Starplex by Robert J. Sawyer Read Free Book Online

seeing a large number of vessels--a vast fleet of craft, whose individual movements are eclipsing background stars, and whose artificial gravity generators are making big dents in spacetime. But I doubt that."
    "Let's close the distance by half, Thor," said Keith.
    "Bring us in to about six million klicks from the periphery of the phenomenon. See if we can make out more detail."
    The little face and the big head behind it nodded in unison. "As you say, boss."
    As he brought the ship closer, Thor also rotated Starplex so that deck one was facing forward into its direction of movement. The ship's thrusters could move the vessel in any direction, regardless of its orientation, but one of the twin radio telescopes was mounted in the center of that square deck, and four optical telescopes were mounted at the corners.
    As they got closer, it became apparent that whatever was obscuring the background stars was reasonably solid and large. Stars were being eclipsed now with only a short period of fading out as they disappeared.
    But there wasn't enough light to see clearly. The nearby A-class star was just too far away. So far, all that they could make out was a series of maddeningly vague shadows.
    "Any radio signals?" asked Keith. As had become his habit, he'd shut off the hologram of Lianne's head that by default hovered above the rim of his console. In the past, he'd found himself staring at it, and that was awkward with Rissa sitting right next to him.
    "Nothing major," she said. "Just wisps of milliwatt noise now and again near the twenty-one-centimeter line, but it's all but lost against the cosmic microwave background."
    Keith looked to Jag, seated on his left. "Ideas?"
    The Waldahud was growing frustrated as they got closer--his fur was standing up in tufts. "Well, an asteroid belt seems unlikely, especially this far from the nearest star. I suppose it could be material in the A's Oort, but it seems much too dense for that."
    Starplex continued to move in. "Spectroscopy?" asked Keith.
    "Whatever those objects are," barked Jag, "they're non-luminous.
    As for absorption of starlight from behind as it passes through the less opaque parts, the spectra I'm seeing is typical of interstellar dust, but there's much less absorption going on than I'd expect." He turned to face Keith.
    "There's simply not enough light out here to see what's going on. We should send up a fusion flare."
    "What if they are ships?" asked Keith. "Their crews might misconstrue it--think we're launching an attack."

    "They are almost certainly not ships," said Jag, curtly.
    "They are planetssized bodies."
    Keith looked at Rissa, at the holographic Thor. and Rhombus, and at the back of Lianne's head, to see if any of them had any objections.
    "All right," he said. "Let's do it."
    Jag got up and walked over to stand beside Rhombus at the external-operations station. Keith found it funny watching them talk: Jag barking like an angry dog, and Rhombus replying in shimmering lights. Since they were just conversing among themselves, PHANTOM
    didn't bother to translate their words for Keith, but Keith tried to listen in, just for the practice. Waldahudar was a difficult language for English speakers to follow, and it required a different grammatical mood depending on the gender of the speaker and the person being spoken to (males could only address females in a conditional/subjunctive way, for instance). On the other hand, specific nouns were avoided as much as possible in polite Waldahudar, lest disagreements over terminology ensue. Throughout the conversation, Jag leaned on Rhombus's workstation for support; his roedial limbs could be used for locomotion or manipulation, but Waldahu-din didn't like dropping down onto their rear four in the company of humans.
    Finally, Jag and Rhombus had agreed on what characteristics the flare should have. Lianne at InOps issued an order that all windows on decks one through thirty be covered or turned opaque. She also drew the