
"You are not the greatest traitor to your kind," announced Iblis.
"That honor belongs to me. I found the planet Cylon and with genetic engineering and advanced
cybernetics gave birth to the ultimate enemy of Man. How do you possibly compare to me?"
"I've never been in competition with you!" Baltar screamed. "Get out of my mind, damn you. Find
someone else to haunt!"
Each time the dreams became more detailed and he woke up feeling worse, in cold sweats or with
severe headaches.
This time he thought he was still dreaming because Athena was standing by his sick-bed—Athena,
whom he'd rather dream about than a Cylon civil war!
As if to reinforce the feeling that he was still in a dream, Athena said: "We have good news for you,
Baltar. When you're fully recovered, we have a job for you. You're going to be a teacher."
"It's a red sun," said President Tigh, peering into a scanner on the bridge of theGalactica .
"An old sun," echoed Athena, checking out her monitor on the bridge of the Daedelus.
The battlestars were having a conference call. They always did when something was important. There
was nothing more crucial than finding a temporary home for the exhausted and damaged Fleet.
"One day I will write a poem dedicated to hydrogen," said Dr. Salik wistfully, surrounded by his favorite
scientific equipment.
Omegas, a bridge officer, exchanged glances with Rigel who took a break from keeping track of the
many ships converging on this quadrant of space. Lately, the top science officer was behaving oddly. He
wasn't as boring as he used to be when he just did his job.
Tigh was in a poetic mood as well. "What do you mean, doctor?" he prompted the older man.
Salik studied the screen showing the planet Paradis. The battlestars were moving into parking orbits that
matched the planet's period of rotation. The period of analysis had begun, the fun part for the scientists.
Salik took advantage of his captive audience: "Paradis is a habitable planet, with evolved life forms, but
the odds are against that. You see, when a star becomes a red giant, it swells up to many times its original
size and routinely devours any planets close to it. Before it swelled, the planets closer in would have been
in the habitable zone, and this planet would have been too far from the star to be congenial to life. So it
has only become habitable since the sun entered its red giant phase, which means that life evolved here
quickly. Or, it evolved elsewhere and traveled here, or was brought here, after the initial solar
expansion."
"So what does this sun have to look forward to?" asked President Tigh.
Salik finished the impromptu lecture. "Impossible to say. Red giants can be extremely stable and last for
a half-billion years or more. Or, they can go through cycles, shrinking down to the white dwarf stage,
then expanding again to the red giant. There can be many of these cycles before the star ends its life.
Given its size, I would say that it will end as a black dwarf—cold and dark. However, it might be more