Jack McDevitt - Polaris

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POLARIS

Jack McDevitt

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s

imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Polaris

AnAce Book / published by arrangement with the author

This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without

permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement

and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

For information address:

The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

http://www.penguinputnam.com

ISBN:0-7865-5242-5

ANACE BOOK®

AceBooks first published by The Ace Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ACEand the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

Electronic edition: November, 2004

Contents

PrOLOG

ONe

TWO

THree

FOUr

FiVe

SiX

SeVeN

eiGHT

NiNe

TeN

eLeVeN

TWeLVe

THirTeeN

FOUrTeeN

FiFTeeN

SiXTeeN

SeVeNTeeN

EiGHTeeN

NiNeTeeN

TWeNTY

TWeNTY-ONe

TWeNTY-TWO

TWeNTY-THree

TWeNTY-FOUr

TWeNTY-FiVe

TWeNTY-SiX

TWeNTY-SeVeN

TWeNTY-eiGHT

ePiLOG

A DF Books NERDs Release

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the

product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely

coincidental.

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

http://www.penguinputnam.com

For Bob Carson,

the world’s finest history teach

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’m indebted to David DeGraff of Alfred University, and to

Walter Cuirle, for technical assistance; to Christopher

Schelling for his patience, and Ralph Vicinanza for many

years of encouragement. To Athena Andreadis, whose

compelling bookTo Seek Out New Life (Three Rivers Press,

1998) was helpful; and to Michael Shara, whose excellent

article “When Stars Collide” (Scientific American, November

2002) inspired the setup. To Ginjer Buchanan, for editorial

guidance. To Julie E. Czerneda and Maureen McDevitt, who

helped with early versions of the manuscript. And to Sara

and Bob Schwager for their insight.

PrOLOG

It no longer looked like a sun. When they’d arrived, only a few days ago, Delta

Karpis had been a standard class G star, serene, placid, drifting quietly through the

great deeps with its family of worlds, as it had done for 6 billion years. Now it was a

misshapen bag, dragged through the night by an invisible hand. Its mass seemed to

have shriveled beneath the tidal pressures; and a stream of radiant gas, millions of

kilometers long, jetted from the neck of the bag, connecting the stricken star with a

glowing point.

Apoint. Chek Boland looked at it a long time, marveling that something so small

as to be virtually invisible could be so disruptive, could literally distort asun.

You haven’t seen anything yet, the astronomers from the other ships were

saying. It hasn’t even begun.

He turned his attention to Klassner. “Nine hours left, Marty,” he said.

“Showtime.”

Klassner was sitting in his favorite chair, the gray-green one with the side table,

his unfocused eyes fixed on the bulkhead. Gradually he blinked and turned toward

Boland. “Yes,” he said. And then: “Showtime for what?”

“The collision.”

He was wearing the puzzled expression that they saw all too often now. “Are we

going to hit something?”

“No. The dwarf is about to hit Delta Kay.”

“Yes,” he said. “Itis remarkable. I’m glad we came.”

The telescopes revealed the point to be a dull red disk surrounded by a ring of

shining gas. It was a white dwarf, the naked core of a collapsed star. Its electrons had

been torn from their nuclei and jammed together, producing an object one step short

of a black hole. A year ago, it had penetrated the planetary system, scattering worlds

and moons, and now it had become a dagger aimed directly at the heart of Delta

Karpis itself.

Klassner had been lucid last evening, and they’d been talking about the human

tendency to project personality onto inanimate objects. To develop loyalty to a ship.

To think that a childhood home welcomes one back. Now they could not escape a

sense of sadness, watching the death struggle of the star, as if it were a living thing,

somehow conscious of what was happening to it.

Nancy White had been part of the conversation. Nancy was a popularizer of

science and had produced shows watched by millions. She’d commented that it was

nonsense, that she couldn’t bring herself to indulge in that particular fantasy when a

genuine catastrophe was taking place on the third world, which was home to large

animals, living oceans, and vast forests. They called the place Kissoff in sullen

reaction. Kissoff had, so far, survived the general turmoil in the system caused by the

presence of the interloper. Its orbit had become eccentric, but that was of no moment

compared with what was about to happen to it and its biosphere. Within the next few

hours, its oceans would boil off, and the atmosphere would be ripped away.

On a different scale, watching the approaching destruction of Martin Klassner

was also painful. Klassner had demonstrated, after thousands of years of speculation,

that alternate universes did exist. It was the breakthrough everyone had thought

impossible. They’re out there, and Klassner had predicted that one day transportation

to them would become possible. Now they were called Klassner universes.

Last year he’d come down with Bentwood’s Syndrome, which induced

occasional delusions and bouts of memory loss. His long, thin hands trembled

constantly. The disease was terminal, and there was doubt whether he’d survive the

year. The medical community was working on it, and a cure was coming. But Warren

Mendoza, one of two medical researchers on board, insisted it would be too late.

