On my mom's 15" powerbook I played vendetta like 2 times, I noticed that in each sector there would be a black pentagon in 2 places on the skybox, around the sun, and paralel to the sun on the other side of the skybox. It wasn't solid, it was more of a thick border.

IT'S A F*CKING CONSPIRACY MAN! GET MULDER!

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ANYWHO.........

After reading that an falling asleep, I had a dream about pentagons in Vendetta. They were accually warp gates to other sectors, with wierd looking stations, and alien artifacts that could only be purchased with some odd form of currency. At the same time, I was dreaming about hiking, and on the trip we found some of this currency, so I went back to the other dream and got some stuff.

AHHAhahaha, dreams are hilarious, there even better when you remember them.

Err, anyways. Those are just the sections of the background, it's not all one peice. I've seen this happen on several machines, including a linux box. Anyways, it's just because they're not lining up properly. Dunno why it does this, but the star thing is one background, and the planets and stars and moons are all seperate pieces that can be moved at will. Guess the image map is shaped like a pentagon. I suspect that for some reason the images you downloaded from a mirror were at fault.