Diamonds in the Sky (21 page)

“But we still have a very persistent unanswered question to deal with,” Kevin said darkly.

“Unfortunately, true. JEDI, display current system ephemeris.”

The holoviewer engaged and a simulation of the current star system hovered over the table. Pamela took over from there. “Three gas giants in the outer system, all with the same anomalous helium-3 line in their atmospheric spectrum. There are four inner planets, numbers 2 and 3 have atmospheres. Number 2 has the same radioactive smog we’ve been observing in other planets with large nitrogen concentrations. Number 3 resembles Mars after phase one terraformation — carbon dioxide and water vapor — and also shows radioactivity consistent with the presence of carbon-14.”

After Bob finished his sip of mocha, he asked, “Any ideas?”

Pamela looked nervous before answering, “I really want this to be due to natural causes, but the evidence just doesn’t add up that way. We’ve got four systems over a distance of sixty parsecs showing the exact same pattern of damage, and no obvious mechanism that we can find.”

Dr. Mathews speculated, “What if a star pulled an Eta Carinae on us — well what we’re expecting from Eta Carinae anyway — and went hypernova? A big enough hypernova doesn’t even leave behind a black hole.” He then added, “No smoking gun.”

Pamela corrected, “While you’re absolutely correct about a hypernova’s potential to destroy even its own core, I’m not sure that helps us here. Let’s use your example, Eta Carinae, as our poster child. It underwent a giant eruption that was witnessed on Earth in 1843, and which was nearly as bright as a supernova itself.”

Dr. Mathews agreed, “Right, it’s called a false supernova.”

“In a few years,” Pamela continued for the non-astronomers in the room, “Eta Carinae produced almost as much visible light as a supernova explosion, but it
survived
— leaving behind two huge lobes of expanding matter. Since then we’ve observed several false supernova. They are considered precursors, and are often followed shortly after by a full-blown stellar explosion. In every case something resembling a nebula has been left behind: ‘smoke’, from the hypernova’s gun.”

As everbody in the room digested that information, Pamela finished, “Finally, before anybody says it, the internal structure and mass of all the candidate stars in the vicinity — the Crucis supergiants and Beta Centauri — have been known for centuries. None of them come close to matching Eta Carinae and we see no evidence of eruptions of any kind.”

“Further, let’s add that we’ve also clearly established that, there is no historical evidence from Earth records, right?” Bob asked. After an awkward pause, he continued the thought, “As I said last month, I don’t remember any supernova — Type I, Type II, hyper, or false — taking place in this particular area of the galaxy in the past millennium.”

There was a long, awkward pause. Finally, Bob squared his shoulders and said, “Okay, I think we all need to be thinking in terms of someone rather than something. What are we up against?”

Dr. Mathews looked at Pamela, who nodded for him to go ahead. “First off, captain, you’ll need to look at what damage has been caused. The ‘radioactive smog’ we’ve been observing is the result of ultraviolet — or even higher energy — radiation bombarding atmospheric nitrogen and inducing various chemical reactions. If we assume gamma rays, that would also account for the lack of ozone we’ve been seeing in planets with significant oxygen concentrations.”

“What about the radiation?”

“Electrons, protons, high-velocity atomic nuclei, and a whole zoo of other sub-atomic particles.” Mathews paused for a second, then continued slowly, “I’ve just described a nasty solar flare. If it’s big enough, the tritium it would generate in a gas giant’s atmosphere would explain the helium-3 lines we’ve been observing.”

“So our nasty boys can trigger really big stellar flares,” Kevin mused. “Is that possible?”

“Not with our technology base. If the Malzurkians had it, they would have used it on us in the war.”

Bob drummed his fingers nervously on the table, looking absently at the system ephemeris as he pondered everything he had just heard. Finally, he said, “We will proceed with our mission as ordered. However, we all need to be prepared to abort and get this information back home.”

“Abort our mission to the Coalsack?” Pamela asked.

“Mission orders allow the ship commander to abort the primary mission in the event humanity is in jeopardy. That particular section was written with Malzurkians in mind, but the Space Force gave me some latitude in how I choose to interpret, or exercise, it.” Looking across the room, he added, “We’re not there yet, people, but we’re getting awfully close.”

