Starplex

When Keith had finished talking, Jag’s mouth hung open for a few moments, showing the two curving blue-white translucent dental plates within. Finally, he barked in a subdued fashion. “I—I know I said such things were possible, but it has never been tried on anything approaching this scale.”

Keith nodded. “Understood. But unless you have a better suggestion—”

“Well,” said Jag’s Brooklynite voice, “we could leave the darmat baby in orbit around the star. Assuming it is still alive, once we put the parasol sun-shield in place, it could, in theory, live out the rest of its natural life—however long that is—in close orbit around that star. But if your plan does not work, the darmat child will be killed.” Jag’s voice became quieter. “I know, Lansing, that I am the one always looking for glory—and, since my role in what you propose is pivotal, I have no doubt that considerable glory would accrue to me were we able to pull this off. But it really is not our decision to make. Ordinarily, I’d say ask the—the patient—for permission before attempting something as risky as this, but that is not possible in this case, because of the radio noise. And so I suggest we do what both your race and mine would do in such circumstances: we should ask the next of kin.”

Keith thought about that, then began to nod slowly. “You’re right, of course. I keep seeing the macro-issue, that if we pull this off, it’ll be great for our relationships with the darmats. Damn, sometimes I’m pretty pigheaded.”

“That is all right,” said Jag lightly, choosing not to take offense at Keith’s unfortunate choice of words. “Rumor has it that you are going to have a very long time to acquire more wisdom.”

* * *

Keith spoke into the mike. “Starplex to Cat’s Eye. Starplex to Cat’s Eye.”

The incongruous French accent; Keith half expected the thing to say Bonjour. “Hello, Starplex. It is wrong to ask, but…”

Keith smiled. “Yes, we have news of your child. We have located it. But it is in close orbit around a blue star. It is unable to get away under its own power.”

“Bad,” said Cat’s Eye. “Bad.”

Keith nodded. “But we have a plan that may—I repeat, may—allow us to rescue the child.”

“Good,” said Cat’s eye.

“The plan involves much risk.”

“Quantify.”

Keith looked at Jag, who lifted all four shoulders. “I can’t,” said the human. “We’ve never done anything like this on this scale before. Indeed, I only recently learned that it was theoretically possible. It may work, or it may not—and I have no way of knowing the likelihood of either outcome.”

“Better idea available?”

“No. No, in fact, this is our only idea.”

“Describe plan.”

Keith did so, at least as much as the limited vocabulary they had established allowed.

“Difficult,” said Cat’s Eye.

“Yes.”

There was a long period of silence on the frequency used by Cat’s Eye, but lots of traffic on the other channels—the darmat community discussing its options.

At last, Cat’s Eye spoke again. “Try, but… but… two hundred and eighteen minus one is much less than two hundred and seventeen.”

Keith swallowed. “I know.”

* * *

The PDQ (containing the cetacean physicist Melondent) and the Rumrunner (with Jag and Longbottle aboard) headed through the shortcut to the sector containing the darmat baby. Working in tandem, the two ships deployed the molecule-thick parasol. Reaction motors were mounted on the parasol’s frame, firing away from the blue star to keep the solar wind from blowing it away. Once the baby was in the shade, its nearside surface temperature began to drop rapidly.

Next, 112 hastily constructed buoys, each consisting of a hollowed-out watson casing with special equipment mounted inside, were popped through the shortcut from Starplex. The two probeships used their tractor beams to array them in interlocking orbits around the baby.

On one of his tall, thin monitor screens aboard the Rumrunner, Jag displayed a hyperspatial map showing the steep local gravity well with the star at the bottom. The sides of the well were almost perpendicular this close to the star; they only began to flare out just before the orbiting darmat was encountered. The baby made a second, smaller well of its own.

Once the buoys were in place, the PDQ headed off, moving past the shortcut without going through it, and continuing on for half a day. Finally, they were all lined up in a neat row. At one end was the Rumrunner. Next to it was the darmat baby. Forty million kilometers beyond the baby was the fiery blue star. Three hundred million kilometers farther on was the shortcut, and a billion kilometers beyond that was the PDQ—Melondent was now a total of seventy-two light-minutes from the star, far enough away that her local space was now reasonably flat.

“Ready?” barked Jag to Longbottle, in the Rumrunner’s piloting tank.

“Ready,” the dolphin barked back in Waldahudar.