Chapter 1

"Wow!"

Archibald Chen was an astronomer—a professional one, albeit young, in his first journeyman role in the science—and not much given to such expressions. But he considered that what his telescope displayed warranted the outburst.

His mentor and immediate supervisor, Camille St. Jean, was less certain of that. To her astronomy was a sedate science, to be treated seriously and in accordance with its attributes, and she was wholly uninclined to offer dispensations of youth to such exuberance.

"What is it, Chen?" she asked in a disapproving tone.

"Nova, ma'am!" he said, undeterred. "I saw it go!"

She doubted it. A nova was a very rare stellar explosion, a star suddenly bursting its bounds in a final paroxysm of energy that would end in demolition of the star itself and its entire planetary system (if any) and would do possible serious damage to anything else nearby, including other stars. The chances that Chen's telescope had just happened to be focused precisely on the particular sector of space where such an event occurred at precisely the time when it occurred—or, more accurately, when its light reached Earth—and moreover with a young student, or not much more than a student, just happening to be looking into the telescope at precisely that instant, were ... well, astronomical.

"Chen," she said, remonstrating.

"It's true, ma'am!" he protested. "Check my record." Each telescope's observations were routinely maintained in a data base to which St. Jean, and all other senior astronomers in the observatory, had instant access. Data storage being inexpensive, the records would ordinarily be maintained indefinitely even though they were mostly of little or no value, but now and again some astronomer or other found occasion to refer back to prior images to check minute changes over time or verify tiny fluctuations that might signal the existence of hitherto unsuspected planets.

"When?" asked St. Jean in her sternest tone, the one she reserved for overeager subordinates who hadn't yet learned to take their discipline with the seriousness she felt it deserved.

"I don't know," he said, flustered. "A minute ago, less. When I spoke."

"Hmph." Still unconvinced, she nevertheless wound back the recording of his 'scope. "I see nothing. Nothing ... Oh." And it was there, an abrupt blossoming of light flashing on her monitor.

"My God," she said slowly. She raised her head to look over at the young man. "You saw this when it happened?"

"Yes, ma'am!" he answered enthusiastically. "I just was looking and all of a sudden there it was!"

She played back the image a second time. Yes, there it was, a minor star, all but invisible even in the high-resolution telescope, abruptly bursting into brilliance that momentarily overwhelmed the display until the optical compensators of the recording system adjusted to the difference.