5 NOVEMBER 2191
170 LIGHT-YEARS FROM THE COALSACK

Bob was working over a particularly difficult section of Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto on his piano when he felt a tremor in his sustainer pedal — the same tremor he always felt when
Procyon
dropped sublight. Knocking the piano bench over in his haste, he was on his feet and out the door of his cabin at a dead run before the first battle station klaxons sounded throughout the ship. Seconds later, he had sprinted up the steps to the command deck and was running into the bridge.

“Watch officer, Captain has the conn,” Carmen snapped while working controls at Helm.

“Bridge aye.”

“This is the Captain I have the conn, status?” Bob gasped as he fell into his station and rapidly scanned his repeaters.

“We dropped across a minus four gradient one minute ago. I’m generating a vector tangential to the gravity well.”

“What minus four gradient? We’re five light-years from the nearest star!”

“Good question. I wanted to set EMCON Bravo as well, but we’ve got a radiation problem and I had to rig plasma screens instead.”

When you don’t know what you’re up against, try not to be seen. Never thought she was paying attention in combat sims…
Bob thought. “Good, fast work, Ms. Sanchez. Bridge to CIC.”

“CIC, O’Byrne,” Kevin looked as rattled as Bob felt.

“How long can the screens hold this load?”

“We’re in no immediate danger, but I wouldn’t want to stay in this position too long. The radiation is also partially blinding our sensors, and we can’t get a good look around us until we do something about that.”

“Thank you, XO, bridge out. Ms. Sanchez, maintain course, ahead full.”

“Ahead full, aye sir.”

Between the minus four and minus three gradients of a gravity well,
Procyon
’s drive performance was significantly degraded. Given that this was the difference between 2,000 times lightspeed and twice lightspeed, the difference was currently meaningless. In just over a minute, the aurora that was shimmering across the plasma screens faded into nothingness.

“Okay, that’s a lot better,” Kevin reported from CIC. “You can stop while we take a look around.”

“Ms. Sanchez, all stop.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Okay,” Kevin reported, “We’ve got a gravity well source at zero-two negative by zero nine one, range six point one five AU. Appears to be several solar masses, with no obvious visual source. You might want Commander Duncan to take a look at some of these potential space readings, because I can’t believe the strength of this magnetic field. Before you ask, systems passed a quick diagnostic.”

“Feed it to Engineering. Bridge to Engineering.”

“Engineering, Commander Duncan.”

“I need you to take a look at the telemetry CIC is forwarding you.”

Alex looked off camera for a moment, suppressed a curse, then said, “You’re running a sim up there, right?”

“Negative. The source is currently six AU off our starboard beam.”

“You’re not thinking about getting any closer, I hope. A magnetic field this strong could pull water molecules apart from several hundred kilometers away.”

That’s a visual I didn’t need right now…
“Unless we’ve got a real compelling reason, I was planning on keeping us right where we are now. Bridge out.”

“I heard that, and it sounds like good advice,” Kevin added from the CIC repeater. “We’re relaying everything to Main Science.”

“Do we need to remain at battle stations?”

“No, but Yellow Alert goes without speaking.”

Bob smiled. “Understood. Set condition yellow, XO. Bridge out.”

* * *

Six hours later, a swirling disk hovered over the table in Main Briefing. Ghostly lobes shot out of the top and bottom along the disk’s rotation axis. Irrationally, Bob wanted to duck out of the way of the hologram as he looked at it.

“The object 6 AU away is confirmed to be a black hole,” Pamela started, “We’ve been able to refine Commander O’Byrne’s quick measurement of several solar masses to approximately 6.115 solar masses.”

“If it’s a black hole, what about that magnetic field? I thought black holes weren’t supposed to have them,” Kevin said.

“Think, commander. You’ve got very rapidly-moving plasma around the event horizon, which is the next best thing to an electric current loop. Of course you’re going to have a magnetic field.” Pamela turned to address the rest of the briefing. “The density and composition of the accretion disk does give us an important clue as to this system’s age. After analysis, we conclude that this system can’t be much over…” she paused for effect, “…one thousand years old.”

“Now there’s a suspiciously familiar number…” Bob murmured.

