Starplex

Chapter X

That night, Keith was eating dinner alone. He loved to cook, but he also loved to have someone to cook for — and Rissa was working late this evening. She and Boxcar had finally had a breakthrough in their Hayflick-limit studies, or, at least, so it appeared. But they were having trouble replicating the results, and so she'd just had sandwiches sent up to her lab.

Keith sometimes wondered how he'd gotten the job as Starplex's head honcho. Oh, it made sense, of course. A sociologist was assumed to be good both at managing the miniature society aboard the ship and at dealing with any new civilizations they might encounter.

But right now, despite all that was going on, there was little for him to do beyond the administrative. Jag would continue his dark-matter studies, as well as trying to make sense of the onslaught of stars; Hek would try to further decode the potentially alien radio signals; Rissa would pursue her life-prolongation project. And Keith? Keith kept hoping a windmill somewhere would start tilting at him — kept hoping for something important to do.

He'd decided to dine in one of the Ib restaurants. Not for the atmosphere, of course. With its almost billiard-ball-smooth surface, Flatland's landscapes, as depicted in the restaurant's holographic windows, were even less visually interesting than Rehbollo's; there was no doubt that when it came to interesting geography, Earth was the most beautiful of the homeworlds. But Ibese food was based on right-handed amino acids; it was completely indigestible by the other three races.

This restaurant, though, offered a wide range of human fare — including a chicken stir-fry, which was exactly what Keith had been craving. The restaurant was inordinately crowded; the four eating establishments in the lower-habitat modules were still uninhabitable. But one of the other privileges of rank was always getting a table without a wait. A sleek, silver robot showed Keith to a booth in the back. A large gestalt plant arched over it, orange octagonal leaves roaming its body freely.

Keith told the server what he wanted, and then he spoke to the desktop viewer, asking for the latest issue of the New Yorker to be displayed.

The server returned with a glass of white wine, then rolled away.

Keith was settling into the lead fiction piece in the magazine when—

Bleep. 'Karendaughter to Lansing.'

'Open. Yes, Lianne?'

'I've finished the engineering study on what to do about the irradiated lower decks. Can we get together so that I can give you my report?'

Keith swalloed once. Of course the report had to be dealt with right away; they needed to solve the overcrowding problem quickly. But where to meet Lianne? Gamma shift would be on the bridge now; no need to disturb them.

Keith's office would be the natural place, but… but… did he really trust himself to be alone with her?

Christ, this is stupid. 'I'm in the Drive-Through, having dinner. Can you bring the report here?'

'Sure thing. On my way. Close.'

Keith had a sip of wine. Maybe this was a mistake.

Maybe people would misconstrue, tell Rissa that he'd had a rendezvous in a booth with Lianne. Maybe — Lianne came in, escorted to his table by a robot. She sat down opposite him and smiled. Geez, she'd arrived quickly — almost as if she'd known where he was before calling, almost as if she'd planned to catch him alone at dinner…

Keith shook his head. Get real. 'Hi, Lianne,' he said. 'You've got a report for me?'

'That's right.' She was dressed in a cyan suit, crisp and professional.

But on her head, crowing her lustrous platinum hair, she was wearing a smart replica of an old-style railway engineer's cap.

Keith had seen her wearing it before, whimsical and stylish and sexy all at once. ''There are techniques,' she said, 'for cleaning up radiation damage. But they're all time-consuming, and—'

The server arrived, bringing Keith's dinner. 'Stir-fry,' said Lianne, smiling. 'I make a mean one of those. You should let me do it for you sometime.'

Keith reached for his wine, thought better of it, picked up his napkin, and, in so doing, sent his fork tumbling onto the rubberized floor. He bent down to retrieve it — and saw Lianne's shapely legs beneath the table.

'Um, thank you,' he said, straightening back up. 'That'd be nice.'

He indicated the steaming platter between them.

'Did you — did you want some?'

'Oh, no,' she said, patting her flat stomach, causing the fabric of her suit to pull tight across her breasts as she did so. 'I'll have a salad later. I've got to watch my figure.'

No need for that, thought Keith. I'll be glad to watch it for you.

'About the radiation?' he said.

She nodded. 'Right. Well, as I said, we can clean it up — but not quickly, and not without putting into drydock for several weeks.'

'Weeks!' said Keith. 'We can't afford that kind of time.'

'Exactly. Which brings me to my suggested solution.'

Keith waited for her to go on. 'Which is?'

'Starplex 2.'

Keith frowned. Starplex had been built at the Rehbollo orbital shipyards, and its sister ship — currently carrying the prosaic name of Starplex 2, although something else would likely end up being the official name — had been under construction now for close to a year. It was being built at Flatland; two such prime contracts couldn't go to the same homeworld, naturally. 'What about her?'

'Well, she's not yet ready for launch, or I'd say simply commandeer the whole thing. But she's being built from identical blueprints to Starplex 1 — and five of her eight habitat modules are already completed, according to the last report I received. We could pop through the shortcut to the Flatland shipyards, dump our lower-four habitat modules there, and replace them with four of the completed ones for Starplex 2.

The modules that we leave off could then be cleaned up at leisure.

Starplex 2's central disk won't be ready for another five months; the four hyperdrive generators have to be extensively tested before the engineering torus can be built around them. That should give plenty of time for the cleanup. When the time comes, our four old modules could be incorporated into the new ship. Of course, all the individual furnishings and equipment we had in our lower four will need to be cleaned up, too, but at least we'll have quarters and lab space for everyone right away.'

Keith nodded, impressed. 'That's brilliant. How long would that take?'

'The specs for habitat-module power-grid deconnection and reconnection call for three days, but I've devised an improved method that doesn't require powering down the couplings. I could do it in fifteen hours if we didn't need to wear radiation suits in the lower modules; in this case, eighteen hours should do the trick.'

'Excellent. What about the lower part of our main shaft and our central disk?'

'Well, the shaft is three quarters fixed up already. We can't clean it easily, but I've had nanotechs laying down extra shielding on its inner surface. As for the central disk, we'll have to completely replace the water in the ocean deck, of course. And not just with plain water, either. It has to be a full seawater formulation, with dissolved salt and other minerals, plus, if possible, plankton and fish stocks.

Also, I'd like to replace all the shipboard air, just to be on the safe side. The docking bays are no problem — they're heavily shielded. Same thing for the engineering torus; its shielding kept it from getting too much of a hit of radiation, as well.'

Keith nodded. 'How long till we can safely maneuver through the shortcut?'

'Tomorrow afternoon, maybe earlier. The gap between the shortcut and the green star is opening rapidly. And as long as you're willing to risk losing half a dozen watsons in trying, we should be able to get word of our intentions through to the Flatland shipyards right away so that the Ibs can start preparing for our arrival.'

'Good work, Lianne.' He looked at her, and she smiled again, a beautiful, warm, intelligent smile. Keith mentally kicked himself for sometimes forgetting that there was a reason she was aboard Starplex.