Starplex

"It's incredible," said Lia

"So — so if that's how it looked six billion years ago, then none of the Commonwealth homeworlds yet exists, right? Is there — do you suppose there's any life in the galaxy now?"

"Well, 'now' is still 'now,' of course," said Jag. "But if you're asking if there was any life in the Milky Way hack when that light started its journey to us, I would say no.

Galactic cores are very radioactive — even more so than we used to think.

In a large elliptical galaxy, such as we're seeing here, the whole galaxy is essentially the core. With stars that close together, there would be so much hard radiation everywhere that stable genetic molecules wouldn't be able to form." He paused. "I guess that means it's only middle-aged galaxies that can give rise to life; young, armless ones will be sterile."

There was silence on the bridge for a time, broken only by the gentle hiss from the air-circulating equipment and the occasional soft beep from a control panel. Each person contemplated the small fuzzy blot of light that one day would give rise to all of them, contemplated the fact that they were farther out in space than anyone had ever been before, contemplated the vastly empty darkness all around them.

Six billion light-years. Keith remembered reading about Borman, Lovell, and Anders, the Apollo 8 astronauts who had circled the moon over Christmas of 1968, reading passages from Genesis back to the people on Earth. They had been the first human beings to get far enough from the homeworld so that they could cup it in an outstretched hand. Maybe more than any other single event, that view, that perspective, that image, had marked childhood's end for humanity — the realization that all their world was one tiny ball floating against the night.

And now, thought Keith, maybe — just maybe — this image was the one that marked the begi

His gaze happened to pass over Jag — who was doing exactly what Keith had done a moment ago, using one of his hands to cup the Milky Way.

"Excuse me, Keith," said Lia

Keith nodded slowly. "Thank you," be said, his voice wistful. He looked once more at the young Milky Way floating in the darkness, and then said softly, "Rhombus, let's have a look at what's going on back home."

Chapter XX

"Launching probe," said Rhombus.

In the holo bubble, Keith could see the silver-and-green cylinder moving away from the ship, illuminated by a tracking searchlight on Starplex's hull. It looked out of place against the fuzzy splotches of distant galaxies. Soon the probe touched the shortcut and disappeared.

"The mn should only take about five minutes," said Rhombus.

Keith nodded, trying to contain himself. He didn't know which he wanted more: to have the probe report that it had detected Rissa's transponder — meaning the Rum Ru

Time passed, and Keith's nervousness grew. A watched pot never boils, but…

He looked up at the trio of clocks floating in space above the hidden port-side door. "How long has it been?"

"Seven minutes," said Rhombus.

"Shouldn't your probe be back by now?"

Lights moved up the Ib's web. "Then where the hell-"

"Tachyon pulse!" a

"Don't wait until it's docked," said Keith. "Download the data by radio and display it."

"Doing so with delight," said Rhombus. "Here we go."

The probe's scan was low resolution, and video, rather than holographic.

A part of the all-encompassing bubble was framed off in blue, and playback of the flatscreen images the probe had recorded began to appear.

"What the — ?" said Keith. "Rhombus, did you use the correct angle of approach?"

"Yes — to within a fraction of a degree."

Jag said a Waldahudar swear word. By default, PHANTOM didn't translate profanity, but Keith felt like swearing himself. "That's not where we came from," he said.

Jag's fur was motionless. "No," he said. The image in the screen showed tightly packed red stars. "At a guess, I'd say it's not even anywhere in the Milky Way. That looks like the inside of a globular cluster. There are dozens associated with CGC 1008, so it might even be one of those."

"Which means…"

"Which means," said Thor, lifting his hands from the helm console, "that we can't go home. We don't have the correct address."

"The latitude/longitude coordinate system must not work the same way over such great distances," said Lia

Keith's voice was small. "Even at full hyperdrive-" Jag snorted.

"Even at full hyperdrive, to cover six billion light-years would take two hundred and seventy million years."

"All right," said Keith. "We'll try sending probes through in a search pattern. Rhombus, start by piercing the tachyon sphere around the shortcut at the north pole, then work your way down, trying again at every five degrees of latitude and five degrees of longitude. Maybe, if we're really lucky, we'll see something we recognize in the scans they bring back."

Rhombus began launching probes, but it soon became apparent that they were all going to either the globular cluster, or to another region of space where the sky was dominated by a ring-shaped nebula.

"From the point of view of this shortcut," said Rhombus, "there are only two other active shortcuts. I suppose that means we're lucky our initial probe came back to us — it only had a one-in-two chance of doing so." "Not much of a choice, is it?" said Keith. "Here on the periphery of a black hole in intergalactic space; off in a globular cluster — presumably full of old, lifeless stars; or over to that ring nebula."

"No," said Jag.

"No what?"

"No, we ca

Keith let out a sigh of relief. "Good. Why not?"

"Because the God of Alluvial Deposits is my patron," said the Waldahud.

"She would not abandon me."

Keith felt his heart sink. He stopped himself before he snapped out something nasty.

"There has to be a way back," said Jag. "We came here, and therefore we must be able to return. If only we-"

"Speed!" shouted Lia

Keith looked at her.

"Speed!" she said. "We went through the shortcut at very high speed.

Perhaps the velocity range at which you enter a shortcut selects which other family of shortcuts you have access to. We've always previously done it at very low relative velocities in order to avoid impacts.

After all, one does go through a shortcut blind, not knowing for sure what's on the other side. But this time, we whipped into it at substantial fraction of light-speed. We may have keyed into another level of shortcuts by doing so."

Keith turned to Jag. He lifted all four shoulders. "It's as good an explanation as any."

"Rhombus, launch another probe," said Keith. "Put it on a long trajectory that will let it accelerate to the same speed we were at when we passed through the shortcut, and aim for the exact latitude and longitude that corresponds to where we came from."