms: stand up, run, sit down, chair, clothing, male, female. And because they'd always lived under cloud cover, for countless other ideas — day, night, month, year, constellation — there were no common Ibese words.