Chapter 3

It was a matter of routine for the Space Exploration Service to record and chart all newly discovered novae. Not that there were so many of them, a nova is a rare event indeed and especially within the comparatively tiny realm of charted space.

Even so it would, to say the least, be an embarrassment if one of SES' exploratory ships were to emerge from worm space—the uncertain hyperspatial dimension through which they bypassed the limitations of the known universe to travel far faster than the speed of light itself—in the path of a known stellar explosion. And much more, of course, than an embarrassment to the putative vessel itself and its crew, which and who would be instantly destroyed.

Once Chen's nova had been confirmed (and that soon became its formal name, "Chen's nova"; St. Jean had been right that its first observer's name would be commemorated), SES began its calculations. Computerization made the process quite rapid; within hours they were complete and the bureaucrats could breathe a collective sigh of relief. No new expeditions would pass anywhere close to either the star itself or within range of its sphere of destruction.

At that point the agency's interest evaporated. It simply cordoned off the comparatively small sector of space adjacent to the nova to ensure that the area wouldn't be visited and forgot about the whole thing.

For the astronomical community, however, the nova was of enduring interest. Partly that was because of its comparative proximity to Earth, offering the hitherto unparalleled opportunity for close-up (relatively speaking) study of such a rare phenomenon, partly because it was so recently discovered, and partly just because anything unusual—and it was certainly that—invites such interest. Scholars in the field, especially those in academia seeking publication attributions to bolster their credentials in search of tenure, vied to be first to identify detailed attributes of the bright new star in Earth's firmament.

It was one Callista Nguyen who first set in print her surprising finding about alignment of the magnetic and geographic poles of Chen's nova. But she somewhat missed the real significance; only in pre-publication peer review of her analysis did St. Jean recognize what it might mean. After somewhat contentious discussions the two women agreed that co-authorship of the paper was acceptable to both, and it was so published.

"A Laser in the Sky!" blared headlines of one of the more lurid tabloids to pick up the story. For so it was. Viewed from a reasonable distance anywhere along its latitudes, such as Earth, Chen's nova was merely interesting. But from each pole emanated a narrow ray of such intensely focused radiation that it would carry destruction hundreds of light-years away, as deadly as the beam of a laser sidearm even over interstellar distances.

It took SES still longer to belatedly trace the polar extensions of the nova's affected area. And with nothing scheduled anywhere in that area of space, the inquiry was given low priority.

It was, however, still pursued, simply in order to eliminate possible destinations for future exploratory missions. The agency's goal was to search for extraterrestrial life; and life would not exist (or not still exist) anywhere in the zone affected by the nova, which could therefore be ruled out as exploratory targets.

Once again nothing of especial moment was found and the extended polar area was added to the cordon. Or more accurately, as a junior clerk discovered when he was assigned to do so, an attempt was made to add it to the cordon. When the agency's master computer three times rejected the addition he reluctantly had to report failure to his boss, who also tried, also failed, and had to report the same upstream to her boss, who hit the same roadblock and ultimately dug a bit deeper to find out why the computer was being so stubborn.

Really the reason was fairly simple: The new cordon area apparently intersected with one that had been previously established, which in SES computerese was a no-no; you can't double-cordon any part of space. There was of course an override, established to deal with the unlikely event that multiple novae might erupt in the same part of space, but that seemed so improbable...

So the clerk's boss' boss decided to dig just a little deeper yet. And found something so shocking that he bucked the entire affair further upstairs