Starplex

They were tens of thousands of light-years from the first darmats they had encountered, but, then again, the darmat race was billions of years old. It was possible that they all spoke the same language. Jag scanned the cacophony, found the topmost frequency group, and, since there were no vacancies, transmitted just above it. “We are looking for one called Junior”—the ship’s computer substituted the baby’s real name.

There was silence for a lot longer than round-trip message time would require, but then, finally, a reply did come through.

“No one here by that name. Who are you?”

“No time to chat—but we’ll be back,” said Jag, and Longbottle turned the ship back toward the shortcut.

“Bet surprised them that did,” said the dolphin as they passed through the gateway.

This time they emerged near a planet about the size of Mars, and just as dry, but yellow rather than red. Its sun, a blue-white star, was visible in the distance, about twice the apparent diameter of Sol as seen from Earth. “Nothing here,” said Jag.

Longbottle allowed himself the luxury of moving the Rumrunner in such a way that the bulk of the yellow planet precisely eclipsed the star. The corona—mixing purple and navy and white—was gorgeous, and covered much more of the sky than the dolphin had expected. He and Jag basked in the sight for a moment, then they dived back through the shortcut.

This exit point had also recently had a star emerge from it, but it wasn’t green. Rather, as at Tau Ceti, this one was a red dwarf, small and cool.

Jag consulted his scanners. “Nothing.”

They dived through again, the shortcut opening like a purple-lipsticked mouth to accommodate them.

Pure blackness—no stars at all.

“A dust cloud,” said Jag, his fur dancing in surprise.

“Interesting—it wasn’t here the last time anyone went through to this exit. Carbon grains mostly, although there are some complex molecules, too, including formaldehyde and even some amino acids, and—Cervantes will want to return here, I think. I’m picking up DNA.”

“In the cloud?” asked Longbottle, incredulous.

“In the cloud,” said Jag. “Self-replicating molecules floating free in space.”

“But no darmat, correct?”

“Correct,” said Jag.

“A wonder for another time,” said Longbottle, and he spun the ship around, fired retros, and headed back through the shortcut.

A new sector of space—another one that had recently had a star erupt from it. This time the intruder was a blue type-O, with more purple sunspots than a fair-haired human had freckles in summer. The Rumrunner had emerged right on the edge of one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms. To one side, the sky was thick with bright young stars; to the other, they were sparse. Overhead, a globular cluster was visible, a million ancient red suns packed together into a ball. And—

“Bingo,” said Jag—or, at least, he barked something that would be translated as that in English. “There it is!”

“See do I,” agreed Longbottle. “But…”

“Parched land!” swore Jag. “It’s trapped.”

“Agree—caught in the net.”

And indeed it was. The baby darmat had obviously stumbled out of the shortcut only a few days before this blue star had arrived, and the star had been expelled from the exit in approximately the same direction as the darmat. As they’d all discovered to their shock, a darmat could move with surprising agility for a free-floating world, but the gravity of a star was enormous. The baby was only forty million kilometers from its surface—less than Mercury’s distance from Sol.

“There is no way it can manage escape velocity,” said Jag. “I’m not even sure it’s managed to settle into orbit; it may be spiraling in. Either way, though, that darmat is not going anywhere.”

“Will signal,” said Longbottle—and he set the ship’s transmitter to broadcast the prerecorded message on all the frequencies that the members of the darmat community had used. They were about three hundred million kilometers from the star; the signals took over fifteen minutes to reach the darmat, and the quickest any reply could be received would be another fifteen minutes after that. They waited, Jag fidgeting, Longbottle amusing himself by painting a sonar caricature of Jag as he fidgeted. But no reply was received.

“Well,” said the Waldahud, “there’s so much radio noise coming from the star, we might not be able to pick up the darmat’s transmission. Or it might not be able to hear us.”

“Or,” said Longbottle, “darmat may be dead.”

Jag made a noise like bubble wrap being burst, his snout vibrating as he did so. That was the one possibility he didn’t want to consider. But the heat that close to the star would be incredible. The side of the darmat facing it might be over 350 degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt lead. Neither Jag nor Delacorte had yet worked out all the particulars of luster-quark meta-chemistry, but many normal complex molecules broke down when heated that high.