Starplex

by Robert J. Sawyer

  "Centrifugal force?" said Lianne. "People would be standing on the walls."

  "Yes. So?"

  "Well, and each deck is cross-shaped, so the apparent force of gravity would increase as you went farther out into each

  "But it would also keep the water from flowing down the central shaft,"

  said Keith. "Instead, it would be trying to press against the outer walls of the ocean deck. Thor, could you set up such a spin using our ACS thrusters?"

  "Can do."

  Keith looked at Rhombus. "How much gravity do you Ibs need for your circulatory systems to work?"

  Rhombus lifted his ropes. "Tests have suggested that at least one eighth of a standard-g is required."

  "Below deck fifty-five," said Lianne, "even at the ends of the arms, we won't get that much apparent gravity at any reasonable rotation rate."

  "But that's only fifteen floors that have to have their Ibs evacuated instead of forty," said Keith. "Lianne, inform everyone of what we're doing. Thor, as soon as no Ib is left below deck fifty-five, start spinning the ship. Bleed off the artificial gravity as we come up to speed."

  "Will do."

  "People should probably vacate the rooms at the ends of each arm, because of the windows," said Lianne.

  "Why?" asked Keith. "They're transparent carbon composite; they won't break even if people are standing on them."

  "Of course not," said Lianne. "But the windows are angled at forty-five degrees there, because the edges of the habitat modules slope at that angle. It'll be difficult to stand on them once the apparent gravity shifts so that those sloping windows become slanted floors."

  Keith nodded. "Good point. Pass on that advisory as well."

  "Will do."

  The holographic head of Longbottle aboard the Rum Runner spoke up.

  "Polluted waters we are in. Engines overheating."

  Keith nodded at the holegram. "Do what you can; if necessary, head away from us. Maybe no one will follow you."

  Starplex rocked again. "Gawst has started carving into the central disk beneath our number-three generator," said Rhombus. "And a second one of his ships is carving in from the top of the disk, right above generator one."

  "Start spinning the ship, Thor."

  The starfield holegram began to rotate. The ship reeled again. "That took Gawst by surprise," said Thor. "His lasers are skittering across the entire undersurface of the central disk."

  Lianne spoke up. "Jessica Fong is in position inside docking bay sixteen, Keith."

  "Show me."

  A frame appeared around part of the starfield holegram--now spinning at dizzying speed. Inside the frame, a picture of the interior of the docking bay appeared, with a space-suited woman floating in midair.

  She was tethered to the rear wall--the one that was shared with the engineering torus--and the tether was pulled taut as the ship's rotation flung her outward toward the inside of the curving space door. The bay's floor, crisscrossed with landing reference markers, was more than a dozen meters below her feet, and its roof, covered with lighting panels and housings for winches, was a dozen meters above her head.

  "Open channel," said Keith, then: "Okay, Jessica. Behind the bay's rear wall, inside the engineering torus, is a water-filled ocean-deck filtering station. That station opens on to the ocean on the other side. Drill open a big hole in the docking bay's rear wall, Be careful, though: when you do that, water is going to hammer through at you."

  "I understand," said Jessica. She reached to her waist and let out more tether. Keith watched breathlessly as she moved through the air across the bay. She wasn't wasting any time; meters of additional tether appeared each second. She finally reached the far side of the bay, slamming against the curving surface of the space door. For a horrible moment, Keith thought she'd been knocked unconscious by the impact, but she soon recovered from the blow and fought to bring the heavy geological laser into position. She was having trouble holding the unit steady. When she fired, her first shot crossed her own tether line, severing it at its midpoint. Fifteen meters of nylon line came crashing down at her; the other fifteen meters whipped around far over her head like a narrow yellow snake. She was now pinned against the center of the space door by the ship's spinning.

  Fong's second shot went equally wild, taking out a junction box for the in-bay lighting system. Everything was plunged into darkness.

  "Jessica!"

  "I'm still here, Keith. God, this is awkward."

  In the frame, all that was visible was black--black, and then a pinprick of ruby, as the laser found the rear wall.

