Starplex

“Twenty wonderful years, honey. You’re always supposed to include the adjective.”

Another forced laugh. “Sorry, you’re right. Twenty wonderful years.” He paused. “I know that we’re planning to renew our wedding vows that day.”

A small edge to Rissa’s voice. “Yes?”

“Nothing. No, forget I said anything. It has been a wonderful twenty years, hasn’t it?”

Keith could just make out her face in the darkness. She nodded, then looked at him, meeting his eyes, trying to see beyond them, see the truth, see what was bothering him. And then it came to her, and she rolled onto her side, facing away from him. “It’s okay,” she said at last.

“What is?”

And she spoke the final words that passed between them that night. “It’s okay,” she said, “if you don’t want to say, ‘for as long as we both shall live.’ ”

* * *

Keith sat at his workstation on the bridge. Holograms of three humans and a dolphin hovered above the station’s rim. In his peripheral vision, he was aware of one of the bridge doors opening and Jag waddling in. The Waldahud didn’t go to his own workstation, though. Instead he stood in front of Keith’s and waited, in what seemed a state of some agitation, while Keith finished the conference he was conducting with the holographic heads. When they’d logged off, Keith looked up at Jag.

“As you know, the darmats have been moving,” said Jag. “I’m frankly surprised at their agility. They seem to work together, each sphere playing off its own gravitational and repulsive forces against the others to move the whole community cooperatively. Anyway, in doing so, they’ve completely reconfigured themselves, so that individual darmats that we couldn’t clearly observe before are now at the periphery of the assemblage. I’ve made some predictions about which darmat might next reproduce, and I’d like to test my theory. For that, I want you to move Starplex to the far side of the dark-matter field.”

“PHANTOM, schematic local space,” said Keith.

A holographic representation appeared in midair between Keith and Jag. The darmats had moved around to the opposite side of the green star, so that Starplex, the shortcut, the star, and the darmat community were pretty much arranged in a straight line.

“If we move to the far side of the darmat field, we’ll be out of view of the shortcut,” said Keith. “We might miss seeing a watson come through. Can’t you just put a probe there?”

“My prediction is based on very minute mass concentrations. I need to use either our deck-one or deck-seventy hyperscope to make my observations.”

Keith considered. “All right.” He tapped a key on his console and the usual holograms of Thor and Rhombus popped into being. “Rhombus, please check with everyone who is currently doing external scanning. Find out when the soonest we can move the ship without interrupting their work will be. Thor, at that time take us to the opposite side of the dark-matter field, positioning us at coordinates Jag will supply you with.”

“Serving is the greatest pleasure,” said Rhombus.

“Bob’s your uncle,” said Thor.

Jag moved his head up and down, imitating the human gesture. Waldahudin never said thank you, but Keith thought the pig looked inordinately pleased.

Chapter XVII

The bridge was calm, the six workstations floating serenely against the holographic night. It was 0500 ship’s time; delta shift was in the final hour of its watch.

In the director’s position was an Ib named Wineglass; other Ibs were at the Internal-Ops and Helm stations. Physical sciences was slaved to a dolphin named Melondent, a Waldahud was at life sciences, and a human named Denna Van Hausen was at External Ops.

A grid of force screens radiated down from the invisible ceiling, creating millimeter-wide vacuum gaps between each workstation, preventing transmission of noise between them. The Ib at Internal Ops was engaged in a holographic conference with three miniature floating Ibs and three disembodied Waldahud heads. The human at External was reading a novel on one of her monitor screens.

Suddenly, the silencing force fields snapped off and an alarm began to sound. “Unidentified ship approaching,” announced PHANTOM.

“There!” said Van Hausen, pointing to the image of the nearby star. “It’s just passing from behind the photosphere.” PHANTOM was showing the unknown ship as a small red triangle; the actual vessel was far too small to be visible at this distance.

“Any chance that it’s just a watson?” asked Wineglass, his British accent carrying a hint of Cockney.

“None,” said Van Hausen. “It’s at least as big as one of our probeships.”