Trizbort map. Most of Starcross has unusual geography (topography?) for a text adventure: you are on the inside surface of a cylinder that is rotating to provide simulated gravity through centrifugal force. "Down" is towards the surface of the cylinder and "up" is towards its axis. Fortunately, you do not need to use fore/aft/starboard/port directional inputs (although you can if you like), nor do you have to think much about whether you are moving clockwise or counterclockwise around the rings that circle the cylinder along its length. Standard NSEW directions work just fine in most areas. The blind connections on the east and west edges of the main part of the map actually wrap around to the other side. The airlocks and docks shown below the main part of the map are a level "down", being on the outside of the cylinder, and the area off to the right is "up" around the cylinder's axis. The room shaded in grey is where you first enter the artifact from the Red Airlock.

Aboard the Starcross

Stand up out of your bunk. Get the tape library and go east to the Bridge. Push the red button to turn off the alarm on the mass detector. Read the screen. Look up the number of the uncharted mass in the table provided in the game feelies and make a note of the range, theta, and phi coordinates:

Object	Range	Theta	Phi
UM08	150	110 (or 210?)	017
UM12	100	345	107
UM24	100	285	087
UM28	250	045	178
UM31	150	105	067
UM52	175	165	035
UM70	100	135	101
UM91	050	015	121

 

Sit down on the control couch and fasten the belt. Set your course with the command computer, range is __, theta is __, phi is __ and then say computer, confirm. Wait ten turns while you travel to the alien object, it rotates underneath you, and then "a huge articulated metal tentacle" grabs your ship and draws it in to the red docking area. Examine the viewport. Unfasten the belt and get up. Go east to the Storage room. Get the space suit and safety line. Wear the suit. Return west to the Bridge and open the inner door. Go out to the Airlock and close the inner door. Open the outer door and go out to the Red Dock.

Examine the relief. Does a large body surrounded by nine smaller bodies at various distances remind you of anything? This is a diagram of the Solar System -- the Sun with its nine planets (hi, Pluto!). Press the fourth bump (Earth, naturally). Press the tiny bump that appears. (Given the background information in the game manual, you might have thought this was Ceres, the largest asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter and where the Starcross is registered; but according to the Invisiclues, it's meant to represent the Artifact itself.) Get the black crystal rod. Go inside to the Red Airlock. Close the outer door, open the inner door, go in to the Red Hall, and close the inner door of the airlock.

For Your Amusement:
Read the Starcross' registration.
While inside the ship, jump.
Turn on the tape library and play the tape. (There are eight possible selections.)
Computer, hello.
Computer, kill me.
Open the outer airlock door without wearing the space suit. (save first)
Wear the space suit, tie the safety line to the suit and to the hook outside the airlock, and go out to Outside Ship. Then try: untying the line and waiting; taking off the space suit. (save first)
Set course for range 200, theta 240, phi 134, and confirm. (save first) (This is just one of the other six possible masses given in the game chart, but all of them give the same response, so I just picked AX01 rather than reproduce the chart.)
Set invalid/random coordinates. (Don't confirm them.)
Don't fasten your seat belt. (save first)
Unfasten your seat belt after you arrive but before the artifact grabs you, then continue to wait. (save first)
Watch the artifact grab the Starcross while outside the ship. (You can unfasten the safety belt just after the course correction burn, then go out the airlock.) (save first)
At the Red Dock, jump, and drop something. (save first, unless you pressed the blue button and took the mass detector output; that's the only object you can afford to lose.)

Rod Hunting

Red rod

Go north, west, north, and east to the Nesting Cage. Examine the nest. Throw the tape library at the nest. (You jerk!) Get the red crystal rod and the tape library.

Yellow rod

Go west, south, west, and south to a Blue Hall location with exits up and down. Open the inner door and go down. Close the inner door, open the outer door, and go out to the Blue Dock. Go south twice to a Spherical Ship where a spider-like alien looks at you. Spider, hello. Give Gurthark the tape library and he will give you a yellow crystal rod. Get the rod. Return north, north, in, close the outer door, open the inner door, in to the Blue Hall.

For Your Amusement:
Before giving the tape library to Gurthark, hang around while he asks you questions. (There are five possibilities. Unfortunately, the game can't process answers.)
Shoot Gurthark with the ray gun from the Weapons Deck. (save first)

Let there be light (and oxygen)

Go up to the Grassland and south to Thin Forest. Open the hatch. Go down to the Repair Room. Get the metal and ceramic square. Put the yellow rod in the yellow slot. (This turns the lights back on in the yellow hall.) Put the red rod in the second red slot. (The wavy lines represent gaseous matter, and the dot diagrams represent molecules of various potential atmospheric gases. The first is CH4, methane; the second is O2, oxygen; the third is NH3, ammonia.) Return up from the Repair Room, north, and down to the blue hall.

