Starplex

"Well, this luster-quark matter consists of what I'm calling para-neutrons and para-protons. Para-neutrons consist of two glossy quarks and one matte, and para-protons consist of a pair of mattes plus a glossy. But neither glossies nor mattes carry any charge whatsoever — so regardless of how you combine them, there's no charge on the nucleus.

And without a positive nucleus, there's nothing to attract negatively charged electrons, so a luster-quark atom is solely a nucleus; it has no electron orbital shells. The bottom line is that luster matter isn't just electrically neutral. Rather, it's nonelectrical; it's immune to electromagnetic interactions."

"Gods," said Jag. "What would explain why it can sink into solid objects. It would probably pass through completely unhindered if it weren't for drag caused by the regular-matter carbon grains and hydrogen polluting it, and— of course! That explains why we can see it, too. If it were purely luster quarks, it would be invisible, since the reflection and absorption of light depend on vibrating charges. We're just seeing the interstellar dust that's caught gravitationally inside the luster matter, like sand in jelly."

He looked at the wall screen. "All right — it doesn't interact electromagnetically. What about the nuclear forces?"

"It is affected by both the strong and the weak nuclear force," said Delacorte. "But those forces are so short-range, I doubt we'd get any interaction through them with regular matter except at incredibly high pressures and temperatures."

Jag was quiet for a moment, considering. When he next spoke, his barking was subdued. "It's incredible," he said. "We knew the Slammer weapon could break chemical bonds, but changing regular matter into luster matter is—"

DELTA DRACONIS

"What was Saul Ben-Abraham like?" asked Glass.

Keith looked around the forest simulation, thinking of all the ways he could describe the man who had been his best friend. Tall. Boisterous. A guffaw that could be heard a kilometer away. A guy who could identify any song in three notes. A man who could drink more beer than anyone Keith had ever met — he must have had a bladder the size of Iceland. Finally, Keith settled on, "Hairy."

"I beg your pardon?" said Glass.

"Saul had a great beard," said Keith. "Covered most of his face. And he had this one giant eyebrow, like a chimp had laid its forearm across his head. The first time I ever saw him in shorts, I was amazed. The guy looked like sasquatch."

"Sasquatch?"

"A mythical primate from my part of Earth. I still remember seeing him in shorts for the first time and saying, gee, Saul, you've got hairy legs. He let out that great laugh of his and said, 'Yes — like a man.'" I said it was more like ten men." Keith paused. "God, how I miss him. Friends like that, who mean that much to you, come along perhaps once in a lifetime."

Glass was quiet for several seconds. "Yes," he said at last. "I suppose that's true."

"Of course," said Keith, "there was more to Saul than just a thick coat of fur. He was brilliant. The only person I've ever met who I thought might be brighter than him is Rissa. Saul was an astronomer. He's the person who discovered the Tau Ceti shortcut, from its footprint in hyperspace. The guy should have won a Nobel prize for that… but they don't like to award them posthumously."

"I appreciate your loss," said Glass. "It's as if — oh, excuse me. My reckoner says I've got an incoming thought package. Will you excuse me for a little while?"

Keith nodded, and Glass took an odd step, sort of sideways, and disappeared. Doubtless he'd gone through a door hidden by the forest simulation filling the docking hay — the only direct visual evidence Keith had had that he wasn't actually back on Earth. Well, if there was a door, Keith wanted to find it. He patted the air in the spot that Glass had disappeared from, but there was nothing. There had to be a wall somewhere around, though. The bay wasn't that big. Keith began to walk, figuring he was bound to hit a wall eventually. He continued on for perhaps five hundred meters without encountering any obstruction.

Of course, if his — he started to think the word "captor," again, but fought it down and substituted "host" instead — if his host were being clever, he could have manipulated the images to make Keith think he was walking in a straight line when he was really going in a circle.

Keith decided to rest. As much as he tried to find time to work out in Starplex's Earth gym, which had gravity set to a full standard gee, he'd lost some muscle tone because of all the time he spent in the lighter Wald-standard gravity used in the ship's common elements. He really should take Thor Magnor up on his offer of playing handball; Keith and Saul had played the game regularly, but he'd given it up when Saul had died.