The Devil's Eye

TWENTY-EIGHT

We climbed back into the air lock. "What's going on?" Ivan demanded. He was out of patience. When we got back into the cabin, Kara was staring at us. "You mean it's missing? It has to be somewhere." I couldn't stop trembling. It was cold inside the lander. I hadn't noticed it before. "No, Kara," I said. "I don't think it's anywhere." We were getting out of our suits. "What's that mean?" asked Kara. "I'm still working on it. Ivan, we need a chart." "Why?" he asked. "Please just do it." I'm pretty sure my voice had gone shrill. He backed off. "Rachel, give us the chart, please." The lights dimmed, and, over the navigation display, Callistra blinked on. Its soft blue glow touched everything, softened Ivan's intense eyes, coated the chairs and the control panel. "Where's Moria?" I asked. Salud Afar's sun. Ivan pointed toward the hatch. It was a dim yellow light. A white light, off to one side, marked Seepah. "Okay. Can we see our position? The asteroid?" A red light, a hand's width away from Moria. "Good. Draw a straight line from Callistra through the asteroid and extend it as far as you can." A blue cursor left the star, crossed the cabin, touched the asteroid, passed off to one side of Salud Afar, and struck the bulkhead. "I know what you were thinking," said Ivan, "but I could see right from the start they weren't going to line up." "That's because we have an adjustment to make. The asteroid is, what, thirty-six light-years from Salud Afar?" "Right."

Kara's eyes found me. They were afraid. "Okay. Let me think about it for a minute." Math wasn't my strong suit. "Ask Rachel to move us, the asteroid, to where its position would have been thirty-three years ago, when they were putting the monument down. And move Moria to where it will be in another three years." "How'd you get that?" "Thirty-three from thirty-six. Okay? Now draw the line again from Callistra." "Done." The line from Callistra went directly through the asteroid and touched Moria. Touched Salud Afar. Ivan's mouth opened, and his head fell back against his seat. Kara took a deep breath. "My God," she said. Ivan shook his head. "I don't believe it. I can't believe they'd know about something like this and keep it quiet." "Alex thinks they knew as far back as Aramy Cleev." "So what's next?" "Let's go take a look."

We knew it would be somewhere along the vector, approximately three light-years out from Salud Afar. That was a pretty big target area. The problem was we didn't really know precisely when the Lantner encountered its problem. So we were guessing. We jumped to within two light-years of Salud Afar but kept well off the vector. We were dealing with a thunderbolt, and we didn't want to come out directly in front of it. Callistra was back in the sky. Brilliant and beautiful. Queen of the Night. Or a satanic spectacle. Take your choice. We burned a ton of fuel turning around. Then we started back, jumping out every few seconds, well wide of the vector. At each stop we looked for Callistra, and each time were relieved to find it still floating serenely ahead. Then, finally, it was gone. Ivan delivered a string of profanities, starting under his breath and ending in a scream. Other than that, we were quiet a long time. Finally, he turned to his wife. "Start packing, babe," he said. "We'll be leaving as soon as we get home." "A nova," Kara said. "But it's too far. It can't affect us." I could feel my heart beating while I sat there, listening to a conversation that was going to play out on a global scale. What would happen when two billion people found out what was coming?

We jumped again. Back toward Salud Afar. Only a few light-weeks. Callistra reappeared. Then back toward the star. And forward again. We finally found it. The bright blue star beginning to look a bit too bright. Beginning to expand. To swell like a poisoned fruit. "You sure we're out of the way?" asked Kara. "We don't want to go like the Lantner. " Ivan relayed the question to me. "How big is it?" he asked. I had no idea. So we stayed in place, cruising through the void, watching while Callistra got brighter. And bigger. It took over the sky. Ivan switched to manual. If we had to leave in a hurry, it would be quicker just to do it rather than instruct Rachel to do it. It would have been smarter to make one more jump back toward the star, to get behind what was coming. But the thing was mesmerizing. Ivan began reading off Callistra's statistics. Its mass, surface temperature, diameter. It was 120 times the mass of Moria, their sun. Normally 1.2 million times as bright. God knew what it was at that moment. No. Not at that moment. Twelve hundred years ago, when this had actually happened. When it had blown apart and flung jets of radiation and God knew what else into the night.

"Its stability index was always low," said Ivan. "At least that's what it says here. If they didn't know already, they should have seen it coming." The star grew blindingly bright. "Uh-oh," said Ivan. "We'd better get out of here." "I think we're okay," I said. "If we'd been in its path, we'd be dead already."

It took a while to find what we were looking for. When we did, it appeared harmless enough: a splash of gauzy light against the empty sky. "Part of the explosion?" Ivan asked. "A gamma-ray burst, I think." "Does it blow everything away?" "No. But it irradiates everything." "That can't be right." "Why?" "It wouldn't explain why the two ships disappeared at the asteroid. Or the people at the ceremony. Unless it just blew them away." I told them what Alex had told me. How Cleev probably fabricated everything to maintain his hold on power. "What a son of a bitch." "It also explains why they had to kill off Jennifer Kelton and Edward Demery." "Why did they have to do that?" "Because Demery figured it out. He figured it out the way Vicki did, and the way Alex did. Except Alex couldn't bring himself to believe what he was seeing." I was trying to visualize the sequence of events. Demery suspected that the star might have blown. That part of it had taken out the monitors at Seepah. That another part, centuries later, destroyed the monument celebration at the asteroid. It had taken several hundred years because Seepah was that much closer to Callistra. Demery would have gone to Jennifer for confirmation. She agreed, and made the mistake-or possibly he did-of showing it to someone in authority. That got them killed. "I know about that," said Kara. "But as I understand it, seventeen or eighteen families were killed that night. They couldn't all have been in on it." Think like Alex. "They'd have killed the others to cover what they were doing. To prevent attention from being drawn to Demery." "It makes sense," she said. The burst was small in the viewports. It looked like a distant comet. "When Vicki went out to the asteroid," he said, "she just wanted to see whether the star was there. Right?" "Sure." "I guess," said Ivan, "it also explains why Haley Khan disappeared." "Yes," I said. "He would have known, too." "But," Kara said, "Cleev's long gone." "I know. But there are still people in power." Kara's eyes had closed. "How much damage do you think this thing will do?" "Rachel?"

"If my measurements are correct, the burst will strike Salud Afar in exactly three years and six days. The event will last three days, four hours, and six minutes. Error ratio of four percent. They will get substantial protection from the atmosphere. Unlike those caught at the asteroid. However, the event will be lethal for unprotected higher life-forms."

He opened a channel to Samuels. "What are you going to do?" I asked. "Start warning people." "No, Ivan." "No?" His face contorted into a snarl. "Hell, Chase, why not?"

"Ivan, if you start making noise, you're going to create a stampede." "What do you suggest? We just keep quiet so we can save our own damned skins?" "No. Look: I'm not sure yet. I'm like you. I'm just a pilot. I don't have any experience with stuff like this. But I'm pretty sure that just getting out there and screaming about it isn't the right way to go." "What is?" "Somebody that people respect is going to need to step up and take charge." He rolled his eyes. "You've lost your mind, Chase. Who's going to do anything like that? Your buddy the antique dealer? Assuming you could get him loose?" How the hell would I know? "Look, I don't have any better ideas than you do right now. But let's just keep calm and try to figure it out. Okay?"