Strands (Maura's Gate Book 4)

by Rawsontile, Fiona

  “When a star a lot larger than Earth’s sun dies, it’ll explode and then collapse. The gravity will be so strong that it crashes all the neutrons into a tight core. Their radius can be as small as seven miles, but a teaspoon weighs like a mountain.”

  “Seven miles in radius? That means if I start a marathon at its north pole, I’ll arrive at the south pole before I finish.”

  Grandpa laughed. “You wouldn’t be able to move your legs, assuming you still had a body.”

  The ship had started moving. Grandpa’s comment had somehow made her legs feel weak, so she sat on floor next to the couch. “How does that relate to black holes?”

  “Well, when the star remnant—what’s left after the explosion—is less than four solar masses, the gravity won’t be strong enough to compress it into a black hole. On the other hand, a neutron star can’t be heavier than ten solar masses. So there is a gray area in between. Certain neutron stars and black holes may co-exist with the same mass.”

  “Hmm, but there has to be an explanation.”

  “I guess, it has something to do with the density. For example, there are neutron stars paired with regular stars, and they rotate each other. The neutron star will keep sucking gases from its partner. The newly absorbed material on the surface isn’t as dense as the inner material. The neutron star sort of maintains a balance as it grows. However, if it suddenly receives an impact from an object, the local collapse may initiate a black-hole conversion.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Devin said, lowering the map. “None of the nearby candidates is eligible.”

  Grandpa sighed and patted on his shoulders. “Don’t give up, Devin.” Then he turned back to Korina. “Let’s say there is a moon-sized planet orbiting the neutron star. If we could somehow kick the moon hard enough so that it crashes into the neutron star, it most likely will trigger the process. Don’t forget that Earth’s moon is millions of times larger than a neutron star.”

  And the neutron star was millions of times Earth’s weight. Korina shook her head.

  “Of all the nearby candidates, three neutron stars have companies. Unfortunately, they are either yellow dwarfs or red giants, with no planetary systems. There’s nothing we can do with a star.”

  “This can be true!” Devin raised his voice. “Is God making fun of us? Korina, are you sure you printed the map correctly?”

  Korina didn’t know how to respond.

  Devin left where he was sitting and bent in front of her. “This is important, Korina. Is there any chance that you made a mistake?”

  She was certain she followed the procedure, but under the fervent gaze of this senior guy, she wished that she had specified a wrong date or screwed up some other parameters.

  “I’m sorry.” The fire in his eyes diminished. He straightened himself and quietly left the room.

  * * *

  They arrived at Planet Oasis on the following morning. Instead of going back to the village, which was located on the west coast of a small continent, Grandpa suggested “touring around”. Within hours, the ship’s high-resolution imaging system had identified several spots on a large island. As the ship descended toward one of them, they began making out various human traces on the ground: quarries, factories, tabernacles and to-be cropland. Needless to say, the area would eventually grow into a bustling city.

  They landed at a corner of a large bare ground next to an apartment complex. The air was humid, with no trace of the sand that reigned on the nearby continent. A few construction vehicles rumbled and twisted among piles of bricks and steel. When they walked past the workers, nobody paid them attention. Korina couldn’t believe those people and vehicles had stayed on the same planet with her during years of imagined loneliness.

  The noise subsided as they approached the apartments. Were those called condos or townhouses? She couldn’t tell based on the descriptions she had read in books. Some had half-built porches and windows without glass, but overall the complex was pretty much finished with a safe and pleasant atmosphere. In the distance, though, box-like buildings carrying tiny windows and dull colors stood next to one another.

  “You see that, Grandpa? Who’d want to live there?”

  Grandpa smiled. “If we were still on Earth, we wouldn’t be able to afford a square foot of that place.”

  Just then, they heard a man speaking loudly, “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going home.” A woman’s voice. “You tricked me here. You said it was a regular cruise.”

