Starplex

“Right,” said Keith, embarrassed. “Sorry. So you’re saying the heavy-metal atoms in the star formed longer ago than the universe is old.”

“That’s correct. And the only way that could happen is if the star came to us from the future.”

“But—but you said the green stars are billions of years older than any current star could be. You’re trying to tell me that these stars have traveled back in time billions of years? That seems incredible.”

Jag preceded his barking reply with a snort. “The intellectual leap should be in the acceptance of time travel, not the length of time an object is cast back. If time travel can exist at all, then the distance traveled back surely is only a function of appropriate technology and sufficient energy. I submit that any race that has the power to move stars around has both in abundance.”

“But I thought time travel was impossible.”

Jag lifted all four shoulders. “Until the shortcuts were discovered, instantaneous transportation was impossible. Until the hyperdrive was discovered, faster-than-light travel was impossible. I cannot begin to suggest how time travel might be made to happen, but apparently it is happening.”

“There are no other explanations?” asked Keith.

“Well, as I said, I have considered other possibilities—such as that the shortcuts are now acting as gateways to parallel universes, and that the green stars come from there rather than from our future. But except for their age, they are what one would expect of matter formed in this specific universe, from our specific big bang, under the very specific physical laws that operate here.”

“Very well,” said Keith, holding up a hand. “But why send stars from the future back to the past?”

“That,” said Jag, “is the first good question you have asked.”

Keith spoke through clenched teeth. “And the answer is?”

Jag lifted all four shoulders again. “I have no idea.”

* * *

As he moved down the dim, cold corridor, Keith accepted that each of the races aboard Starplex managed to piss the others off in different ways. One of the things humans did that he knew bugged the hell out of everyone else was spending endless time trying to come up with cute words made from the initial letters of phrases. All the races called such things “acronyms” now, since only the Terran languages had a word for them. Early on in planning Starplex, some human came up with the term CAGE for “Common Access General Environment,” referring to the shipboard conditions in those areas that had to be shared by all four races.

Well, it felt like a goddamned cage, thought Keith. Like a dungeon.

All the races could exist in nitrogen-oxygen atmospheres, although Ibs required a much higher concentration of carbon dioxide to trigger their breathing reflex than humans did. Common-area gravity ended up being set at .82 of Earth’s—normal for a Waldahud, light for a human or dolphin, and only half of what an Ib was used to. Humidity was kept high, too: Waldahud sinuses seized if the air was too dry. Common-area lighting was redder than humans liked—similar to a bright terrestrial sunset. Further, all lighting had to be indirect. The Ib homeworld was perpetually shrouded in cloud, and the thousands of photosensors in their webs could be damaged by bright lighting.

Even so, there were still problems. Keith moved to one side of the corridor to let an Ib roll by, and as it passed, one of the two dangling blue tubes coming off the creature’s pump pushed out a hard gray pellet, which fell to the corridor floor. The pod’s brain had no conscious control over this function; for Ibs, toilet training was a biological impossibility. On Flatland, the pellets were scooped up by scavengers that reprocessed them for the nutrients the Ib had been unable to use. Aboard Starplex, little PHARTs the size of human shoes served the same function. One such came zipping along the corridor as Keith watched. It sucked up the dropping and rolled upon its way.

Keith had finally gotten used to the Ibs defecating everywhere; thank God their feces had no discernible odor. But he didn’t think he’d ever get used to the cold, or the damp, or any of the other things forced upon them by the Waldahudin—

Keith stopped dead in his tracks. He was coming to a T-intersection in the corridor, and could hear raised voices up ahead: a human male shouting in—Japanese, it sounded like—and the angry barking of a Waldahud.

“PHANTOM,” Keith said softly, “translate those voices for me.”

A New York accent: “You are weak, Teshima. Very weak. You don’t deserve a mate.”

“Have sex with yourself!” Keith frowned, suspecting the computer wasn’t doing justice to the original Japanese.

The New York accent again: “On my world, you would be the least significant member of the entourage of the ugliest, puniest female—”

“Identify the speakers,” Keith whispered.

“The human is Hiroyuki Teshima, a biochemist,” said PHANTOM through Keith’s implant “The Waldahud is Gart Daygaro em-Holf, a member of the engineering staff.”