Starplex

"I announce with pleasure that the Marc Garneau is secured in docking bay eight," said a voice with a British accent in Keith's ear. By convention, Waldahud voices were translated into English with old-fashioned New York accents, while the Ibs were assigned British ones — it made it easier to sort out who was speaking, since the translated voices all came from the same source, the listener's cochlear implant.

"Okay, boss," said Thor. "Here we go." In front of him, Keith could see Thor's large hands manipulating controls. About five minutes later, the stars stopped moving again. "As requested, boss," said Thor. "Twenty thousand meters from the shortcut, on the button."

"Thank you," said Keith. "Rhombus, please launch the probe."

Rhombus's ropelike tentacles snapped across his console as if he were whipping it into submission. His sensor web flashed. "A pleasure to do so."

A schematic of the probe appeared on one of Keith's monitors: a silver cylinder, four meters long by one in diameter, its surface studded with scanners, sensors, camera lenses, and CCD plates. The probe had only thruster power and four clusters of conical attitude-control jets; a hyperdrive engine was far too expensive to risk, given that the probe might never come back.

The probe accelerated through a mass-driver tube in one of Starplex's upper-habitat modules. As soon as the probe was out in space, the bridge staff could see the glow of its thrusters in the holographic sphere surrounding them. The probe rotated along its axis so that each of its instruments would be exposed to the entire panorama of the sky.

There was no visible target for the probe — at least, not yet. But its course had been computed so that it would enter the shortcut at the exact angle specified by CHAT. When it did so, the probe seemed to disappear, a tiny ring of violet fire swallowing it up.

"In friendship I observe that passage through the shortcut was normal," reported Rhombus in his rich Oxford tones.

And now the waiting began. Each person showed tension in a different way. Lianne at InOps drummed her painted fingernails on the edge of her console. The lights on Rhombus's web flashed randomly — not a coherent pictogram, but just a sign of mental agitation. Jag picked at his fur and slid his translucent dental plates across each other, making a faint chalk-on-slate sound. Keith got up and paced. Rissa busied herself organizing files on her computer.

Only the unflappable Thoraid Magnor seemed calm, swinging his giant feet onto his console, and leaning back in his chair, hands interlaced behind his orange mane.

But despite Thor's appearance, there was reason for concern. Ten years ago, a boomerang launched from Tau Ceti had reached its target, a dormant shortcut near the M3-class star Tejat Posterior in the constellation Gemini.

That boomerang never returned to Tau Ceti. Instead, at about the time it was supposed to come home, a smooth ball of metal shot out of the Rehbollo shortcut. Analysis determined that the ball was the remains of the probe after some process had briefly broken all molecular bonds in its construction.

The word "process" had been deliberately chosen for the public reports, but many believed that no natural activity could have done that, not even if the Tejat Posterior shortcut exit had been inside a star's core.

The hypothetical beings responsible were dubbed "Slammers," because they'd apparently slammed the interstellar doorway in the Commonwealth's collective face.

Additional hyperspace probes with heavy shielding had been sent toward Tejat Posterior (from launch points well away from any-of the Commonwealth homeworlds), but it would still be another two years before they arrived there.

Until they did, the mystery of the Slammers remained unresolved — but there was always a fear that they might be lurking behind other shortcuts.

"With relief, I report a tachyon pulse," announced Rhombus.

Keith let out his breath; he hadn't been aware that he'd been holding it until then. The pulse meant something was coming through the shortcut; the probe was returning. They watched as the shortcut grew from an infinitesimal point to a meter in diameter, with a violet periphery. The cylindrical object popped through. Keith nodded slightly: the probe appeared undamaged. It maneuvered back toward Starplex under its own power, meaning its internal electronics were still intact, and slid down the launching tube into its berth.

Umbilicals were attached to it, and its store of data was uploaded into PHANTOM, Starplex's central computer.

"Let's see it," Keith said, and Rhombus complied, replacing the spherical hologram of space outside Starplex with what the probe had seen on the other side of the shortcut. At first, it just seemed to be more space, different constellations enveloping them. There were murmurs of disappointment.

One always hoped that a spacecraft would be visible — a ship from whatever race had brought the shortcut on-line.