A schematic of the probe appeared on one of Keith's monitors: a silver cylinder, four meters long by one in diameter, its surface studded with scanners, sensors, camera lenses, and CCD plates. The probe had only thruster power and four clusters of conical attitude-control jets; a hyperdrive engine was far too expensive to risk, given that the probe might never come back.
The probe accelerated through a mass-driver tube in one of Starplex's upper-habitat modules. As soon as the probe was out in space, the bridge staff could see the glow of its thrusters in the holographic sphere surrounding them. The probe rotated along its axis so that each of its instruments would be exposed to the entire panorama of the sky.
There was no visible target for the probe — at least, not yet. But its course had been computed so that it would enter the shortcut at the exact angle specified by CHAT. When it did so, the probe seemed to disappear, a tiny ring of violet fire swallowing it up.
"In friendship I observe that passage through the shortcut was normal," reported Rhombus in his rich Oxford tones.
And now the waiting began. Each person showed tension in a different way. Lianne at InOps drummed her painted fingernails on the edge of her console. The lights on Rhombus's web flashed randomly — not a coherent pictogram, but just a sign of mental agitation. Jag picked at his fur and slid his translucent dental plates across each other, making a faint chalk-on-slate sound. Keith got up and paced. Rissa busied herself organizing files on her computer.
Only the unflappable Thoraid Magnor seemed calm, swinging his giant feet onto his console, and leaning back in his chair, hands interlaced behind his orange mane.
But despite Thor's appearance, there was reason for concern. Ten years ago, a boomerang launched from Tau Ceti had reached its target, a dormant shortcut near the M3-class star Tejat Posterior in the constellation Gemini.
That boomerang never returned to Tau Ceti. Instead, at about the time it was supposed to come home, a smooth ball of metal shot out of the Rehbollo shortcut. Analysis determined that the ball was the remains of the probe after some process had briefly broken all molecular bonds in its construction.
The word "process" had been deliberately chosen for the public reports, but many believed that no natural activity could have done that, not even if the Tejat Posterior shortcut exit had been inside a star's core.
The hypothetical beings responsible were dubbed "Slammers," because they'd apparently slammed the interstellar doorway in the Commonwealth's collective face.
Additional hyperspace probes with heavy shielding had been sent toward Tejat Posterior (from launch points well away from any-of the Commonwealth homeworlds), but it would still be another two years before they arrived there.
Until they did, the mystery of the Slammers remained unresolved — but there was always a fear that they might be lurking behind other shortcuts.
"With relief, I report a tachyon pulse," announced Rhombus.
Keith let out his breath; he hadn't been aware that he'd been holding it until then. The pulse meant something was coming through the shortcut; the probe was returning. They watched as the shortcut grew from an infinitesimal point to a meter in diameter, with a violet periphery. The cylindrical object popped through. Keith nodded slightly: the probe appeared undamaged. It maneuvered back toward Starplex under its own power, meaning its internal electronics were still intact, and slid down the launching tube into its berth.
Umbilicals were attached to it, and its store of data was uploaded into PHANTOM, Starplex's central computer.
"Let's see it," Keith said, and Rhombus complied, replacing the spherical hologram of space outside Starplex with what the probe had seen on the other side of the shortcut. At first, it just seemed to be more space, different constellations enveloping them. There were murmurs of disappointment.
One always hoped that a spacecraft would be visible — a ship from whatever race had brought the shortcut on-line.
Jag got out of his chair, and walked around to stand in front of the two rows of workstations. He rotated on his hooves, looking at various parts of the hologram, then began interpreting what was visible for the rest of them. "Well," said a translated Brooklyn accent overtop of his dog barks, "it looks like normal interstellar space. Just what you'd expect for the Perseus Arm — lots of blue stars, not too densely packed."
He stopped and pointed. "See that band of light?
We're on the inner edge of the Perseus Arm, looking back toward the Orion Arm. Neither Galath nor Hotspot would be visible from here, but we might be able to find Sol in a telescope."
He began a circumnavigation of the bridge, his black' hooves ticking against the invisible floor. "The only thing that looks bright enough to be a nearby main-sequence star is that one there." He indicated a blue-white point that was indeed brighter than all the others. "Still, it shows no sign of a visible disk, so at a minimum we are several billion kilometers from it. Of course, we can use a couple of probes to do some long-base-line parallax tests to see how close it is as soon as we go through the shortcut; I don't normally favor A-class stars for having habitable planets, but it seems as good a place as any to start looking for whoever activated this exit."
"So you think it's safe for us to go on through?" Keith asked. The Waldahud turned to face him, and his left pair of eyes blinked.
"There doesn't appear to be any immediate danger," he said. "I'll want to review the rest of the probe's data, but it looks just like, well, space."
"Okay. In that case, let's try-"
"Just a second," said Jag, apparently catching sight of a part of the hologram over Keith's shoulder. He walked toward the director, then continued on, past the seating gallery behind his station. "Just a second," he said again.
"Rhombus, how much real-time hologram is left?"
"I abase myself to admit we exhausted the real-time playback two minutes ago," said the Ib at the ExOps console. "I've been looping the playback since then."
Jag walked over to the bridge wall — which was something like taking a few steps toward a distant mountain in hopes that doing so would improve one's view of it. He peered into the darkness. "That area there," he said, circling his upper left ann to indicate a large portion of the starfield.
"There is something unusual… Rhombus, speed up the playback. Ten times normal rate, and loop it continuously."
"Done without rancor," said Rhombus, ropes snapping.
"That can't be," said Thor, who had turned around to look as well. He half rose from his chair at the helm console.
"But it is," said Jag.
"What is it?" asked Keith.
"You see it," said Jag. "Look."
"All I see is a bunch of stars twinkling."
Jag lifted his upper shoulders, the Waldahud equivalent of a nod of assent. "Exactly. Just like a clear winter's night back on your wondrous Earth, no doubt. Except," he said, "that stars do not twinkle when seen from space."
GAMMA DRACONIS
You hold, the glass man had said, not only the key to the future, but also to the past. The glass man's words echoed in Keith's mind. He looked around at trees, the lake, the blue sky. All right, all right — Glass had said it was not a cage, not a zoo, that he could leave at any time. Still, his head was reeling. Maybe it was because all this was too much to take in at once, despite Glass attempt to provide familiar surroundings. Or maybe the sensation was an aftereffect of Glass's mind-probe — Keith still suspected something like that was at work here. Either way, he found himself feeling dizzy, and decided to lower his body down to the grass. At first he knelt, but then he moved into a more comfortable position, with his legs sticking out to one side. He was astonished to see he'd gotten a grass stain on the knee of his pants.