To Save the Sun

by Ben Bova

  The test would fail. Rice already knew it. Emperor Javas, Fain and all the scientists at the test site—both human and alien—knew it would fail. And, according to the surreptitiously gained information he'd received from a source close to Rice, even Dr. Montgarde would know by now that this test was destined to be unsuccessful.

  He had no way of knowing what Dr. Montgarde's reaction was when she had received the illegal communication his source told him had been routed through the aliens. But if the mood of those now observing the test—from those around him here at the site, to Emperor Javas back on Luna—was any indication, the effect was not what he had anticipated.

  Bomeer had hoped to bring about a questioning of their goals, a review of the project itself and the value it would serve compared with the obvious choice of merely evacuating Earth as he and Fain had originally proposed on Corinth a century ago. What he found instead was an attitude that what was about to happen was not a failed experiment, but rather a data-gathering endeavor that would better hone the experimentation process for research and development yet to come.

  How could I have been so wrong? he asked himself. There was a time when a failure like this would have stopped all forward motion; the Council of Academicians would have demanded that more study be done, that nothing further be attempted until a full reevaluation of the stated goals was presented, reviewed, dissected and then reassembled for still further study.

  But things were different now. There was the New Attitude, after all, now being openly embraced by the member planets of the Hundred Worlds.

  Fain and Javas are right. And before them, Emperor Nicholas. Bomeer nodded slowly in the darkened room, admitting for the first time that it was he and the last holdouts among the academicians who were out of step with the Empire, and not the other way around. We were blind to it all—No, he silently confessed, we blinded ourselves.

  "Academician?"

  He felt a hand on the sleeve of his tunic and turned to see Rice staring at him.

  "Academician?" he asked again, his hand covering the microphone of his headset. "Did you hear me, sir?"

  Bomeer smiled softly in resignation. "I'm sorry, Doctor, my mind was elsewhere. You were saying?"

  "Everything is in place. We're ready to allow the shields to permeate and begin the test. As the ranking member of the science team, the order is yours to give, Academician."

  The irony of the situation struck him that it would be he who gave the order for the test. A test that everyone involved in the research—indeed, everyone now watching in realtime through the tachyon link—already knew would be a failure. He felt suddenly old and wondered how he would be remembered for his actions this day.

  "Begin," he said simply.

  Rice spoke into the headset, his eyes not leaving the twin projections before them.

  Nothing happened visually. They continued watching, and Rice received reports over the headset almost as rapidly as the figures scrolled through the air around the various parts of the display. The readings were changing, much as they had in the second model, but still no visual changes occurred.

  Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen, twenty, twenty-five. Nearly thirty minutes had gone by before Bomeer noticed that the glow of the Sol star had increased slightly.

  The radiance grew steadily, becoming almost too bright to watch before the computer-controlled projection dimmed the image on the left. The brightness still increased, the familiar yellow glow lightening to a whiter shade as the energy heightened.

  "Academician…" Rice started to say, then hesitated and cupped his hand over the headset's earpiece. He stood suddenly and stared, not at the Sol star where most of the effects were being manifested, but at the feeder star.

  Bomeer followed his gaze, puzzled by the expression visible in the glow cast from the bright objects. The feeder star was visibly unaffected, the energy drain having the effect of speeding up its aging process. There should not be noticeable change in a feeder star until much later during its lifetime; certainly, since this mini-star would be dissipated at the conclusion of the test, nothing would be seen here. But still Rice stood riveted, his mouth open.

  What is he—? Bomeer stopped himself when he saw what had captured Rice's attention. Where was the fourth generator ship?

  "System! Increase right side image!"

  "What magnification would you—"

  "Double it!" Bomeer demanded, cutting off the system's query. The image enlarged immediately and the remaining three ships were easily visible. All were clearly in trouble.

