There were no old buildings on the campus of Star City University. The Colony itself was only 32 years old\u2014 nearly 33, if you counted from Charter Day coming up in January. Or 37 if you counted from the day construction began. The \u201cground\u201d which the campus occupied would be somewhere in between, depending on when the construction got around to that particular piece.<\/p>\n
Where was I going with this?<\/em> Linda Ryder paused and frowned. Her train of thought had been derailed by nitpicking Star City\u2019s age. No old buildings…<\/em><\/p>\n Right. She\u2019d been looking at the ivy trained to grow up the faux-brick walls of the Admin building and wondering why the designers had been so set on imitating the appearance of planetside colleges with centuries behind them.<\/p>\n What was the need for an above-decks campus at all, really? Intramural fields, some nice grounds to relax in between classes\u2014 that\u2019s all that had to be there. Everything else would do just fine occupying the layers of decks below her feet.<\/p>\n Still, someone had thought the only major offworld university needed to look like someone else\u2019s idea of what a university ought to look like, and so it was, with most of the classroom and research buildings heaving themselves up above \u201cground level\u201d as if they were planetside, freestanding buildings instead of just upper floors on top the fully occupied decks below.<\/p>\n Maybe it was because<\/em> Star City was so young. It was the third youngest of all the O\u2019Neill Colonies. Linda grew up in the oldest: Aurora, coming up on its 70th Charter Day. Still a baby by comparison to Earthly cities, but at least there the structures that looked out-of-date did so because they actually were.<\/p>\n Her daily run took her on past Admin and toward the student center. Okay,<\/em> she admitted to herself, the outdoor seating area for the coffee bar is nice.<\/em> But even so, the rest of the student center could have been one deck down, with stairs up to the patio.<\/p>\n She spotted her friends at a table next to the Tree (a campus landmark: there were plenty of trees in Midway, but the<\/em> Tree had been brought up from Earth as a sapling rather than a seed, and was now twice the size of any other tree on campus) and headed in their direction. They\u2019d already ordered, and had a bottle of water waiting for Linda\u2014 she\u2019d get coffee after she cooled down.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know why you do that to yourself,\u201d David said as Linda grabbed a paper napkin from the table and mopped her face.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause otherwise the sweat runs into my eyes,\u201d she answered.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s not what I meant.\u201d<\/p>\n Linda knew that but ignored it. She opened the water bottle and took a long drink.<\/p>\n \u201cExercise is good for you, David,\u201d Jenny said. \u201cYou should try it sometime. Otherwise you\u2019ll drop dead of a heart attack before you\u2019re forty.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re one to talk, when was the last time you did anything physical?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBy day or by night?\u201d Jenny replied with a calm smile.<\/p>\n Jenny Terrell, David Rose, and Frank Lewis had become Linda\u2019s central circle of friends over the last couple of years, ever since they got grouped together in freshman Physics lab. Jenny and Linda had tried being roommates their sophomore year but it hadn\u2019t worked out: they got on each other\u2019s nerves too much while sharing a dorm room, and after a year had each found their own place off campus.<\/p>\n Frank now broke into the conversation to ask, \u201cLinda, have you done the Quantum homework yet?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWorking on it,\u201d she answered carefully. In fact she\u2019d known the answers at a glance, and finished the assignment pretty much as fast as she could enter the equations on her handscreen. But she didn\u2019t want to say that.<\/p>\n Her friends knew she got straight A\u2019s, at least on everything in the Physics department. She didn\u2019t want them to know how easy it was.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat time is it?\u201d she asked. She needed to shower before her next class.<\/p>\n \u201cTwelve thirty,\u201d Jenny said.<\/p>\n She had an hour. No problem.<\/p>\n When it started getting darker, her first thought was that something had malfunctioned. Something had kicked the Colony into night mode accidentally, and the transparencies were polarizing to shut out the light. Or worse, the mirrors themselves had lost tracking on the Sun.<\/p>\n But that wasn\u2019t it. Instinctively she lifted her eyes upward, squinting for a glance at the Sun, and its disk was right where it should be. But the Sun itself was darkening, yellowing on its way to orange.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d Frank looked around at the suddenly dim patio. He didn\u2019t look up: he hadn\u2019t caught on yet.<\/p>\n Others had. Linda heard sudden shouts in the distance.<\/p>\n She didn\u2019t have to squint to look at the Sun now.<\/p>\n \u201cOh my God,\u201d Jenny whispered. \u201cIt\u2019s the Sun.\u201d<\/p>\n All four of them stared upward now.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s impossible,\u201d David said. \u201cImpossible.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSomething must be blocking it,\u201d Frank said. \u201cA dust cloud, or something is wrong with the mirrors. The Sun can\u2019t cool down that fast, it\u2019s not physically possible.\u201d<\/p>\n The light reminded Linda of sunset pictures from Earth. But the Sun wasn\u2019t setting. Its reflected image stood there in the sky, going out.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a fluctuation,\u201d Jenny said. \u201cIt must be. The Sun\u2019s been flickering twenty years, this is just a bigger fluctuation.\u201d<\/p>\n Darkness fell, and a dim emergency light came on over the door into the student center. Not the usual nighttime lighting, the battery system used during a power failure… or eclipse.<\/p>\n Linda found herself holding her breath. With difficulty, she forced herself to exhale, and breathe again. She said, softly, \u201cWhat if it doesn\u2019t come back?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt has to,\u201d Frank said. \u201cThat much heat energy can\u2019t just disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n Linda heard more shouting, but it was distant. There didn\u2019t seem to be any panic nearby: everyone was just stunned. People below decks probably didn\u2019t even know what was happening, would think it was just a power malfunction. Linda and her friends continued to stare, transfixed, at the now dim, black circle of the Sun, surrounded by a sullen red corona.