“Well, luster quarks each mass about seven hundred and sixteen times what an electron does; that’s about eighteen percent more than an up or a down quark. So a luster atom has a little more mass, and therefore produces a little more gravity, than does a normal atom with a comparable number of nucleons. Damned if I know how these luster quarks interact chemically with each other, though.”
Jag was pacing back and forth. “All right,” he said. “All right—how about this? Let’s propose two more fundamental forces on top of the traditional four. Ever since the old Standard Model broke down, we’ve been looking for additional forces anyway. Say one force is long-range and repulsive—Cervantes and I already observed that one at work while trying to push pieces of the gravel together with tractor beams. The other force would be medium-range and attractive.
“What does that do for us?“ asked Delacorte.
“Well,” said Jag, “normal chemistry is the result of orbital overlap of electrons surrounding charged nuclei; there’s none of that going on here. But if the medium-range attractive force was stronger than the weak nuclear force, then it could act almost as ‘meta-charge,’ making possible a kind of ‘meta-chemistry.’ It could bind atoms without relying on electromagnetism to do so. Meanwhile, the long-range repulsive force would repel luster quarks from each other. It would only be overwhelmed by the quarks’ own gravity when enough mass density was present to force them together. It’s similar to gravity forcing electrons and protons together to make a neutron star despite the degeneracy pressure wanting to keep electrons out of each other’s orbitals.” He looked at Rissa. “This means we’ve got ‘meta-chemistry’ that can conduct possibly quite complex reactions at the molecular level, but at the macro levelluster matter can only clump together in world-sized masses whose own gravity is enough to overpower the repulsive force.”
Delacorte looked impressed. “If you can work out the mechanism of all that, you’ll win the Nobel or Kayf-Dukt for sure. It really is incredible—a whole different kind of matter that only interacts slightly with baryonic—”
“Pastark!” barked Jag. “By all the gods, do you know what this is?” His fur was whipping about like wheat in a high wind.
“Tell us,” said Rissa at last, irritated.
“We shouldn’t be calling it ‘luster matter,’ ” Jag said. “The stuff already has a perfectly good common name.” His two right eyes looked at Delacorte’s image and his two left at Rissa. “Dark matter!”
“Good God!” said Delacorte. “Good God, I think you’re right.” She shook her head in wonder. “Dark matter.”
“That it is,” said Jag. “It makes up the vast bulk of our universe, and until now we’ve never known what it was. This is the find of the century!” His four eyes closed, picturing the glory.
DELTA DRACONIS
“What was Saul Ben-Abraham like?” asked Glass.
Keith looked around the forest simulation, thinking of all the ways he could describe the man who had been his best friend. Tall. Boisterous. A guffaw that could be heard a kilometer away. A guy who could identify any song in three notes. A man who could drink more beer than anyone Keith had ever met—he must have had a bladder the size of Iceland. Finally, Keith settled on, “Hairy.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Glass.
“Saul had a great beard,” said Keith. “Covered most of his face. And he had this one giant eyebrow, like a chimp had laid its forearm across his head. The first time I ever saw him in shorts, I was amazed. The guy looked like sasquatch.”
“Sasquatch?”
“A mythical primate from my part of Earth. I still remember seeing him in shorts for the first time and saying, gee, Saul, you’ve got hairy legs. He let out that great laugh of his and said, ‘Yes—like a man.’ ” I said it was more like ten men.” Keith paused. “God, how I miss him. Friends like that, who mean that much to you, come along perhaps once in a lifetime.”
Glass was quiet for several seconds. “Yes,” he said at last. “I suppose that’s true.”
“Of course,” said Keith, “there was more to Saul than just a thick coat of fur. He was brilliant. The only person I’ve ever met who I thought might be brighter than him is Rissa. Saul was an astronomer. He’s the person who discovered the Tau Ceti shortcut, from its footprint in hyperspace. The guy should have won a Nobel prize for that… but they don’t like to award them posthumously.”
“I appreciate your loss,” said Glass. “It’s as if—oh, excuse me. My reckoner says I’ve got an incoming thought package. Will you excuse me for a little while?”
Keith nodded, and Glass took an odd step, sort of sideways, and disappeared. Doubtless he’d gone through a door hidden by the forest simulation filling the docking hay—the only direct visual evidence Keith had had that he wasn’t actually back on Earth. Well, if there was a door, Keith wanted to find it. He patted the air in the spot that Glass had disappeared from, but there was nothing. There had to be a wall somewhere around, though. The bay wasn’t that big. Keith began to walk, figuring he was bound to hit a wall eventually. He continued on for perhaps five hundred meters without encountering any obstruction.
Of course, if his—he started to think the word “captor,” again, but fought it down and substituted “host” instead—if his host were being clever, he could have manipulated the images to make Keith think he was walking in a straight line when he was really going in a circle.
Keith decided to rest. As much as he tried to find time to work out in Starplex’s Earth gym, which had gravity set to a full standard gee, he’d lost some muscle tone because of all the time he spent in the lighter Wald-standard gravity used in the ship’s common elements. He really should take Thor Magnor up on his offer of playing handball; Keith and Saul had played the game regularly, but he’d given it up when Saul had died.
Keith lowered himself to the ground again, which, at this spot, was covered with clover. Keith found it quite comfortable to sit on. He ran his hand through the clover, enjoying the feel of it against his skin, and looked around. It was a remarkable simulation, he thought. So relaxing, so beautiful. He watched some birds moving high overhead, but they were too far away for him to identify the species.
Keith plucked a piece of clover and brought it up to look at. Maybe this was his lucky day; maybe he’d find a four-leaf clover…
What luck. He did.
He plucked a few more pieces, and his jaw dropped.
He pressed his face to the ground, and examined plant after plant.
They were all four-leaf clovers.
He brought one up to his face, held between thumb and index finger, and scrutinized it. It seemed like normal clover in almost every way. It even bled a little green plant juice from its severed stem. But each of these clovers had four leaves. Keith remembered from undergraduate botany that the genus name for clover was Trifolium—three leaves. By definition, clover had three leaves, except in the odd mutant individual. But these plants all had four distinct oval leaves.
Keith looked at the white and pink flowers growing from some of the plants. Definitely clover—but four-leaf clover. He shook his head. How could Glass have gotten all the other details right, but have made a mistake such as this? It didn’t make any sense.
He looked around again, searching for any other discrepancies. Most of the deciduous trees did indeed seem to be maple—sugar maple, in fact, if he wasn’t mistaken. And those conifers were jack pine, and the big one a little farther along was a blue spruce. And—And what kind of bird was that? Sitting in that blue spruce? Surely not a cardinal or a jay. Oh, it had the tufted head crest, but it was emerald green, and its bill was flat and spatulate, unlike that of most songbirds.