  One was breaking up in space, the wet Sarpan atmosphere puffing out in a frozen crystalline cloud for a brief second before dissipating. The craft crumpled, as if being squeezed by a giant invisible hand, its size shrinking as it formed a tight ball of debris before he lost sight of it. The other two ships managed, through either their pilots' skill or good fortune, to get farther away and, although they suffered nothing like the damage that had just occurred to the other ship, they now appeared to be dead in space.

  The two men stood transfixed at the sight, unable to speak until a warning claxon jarred both of them.

  "System!" Bomeer yelled. "What's happening?"

  There was a brief pause as the room system analyzed his voice patterns, determining if he had clearance for the requested information. "Commander Fain has ordered the Port of Kowloon to begin an immediate pullback." It offered nothing further and Bomeer knew that asking for additional information would be fruitless.

  "Academician!" Rice had grabbed him by the shoulder and was pointing to the image of the Sol star. Bomeer turned, incredulous at what he saw.

  The mini-star glowed nearly white-hot, and had expanded to the limit of the innermost of the concentrically arrayed holding shields. The generator ships were moving away, but as the energy level increased, the inner shield disintegrated before his eyes, the star "jumping" in size to fill the space to the next shield. With more room inside the shields, the glow softened slightly and the brightness lowered, but immediately began to build again.

  The energy released by the ruptured inner shield traveled out from the mini-star in an invisible wave, catching the nearest of the fleeing generator ships in its grasp. The ship flared instantly, incinerated. There was a second flare on the opposite side, then a third and fourth as the energy wave caught up with them.

  The next shield burst, like the thin bubble it was, much the same as the first had minutes earlier. Two more flares followed and, although he hadn't seen them in the projection because the system had steadily dimmed the image in response to the intensified brightness, Bomeer knew that the two Imperial support ships had just been destroyed.

  The two projections had begun shrinking in size, and Bomeer reasoned that the Kowloon was accelerating fast enough now that the distance between them and the test site had been widened significantly. He hadn't realized that he'd risen to his feet, and he fell wearily back into his chair as he regarded the receding stars. He didn't bother to order the system to compensate the projection for the distance.

  There were no more flares as he watched the image fall away.

  Commander Fain's holographic image at the front of the viewing chamber remained so still that for a moment Rice wondered if the system had malfunctioned. He stood—had remained standing, in fact, since the conference started—lost deep in thought as they awaited the next report from the shuttle now surveying the test site.

  In contrast, Academician Bomeer, seated next to him, refused to sit still and fidgeted constantly. The man was severely distraught by what had happened and became increasingly so as the reports of additional fatalities came in. There were dark circles under his red eyes and his academician's garb was untidy for the first time in memory. Rice knew Bomeer had gotten no more sleep in the last day than he had. The academician ran his hand for the hundredth time through his disheveled hair, the sudden motion catching Fain's attention.

  There was no one else in the room, and although only the three of them we
re involved in this conference, Rice knew that everything they discussed would be relayed to the Emperor's top scientific aides on Luna. Emperor Javas himself had not been available for this conference. Rice had no way of verifying it, but he suspected that the Emperor was at this moment occupied in intense discussions with the Sarpan.

  "Commander?" The sudden disembodied voice of the reconnaissance shuttle pilot filled the chamber.

  Fain raised his head. "Yes, Captain?"

  "Sir, the craft the Sarpan sent out is between us and the two generator ships that tried to get away from the feeder star. They've got them in a gravity harness and refuse to allow us to get any closer. We've done a complete scan, though, and as far as we can tell there's no life on either of them."

  Fain nodded to himself, then, "No sign of the other two generator ships?"

  "No, sir; nothing appears on our scans and the gravity field here is too distorted for us to safely go any closer to the feeder to mount an effective search. We 're having a hard time maintaining this position as it is."

  "Very well, Captain. Return to the ship." Fain, still on his feet, turned to face them. "I think we can assume that there were no survivors inside a radius of four thousand kilometers at either star," he said bluntly. "All the Sarpan on the eight generator ships, thirty-two of them in all, were killed; along with the eight human crew members assigned to accompany them."