<\/p>\n \u201cWill it go nova?\u201d Jenny asked. \u201cWith no internal heat to keep pressure, there\u2019ll be a gravitational collapse…\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Sun\u2019s not big enough for a nova,\u201d David said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m telling you it has to come back,\u201d Frank insisted. \u201cAn object the Sun\u2019s size, even if you stopped all fusion inside it on an instant, it can\u2019t cool down that quickly. The energy has to go somewhere! Something is containing it, or screening it, or, or…\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c…or sending it elsewhere.\u201d None of the others heard Linda\u2019s quiet remark. The thought had come to her, in the same intuitive way as the answers on her physics homework, but she couldn\u2019t pin it down.<\/p>\n She tore her eyes away from the Sun and looked at her friends. They continued to stare at the darkened Sun, but their faces, and their conversation\u2014 though whispered, filtered through astonishment\u2014 they didn\u2019t seem afraid.<\/p>\n God help us,<\/em> she thought, the world is ending, and we\u2019re fascinated.<\/em><\/p>\n Suddenly there was a bright flash. Her friends cried out and turned away, covering their eyes in momentary pain from the sudden flare. Even Linda, looking away from the Sun at the moment of the flare, was dazzled and for a moment could see only glaring afterimages. By the time her eyes readjusted, everything looked normal, the Sun as bright as it ever was.<\/p>\n The others were still rubbing their eyes. \u201cAre you okay?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n Frank lowered his hand and blinked. \u201cLike a strobe light going off right in your face. But I think it\u2019s okay.\u201d<\/p>\n David and Jenny also seemed to be recovering. At least no one was saying they were blind.<\/p>\n After a few moments recovery, they stared at each other.<\/p>\n \u201cTold you it had to come back,\u201d Frank finally said.<\/p>\n #\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 #\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 #<\/p>\n There was general chaos around campus in the wake of the… whatever-it-was. Probably the same was true all over Star City\u2014 over all the Colonies.<\/p>\n The emergency had passed, at least for now. It had passed before shock could turn into fear and panic and now everyone was trading rumors, asking each other the same questions: \u201cDid you see it? What do you think it was? Will it happen again?\u201d<\/p>\n No panic, but new fear lurked in the background. Linda could feel it in the air, hear it in the tones of every voice. No one knew whether this would be an isolated event, a new pattern for the Sun\u2019s unexplained fluctuation, or the sign that something worse was coming.<\/p>\n The clock counted its way around to 1330\u00a0 and time for afternoon classes. With no better plan, Linda and the others headed to class, though they weren\u2019t entirely sure it would actually happen.<\/p>\n They found about half the class had shown up. Professor Schaller was there, but he dispensed with the lecture planned on the syllabus and let the class discuss\u2014 or more like aimlessly chatter about\u2014 the Sun\u2019s brief outage. He had data from the Astronomy Department\u2019s solar observatory up on the lecture hall\u2019s main screen and talked over what it showed, but it was easy to see he was as shaken as anyone else.<\/p>\n Linda, though, found herself frowning at the graphs on the screen, showing the drop in the Sun\u2019s light and heat over time, and then the flash that ended the event. It wasn\u2019t a steady drop, the line dropped in an odd sort of wobbly pattern, and looking at it she had a sudden sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.<\/p>\n \u201cI know this,\u201d she muttered to herself. \u201cI\u2019ve seen this before.\u201d<\/p>\n The feeling only grew stronger as Professor Schaller overlaid a series of graphs showing how the Sun\u2019s output had dropped in different wavelengths. The data showed the Sun hadn\u2019t simply dimmed while keeping the same spectral features, as it might have appeared if something partly opaque had passed between it and the Earth-Moon system. Instead the graph showed a rapid cooling, followed by a sudden high-temperature flash a good deal hotter than the Sun\u2019s norm, and then a lapse back to the normal range of fluctuations.<\/p>\n \u201cNo doubt this is significant,\u201d Schaller said, working at the lectern controls to highlight parts of the graph. \u201cIf we integrate over these curves, taking the Sun\u2019s average output as a baseline, we find that the extra energy emitted during the flash was exactly<\/em> the amount that the Sun fell short during the cooling event.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo conservation of energy remains intact,\u201d Frank said quietly. \u201cIt\u2019s as if it was, I don\u2019t know, bottled up somehow.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs if the Sun held its breath for a moment, and then let it out in one big puff,\u201d Jenny said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s what the whole human race did, anyway,\u201d David said.<\/p>\n Linda did not join in the conversation. The more data Professor Schaller displayed, the stronger her feeling of recognition grew.<\/p>\n Something contained the energy, almost the whole energy the Sun puts out,<\/em> she thought. But then immediately: No, that\u2019s not it. Something <\/em>drew the energy away, cooling the Sun down as its heat got sucked right out of it.<\/em> Like a machine drawing amps from an electrical circuit\u2014 only instead of using the energy for something, whatever had taken it then coughed it right back out again.<\/p>\n But what could draw enough power to drain a whole star? What sort of heat sink could drain so much?<\/p>\n She looked at the graph on the screen again, the strange but distinctive wobbly shape of its descending curve, and thought the answer was right on the tip of her mind. She\u2019d seen that graph before. Somewhere.<\/p>\n \u201cI know this,\u201d she said out loud. \u201cI know this.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n TO BE CONTINUED<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There were no old buildings on the campus of Star City University. The Colony itself was only 32 years old\u2014 nearly 33, if you counted from Charter Day coming up in January. Or 37 if you counted from the day…<\/p>\n