Unless Dunninger’s research held the answer.

“Kage.” Klassner was addressing the AI. “What is its velocity now?” He meant

the white dwarf.

“It has increased slightly to six hundred twenty kilometers, Martin. It will

accelerate another four percent during its final approach.”

They’d just finished dinner. Impact would take place at 0414 hours ship time.

“I never expected,” said Klassner, turning his gray, watery eyes on Boland, “to

see anything like this.” He was back. It was amazing the way he came and went.

“None of us did, Marty.” The frequency of such an event anywhere within the

transport lanes had been estimated at one every half billion years. And here it was.

Incredible. “God has been very kind to us.”

Klassner’s breathing was audible. It sounded whispery, harsh, labored. “I would

have wished, though, if we were going to have a collision,” he said, “it could have

taken place between tworeal stars.”

“A white dwarf is a real star.”

“No. Not really. It’s a burned-out corpse.” Part of the problem with Bentwood’s

was that, along with its other effects, it seemed to reduce intelligence. Klassner’s

enormous intellect had at one time glowed in those eyes. You could look at him and

literally see his brilliance. There were times now when it seemed he was on

automatic, that no one was behind the wheel. It would not have been correct to say

that his gaze had turned vacuous, but the genius was gone, save for an occasional

glimmer. And he knew it, knew what he had once been.It’s a burned-out corpse.

“I wish we could get closer,” Boland said. The link to the bridge was on, and he

intended the comment for Madeleine English, their pilot.

“As far as I’m concerned,”she responded,“we’re already too close.” Her voice

was cool and crisp. She wasn’t impressed by the six celebrities who constituted the

entire passenger list for thePolaris.

TheSentinel was somewhere above Delta Kay’s north pole; theRensilaer lay on

the far side of the dwarf. Both were filled with working researchers, measuring,

counting, recording, gathering data that specialists would still be analyzing years

hence. One of the major objectives of the mission was to measure, finally, the natural

curve of space-time.

The conversations among the ships had grown increasingly enthusiastic during

the buildup.You ever see anything like this? I feel as if everything I’ve done has been

leading up to this moment. Look at that son of a bitch. Cal, what are you getting on

acceleration? But it had all died away during the last few hours. The comm links

were silent, and even Boland’s fellow passengers had little to say.

They’d all gone back to their cabins after dinner, to work, or read, or while away

the final hours however they could. But the herd instinct had taken over, and one by

one they’d filtered back. Mendoza in white slacks and pullover, always a brooding

figure, absorbed to the exclusion of everything else by the drama playing out in the

sky. Nancy White, scribbling notes to herself between exchanges with Tom

Dunninger, Mendoza’s occasional colleague. They were microbiologists. Dunninger

had earned an extraordinary reputation in his chosen field. He’d dedicated the latter

years of his career to pursuing a way to stave off the ageing process. And Garth

Urquhart, who had for two terms been one of the seven councillors of the Associated

States.

On the screens, the torture of Delta Karpis grew more intense. The solar bag was

becoming more and more stretched. “Who would have believed,” said Mendoza, “that

one of these things could become that distorted without blowing up.”

“It’s coming,” said White.

The hours counted down, and the conversation never wandered from the

spectacle.What’s the mass of that thing anyhow? Is it my imagination, or is the sun

changing color? The ring around the dwarf is getting brighter.

Shortly before midnight they set up a buffet. They wandered around the table,

sampling fruit and cheese. Dunninger opened a bottle of wine and Mendoza offered a

toast to the dying giant outside. “Unmarked for six billion years,” he said. “All that

time just waiting for us.”

Unlike the researchers in theSentinel and theRensilaer, they were no more than

casual observers. No work was being done, no measurements taken, no records kept,

by any of them. They were there simply to enjoy the show, which consisted of slices

of feeds from all three ships and from dozens of probes and satellites. They would sit

quietly, or noisily if they preferred, and watch. Survey and the scientific community

were saying thanks for their assorted contributions.

ThePolaris wasn’t designed as a research vessel. It was a supplemental carrier, a

luxury vehicle (by Survey’s spartan standards) that transported VIPs whom the

director wanted to impress. Usually, these were political figures. This, however, was a

different sort of occasion.

The images of Delta Karpis and the white dwarf on the wall screen were better

than anything they could see with the naked eye. Still, Boland, who was a

psychiatrist, noticed they all had a tendency to station themselves near the viewports,

as if that were the only way to be really present at the event.

Huge explosions erupted periodically from the surface of the sun and vast waves

of glowing gas were flung into the darkness of space.

A streak of white light ripped outward from the dwarf. “Looks like a piece broke

off,” said Urquhart.

“Not possible,” said Klassner. “Nothing’s going to break off a neutron star and

float away. It was gas.”

