Starplex

BETA DRACONIS

Keith Lansing looked around the docking bay aboard the strange alien craft. Like the ship’s exterior, this part, too, was featureless. No seams, no equipment, nothing marring the six glowing cube faces.

When the shortcuts were discovered, the press had delighted in bandying around a century-old saying, attributed to the Sri Lankan writer Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

The shortcuts were magic.

And so was this strange, beautiful starship, this starship that moved in apparent defiance of Newton’s laws…

Keith took a deep breath. He knew what was about to happen, knew it in his bones. He was about to meet the makers of the shortcuts.

The pod’s course across the bay curved gently downward and soon it came to rest on the flat lower face of the bay. Keith felt weight returning. It continued to grow slowly, and he settled to the floor. The gravity kept increasing, more and more, until it had reached Starplex’s shipboard standard. But still it grew, and Keith fought a wave of panic, fearing he would be crushed to jelly.

Finally, though, it stopped—and Keith realized that it was at just about the level he kept it at in his cabin aboard ship, nine percent higher than the Commonwealth standard but equal to Earth’s sea-level surface gravity.

And then, suddenly—

Everything around him was… was familiar.

Was Earth.

The edge of a mixed forest, maple trees and spruces rising to a sky the shade of blue no other planet he’d ever seen had. Sunlight precisely the color of Sol’s—matching the antihomesickness lamps he and Rissa had in their apartment aboard Starplex. To his right, a lake covered with lily pads, bulrushes rising from its edge. Overhead, a V-shaped flock of—no mistake—of Canada geese, and—yup, just to dispel any final doubt, a daytime gibbous moon, showing the Sea of Tranquility and the O-shaped Sea of Crises to its right.

An illusion, of course. Virtual reality. Make him feel at home. Perhaps they could read his mind, or perhaps they’d already contacted other travelers from Earth.

The travel pod had no elaborate sensors. There was air in the bay, though. He could hear—God, he could hear crickets, and bullfrogs, and, yes, the haunting call of a loon, all transmitted through the hull of the ship from the air outside. No way to test a sample, but they couldn’t have gotten all the other details right and screwed up on something as simple as the gas mixture for human-breathable air.

And yet, he hesitated. The trip to Tau Ceti was supposed to be a simple run; Keith hadn’t even bothered to see if there was a spacesuit in the pod’s emergency locker before departure.

But it was clearly an invitation—an invitation to first contact. And first contact was what Starplex was all about. Keith touched a series of controls, overriding the safety interlocks that kept the pod’s rear door from opening when it wasn’t connected to an access ring. The glassteel panel slid up into the roof.

Keith took a tentative breath—

And sneezed.

Jesus Christ, he thought. Ragweed pollen. These guys were good.

He sniffed again, and could smell all the things he’d have smelled if he really were back on Earth. Wildflowers and grass and damp wood and a thousand other things, subtly mixed. He stepped out.

They’d thought of everything—a perfect re-creation. Why, he even left footprints in the soft earth, something most virtual-reality simulations tripped up on. Indeed, he could feel the texture of the ground through the soles of his shoes, feel it give with each step, feel the springiness of grass compressing beneath his feet, the sharp jab of a stone. It was perfect…

And then it hit him. Maybe he was back on Earth. The shortcut makers knew how to cut across space in the twinkling of an eye. Maybe this was the real thing, maybe he was home—

But there had been no second shortcut inside the docking bay, no flash of purple Soderstrom radiation. And besides, if this was Earth, where had they found such unspoiled wilderness? He looked again at the sky, searching for an airplane or shuttle contrail.

Still—his sneezing meant they’d actually manufactured allergen molecules, or were manipulating his mind on a very sophisticated level. Suddenly Keith felt his throat constricting. A zoo! A goddamned zoo, and he was a specimen in it. He was trapped, a prisoner. He turned around, about to rush back to his pod, and saw the glass man.

“Hello, Keith,” said the man. His whole body was transparent, made of perfect crystal that flowed as he moved. There was only the faintest hint of color to the transparent form, a touch of cool aquamarine.

Keith said nothing for several seconds. The pounding of his heart was drowning out the wilderness sounds. “You know who I am?” he said at last.

“Sort of,” said the glass man. His voice was masculine, deep. His body, although humanoid, was stylized, like a mannequin in a trendy store. His head was a featureless egg shape, with the point forming the chin. Although the arms and legs seemed well proportioned, they were smooth, without any apparent musculature. The belly and chest were flat, and the transparent sex organ between the legs was simplified, rocket-shaped.

Keith stared at the glass man, wondering what to do next. Finally, desperate to know his status, he said: “I want to leave.”

“You may,” said the glass man, spreading his transparent arms. “Anytime you wish. Your pod stands waiting for you.” There was no sign of a speaking orifice on the simple ovoid head, but Keith’s ears told him the sound was indeed emanating from it.

“This—this isn’t a zoo?” asked Keith.

There was a sound like wind chimes—glassy laughter? “No.”

“And I’m not a prisoner?”

The wind chimes again. “No. You are—is ‘guest’ the right word? You are my guest.”

“How can you speak English?”

“I don’t, actually, of course. My reckoner is translating the words for you.”

“Did you make the shortcuts?”

“The what?”

“The shortcuts. The interstellar gateways, the stargates—whatever you want to call them.”

“ ‘Shortcuts,’ ” said the glass man, nodding. “A good name for them. Yes, we created them.”

Keith’s pulse was racing. “What do you want from me?”

The wind chimes once more. “You seem defensive, Keith. Isn’t there some standard speech you’re supposed to make in a first-contact situation? Or is it too early for that?”

Too early? “Well, yes.” Keith swallowed. “I, G. K. Lansing, Director of Starplex, bring you friendly greetings from the Commonwealth of Planets, a peaceful association of four sentient races from three different homeworlds.”

“Ah, now that’s better. Thank you.”

Keith was struggling to take it all in: the transparent humanoid, the forest re-creation, the beautiful starship, the diverting of his pod. “I’d still like to know what you want from me,” he said at last.

The glass man tipped his featureless head at Keith. “Well, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, the fate of the universe is in question.”

Keith blinked.

“But, more than that,” said the glass man, “I need to ask you some questions. For you see, Keith Lansing, you hold not only the key to the future, but also to the past.”