  Keith watched as the metal began to glow, soften, ripple----and then-The sound of water rushing through, like a high-pressure fire hose.

  Jessica continued to shoot the laser, perforating a giant square along the rear wall. A hole here, move the laser a centimeter, another hole, shoot again, over and over-- The emergency lights came on, bathing the entire bay in red.

  Seawater erupted from the rear wall. The perforated square of bulkhead metal peeled back, then tore free, flinging across the bay, propelled by a geyser of water behind it.

  Keith cringed. It looked as-though the metal wall fragment was going to slap against Jessica, who was already being pummeled by wild fists of water, but she, too, must have seen it coming. There was an explosion of flame behind her, scorching the wall. She'd been smart enough to put on a suit with a thruster pack, and had fired herself up and away just in time. The bay was filling with water, starting at the space door and rising in toward the interior wall Jessica was soon slapped back against the door.

  Once the bay had filled, Keith spoke to her once more.

  "Okay, now turn around and drill a.hole about ten centimeters in diameter in the outer docking-bay door. Hold the beam emitter right against the door; you don't want to boil the water around you."

  "Will do," she said, her space suit now a diving suit. She stood on the space door and held the gray metal cone of .her geological laser like a jackhammer. She then fired down between her feet. Soon, part of the space door was glowing cherry red, then white-hot, and then, and then .

  . .

  Starplex spun like a top against the night, green starlight winking off its hull.

  The five remaining Waldahud ships were approaching.

  Two of the ships were. coming in from above and three from below, heading toward the ring of docking bays. Doubtless the ship was rotating too fast for any of the Waldahud pilots to notice the tiny incandescent spot in the middle of the door to bay sixteen, a spot that glowed, flared, and burned away.

  And suddenly-- Water began to spray out into space, flinging away from the rapidly rotating ship. And as it hit vacuum, it evaporated immediately into vapor, and then, once enough vapor had accumulated to make for considerable pressure, the water recondensed into liquid, the plankton, salt crystals, and oceanic detritus providing seeds for droplet formation, and then here, shaded from the green star by the intervening dark-matter field, it froze into ice-- Millions upon millions of ice pellets, flinging away from Starplex at high speed, propelled by the explosive force of all the water behind and by the centrifugal force of the rapidly rotating ship. Countless diamonds against the night, winking green in the light of the nearby star-- The first Waldahud ship was hit by a barrage of ice chunks, that ship's speed toward Starplex being added to the pellets' own velocity, making for a truly high-speed collision. The initial half-dozen chunks were deflected by the ship's force screens, shields designed for guarding against single microme-teoroid impacts, not a sustained onslaughtn-Ice pellets ripped through the Waldahud hull like teeth through flesh, tearing up the habitat, expelled air freezing and adding to the hailstorm in space On the bridge, Keith called out, "Now, Thor! Rock the ship!"

  Thor compliedew streamer of ice chunks angled off in a different direction, impacting a second Waldahud ship, ripping it open. Then a third ship exploded, a silent flower against the dark background, as frozen bullets ripped into the tanks containing its at
mospheric-maneuvering fuel.

  Thor rocked the ship the other way, and ice pellets were flung toward the fourth remaining ship. By this time, its pilot had come up with a counterstrategy. He rotated his own ship so that its fusion exhaust cone faced toward Starplex, and he fired his main engine, melting the ice into water drops, which immediately boiled into vapor before they could hit his ship.

  But the pilot of one of the other remaining ships had been unprepared for this maneuver, or too preoccupied with saving his own tail by heading toward the shortcut. His course took him in the path of his comrade's fusion exhaust, and the white-hot flames tore into his vessel.

  It exploded, leaving only two ships--one of which was Gawst's.