“That thought occurred to a lot of us, too.”

“But doesn’t it take a supernova to form a black hole?” Carmen asked.

“So did that thought.”

“Great. So our nasties have now graduated from sterilizing planets to generating black holes?” Kevin said.

“Hold on. I had my staff do some data mining through our archives over the past several hours, and we may have found how to generate this system without blowing up a star. This is a mechanism first proposed in the late twentieth/early twenty-first century to explain some of the intense gamma ray events being detected by the Vela satellites. The Velas were launched to detect gamma ray signatures from space-based nuclear weapons test ban violations.”

“It’s a gamma burster?” Kevin said incredulously.

“It’s a gamma burster,” Pamela confirmed. “It’s something we’ve observed for hundreds of years, but always in distant galaxies. It never really occurred to anyone that they could happen in ours.”

“So does a gamma burster explain what we’ve been seeing the past month?” Bob asked.

She manipulated some controls, and the hologram above the table changed to show two neutron stars slowly spiraling toward each other. “It does. We start with neutron stars in mutual orbit.”

“Why aren’t their orbits stable?” Carmen asked, noting the decaying orbits.

“Two reasons.” Almost unconsciously, Pamela got up and slowly paced around the table as she spoke, almost as if lecturing a class. “First, gravitational wave emissions. Mostly because the progenitor neutron stars are so fast and close to each other. Now watch what happens when they approach each other’s tidal limits… Their accretion disks interact, creating an intermittent drag…”

In the simulation, the approaching neutron stars suddenly shredded apart along their mutual orbits. The debris rapidly spiraled into the system’s center of gravity, then two intense beams of radiation shot out along the system’s rotational axis. “In the process of forming the final black hole, the excess energy is funneled out along their orbital angular momentum vector … which becomes the black hole’s spin axis,” Pamela explained matter-of-factly. “The leading edge of the jet will consist of an intense burst of gamma rays, followed very shortly by highly-relativistic particle radiation. With sufficient plasma densities, it is possible the beams may be self-focusing over interstellar distances. You’re basically cramming the energy of an entire supernova into two very narrow opposing jets.”

Bob’s mouth slowly opened. “Where would the beams have been aimed?”

“When we originally dropped sublight, we were very nearly looking down the rotational axis of the accretion disk,” Carmen trailed off, then looked up and said. “JEDI, display current astrogation plot. Include this location plus the location of our last four maintenance stops.”

The display swam and projected the requested data. Bob now took over. “JEDI, assume a gamma-ray generating event of the type previously modeled by Dr. Davies has taken place. Given the current alignment of this system’s rotation axis relative to the galaxy, plot where the radiation jet would fall on this chart.”

The radiation beam shot out from the newly-formed black hole and speared through the galaxy. One by one, the lobe approached each of the previous four systems
Procyon
had visited over the past month.

One by one, it missed each one.

Carmen muttered an inarticulate and vaguely Spanish-sounding curse under her breath. “Reminds me of my Masters’ thesis research,” Bob said, clearly disappointed by the outcome of the simulation.

Kevin’s face, however, showed he didn’t share everyone else’s mood. Bob noticed this and said, “Yes, XO?”

Kevin finally found the words he was looking for. Looking at the ceiling, he asked, “JEDI, are we using current positions for the highlighted stars?”

“Yes.”

“Bingo,” Kevin said with overly-savage triumph.

“Oh, my,” Bob breathed. He understood what Kevin was getting at immediately.

“What? What’s wrong?” Pamela asked. She was uncharacteristically slow on the uptake.

“We never corrected the sim for one thousand years of proper motion. We’re looking at the stars where they were when we visited them, not where they were when the event happened.” Kevin leaned back in his chair and finished smugly, “Never send an AI to do a man’s work.”

A wave of recognition slowly broke over the briefing room. “Mr. O’Byrne, would you mind doing the honors?” Bob asked.

“With pleasure. JEDI, edit sim. For the four stars highlighted, change their galactic positions to where they were at the time of the gamma ray event and allow the stars to move based on their recorded proper motion and galactic orbit.”

“Done,” JEDI said almost immediately. Only those with astronomy backgrounds knew the amount of calculation hidden in the slight gap between command and response.