Starplex

by Robert J. Sawyer

  "How about a fusion exhaust?" asked Lianne. "Could it be a ship coming out of the shortcut tail first, as if it were decelerating?"

  Jag consulted more readouts. "It certainly is a fusion signature," he said. "But it would have to be a very powerful engine."

  Keith left his console and walked over to stand just behind Rhombus.

  "Any chance of contacting that ship?"

  One of Rhombus's manipulatory ropes whipped out to touch a control.

  "Forgive me, but not on conventional radio.

  The thing is putting out an enormous 'amount of EMI. A hyperspace radio link might work, but there's no way of knowing which quantized level they use for communication."

  "Start at the lowest and work your way up," Keith said.

  "Standard prime-number sequences."

  Another flick of a rope. "Transmitting. But it would literally take forever to try every level."

  Keith turned around and faced Rissa. "Looks like you might get your first-contact opportunity after all." He turned back to look at the shortcut. "Christ, that's bright." Every object on the bridge that wasn't swathed in the hologram was bathed in green light now. Although no shadows fell on the invisible floor, the staff members were all casting harsh ones on the seating gallery behind the workstations.

  "It's even brighter than it looks," said Jag. "The camera is filtering most of it."

  "What the hell could it be?" Keith asked, looking at Jag.

  "Whatever it is," said Jag, "it's streaming out a lot of charged particles--could be a particle-beam weapon." The green circle continued to expand. "Diameter is now one hundred and ten meters," said Jag. "One fifty." His barking grew softer, incredulous. "Two fifty. Five hundred. A full kilometer. Two kilometers."

  Keith turned back to the flaring image in the hologram.

  "Jesus," he said, bringing an arm up to shield his eyes.

  Slapping of ropes from Rhombus--an Ibese scream.

  "Profuse apologies," he said a moment later as the display darkened somewhat. "The object is brighter than the automatic compensators are designed to deal with. I shall henceforth monitor the display directly."

  The green circle kept expanding at a great rate. Its edges were coruscating with violet Soderstrom discharges--a pyrotechnical halo around the vast green center. The central area still seemed to be a flat cimle.

  "Temperature is about twelve thousand Kelvin," said Jag.

  "That's hot," said Rissa. "What in God's name is it?"

  An alarm started sounding, warbling high and low.

  "Radiation warning!" shouted Lianne. She wheeled to face Keith.

  "Recommended action: move Starplex."

  "Right," Keith said, sprinting back to his command station. "Thor, pick up the pace. Put us another fifty thousand klicks from the shortcut."

  He glanced at his astrogation readout. "Course two hundred and ten degrees by forty-five degrees. Use thrusters only; I don't want to drop into hyperspace until we know what that thing is."

  "As you say, boss," said Thor, hands flying over his instruments.

  The apparent growth of the green circle slowed, but it was still getting larger; its expansion rate was exceeding Star-plex's maneuvering speed.

  "I didn't know a shortcut could open that wide," said Rhombus. "Jag, just what exactly is coming through it?"

  Both sets of Jag's shoulders rose and fell. "Unknown. The spectral analysis is unusual--lots of heavy-element Fraunz hofer absorption lines. It matches nothing in our database." He paused. "If it's a fusion exhaust, the ship must be gigantic."

  "It looks perfectly flat," said Rissa. "How can it keep expanding as a circle?"

  "The apparent expansion is caused by the opening up of the shortcut aperture," said Jag. "They open at a finite speed, and, when touched by a flat surface, an aperture will take on a circular shape.until the edges are reached." He used his left eyes to glance at a readout.

  "The rate at which the aperture is opening is increasing, although at an uneven rate."

  The halo of violet, representing the edges of the portal, was just the faintest border around the vast circle, like a matte line around a spaceship model in an old-fashioned SF movie.

  "How big is it now?" Keith asked.

  Jag was evidently getting tired of answering that question.

  He touched keys on his console and a trio of color-coded rulers demarcated in different units formed a glowing three-quarters frame around the green circle. It now measured 450 kilometers in diameter.

  "Radiation levels are increasing rapidly," said Lianne.

