Starplex

"Tomorrow afternoon, maybe earlier. The gap between the shortcut and the green star is opening rapidly. And as long as you're willing to risk losing half a dozen watsons in trying, we should be able to get word of our intentions through to the Flatland shipyards right away so that the Ibs can start preparing for our arrival."

"Good work, Lianne." He looked at her, and she smiled again, a beautiful, warm, intelligent smile. Keith mentally kicked himself for sometimes forgetting that there was a reason she was aboard Starplex.

Lianne Karendaughter was the best starship engineer in the business.

Thor piloted Starplex through the shortcut, and it popped out at the periphery of the Flatland system. From here, the Magellanic Clouds dominated the sky. Flatland's sun, Hotspot, was a white F-class star, and Flatland itself was a featureless ball, shrouded in white clouds.

Ibs were incapable of working in zero-g. Keith watched from a window as thousands of them swarmed around Starplex in hockey-puck-shaped solo travel units, transparent except for the opaque artificial-gravity plates that made up their bottoms. Since the work was being done by Ibs, not a second was being wasted. The new habitat modules were locked into place, giving Starplex all-new decks forty-one through seventy.

Keith could just make out the bubble-shaped travel pod from which Lianne was orchestrating the entire operation. The only problem during the whole refit occurred when the hose draining off the ocean deck ruptured, and salt water sprayed into space, freezing into tiny ice particles that sparkled like diamonds in the white glare from Hotspot.

When it was all done, Starplex — now a hybrid of Starplexes 1 and 2 — headed back through the shortcut.

Keith was delighted with the repairs — and even more delighted that everyone would no longer have to crowd into the upper half of the ship. Arguments had been breaking out among members of all the races.

Perhaps now that they had plenty of room again, peace would once more reign aboard Starplex.

While at the Rehbollo shipyards, five new researchers were brought aboard — one Ib and two Waldahud dark-matter specialists, and a dolphin and a human who were experts in stellar evolution. All of them had dropped everything at receipt of Starplex's reports, and immediately headed through the shortcut network to rendezvous with the ship at Flatland.

As she had promised, Lianne finished the refit in less than eighteen hours. Thor piloted the ship back through the shortcut, and they re-emerged in the vicinity of the dark-matter field and the enigmatic green star.

Chapter XI

Starplex's designers had planned to put the director's office adjacent to the bridge, but Keith had insisted that be changed. The director, he felt, should be seen all over his ship, not just in one isolated area.

He had ended up with a large square room, almost four meters on a side, located on deck fourteen, halfway along one of the triangular faces of habitat module two. Through the window that covered one wall, he could see module three, perpendicular to the one he was in, as well as a ninety-degree slice of the copper-colored circular roof of Starplex's central disk sixteen floors below. That particular part of the roof was marked with Starplex's name in wedge-shaped Waldahudar lettering.

Keith sat behind a long rectangular desk, made of real mahogany. On it were framed holos of his wife Rissa, looking exotic in an old-fashioned Spanish dancing dress, and their son Saul, wearing a Harvard sweatshirt and sporting that strange goatee that was the current fashion among young men. Next to the holos was a 1/600 scale model of Starplex. Behind his desk was a credenza with globes of Earth, Rehbollo, and Flatland on it, as well as a traditional go board with playing pieces of polished white shell and slate.

Above the credenza was a framed print of an Emily Cart painting, depicting a Haida totem pole in a forest on one of the Queen Charlotte Islands. Flanking the credenza on either side were large potted plants.

A long couch, three polychairs, and a coffee table were also in the room.

Keith had his shoes off, and had swung his feet up on his desk. He never emulated Thor while on the bridge, but when alone he often adopted this posture. He was leaning back in his black chair, reading a report on the signals Hek had been detecting, when the door buzzer sounded.

"Jag Kandaro em-Pelsh is here," announced PHANTOM.

Keith sighed, sat up straight, and made a let-him-in motion with his hand. The door slid aside, and Jag walked in. After a moment, the Waldahud's nostrils started flaring, and Keith thought perhaps Jag could smell his feet. "What can I do for you, Jag?" The Waldahud touched the back of one of the polychairs, which configured itself to accommodate his frame. He sat down and began to bark. The translated voice said, "Few of your Earth literary characters appeal to me, but one who does is Sherlock Holmes."