For Your Amusement:
Go west into the other Grassland location and watch the weasels hunt a unicorn.
Put the red rod in the slot for methane or ammonia, remove your suit if you're wearing it, and wait 30+ times. (save first)

Blue rod

Go south twice, west, south, and east into the Laboratory. The silvery globe here is a force field. ("This is a technology so far beyond current human experience that it is impossible to explain. Ask again when you fully understand the details of the Matter Intransitivity Principle of the Dornbrookian Unified Field Theory.") Turn the dial to 1. Hmm, how to get that blue crystal rod that's imbedded in the globe?

Take the red and blue disks that are hanging on the wall. These teleport objects from one disk to the other, wherever they are, so long as both are on the ground. Put one on the floor and the other under the globe. Turn the dial to 2 or 3. Put any object, like the square or black rod, on the globe. Turn the dial to 4. When the sphere expands, the object you placed will fall onto the disk below, activating it and teleporting both the object and the blue rod to the other disk. Turn the dial to any smaller size again so you can reach the disk underneath it. Get both disks, your spare object, and the blue rod.

For Your Amusement:
Shoot the sphere with the ray gun from the Weapons Deck. (save first; this will "work" as far as getting the blue rod, but the gun has only three shots in it and you need all three for a later purpose.)
After placing the disks and turning the dial to 4, step on the disk on the floor. (save first)

Pink rod

Go west and north twice to the Yellow Hall location with the airlock. Open the inner door and go down into the Yellow Airlock. Close the inner door. Put all your rods in the basket and pick it up. Open the outer door twice. Go out to the Yellow Dock. Tie the line to your suit and then to the hook. Go west to Among Debris. Get the pink rod from the unfortunate dead reptile. Return east, untie the line from the hook, and go back up to the Yellow Airlock. Close the outer door, open the inner door, and go up to Yellow Hall.

Clear rod

Go north, east, north, and west to the Observatory. Examine the projector. Get the black rod from the basket and look at the projector through it. Get the clear rod. (An alternate solution is to use the fragment of smoked glass found in the Cargo Hold of the weasels' ship; see Violet rod below.)

For Your Amusement:
Look into the projector without using the visor glass or black rod. (save first) (Do not look into laser with remaining eye!)

Control computer / Gold rod

Go east, north, west twice, and south to the Computer Room. Open the access panel on the computer. Put the metal/ceramic square in the slot. Turn on the switch. Get the gold rod. Read the description of the enunciator panel.

The first bank, with the symbol of the emission of rays, means light, as you may have guessed when you repaired the yellow hall lights with the yellow rod. The flashing red light in this bank refers to the fading lights in the red hall and the yellow one means the lights in the yellow hall have failed (it does not change for the emergency lighting). The lit and flashing yellow lights in the second and third banks indicate problems with the yellow docking port and the yellow airlock, as you saw.

On the other side of the panel, the dark indicators for navigation, engine, library, and defenses mean there are no problems with these systems (indeed, you'll never even see anything to do with library or defenses in this story). The fifth (cage) light shows the breakout in the Zoo. The symbol for the sixth light represents solid, liquid, and gas states of matter, similar to the wavy lines on the repair machine where you selected oxygen. The flickering light indicates a problem with the artifact's atmosphere. (You might not have noticed the air problem since you solved it as soon as you could. When the tentacle appears to grab the Starcross, a "bad air" timer is set to 75 moves + a random number up to 50.)

Green rod

You may or may not have already encountered "a small metal contraption ... a mechanical mouse". (Does its description remind anyone else of K-9 from Doctor Who?) You must now wander around through the colored halls until you find it, so go north to Room on Ring One, save the game, and start moving. (...Whee. Are we having fun yet? If you get really frustrated from doing this for dozens of turns and the mouse hasn't shown up, if you're using the Frotz interpreter you can press Alt+D to enter a debug mode and turn on object movement tracking to help anticipate the mouse's location. The mouse's movements are random, so quitting and reloading the game file to get a new random seed may have some effect.)

When you finally spot the mouse, drop one of the disks and wait. The mouse will grab it ("picks up some refuse"). Go to Room on Ring Four, between the blue and red halls. Save the game. Wait here for a while, then drop the other disk and stand on it. If nothing happens, the mouse has not yet dumped the disk in the trash; keep waiting and try again. Eventually you will be teleported to the Garage. (This may take a long time. There's only a 15% chance that the mouse will go into its hole on a given turn. You can follow the mouse after it picks up the disk, but I always find it super frustrating to be following the damn thing around for ages while it refuses to go into its "previously unnoticed hole" in a room. If you have object movement tracking turned on, you will be able to see when the mouse object is moved to the Garage even if you aren't in the room it leaves from.)

