Starplex

means that whatever the samples are made of must be unusual stuff indeed.'

Lights moved up Rhombus's web. 'A fair assumption.'

Jag slid his dental plates together. 'There must be a way to bring some of that material aboard for study.'

'Doubtless you have already thought of this,' said Rhombus, 'and I waste both our time by mentioning the idea, but we could use a force box. You know, like the kind they use in labs for handling antimatter.'

Jag lifted his upper shoulders. 'Acceptable. But don't use an EM forcefield; instead, use artificial-gravity fields to hold the contents away from the box's walls, regardless of what acceleration we use.'

'Will do, with obeisance,' said Rhombus.

The force box was manipulated by tractor beams. It consisted of eight antigrav generators arranged as the corners of a perfect cube, with wide, paddlelike handles sticking off each face's midpoint to give the tractors something to hold on to. The box was pushed into one of the large gray spheres, and opened there. A second box was manipulated into the swarm of gravel between two of the spheres and activated there. The two boxes were then quickly hauled back in to Starplex.

Finally, the sample containers were maneuvered into separate isolation chambers in Jag's lab. The antigrav trick had been a success: one box did indeed contain samples of the gas that constituted the sphere, and the other held several pieces of translucent gravel plus one partially transparent rock the size of a hen's egg. Now, at last, Jag would find out what they were dealing with.

Chapter VI

Keith ran a hand over his pate, and leaned back in his chair, looking out at the starscape hologram enveloping the bridge. There wasn't much else to do, until Jag reported back. Rissa was still off working with Boxcar, and alpha shift was coming to an end. Keith exhaled — probably too noisily. Rhombus had rolled up to the director's workstation to discuss something or other. Lights flashed across the Ib's mantle.

'Irritated?' said his translated voice.

Keith nodded.

'Jag?' asked the Ib.

Keith nodded again.

'In politeness, I observe that he's not that bad,' said Rhombus. 'As Waldahudin go, he's positively genteel.'

Keith gestured toward the part of the starfield that hid the door Jag had gone through. 'He's so… competitive. Combative.'

'They're all like that,' said Rhombus. 'All the males, anyway. Have you spent much time on Rehbollo?'

'No. Although I was in on the first contact between humans and Waldahudin, I always thought that it was best for me to stay away from Rehbollo. I— I've still got a lot of anger over the death of Saul Ben-Abraham, I guess.'

Rhombus was quiet for a few moments, perhaps digesting this. Then his web rippled with light again. 'Our shift is over, friend Keith. Will you grant me nine minutes of your time?'

Keith shrugged and got to his feet. He addressed the room. 'Good work, everyone. Thank you.'

Lianne turned around, her platinum hair bouncing as she did so, and smiled at Keith. Rhombus and Keith headed out into the chilly corridor, the Ib rolling beside the human.

A couple of slim robots were moving down the corridor as well. One was carrying a lunch tray for someone; another was running a vacuum cleaner along the floor. Keith still privately thought of such robots as PHARTs — PHANTOM ambulatory remote toilers — but the Waldahudin had started throwing things when it was suggested that Starplex terminology contained acronyms nested within acronyms.

Through a window in the corridor wall, Keith could see one of the vertical dolphin-access tubes, consisting of meter-thick disks of water separated by ten centimeters of air held in place by force fields. The air gaps prevented the water pressure from increasing over the tube's height. As he watched, a bottle-nosed dolphin passed by, swimming up.

Keith looked at Rhombus. Lights wexe flashing in unison on his web.

'What's so funny?' Keith asked.

'Nothing,' said the Ib.

'No, come on. What is it?'

'I was just thinking of a joke Thor told today. How many Waldahudin does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: five — and each one has to get credit.'

Keith frowned. 'Lianne told you that same joke weeks ago.'

'I know,' said Rhombus. 'I laughed then, too.'

Keith shook his head. 'I'll never understand how you Ibs can find the same thing funny over and over again.'

'I'd shrug if I could,' said Rhombus. 'The same painting is pretty each time you look at it. The same dish is tasty each time you eat it. Why shouldn't the same joke be funny each time you hear it?'

'I don't know,' said Keith. 'I'm just glad I got you to stop telling me that stupid 'that's not my axle — it's my feeding tube' joke every time we met. That was irritating as hell.'

'Sorry.'

They continued down the corridor in silence for a while, then: 'You know, good Keith, it's a lot easier to understand the Waldahudin if you've spent time on their world.'

'Oh?'

'You and Clarissa have always been happy together, if you'll permit me to say so. We Ibs don't have such intimacy with other individuals; we shuffle our own genetic material amongst our component parts, rather than bonding with a mate. Oh, I take comfort from my other components — my wheels, for instance, are not sentient, but they have intelligence comparable to that of a terrestrial dog. I have a relationship with them that gives me great joy. But I perceive that the relationship you enjoy with Clarissa is something much, much more. I only dimly understand it, but I'm sure Jag appreciates it. Waldahudin, like humans, have two sexes, after all.'

Keith couldn't see where this was going, and, on the whole, thought Rhombus was presuming on their friendship.

'Yes?'

'Waldahudin have two sexes, but they do not have equal numbers of each sex,' said the Ib. 'There are, in fact, five males for every female. Yet, despite this, they are a monogamous race, forming lifetime pairbonds.'

'So I've heard.'

'But have you contemplated the ramifications of that?' asked the Ib. 'It means that four out of every five males end up without a mate — end up being excluded from the gene pool. Perhaps you had to fend off some other suitors in your pursuit of Clarissa — or maybe she had to fend off others who were pursuing you; forgive me, but I've no idea how these things work. But I imagine in such contests it was a comfort to all the participants to know that for each male there was a female, and vice versa. Oh, the pairings might not end up as one might wish, but the chances were good that each man would find a woman, and vice versa — or a mate of their own gender, if that was their preference.'

Keith moved his shoulders. 'I suppose.'

'But for Jag's people, that is not the case. Females have absolute power in their society. Every single one of them is — courted, I believe is the word — by five males, and the female, when she reaches estrus at thirty years of age, will pick her one mate from the five who have spent the last twenty-five years vying for her attentions. You know Jag's full name?'

Keith thought for a moment. 'Jag Kandaro em-Pelsh, isn't it?'

'That's right. Do you know its derivation?'

He shook his head.

'Kandaro is a regional designation,' said Rhombus. 'It refers to the province Jag traces lineage to. And Pelsh is the name of the female of whose entourage he is a member.