  "Thor, double our retreat speed," Keith said. "Can our force screens handle this?"

  Lianne was consulting a set of readouts. She shook her head. "Not if it gets much bigger."

  The warbling sound was continuing in the background.

  "Turn that damned alarm off," Keith said. He looked at the Waldahud.

  "Jag?"

  "It's flat," Jag said. "Like a wall of flame. Diameter is now over a thousand kilometers. Thirteen hundred . . . Seventeen hundred . . ."

  The emerald light dominated the sky. The humans brought up hands to shield their eyes again.

  Suddenly, a streamer of green fire shot out of the wall, like a neon whiplash against the night. It continued to stretch out until it had extended over fifty thousand kilometers from the shortcut.

  "My God . . ." said Rissa.

  "Tell me that's not a weapon," said Jag, rising to his feet, and standing with both sets of arms crossed behind his back.

  "We would have been incinerated if we hadn't moved the ship."

  "Could it--could it be the Slammers?" asked Lianne.

  The green streamer was now falling. back toward the vast luminescent circle of the shortcut. As it did so, it broke up into fiery segments, each thousands of kilometers long.

  "Thor, prepare to go into hyperdrive on my order," Keith said.

  "All stations, secure for hyperdrive," said Lianne's voice over the loudspeakers.

  "Is it a forcefield of some kind?" asked Rissa.

  "Unlikely," said Jag.

  "If that is a ship's exhaust," Keith said, "it must have the biggest goddamn ramscoop in history attached to the other end."

  "Diameter is eight thousand kilometers," said Jag. He had already recalibrated the units on the scale bars twice. ''Ten thousand . . ."

  "Thor, thirty seconds to hyperdrive!"

  "All stations, alert," said Lianne. "Hyperdrive in twenty-five seconds, mark."

  Another tongue of green flame shot out of the widening circle.

  "Hyperdrive in fifteen seconds, mark," said Lianne.

  "Sweet Jesus, it's huge," Rissa said, under' her breath.

  "Hyperdrive in five sec--hyperdrive initialization canceled!

  Automatic override!"

  "What? Why?" Keith looked at the pair of computer eyes mounted on his workstation. "PHANTOM, what's happening?"

  "Gravity well is too steep for safe hyperspatial insertion," replied the computer.

  "Gravity well? We're in open space!"

  time." He moved out from behind his console and jogged in front of the cluster of workstations. "Reduce display brightness by half."

  Rhombus's ropes flicked. The view of the giant green circle dimmed, but it was still flaring, overexposed.

  "Halve it again," snapped Jag.

  The view grew dimmer. Jag was trying to look at it, but it was still too bright for eyes that had evolved under a dim red sun. "Once more,"

  he said.

  The view darkened further--and suddenly there was detail visible on the green surface: a granularity of lighter and darker shades . . .

  "That's not a ship," said Jag, his own voice, audible beneath PHANTOM's translation, the staccato barking of Waldahud astonishment. "It's a star."

  "A green starT' said Rissa, amazed. "There's no such thing."

  "Thor," Keith snapped, "full thruster power--perpendicular course away from the shortcut. Move!"

  The al
arm began to warble again. "Level-two radiation warning!"

  shouted Lianne overtop of it.

  "Force screens to maximum," Keith snapped.

  "Can't do both, boss," shouted Thor. "Full thrusters can't be combined with maximum screens."

  "Priority to thrusters, then! Get us out of here!"

  "If that's a star," said Rissa, "we're way too close, aren't we?" She looked at Jag, who said nothing. "Aren't we?" she asked again.

  Jag lifted his upper shoulders. "Way, way too close," he said softly.

  "If the radiation doesn't fry us," said Rissa, "the heat will."

  "Thor, can't you get any more speed?" Keith said.

  "No can do, boss. The local gravity well is steepening rapidly."

  "Would we do better to abandon the mothership?" asked Lianne.

  "Perhaps our smaller ships could escape more easily?

  "Forgive me, but no," said Rhombus. "Beside the fact that we don't have enough auxiliary vessels to evacuate everyone, only a few of them are outfitted with shielding for close approaches to stars."

