Ben Bova - To Save the Sun

For Barbara, of course .— B.B .

For Sally, who makes everything possible, and for Courtney, who makes everything fun .— A.J.A .

And for Gordy, with our deepest thanks for his unfailing kindness and generosity.

The Emperor of the Hundred Worlds stood at the head of the conference chamber, tall, gray, grim-faced. Although there were forty other men and women seated in the chamber, the Emperor knew he was alone.

“Then it is certain?” he asked, his voice grave but strong despite the news they had given him. “Earth’s Sun will explode?”

The scientists had come from all ends of the Empire to reveal their findings to the Emperor. They shifted uneasily in their sculptured couches under his steady gaze. A few of them, the oldest and best-trusted, were actually on Corinth, the Imperial planet itself, only an ocean away from the palace. Most of the others had been brought to the Imperial solar system from their homeworlds, and were housed on the three other planets of the system.

Although the holographic projections made them look as solid and real as Emperor Nicholas himself, there was always a slight lag in their responses to him. The delay was an indication of their rank within the scientific order, and they had even arranged their seating in the conference chamber the same way: the farther away from the Emperor, the lower in the hierarchy.

Some things cannot be conquered , the Emperor thought to himself as one of the men in the third rank of couches, a roundish, balding, slightly pompous little man, got to his feet. Time still reigns supreme. Distance we can conquer, but not time. Not death .

“Properly speaking, Sire, the Sun will not explode. It will not become a nova. Its mass is too low for that. But the eruptions that it will suffer will be of sufficient severity to heat Earth’s atmosphere to incandescence. It will destroy all life on the surface. And, of course, the oceans will be drastically damaged; the food chain of the oceans will be totally disrupted.”

Good-bye to Earth, then , thought the Emperor.

But aloud he asked, “The power satellites, and the shielding we have provided the planet—they will not protect it?”

The scientist stood dumb, patiently waiting for his Emperor’s response to span the light-minutes between them. How drab he looks , the Emperor noted. And how soft . He pulled his own white robe closer around his iron-hard body. He was older than most of them in the conference chamber, but they were accustomed to sitting at desks and lecturing to students. He was accustomed to standing before multitudes and commanding.

“The shielding,” the bald man said at last, “will not be sufficient. There is nothing we can do. For several centuries neutrino counts have consistently shown that the core of Earth’s Sun has become stagnant. Sometime over the next three to five hundred years, the Sun will erupt and destroy all life on Earth and the inner planets of its system. The data are conclusive.”

The Emperor inclined his head to the man, curtly, a gesture that meant both “Thank you” and “Be seated.” The scientist waited mutely for the gesture to reach him.

The data are conclusive . The integrator woven into the molecules of his cerebral cortex linked the Emperor’s mind with the continent-spanning computer complex that was the Imperial memory.

Within milliseconds he reviewed the equations and found no flaw in them. Even as he did so, the other hemisphere of his brain was picturing Earth’s daystar seething, writhing in a fury of pent-up nuclear agony, then erupting into giant flares. The Sun calmed afterward and smiled benignly once again on a blackened, barren, smoking rock called Earth.

A younger man was on his feet, back in the last row of couches. The Emperor realized that he had already asked for permission to speak. Now they both waited for the photons to complete the journey between them. From his position in the chamber and the distance between them, he was either an upstart or a very junior researcher.

“Sire,” he said at last, his face suddenly flushed in embarrassed self-consciousness or, perhaps, the heat of conviction, “the data may be conclusive, true enough. But it is not true that we must accept this catastrophe with folded hands.”

The Emperor began to say, “Explain yourself,” but the intense young man never hesitated to wait for an Imperial response. He was taking no chance of being commanded into silence before he had finished.

“Earth’s Sun will erupt only if we do nothing to prevent it. A colleague of mine believes that we have the means to prevent the eruptions. I would like to present her ideas on the subject. She could not attend this meeting herself.” The young man’s face grew taut, angry. “Her application to attend was rejected by the Coordinating Committee.”

The Emperor smiled inwardly as the young man’s words reached the other scientists around him. He could see a shock wave of disbelief and indignation spread through the assembly. The hoary old men in the front row, who chose the members of the Coordinating Committee, went stiff with anger.

Even Prince Javas, the Emperor’s last remaining son, roused from his idle daydreaming where he sat at the Emperor’s side and seemed to take an interest in the meeting for the first time.

“You may present your colleague’s proposal,” the Emperor said. That is what an Emperor is for , he added silently, looking at his youngest son, seeking some understanding on his handsome untroubled face. To be magnanimous in the face of disaster .

The young man took a pen-sized data stick from his sleeve pocket and inserted it into the computer input slot in the arm of his couch. The scientists in the front ranks of the chamber glowered and muttered to each other.

The Emperor stood lean and straight, stroking his graying beard absently as he waited for the information to reach him. When it did, he saw in his mind a young dark-haired woman whose face might have been charming were she not so intensely serious about her subject. She was speaking, trying to keep her voice dispassionate, but was almost literally quivering with excitement. Equations appeared, charts, graphs, lists of materials and costs; yet her intent, dark-eyed face dominated it all.

Beyond her, the Emperor saw a vague, star-shimmering image of vast ships ferrying megatons of equipment and thousands upon thousands of technical specialists from all parts of the Hundred Worlds toward Earth and its troubled Sun.

Then, as the equations faded and the starry picture went dim and even the woman’s face began to pale, the Emperor saw the Earth, green and safe, smelled the grass and heard birds singing, saw the Sun shining gently over a range of softly rolling, ancient wooded hills.

He closed his eyes. You go too far, woman . But how was she to know that his eldest son had died in hills exactly like these, killed on Earth, killed by Earth, so many years ago?

He sat now. The Emperor of the Hundred Worlds spent little time on his feet anymore. One by one the vanities are surrendered . He sat in a powered chair that held him in a soft yet firm embrace. It was mobile and almost alive: part personal vehicle, part medical monitor, part communications system that could link him with any place in the Empire.

His son stood. Prince Javas stood by the marble balustrade that girdled the high terrace where his father had received him. He wore the gray-blue uniform of a fleet commander, although he had never bothered to accept command of even one ship. His wife, the Princess Rihana, was at her husband’s side.