Boland was the youngest of the passengers. He was probably forty, with black

hair, trim good looks and a self-confident demeanor that never failed to turn women’s

heads. He had started out doing mind wipes and personality reconstruction for violent

criminals, converting them into contented—or at least, law-abiding—citizens. But he

was best known for his work in the neurological sciences, and for the Boland Model,

which purported to be the most comprehensive explanation ever devised of how the

brain worked.

Delta Kay’s remaining worlds moved serenely in their orbits, as if nothing

unusual were occurring. Except for the innermost, which had been a gas giant so close

to the sun that it literally sailed through its outer atmosphere. That was Delta Karpis I.

It had no other name, and now it was gone, swallowed by a flare. They’d seen it

happen. It had plunged in, but only a couple of its moons had emerged on the other

side.

When the dwarf arrived, a year ago, Delta Kay had possessed a planetary system

containing five gas giants, six terrestrial worlds, and a couple of hundred moons. The

outermost was still there, a world of blue crystal and brilliant silver rings, with only

three satellites. Boland thought it the loveliest celestial object he’d ever seen.

Kissoff was also still relatively untouched by the disaster. Its oceans remained

placid, and its skies were quiet except for a hurricane in one of the southern seas. It

was just getting started, but it would not have an opportunity to develop. Most of the

other worlds had been dragged from their orbits and were now outbound. Delta

Karpis IV had been a double planet, two terrestrial worlds, each with a frozen

atmosphere. They’d been ripped apart and were now headed in almost diametrically

opposite directions.

The dwarf was smaller than Rimway, smaller even than Earth. But it packed

more mass than Delta Kay, and Boland knew that if somehow he could reach the

surface of the object, he would weigh billions of tons.

At 2:54A .M., the dwarf and its shining ring slipped into the chaos and disappeared.

Urquhart said he didn’t care what anybody said, something that small couldn’t

possibly avoid getting swallowed by the conflagration. Tom Dunninger commented

how it could just as easily have been a sun warming one of the Confederate worlds.

“It’s a sobering moment,” he said. “Makes you realize nobody’s safe.”

The comment seemed pointed, and Boland wondered if he was sending a

message.

Huge explosions ripped through the stricken sun, and the AI reported that

temperatures on its surface were soaring. Its basic yellow-orange hue was fading to

white. Wild forest fires had broken out on Kissoff. And enormous clouds of mist were

rising out of the oceans. Abruptly, the picture went blank.

“Lost at the source,”said the AI.

Delta Kay V was adrift, sucked in toward the collision. It was normally ice-

covered, with only a wisp of atmosphere. But the ice had melted, and its sky was full

of thick gray clouds. Two of the satellites orbiting the gas giant Delta Kay VII

collided. Its rings, brown and gold like a sunset, began to shimmer and break apart.

Maddy’s voice sounded over the link:“The Rensilaeris saying the sun’ll put out

as much energy during the next hour as it has over the last hundred million years.”

TheSentinel reported that it was taking more radiation than it had been prepared

for and was withdrawing. Its captain told Madeleine, in a transmission mistakenly

relayed to the passengers, to be careful.“That’s bad weather out there.”

Madeleine English stayed on the bridge. Usually she did not hesitate to join her

passengers in the common room when circumstances allowed, but at the moment

conditions demanded she remain in the pilot’s seat. She was a beautiful woman, with

blue eyes, lush blonde hair, perfect features. But there was no softness in her, no

sense that she was in any way vulnerable.

Mendoza asked whether they were too close.

“We’re at a safe distance,”Maddy said.“Don’t worry. At the first sign of

overload, we’ll skedaddle.”

One hour, eight minutes after it had vanished into the inferno, the dwarf

reappeared. It had plowed directly through the sun,sailed through, according to the

experts on the other ships, like a rock going through fog. The solar stream that had

reached out toward it during its approach had collapsed back into the turbulence, and

a new one was forming on the opposite side, dragged out of the dying star by the

enormous gravity. Then a titanic explosion obscured the view.

“I’m closing the viewports,”said Maddy.“You’ll have to settle for watching the

feeds now. If it goes prematurely, we don’t want anyone blinded.”

Dunninger napped. And even Mendoza. Nancy White looked tired. She’d tried to get

some rest during the day, but it didn’t matter. Circadian rhythms were what they

were, and it happened that ship time coincided with Andiquar time, so it really was

close to 4:00A .M. She had taken something to stay awake. Boland didn’t know what it

was, but he knew the symptoms.

Boland was startled by the tug of the ship’s engines. Madeleine appeared briefly

at the door to report that it was getting “a little bit hot outside,” and she was going to

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POLARISJackMcDevittThisisaworkoffiction.Names,characters,places,andincidentsareeithertheproductoftheauthor’simaginationorareusedfictitiously,andanyresemblancetoactualpersons,livingordead,businessestablishments,eventsorlocalesisentirelycoincidental.PolarisAnAceBook/publishedbyarrangementwiththeauthor...

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Jack McDevitt - Polaris

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