  The expanding ring of water pellets deflected most of the ship debris away from Starplex, but the crew of the Waldahud craft that had tried the fusion-exhaust trick wasn't so lucky. A large, jagged piece of hull rammed into their shipt it spinning away, out of control--directly toward the field of dark matterlot seemed almost to regain control when he was a few million kilometers away from the closest of the great gray balls of gas, but by then he was already caught in its gravity. It would take hours for the deadly trajectory to play out its course, but the ship was destined to crash into the darmat-- STARPLEX.

  and, at that velocity, even the kind of soft impact that occurred when regular matter hit dark matter would be enough to pulverize the vessel.

  Gawst's ship was still intact, holding station with a tractor beam beneath the central disk. There was no way Thor could aim the ice-pellet stream there. Still, Starplex could keep spinning until GaWst ran out of fuel, if need be . . .

  "Uh-oh." PHANTOM's translation of the rippling lights on Rhombus.

  Thor looked up. "God damn," he said.

  Emerging from behind the limb of the green star were one . . . two .

  . . five more Waldahud fighters. Gawst had not been fool enough to use all his forces on the initial attack. One of the newcomers was a giant, ten times the size of the smaller probecraft.

  Starplex's five dolphin-piloted ships had backed off, avoiding the ice barrage. But now they were linking up in formation, and heading toward the approaching attack force, determined to get to it before it could get to their mothership.

  And then . . .

  "What the hell?" said Keith, gripping his armrests.

  "Jesus "said Thor." Jesus.

  The vast field of dark matter had begun to move, slowly at first, but now with gathering speed. It was spinning out into lumpy streamers, greenish on the side facing toward the rogue sun, inky black on the other. The streamers grew longer until they spre ad out over millions of kilometers, tubes of gravel with planet-sized spheres distributed along their length like knuckles on ethereal fingers.

  The Starplex probeships dived above or below the stream- ers. The Waldahud pilots found their ships traveling in erratic courses, unable to compensate for the streamers' gravitational attraction. In the spherical hologram, Keith could see the attacking ships staggering in drunken, weaving lines, pulled off course by the hundreds of Jupiter-masses within each dark-matter ribbon.

  The streamers were growing with surprising speed. Keith still had trouble with the concept of macrolife living freely in space, but of course most life-forms could move quickly when they wanted to . . .

  The pilots of the incoming Waldahud ships were realizing that they were in trouble. One of them aborted what had clearly been 'an attack run toward Starplex, and was now veering off at a steep angle. Another fired its braking jets, the exhausts four ruby pinpricks against the blackness. But the darmats continued to reach for them, long, puffy fingers against the night.

  If the ships had been able to use hyperdrive, they could have escaped.

  But the gravity well from the green star, and the shallower but still significant wells created by the darmats, prevented that.

  The farthest of the new fighters was now only a few kilometers ahead of one of the dark-matter tendrils. Keith watched as the gap was closed, the ship disappearing within the fog of gravel.

  Thor provided a schematic, showing the fighter's position within the streamer--a streamer that now was no longer reaching forward, but had started pulling back, its gravity dragging the Waldahud vessel with it .

  . .

  Soon a second dark-matter tentacle had enveloped another Waldahud ship.

  A third fighter was trying desperately to get away; Keith could see the flash of explosive bolts as it jettisoned its weapons clusters in order to decrease its overall mass. But the dark matter was still gaining on it, Meanwhile, the two tendrils that had already caught ships were still pulling back, and--that was curious--had begun curling in on themselves, archirig away, like cobras made of ash.

  The third small ship was finally caught, and its gray finger started pulling back, too. The giant Waldahud ship was also being approached from above and below by separate dark-matter tentacles. Only the fifth new ship seemed likely to get away, although Keith's heart was pounding as he saw that Rissa and Longbottle were now pursuing it. His son's face flashed in front of his eyes--still a kid at nineteen, the goatee notwithstanding. How would he break the news to him if his mother got killed?

  The first two tentacles had arched back into semicircles, the cups of which were facing away from the green star. At the same moment as the large vessel was engulfed by the two converging streamers that had been pursuing it, the first of the dark-matter fingers snapped forward like a whip. The Waldahud fighter that had been embedded in it shot ahead, out of the tentacle, tumbling end over end. Keith saw the pinpoint lights of ACS jets firing, but the ship's wild rotation continued unabated Keith's jaw fell open. Good Christ--!