  Korina turned to the house on her right and saw a woman rushing out of the front door with a small suitcase. How pretty she was, even in anger! The light-yellow dress wafted like pearly sand dancing in the wind. A belt as glittering as the planetary rings wreathed around her waist. Though a tall and strong woman at Korina’s mother’s age, she did not resemble women in the village who picked up the corn or fed the chicken. She belonged to another society.

  “Because you wouldn’t listen!” The man was a few years older than her, with thick mustache and eagle-like dark eyes. “You know how much this small apartment cost me? I wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t care about you.”

  “Thank you, Dave, but you should’ve respected my choice.”

  The man held her arm and gazed at her intensely. “Rose, do you really understand what’s going to happen? Once the public grasps the situation, you may not get a chance to come back.”

  “Believe me.” She sneered. “I know that better than anyone else. That’s why I can’t stay in this place.”

  They quietly stared at each other for a moment until the man loosened his grip. “You are out of your mind.”

  The woman turned and stepped down from the porch. She browsed through the visitors and appeared to be surprised when she spotted one of them. “Devin! What are you doing here?”

  Devin made no response, as if he hadn’t seen or heard anything.

  “So, this is the … Devin.” The man considered the crowd for a while. Then he returned to the building without another word.

  “Do you guys have a ship here?” the woman asked them. “Could you take me along?”

  “I’m not going to take you.” A stiff reply, and no eye contact.

  “But I need to go home.”

  “That has nothing to do with me.” Having said that, Devin left the others and headed to where their ship was parked.

  The rest of them endured the awkwardness until Matt spoke up. “Ms. Melandroinno, uh, did I say your name correctly?”

  The woman looked at him perplexedly.

  “I’ll take you. I’m Matt Pastore—you may not remember me—Devin’s colleague, a NASA astronaut, and thus have an equal responsibility for my fellow humans.” He extended his hand to her. “Welcome aboard.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Pastore.” She shook his hand.

  Korina suddenly realized what was happening. “Please take me too!” she said to Matt, and then looked at Grandpa pleadingly. “I’m tired of here, Grandpa, and I hate to become a dark person! Please, take me to where I was born, even just for a few years.”

  “Ur … that, I don’t know.” Matt looked at Grandpa.

  “Sweetheart.” The woman stooped over and smiled. Her eyes reminded Korina of the night sky. “You stay here with your family, okay? You don’t know how lucky you are.”

  “But you are going home!” Korina protested.

  “It’s different. The government is not doing their job, and I happen to have some money and resource. We have founded our own association to work on the problem.”

  “Then I’m willing to help!” Why would everyone treat her like a child?

  “If we survive,” said Matt. “We’ll come back for you. I promise!”

  Korina sighed and gave up.

  “Time to board the ship,” Matt said, “before Devin loses his patience and decides to ditch us.”

  As they exited the apartment complex, Korina heard him murmuring, “He’s generally a nice guy, but could be a jerk sometimes.”
r />   * * *

  The air was cooling with the setting sun when they came back to the village. Korina and Grandpa each had their masks and winter clothes on. Not dressed properly, Ms. Melandroinno shivered in the wind for a minute and ran back to the ship.

  “I can’t leave without a good picture of the rings.” Matt carried his camera and walked away.

  Korina reckoned she should say something, like “Don’t forget to print out a new map. I might have done it wrong.” But Devin and Grandpa were busy talking to each other. A sad feeling seized her heart. Those were strangers she met two days ago, but how she wished they could stay here longer! What could she do for them?

  She looked around and saw a stem of brown leaves under a tree. A nestnut! They would like it! She leapt forward, fetched out a chisel from her backpack, and started digging. The soil under the loose layer of sand was quite firm, but she was getting there.

  “All right!” she heard Matt announcing. “We should hit the road.”

  “Wait!” she yelled. “I have something for you guys.”

  The chisel had toughed the hard shell. Her left hand grabbed the stem tightly while the other hand kept scraping dirt away. “One more minute!”

  A series of clicks sounded inside the nestnut as she pulled it out. The nut was ball-shaped, the size of a baby’s head, with irregular groves covering the surface like dried riverbeds. Well, that was the outer shell. The one inside was smooth and half as large.