  Bomeer shifted again uneasily as Fain listed the casualties.

  "The Imperial support ships Dendam and Powell were incinerated in the flare, with the loss of all hands—more than three hundred."

  He hesitated and, although there was no outward change in his features, it seemed to Rice that Fain was pausing in a moment of reverence and respect for those killed in the accident—human and alien alike.

  Fain's mouth tightened into a straight line for several seconds, then, "I'm ordering that preparations for the return trip to Luna be finalized immediately, Dr. Rice. We should be ready to leave in under two weeks. Is there anything else your analysis requires here at the test site before we depart?"

  "What more analysis could you possibly want?" Bomeer demanded angrily before Rice could respond. He was on his feet and gestured at Fain in frustration. "The mistake we have made here should never be repeated! We should be the master of technology, but in our attempt to move technology too quickly into the future, we allowed technology to become master over us."

  Fain shook his head at the academician's outburst, but said nothing.

  "I've been warning of a failure like this since the beginning of the project."

  "May I remind you, Academician," Rice countered, "that it was you who rushed this experiment to its completion?"

  Commander Fain arched an eyebrow. "Is this true?"

  Bomeer stood speechless. He tried several times to refute what had been said, but gave up before turning back to his seat and falling heavily into it. "Yes," he said finally, his voice shaking.

  "Then you've not only interpreted the data incorrectly,"

  Fain said, staring down at them, "but you are also a fool with blood on his hands." The Commander said nothing more for several moments, then silently broke the connection.

  Rice stood, inhaling deeply and rubbing at his sore eyes, and regarded the academician. He sat slumped in his seat, his shoulders drooping, and stared at the darkened display area. Everything that Rice had come to associate with him—the arrogance, the self-assured air, the importance of his position—seemed to drain from him as he watched. The man was a mere shadow of the figure he had been when they left Luna.

  "You think this was a failure?" Rice asked in a tone of voice he would never previously have dared use with the academician.

  Bomeer didn't turn, and continued staring wordlessly at the empty area in front of him.

  "A tragedy, yes," Rice went on, "a senseless act of stupidity that could have been avoided if you had put our goals ahead of your own. But this was no failure. We have the proof that Dr. Montgarde's theories are valid, and we have the figures we need to restructure the equations to allow for the characteristics of the shielding. Far from bringing this project to an end, or even slowing it down, the test shows us that what we've done here is only a beginning."

  Rice walked to the exit of the viewing chamber. "What we've accomplished here was worthwhile, and your efforts to stall us can't change that." He thumbed the control to open the door, then turned back to Bomeer one last time as the door slid aside. "You've only succeeded in changing its cost."

  Rice turned away and, although not bothering to close the door as he strode away, didn't see Bomeer bury his face in his hands.

  "Temple? Do I disturb you?"

  Rice sat upright at his desk in the open lab, blinking rapidly at the light, and looked at Oidar standing before him in a Sarpan E-suit. The last two weeks had been busy ones. He had been going over some last-minute details before the Port of Kowloon prepared to return to Luna and had fallen asleep over his handheld. The alien stood motionless, his arms gently cradling a bulge in the front of the suit, and waited for him to come fully awake.

  "Oh… Oidar. No, no; I'm fine." He hadn't been expecting a visit from the alien and as he became more awake he suddenly remembered that the temperature settings in the open lab would be uncomfortable for Oidar once he'd removed his suit. "System! Increase lab temperature and humidity to—"

  "System! Cancel!" Oidar said, cutting him off. The room system beeped once as it reset itself to accept the alien scientist's voice pattern. "I am sorry, Temple, but I cannot stay." His voice was tinny as it came from the suit's small speaker, but Rice could easily tell that he was uneasy.

  "Oidar, what's wrong?"