  --as the ship was flung directly toward the green star.

  The vessel continued to rotate over and over as the distance between it and the star diminished rapidly. The pilot finally managed to gain control, but he was too close to the 1.5-million-kilometer-wide ball of fire. Prominences licked toward the incoming projectile-- --and the ship turned to vapor in the star's upper atmosphere.

  Keith shouted, "Rhombus, hail our probeships!"

  "Channel open."

  "Return to Starplex!" said Keith. "All ships, return at once to Starplex!"

  Four probeships acknowledged and changed course, but one was still pursuing its target.

  "Rissa!" Keith shouted. "Turn back!"

  Suddenly the second dark-matter whip cracked across the night, sending another Waldahud ship hurtling toward the green star. Keith's head kept snapping left and right between the twin horrors of Rissa's ship receding from Starplex and the fighter's head-over-heels rush toward destruction.

  The Rum Runner was corkscrewing wildly as it approached the enemy vessel. Laser fire from the Waldahud's rear cannons kept missing the probeship, or glancing off its force screens. But, after a moment, the firing stopped as the Waldahudin aboard presumably became absorbed in the spectacle they, too, were no doubt monitoring.

  The second ship the darmats had tossed toward the sun was rapidly reaching its destination. Lifeboats popped away from it, but their puny motors weren't strong enough to let them achieve orbit around the star.

  The last sight the dying Waldahu-din probably saw on their monitor screens was the star's strange dumbbell-shaped sunspots, gray-black splotches against a hell of liquid jade.

  The PDQ and the Dakterth were returning to Starplex now. Of course, they had to approach from above or below to avoid the torus of hail surrounding the ship. Rhombus was using tractor beams to pull them down onto the flat surface of the central disk. There was no way to get them into the docking bays--the ice prevented that--but there were emergency docking clamps on both faces of the disk.

  Rum Runner was still giving chase. "Rissa!" shouted Keith into his mike. "For God's sake, Rissa--come home!"

  Suddenly the Rum Runner's laser erupted, PHANTOM dutifully drawing in its beam on the holographic display. It swept across the starscape.

  Rissa's aim was
perfect, severing the ship's engine pod from the craft in one clean slice.

  The pod tumbled against the night, a puff of expelled gas around it shining like a halo of emeralds. And suddenly-- The pod flared brilliantly, brighter even than the nearby star, as it went up in a fusion explosion. Longbottle executed a crazed arcing maneuver to avoid the expanding ball of plasma, then began a laser-straight path for Starplex. The engineless Waldahud ship shot away at an oblique angle under momentum, unable to maneuver.

  The third dark-matter whip cracked, sending another Waldahud fighter pinwheeling across the firmament. As this one passed by, Keith saw that several of its hull plates had been deliberately blown away; the crew had apparently preferred opening the ship to vacuum over cooking alive as they plunged into the sun.

  Next the combined double finger that had enveloped the huge Waldahud ship began to rotate around its midpoint, playing out into a spiral design like a galaxy as it did so, turning faster and faster. PHANTOM

  showed the location of the ship buried within one arm of the spinning mass. The rotation became more and more rapid, until finally, like an athlete throwing a discus, the dark matter hurtled the giant ship away from it. The bigger ship managed to regain control before it impacted the sun, but as it startedto alter its course, the white fusion flames of its exhaust stark against the green inferno, a giant prominence arched upward from the photosphere, engulfing it.

  "Four of our five probeships are safely clamped to our hull," reported Rhombus. "And the Rum Runner will be back in eleven minutes."

  Keith let out a heavy sigh. "Excellent. We must have everyone out of the lower decks by now, right?"

  "The final elevator is on its way up," said Lianne. "Give it another thirty seconds."

  "Okay. Keep the lower decks at zero-g so no more water will flow down.

  Thor, stop spinning the ship."

  "Will do."

  "Director," said Rhombus, "Gawst's ship has attached itself to the surface of our hull. He's holding in place with a tractor beam."