  “It’s called a nestnut,” she said, putting it in Devin’s hands. “Grandpa said you don’t have it at home. A nut inside a nut. Kids will like it.”

  “Thank you, Korina.” Devin smiled broadly and shook it in his hands. “A nut inside a …”

  His body froze, and his eyes gawked at the air in front of him as if there stood a ghost. Korina was frightened. Did she do something wrong? She wanted to ask but dared not to make a sound.

  “What’s going on?” Matt walked over.

  “Hold it for me.” Devin gave the nestnut to him and said to Grandpa, “Can I see the map?”

  He unrolled the map Grandpa handed to him, his hands shaking as his eyes searched on the paper. “The MTYH-22 … here … Lamar, do you think it might work?” He looked up at Grandpa, who smiled back.

  “Of course. How could we have forgotten about it?”

  Weariness seemed to have vanished from Grandpa’s face. In fact, in Korina’s memory he had never appeared to be so happy.

  “Good girl.” Devin gave her a brief but tight hug. “You saved the world.” Then he said to Matt, “Let’s go! We’ve got a lot to do at home.”

  Korina and Grandpa stood there and waved while the two astronauts boarded the ship.

  “Korina, you know you just saved billions of people’s lives?”

  She thought Devin was joking earlier on, but now that Grandpa also acknowledged that, her heart was about to jump out of her chest. “Me? Are you serious?”

  “In the 1970s, two scientists hypothesized there might be neutron stars dwelling inside red giants, which are dying stars extremely large but loose. The first system was discovered in 2014. Later, more and more got confirmed.”

  “How could that happen?”

  “Initially, they were binary stars orbiting each other. Then one of them exploded and became a neutron star, which, for some reason, got swallowed by its partner.”

  “A star inside a star, like a nestnut.” She had indeed helped them! The thought seemed to have brightened the darkening sky.

  “But that’s not all. In fact, they don’t always stay nested. In some systems, the momentum of them orbiting each other is so strong that they soon become separate again. Of course, the red giant will lose weight each time they cross each other. The one Devin was talking about is currently in a combined state, and the map only showed the red giant. In a few months, the neutron star will begin emerging. And their system carries a troop of planets, moons, and asteroids for us to play with.”

  Korina waved again as the ship soared into the sky. Then she glanced at Grandpa. Those men were crazy, weren’t they? None of them could lift a ton of rock, yet they endeavored to alter the universe. She admired them and wished them success. Even if they failed, shall we say that mankind didn’t fail their dignity? We lived, we perished, with almost negligible physical size and lifespan, but stars and planets wouldn’t forget us.

  Life is the true miracle of the universe!

  Chapter 5 The Plate

  It was an early afternoon, a month after Devin had left, when Lamar finished the last wood plate he had ever crafted. He coated it with a clear paint twice and set it aside to dry. Then he heard Korina calling him outside. He walked to the side gate and saw her standing there with Philip. The boy was a grownup now compared with what Lamar had remembered. Taller and sturdier. His eyes beamed with sophistication and courage. Was there dark-matter residue inside his body? Lamar wondered.

  “We are leaving tomorrow,” Korina said. She was no longer that timid girl. “I can’t wait to go to college.”

  “Good girl.” Lamar smiled. Then he said to Philip, “You keep an eye on her for me, won’t you, Philip? She could be trouble sometimes.”

  “Don’t worry, Grandpa Lamar. I’ll take care of her.”

  “Don’t worry. If others can do it, so can I.” She handed him a necklace made of nestnut seeds. “I still have things to pack, Grandpa. So we’ll see you next summer, then.”

  The young people hugged the old man in turn and left. He stood there for a long time after they had disappeared in his view, as if he had fallen asleep. Then he went inside, grabbed the plate, and left for the hill nearby. He wouldn’t be able to see them next year. His day was coming, most likely this winter. If he had stayed on Earth, an ordinary hospital would have been able to extend his life, but … it was okay.