  He took off the E-suit's bubble helmet and set it on the corner of the desk. Water dripped from the helmet's collar ring and ran in a thin trickle over the edge. Rice ignored it.

  "There is something here for you to see." Oidar pulled a data stick from a sleeve pocket and handed it to him, then again caressed the suit bulge. "It is a recording of the accident at the breeder star. I am sure you have such recordings, but our scans"—he paused briefly, a hint of apology in his tone—"are better at penetrating our own shielding than yours. It is not visible, but please to note if something strange appears in the readout."

  Rice took the stick and inserted it into his handheld. "What should I be looking for?" Oidar shook his head, and Rice understood that the alien didn't want to influence him. Perhaps Oidar wasn't sure what it was either.

  He started the playback and the figures ran through in the same sequence and values as on the Imperial recordings of what had happened. "I'm not sure I understand what it is you want me to—" There was a sudden anomaly in the readouts that stood out sharply from the familiar sequence. "What was that?" Oidar smiled and nodded. Rice reversed the playback a few increments and started it again. Again, the anomaly appeared. Rice removed the stick and replaced it with another, then watched as it played back and compared the two. When it finished, he set the handheld back on his desk.

  "What did you see?" Oidar tilted his head curiously.

  "I'm not sure," Rice replied. "Everything matched the figures we got. The energy levels in your recording, made at the time the shielding ruptured, are the same as ours. The energy released by the destroyed ships shows up at the same intensity as in ours. But where our recording showed six explosions—the four generator ships and the two Imperial craft—this one shows a seventh."

  "So."

  "Yeah, 'so' is right." Rice leaned against the desk and crossed his arms as he considered what he'd just seen. "Can I assume your scans of the feeder star are as good as this one, and that you've detected no trace of the generator ship that disappeared there?"

  Oidar nodded.

  "Could it be the missing ship?" Rice asked, more to himself than to Oidar. He looked up, then, "Do your people think it could somehow have been drawn through the wormhole when the energy balance went critical, only to be incinerated with the other ships at the br
eeder star a few seconds later?"

  "They do, Temple. But—" He hesitated, his voice again taking on the apologetic tone. "But they do not wish to share this information with you at this time."

  Rice understood. The feeder star had been separated from the breeder by a distance of 900,000 kilometers. If the anomaly on the data stick proved to be the missing ship…

  "Temple?"

  Rice looked up and saw that Oidar was shaking. The air in the open lab was dry, and his skin no longer glistened as it had when he'd first removed his helmet.

  "My God," Rice said, grabbing the helmet, "you'll hurt yourself. Put this on. Now." He snatched the helmet from the desk and tried to slip it over his friend's head, but was stopped by Oidar's hand firmly grasping his shoulder.

  "A moment more, then I promise to put it on." Rice stopped, but continued to hold the helmet. Oidar's hands moved to the bulge in the E-suit, and he rubbed at it in a circular motion. Rice noticed that the bulge moved slightly at his touch.

  "They move now without benefit of tails," Oidar said, and Rice knew that meant they were walking on newly developed legs. There was both pride and sadness in Oidar's voice. "They will be mature soon and will choose their way. I am hoping they will all choose science and will investigate what we have found here. When you are again back at Luna I will be gone, but they will work at your side as I have done. As did my father before me."

  "And they will be…" Rice groped for the phrase he'd once heard Oidar use. "They will be gladly received."

  There was an awkward silence that seemed to last forever before Oidar reached for the helmet and lowered it over his head. The helmet sealed at the collar ring, he inhaled deeply for several seconds, then held out his hand, palm forward. Rice placed his own palm flat against the other's in a Sarpan gesture of final touching. Their hands parted, and Rice grasped the alien's hand in a firm handshake. Oidar said nothing when he released his grip and walked for the door. Rice remained standing at the desk.

  When he reached the door, Oidar stopped and turned back. "Temple," he began tentatively, his voice again thin and tinny in the suit speaker. "I have studied your medical records most thoroughly…"