  Lianne had her head tilted to one side; listening to private communications over her ear implant. "Director, we have panicked messages coming in from all over the ship."

  "Standard radiation precautions," snapped Keith.

  "Those will be inadequate," said Jag softly as he moved back to his workstation.

  Keith looked over at Rissa. One of her monitors was displaying plans for Starplex, showing the two mutually perpendicular diamonds intersecting the wide central disk.

  "What happens," she said, turning to him, "if we rotate Starplex so that the ocean deck is at a right angle to our line of travel?"

  "What difference will that make?" asked Keith.

  "We could use the seawater as radiation shielding. The ocean is filled to a depth of twenty-five meters. That's a lot of insulation."

  Lights on Rhombus's web winked on and off. "It would certainly help--everyone who isn't on or below the ocean deck, that is."

  Lianne spoke up. "We'll all be fried unless we do something."

  Keith nodded. "Thor, rotate Starplex as described."

  "ACS jets firing."

  "Lianne, devise a plan to evacuate all personnel from decks thirty-one through seventy."

  She nodded.

  "PHANTOM, intercom now!"

  "Intercom on," said PHANTOM.

  "Everyone--quickly. This is Director Lansing. Following instructions from Internal-Ops Manager Karendaughter, evacuate decks thirty-one through seventy. Get out of the engineering torus, out of the docking bays, out of the cargo holds, and out of all four lower-habitat modules.

  Everyone move into the upper-habitat modules. All dolphins--either get out of the ocean deck altogether, or swim up to the surface of the ocean and stay there. Everyone,. move in an orderly fashion--but move!

  PHANTOM, end, translate, and loop."

  In the hole display, the surface of the star was bulging out of the circular shortcut opening. "The shortcut-aperture expansion rate is increasing rapidly," said Jag. "It seemed to take a while to get going, probably because the star was essentially flat at first, but now that the surface is showing curvature, the thing is opening more quickly.

  Diameter is now one hundred and ten thousand kilometers."

  "Radiation is increasing rapidly as more of the surface comes through,"

  said Lianne.. "And if it shoots another prominence in our direction, we'll be cinderized."

  "Evacuation status," snapped Keith.

  Lianne pushed buttons and twenty-four square images appeared, replacing part of the starscape bubble. Each showed a different view through PHANTOM's eyes, and the scenes kept shifting, cycling through the computer's various cameras.

  A corridor--level fifty-eight, according to the superimposed status line: six Ibs rapidly rolling forward.

  An intersection: three human women in track suits hurrying toward the camera from one direction, and two Waldahudin and a human male rushing in from the other direction.

  The zero-g part of the central shaft: people using the handholds to shoot themselves upward.

  A vertical water tube, with three dolphins swimming up it.

  An elevator car, with a Waldahud holding the door open with one arm and urging passengers in with the other three.

  Another elevator car, containing an Ib surrounded by a dozen humans.

  "Even with everyone above the ocean deck," said Lianne, "I don't think we're going to have enough radiation-shielding."

  "Wait!" said Thor. "What about going behind the shortcut?"

  "Eh?" said Rhombus--or, at least, that's the sound PHANTOM gave to the little ripple of lights that passed over his mantle.

  "The shortcut's a circular hole," said Thor, looking over his shoulder at Keith. "The star is emerging from it. The rear part of the shortcut is a flat, empty circle--a black void in the shape of whatever's passing through it. If we're behind the shortcut, we'll be protected--at least for a while."

  Jag slapped all four of his hands against his console.

  "He's right!"

  Keith nodded. "Do it, Thor. Alter course to put us in the lee of the shortcut, keeping the bottom of the ocean deck facing the emerging star."

  "Executing," said Thor. "But it'll take a while to get there." In the spherical holo display encompassing the bridge, the brilliant circular profile of the star slowly became a green dome as Thor maneuvered the ship.

  "Talldorsal to Lansing!" A high-pitched dolphin voice over the intercom, with splashing in the background.

  "Open. Lansing here."

  "Thor's not moving in a line straight the ship. We're getting tides on the ocean deck."