Save the game once more. Get the disk. Search the the trash bin repeatedly until you find a green crystal rod. Take the rod. It's possible that while you were doing this, the mouse will have picked up the disk you left behind and brought it here as well. If so, make sure to grab it before you leave. Go north. You will emerge in Room on Ring Four. Hopefully your other disk is still here; pick it up. If not, you may find it less frustrating to just restore the game than to repeat the whole circus just to get the other disk back. (You must have both disks to continue.)

For Your Amusement:
Go down the chute in the Garage. (save first)

Silver rod

Go west, north, and west to the Weapons Deck. Drop one of the disks here (you are pre-positioning it for a later need). Get the gun and look inside it. Get the silver rod.

Brown rod

Go east, south, east twice, north, and east twice to the Village Center. Remove your space suit. Wait for the weasel-alien chief to appear; notice he is wearing a brown crystal rod. He seems very taken with your space suit, so give the suit to the chief. Point to the brown rod and he will reluctantly give it to you, then head off into the Warren.

For Your Amusement:
Talk to the weasels.
Talk to the chief.
When the weasel chief is asking you to claim something in trade for your suit, point at his wife or child.
Shoot the weasel chief's wife or child.
Drop something in the weasels' village. (save first - you need everything, and there's only a 25% chance you'll get the item back.) -- per the source it should get stolen, but I'm not able to trigger this

Violet rod

Follow chief until you arrive at Center of the Warren. (The Warren is otherwise unnavigable. If you go into it alone, you'll never get out.) Go down to the Green Airlock. Close the inner door, then open the outer door. Go out to the Green Dock, west twice, and north to the Control Room of the weasels' ship. Touch or move the skeleton. Look. Get the violet rod. Drop the teleportation disk on the floor and stand on it. You will be teleported to the disk you left behind, hopefully in the Weapons Deck. (There is a chance the maintenance mouse will have collected it again and you will find yourself in the Garage. In that case, go north, west, and north twice to the Blue Hall location with up and down exits.)

For Your Amusement:
Move the skeleton twice, or shoot it with the ray gun. (save first)
Go back through the Green Airlock after taking the violet rod. (save first)

Activating the Artifact

From the Weapons Deck, go east, north, and up to Grassland. Go east and south twice to the base of a massive tree. Climb the tree twice to Top of Tree. The hatch to the drive bubble is "out of reach"... but the gravity here is so much lessened that you can jump there! At the Drive Bubble Entrance, put the silver rod in the silver slot. Go in to the Drive Bubble. Get the white rod and put it in the white slot. This will activate the drive. Go out and up to On Drive Bubble, climbing onto the outer surface of the bubble.

Now, how to get to that control bubble at the other end? Well, there's no gravity here... maybe jump again? (Or you can push the drive bubble.) Hmm, seems like that wasn't enough force to make it all the way. Well, shoot! No, really: shoot the gun at the drive bubble three times. (Guess it's more of a flamethrower than a "ray gun"! Still, I'm not sure that would have enough kinetic energy to work...) From On Control Bubble, go down to Control Bubble Entrance. Put the gold rod in the gold slot and enter the Control Bubble.

Put the clear rod in the clear slot and five other colored slots will appear. Put each rod into the slot of its own color (the order doesn't matter) and each will reveal one of the ship controls. Touch the large square once and the scene on the pink screen will zoom out from the artifact ("nearby space") to show the inner Solar System. Touch the brown spot to select destination: four times until Earth is "brightly highlighted". Press the violet spot to select a course: four times until "the line terminates in a circle around Earth. (The ellipse will also work.) Press the green spot to select the speed: once for a slower speed. (The medium speed, "flashing rapidly", will also work.) Press the blue spot to activate the drive and set off for Earth.

For Your Amusement:
Jump from the Drive Bubble Entrance. (save first)
In the Drive Bubble, put the black rod in the black slot. (save first)
Try going to the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, or Jupiter (same response).
Try the course that terminates in the center of Earth and the parabolic course. (save first)

For Your Amusement at various times:
Shoot Gurthark (the spider). (save first)
Shoot the palisades that block passage into the weasels' village. (save first; this naturally annoys the weasels)
While carrying one of the disks, step on the other, or put one disk on top of the other. (save first)
Shoot the mechanical mouse. (You meanie! Save first if you haven't gotten the green rod)
Watch the mouse try to enter the Warren or climb the tree. (This may be hard to accomplish, since the mouse's movements are random.)
Examine a grue.
Jump.

Extras

For further entertainment, you may be interested in:
Lists of bugs in Starcross: Nathan Simpson, Graeme Cree, XyzzyNews
Posts about this game at The Digital Antiquarian, The Adventure Gamer, and SPAG
Source code

Points

There are a total of 400 points. You score 25 points each for getting the 12 crystal rods (300 points). Additionally, you score 25 points for each of the following actions:
Reach the Red Dock
Enter the Control Bubble
Program a course for the Artifact and press the blue spot
Arrive safely at Earth
You lose 10 points for dying, to a maximum of 4 times (?).

Last updated: 6/19/2021