  He stopped halfway on the hillside and bent over a stack of loosely packed hay. He brushed off the top layer and uncovered a metal box along with a dish modified from an iron wok. He switched off a knob on the radio transmitter. It had done its job. He then tied the wood plate to the antenna with the necklace. Hopefully it would resist floods, but if it got carried away, no big deal. It was just a piece of wood. One day it would break down and return to what created it. In fact, didn’t every creature belong to its planet? What’s age? All the particles inside our bodies were as old as the universe.

  The sky was clear and placid. The sun stood right behind the planetary rings, weaving a mosaic pattern with the countless stones. The colored light eventually fell to the ground, pierced through the gauzy sand, and kindled the plate that had a few words carved in:

  WE ARE ALL CONNECTED.

  (End of Book 4; Next, first chapter of The Starlight Fortress)

  Chapter 1 of The Starlight Fortress

  A group of ships were flying in outer space, a place where sound made no sense and speed was difficult to judge. Inside the bridge of a destroyer escort, Sterling Presley was sitting in front of a computer. Despite the military-cut brown hair, he resembled nothing of a stereotypical soldier. His slim figure could be a little stronger. The brown eyes were too calm and solitary to hold patriotism. His skin wasn’t rough enough to match the cruelty of war. If he weren’t wearing a uniform, he would have looked like a junior college professor.

  Weird … He confirmed his suspicion and closed the image on the computer. The recent Battle of the Stony Band was considered a victory, their first victory since the war spread to this system eight years ago, but something about that battle wasn’t right.

  He picked up a phone from the table and said a few words. A moment later an officer appeared at the door. “Sir?”

  “Get ready for unloading at Turning Point Station.” Sterling left his desk and stopped in front of a window. Nothing existed outside, except lights from distant stars. The small planet RA5 was not distinguishable yet from its background.

  “Unloading?” The officer hesitated. “Sir, I thought we were heading to the fortress.”

>   “We are, but …” Sterling wasn’t sure how to explain it. To him, logic and reasoning were most meaningful when one studied a case de facto; at the front, everything should yield to intuitions. Or, things that appeared like intuitions but were outcomes of one’s subconscious logic and reasoning.

  “Just do what I said.”

  * * *

  The station wasn’t big enough to hold everything they had on board. After unloading the critical stuff for the newly constructed Starlight Fortress, they carried the rest of the supplies and resumed their trip to the fortress. It was past lunchtime. Sterling left the bridge and entered a dimly lit cafeteria. A few soldiers sat at a table. They had apparently finished the food a while ago.

  “It’s got to be Silverman!” he heard one of them saying. “Hands down! They say he was interviewed twice.”

  “I don’t like that guy. I’d rather they choose Rafael Tait.”

  “Nobody asked for your opinion. And Tait wasn’t nominated, mind you. Academy matters!”

  Sterling smiled and grabbed his sandwich. Lately everyone was talking about the candidates for the queen’s military assistant. The common practice now was to have the monarch take charge of military issues. Yes, their newly ascended queen, that teenage looking girl! Two nominees from each of the three Sunpherean fleets, he heard. Too bad that Rafael didn’t get a chance.

  He was about to finish his lunch when someone rushed in and brought him a message. It was from the fortress, informing his flotilla that a group of enemies was identified ahead, about thirteen light seconds away. How the enemy got there without being spotted by their monitoring devices at Pathway Trawtle—said Rear Admiral Silverman in the message—was unclear. Anyway, since it would take some time for the fortress to send over reinforcements, Silverman suggested that they either turn around or hold on for a while before encountering the enemy.

  Thirteen light seconds, about twenty minutes … Sterling pondered on his options as he left for the Combat Information Center. He didn’t want to retreat. He had to know how the enemy appeared out of the blue, right inside their system, only seventy light seconds away from the nearest planet with human residents. Sweat emerged on his back as he envisioned all the possibilities. But if he simply stopped marching, the enemy would know it, and they’d vanish long before the reinforcements came.