  "Lianne?" Keith said, and the twenty-four views of the evacuation all changed to different angles on the ocean.

  Seawater was sloshing up to the holographic ceiling on the port side, real waves touching fake clouds, forcing all the dolphins to the starboard so that they could breathe.

  "Damn," said Thor. "Hadn't thought about that. I'll rotate the ship around its axis as we move. With luck, I should be able to keep all the forces balanced. Sorry!"

  As Starplex continued to move, the bulging dome of the green star became progressively eclipsed by the featureless black circular backside of the shortcut. And then, at last, the green disappeared; Starplex was in the shortcut's lee. The only evidence for the emerging star was the emerald cast on the dark-matter field beyond it. Even the ring of Soderstrom radiation was invisible back here; it, after all, was caused by tachyons spilling out of the shortcut, heading in the opposite direction. The black circle continued to grow, though, blotting out more and more background stars. Its diameter was now 800,000 kilometers.

  "Can you extrapolate how big the star is going to get, based on the curvature we observed on the other side?" Keith asked Jag.

  "It's not yet halfway through," Jag replied, "and it's oblate from high-speed rotation. Best guess? One-point-five mil]ion kilometers."

  "Thor, any chance of the hyperdrive?" Keith asked.

  Thor spoke into the hologram of Keith floating above his console rim.

  "Not yet. We'd have to be at least seventy million klicks from the star's center before space would be flat enough to engage it. I estimate we'll reach that distance in eleven hours."

  "Hours. How long till the star's equator passes through the shortcut?"

  "Perhaps five minutes," said Jag.

  "Evacuation status?"

  "One hundred and ninety people are still below the ocean deck," said Lianne.

  "Will we make it?" Keith asked her.

  "I'm not--"

  "Red light on thruster number six," shouted Thor. "It's overheating."

  "Great," Keith said. "Do you need to take it off-line?"

  "Not yet," said Thor. "I'm injecting repair nanotechs into its intercoolers; they may be able to correct the problem."

  "The green star's equator is about to pass through the shortcut," said Jag.

  A porti
on of the holographic display changed to a schematic representation of what was happening. At the left was the bulging hemisphere of the part of the star that had already protruded from the shortcut. The shortcut itself was seen from the side as a vertical line. Behind that, and receding away from it, was the diamond-shaped profile of Starplex. As the equator passed out of the shortcut, the hole the shortcut made in space started shrinking, and photons and charged particles from the star began spilling backward. The edges of the radiation backwash were like the hands of a clock starting at noon and six and converging toward three o'clock.

  Thor pushed Starplex as hard as he could. Keith could see constellations of yellow warning indicators lighting up on the pilot's panel.. The ship continued to climb out of the star's gravity well, its escape tunnel narrowing as the shortcut shrank in size.

  "Lansing!" shouted Jag. "The dark-matter field is moving--moving away from the star."

  "Could it be because of that repulsive force you mentioned?"

  Jag moved both sets of shoulders. "It's not the kind of effect I'd predict, but--"

  "Lower-deck evacuation now complete," said Lianne, swinging around to face the director.

  "Even so," said Thor, "we're going to take one hell of a lot radiation kick when that backwash hits us."

  Finally, the star finished emerging, and the shortcut disappeared. At that point, Thor switched all power from the engines to the force screens, trying to deflect as much of the incoming radiation as possible. Starplex continued to travel under momentum. The radiation alarm began to warble again.

  "Are we far enough away?" Keith asked. Thor was too busy with the controls to answer. "Are we far enough away?" he asked again.

  Jag did some calculations. "I think so," he said, "but only because we're using the ocean deck as shielding. Otherwise, we would all have taken a lethal dose."

  "All right," Keith said. "Let's continue on until we're at a safe distance. Lianne, draw up a new duty roster that makes minimal use of cetaceans, and put any nonessential dolphins into medical hibernation until we can replace the water on the ocean deck. At the rate the star is receding from the shortcut, it'll be days before we can approach the portal safely." He paused, then: "Good work, everyone. Rhombus, what's the status of our docking bays?"