Starplex

* * *

Finally, the Rumrunner reached its destination, 1.3 billion kilometers from the star, and a billion kilometers past the shortcut. Jag and Melondent consulted by radio about the exact trajectory they wanted to launch the darmat child on, then the gravitational buoys were activated again, pushing and pulling the world-sized being, which, as planned, started to fall in toward the star, sliding back down the gravity well it had earlier been whisked out of. But this time, the shortcut point was in between the darmat and the star; this time, if all went well, the child would touch the shortcut, its approach to it speeded somewhat by the attraction of the star’s gravity beyond.

Even at full thrusters, it took more than a day for the buoys to bring the darmat back in to the vicinity of the shortcut. Melondent popped a watson through to Starplex, warning them that, if all went well, the baby was about to reemerge on their side.

When they did get close to the shortcut, the buoys fought to slow down the baby’s speed so that it would pass slowly through the portal. The whole-rescue effort would be for naught if the darmat ended up whipping in toward the green star near Starplex. Once it had been braked to a reasonable speed, they adjusted the baby’s trajectory so that it would pass through the tachyon sphere on the precise course required.

First to pass through the shortcut were some of the gravity buoys, then, at last, the baby itself touched it. The point began to swell, widening, enveloping the darmat, lips of purple lightning surrounding, then engulfing, the giant black sphere. Jag wondered what was going through the darmat’s mind during the passage, assuming it was still alive.

And if it was alive, and did at some point regain whatever passed for consciousness, then, Jag wondered, what if it panicked? What if it was unable to make sense out of being partly in one sector of space and partly in another? It might grind its own passage to a halt. If the beast were to expire there, halfway through the shortcut, there might be no way to dislodge it. The shortcut opening formed a tight seal around the passing body, so no coordination of the use of gravity generators on both sides would be possible. And that would mean that the Rumrunner and the PDQ might be trapped forever here, out on the edge of the Perseus arm, tens of thousands of light-years from any of the home-worlds.

The darmat was deforming a bit as it moved through the opening, the shortcut’s periphery clamping down on it. Such clamping was normal, and the effect on rigid spaceships was negligible, but the darmat was mostly gas—exotic, luster-quark gas to be sure, but still gas. Jag feared the baby would be cleaved in two—similar to the normal birthing process, but possibly fatal when done unexpectedly. But it seemed the creature’s core was sufficiently solid to prevent the shortcut from pinching all the way through.

At last, the darmat completed its passage. The shortcut collapsed down to its normal dimensionless existence. Jag wanted Longbottle to immediately dive through the shortcut so that they could see the result of all their efforts. But they, and Melondent aboard the PDQ, had to wait for hours to be sure the darmat had moved far enough from the shortcut so that a collision—or just tidal stress from its enormous gravity—wouldn’t destroy their ships when they popped through to the other side.

At last, after a probe had indicated it was safe to go through, Longbottle programmed the computer to take them home. The Rumrunner moved forward. The shortcut swelled, and they passed through to the other side.

It took Jag a few moments to take in all that he was seeing. The baby was there, all right. And so was Starplex. But Starplex was surrounded on all sides by darmats, and the ship itself looked dead, all the lights in its windows dark.

Chapter XXIV

The shortcut point began to expand, starting as a violet pinprick of Soderstrom radiation, and growing as an ever-expanding purple ring. First to pop through was one of Starplex’s hastily constructed antigravity buoys, and then another and another. They zoomed across the sky like bullets. They’d been tugging the darmat baby, but since they came through the portal before it did, they were severed from its mass and so shot ahead. Soon, though, the bulk of the darmat baby began its passage, bulging out through the ring of purple in the sky.

On Starplex’s bridge Thorald Magnor let loose a great cheer, and it was echoed by hundreds of others from all over the ship, as everyone watched the spectacle either through a window or on a viewscreen.