Starplex

The front row of workstations all rotated around on their individual pedestals so that they faced the back row: Lianne was facing Jag, Thor was facing Keith, and Rhombus was facing Rissa. Keith looked at each member of his bridge staff in turn. "We've got almost an embarrassment of riches here," he said. "First, there's the mystery of the stars' erupting from the shortcuts — stars that Jag thinks come from the future.

As if that's not a big enough puzzle to try to figure out, we've also stumbled upon life — life! — made out of dark matter." Keith looked from face to face. "Given the complexity of the radio signals Hek's been picking up, there's a chance — a small one, I grant you — that we're even looking at first contact with intelligent life. Rissa, it would have been crazy to say this yesterday, but let's make the dark-matter investigations the province of the life-sciences division."

She nodded.

Keith turned to Jag. "The stars coming out of the shortcuts, on the other hand, may pose a threat to the Commonwealth. If you're right, Jag, and they are coming from the future, then we've got to find out why they're coming back. Is it by deliberate design? If so, is it for a malevolent purpose? Or is it just an accident? A globular cluster, say, colliding with a shortcut billions of years from now, and overloading it somehow so that its constituent stars are spewed back to here?"

"Well," barked Jag, "a globular cluster wouldn't pass through a shortcut. Only one of its member stars would."

"Unless," said Thor, sounding a bit feisty, "that globular cluster was enclosed in a sort of super Dyson sphere — a shell around the entire assembly of stars. Imagine something like that touching a shortcut billions of years from now. The shell could break apart while traversing the gate, and send the component stars scattering out of different exit points."

"Ridiculous," said Jag. "You humans always reinforce each other in even your wildest fantasies. Take your religions, for instance—"

"Enough!" snapped Keith, bringing his open palm down loudly on the edge of his workstation. "Enough. We're not going to get anywhere squabbling." He looked at the Waldahud. "If you don't like Thor's suggestion, then make one of your own. Why are the stars coming back here from the future?"

Jag was facing the director, but only his right eyes were looking at Keith; the left pair was scanning the surroundings, an instinctual precursor to a fight. "I don't know," he said at last.

"We need an answer," said Keith, his voice still edged.

"Interrupting in all politeness," said Rhombus. "Offense not intended and hopefully not taken."

Keith turned to face the Ib. "What is it?"

"Perhaps you are asking the wrong person. No slight is intended of good Jag, of course. But if you want to know why the stars are being sent back in time, then the person to ask is the person who is sending them back."

"You mean ask some person in the future?" Keith said. "How can we possibly do that?"

The Ib's mantle twinkled. "Now that is a question for good Jag," he said. "If material from the future can exit the shortcut in the past, can we then send something from the past into the future?"

Jag was quiet for a second, thinking. But then he moved his lower shoulders. "Not as far as I can tell. Every computer simulation I've done shows that any object entering the shortcut in the present gets shunted to another present-day shortcut. Assuming the rogue stars are being sent back by conscious design, I don't know how whoever is controlling the shortcuts is doing it, and I have no idea how to send something forward."

"Ah, good Jag," said Rhombus, "forgive me, but there is of course one way to send something forward."

"And what's that?" Keith asked.

"A time capsule," said the Ib. "You know: just make something that will last. Eventually, without our doing anything special, it will end up in the future through the natural passage of time."

Jag and Keith looked at each other. "But — but Jag says the stars are coming from billions of years in the future," Keith said.

"In fact," said the Waldahud, "if I had to guess, I would say they come from something like ten billion years from now."

Keith nodded, turning back to face Rhombus. "That's double the current age of any of the Commonwealth homeworlds."

"True," said the Ib. "But, forgive me, despite what you Humans think, neither Earth nor the other homeworlds were created by deliberate design. Our time capsule would be."

"A time capsule that would last ten billion years…" said Jag, clearly intrigued. "Perhaps… perhaps if it were made out of extremely hard material, like… like diamond, but without the cleavage planes. But even if we made such a thing, there is no guarantee that anyone would ever find it. And, besides, this part of the galaxy will rotate around the core forty-odd times before then. How do we possibly keep the object from drifting away from during all that time?"