Crossroads of the Galaxy

Prologue When the people of Earth finally reached out to explore the Universe, they found, to their pleasant surprise, that there were shortcuts to the stars. Scientists had predicted that voyages between solar systems might take hundreds of years apiece—but, thanks to the discovery of the starpaths, such journeys required only a couple of days or weeks. Suddenly the whole Galaxy lay at man’s doorstep. The starpaths were creases in the fabric of space itself. By traveling along these folds, a spaceship could bypass the vast gulfs of interstellar space and arrive at its destination in a tiny fraction of the time it would ordinarily have taken. No one knew precisely how the starpaths were originally formed, although there were plenty of theories: that they were the “wakes” of black holes moving rapidly through space; or that they were primordial remains of the “Big Bang” that created the Universe billions of years ago; or that they were somehow condensations of gravitic fields, possibly caused by pressure from adjacent universes. There were almost as many different theories as there were scientists trying to explain them. But if the origins of the starpaths were unknown, their properties were quite well defined. The starpaths acted like tunnels in space. Light from outside the entrance did not filter in, and ships had to traverse their length flying by instrumentation alone. The starpaths were of fixed length, going generally between one solar system and another—although sometimes they opened out into empty space, where there was no star at all. The paths were not fixed in space, but rotated at roughly the same rate as the Galaxy itself so that, in general, their ends remained stationary with respect to the stars they linked. There were thousands upon thousands of starpaths crisscrossing space throughout the Galaxy; there may even have been many millions. New ones were always being discovered and explored, with the result that frontiers were constantly being opened and the horizons of knowledge were continually expanding. Humans quickly discovered that they were no longer alone, that they shared the Galaxy with many other races of intelligent beings. Usually the first encounters with aliens were peaceful, and an exchange of ideas, goods, and technology benefited both parties. Occasionally, a clash of cultures led to hostilities, sometimes even wars. On the whole, however, there was plenty of room for everyone, and a flourishing trade grew up between the stars. In some instances, more than one starpath would intersect within a given solar system. These intersections became the natural centers for interstellar trade, since they were easily accessible to several races. The largest of these intersections—a place with access to more than three hundred starpaths—became the largest multiracial complex and trading center of the Galaxy: a place called Nexus.