To Save the Sun Read online

  To Save the Sun

  By

  Ben Bova & A. J. Austin

  Contents

  PART ONE DECISION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  PART TWO HE WHO MUST DIE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  PART THREE COMING OF AGE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PART FOUR TO REAP THE WHIRLWIND

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  PART FIVE TEST

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  PART SIX HOMECOMING

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  Praise for

  To Save the Sun

  "Bova gets better and better, combining plausible science with increasingly complex fiction."

  —Los Angeles Daily News

  "An entertaining tale!"

  —The Washington Times

  "A classical saga of love and loyalty, ambition and treachery… Quite entertaining!"

  —West Coast Review of Books

  "It's a good read—good enough, indeed, for me to predict you'll see it on award ballots."

  —Analog

  Tor books by Ben Bova

  As on a Darkling Plain

  The Astral Mirror

  Battle Station

  The Best of the Nebulas (ed.)

  Challenges

  Colony

  Cyberbooks

  Empire Builders

  Escape Plus

  Gremlins Go Home (with Gordon R. Dickson)

  The Kinsman Saga

  The Multiple Man

  Orion

  Orion in the Dying Time

  Out of the Sun

  Peacekeepers

  Privateers

  Prometheans

  Star Peace: Assured Survival

  The Starcrossed

  Test of Fire

  To Save the Sun (with A. J. Austin)

  The Trikon Deception (with Bill Pogue)

  Triumph

  Vengeance of Orion

  Voyagers

  Voyagers II: The Alien Within

  Voyagers HI: Star Brothers

  The Winds of Altair

  Note: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  TO SAVE THE SUN

  Copyright © 1992 by Ben Bova and A. J. Austin

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Cover art by John Berkey

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, N.Y. 10010

  Tor ® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  ISBN: 0-812-51448-3

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-25453

  First edition: September 1992

  First mass market printing: December 1993

  Printed in the United States of America

  0987654321

  For Barbara, of course.—B.B.

  For Sally, who makes everything possible, and for Courtney, who makes everything fun.—A.J.A.

  And for Gordy, with our deepest thanks for his unfailing kindness and generosity.

  PART ONE

  DECISION

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Emperor of the Hundred Worlds stood at the head of the conference chamber, tall, gray, grim-faced. Although there were forty other men and women seated in the chamber, the Emperor knew he was alone.

  "Then it is certain?" he asked, his voice grave but strong despite the news they had given him. "Earth's Sun will explode?"

  The scientists had come from all ends of the Empire to reveal their findings to the Emperor. They shifted uneasily in their sculptured couches under his steady gaze. A few of them, the oldest and best-trusted, were actually on Corinth, the Imperial planet itself, only an ocean away from the palace. Most of the others had been brought to the Imperial solar system from their homeworlds, and were housed on the three other planets of the system.

  Although the holographic projections made them look as solid and real as Emperor Nicholas himself, there was always a slight lag in their responses to him. The delay was an indication of their rank within the scientific order, and they had even arranged their seating in the conference chamber the same way: the farther away from the Emperor, the lower in the hierarchy.

  Some things cannot be conquered, the Emperor thought to himself as one of the men in the third rank of couches, a roundish, balding, slightly pompous little man, got to his feet. Time still reigns supreme. Distance we can conquer, but not time. Not death.

  "Properly speaking, Sire, the Sun will not explode. It will not become a nova. Its mass is too low for that. But the eruptions that it will suffer will be of sufficient severity to heat Earth's atmosphere to incandescence. It will destroy all life on the surface. And, of course, the oceans will be drastically damaged; the food chain of the oceans will be totally disrupted."

  Good-bye to Earth, then, thought the Emperor.

  But aloud he asked, "The power satellites, and the shielding we have provided the planet—they will not protect it?"

  The scientist stood dumb, patiently waiting for his Emperor's response to span the light-minutes between them. How drab he looks, the Emperor noted. And how soft. He pulled his own white robe closer around his iron-hard body. He was older than most of them in the conference chamber, but they were accustomed to sitting at desks and lecturing to students. He was accustomed to standing before multitudes and commanding.

  "The shielding," the bald man said at last, "will not be sufficient. There is nothing we can do. For several centuries neutrino counts have consistently shown that the core of Earth's Sun has become stagnant. Sometime over the next three to five hundred years, the Sun will erupt and destroy all life on Earth and the inner planets of its system. The data are conclusive."

  The Emperor inclined his head to the man, curtly, a gesture that meant both "Thank you" and "Be seated." The scientist waited mutely for the gesture to reach him.

  The data are conclusive. The integrator woven into the molecules of his cerebral cortex linked the Emperor's mind with the continent-spanning computer complex that was the Imperial memory.

  Within milliseconds he reviewed the equations and found no flaw in them. Even as he did so, the other hemisphere of his brain was picturing Earth's daystar seething, writhing in a fury of pent-up nuclear agony, then erupting into giant flares. The Sun calmed afterward and smiled benignly once again on a blackened, barren, smoking rock called Earth.

  A younger man was on his feet, back in the last row of couches. The Emperor realized that he had alre
ady asked for permission to speak. Now they both waited for the photons to complete the journey between them. From his position in the chamber and the distance between them, he was either an upstart or a very junior researcher.

  "Sire," he said at last, his face suddenly flushed in embarrassed self-consciousness or, perhaps, the heat of conviction, "the data may be conclusive, true enough. But it is not true that we must accept this catastrophe with folded hands."

  The Emperor began to say, "Explain yourself," but the intense young man never hesitated to wait for an Imperial response. He was taking no chance of being commanded into silence before he had finished.

  "Earth's Sun will erupt only if we do nothing to prevent it. A colleague of mine believes that we have the means to prevent the eruptions. I would like to present her ideas on the subject. She could not attend this meeting herself." The young man's face grew taut, angry. "Her application to attend was rejected by the Coordinating Committee."

  The Emperor smiled inwardly as the young man's words reached the other scientists around him. He could see a shock wave of disbelief and indignation spread through the assembly. The hoary old men in the front row, who chose the members of the Coordinating Committee, went stiff with anger.

  Even Prince Javas, the Emperor's last remaining son, roused from his idle daydreaming where he sat at the Emperor's side and seemed to take an interest in the meeting for the first time.

  "You may present your colleague's proposal," the Emperor said. That is what an Emperor is for, he added silently, looking at his youngest son, seeking some understanding on his handsome untroubled face. To be magnanimous in the face of disaster.

  The young man took a pen-sized data stick from his sleeve pocket and inserted it into the computer input slot in the arm of his couch. The scientists in the front ranks of the chamber glowered and muttered to each other.

  The Emperor stood lean and straight, stroking his graying beard absently as he waited for the information to reach him. When it did, he saw in his mind a young dark-haired woman whose face might have been charming were she not so intensely serious about her subject. She was speaking, trying to keep her voice dispassionate, but was almost literally quivering with excitement. Equations appeared, charts, graphs, lists of materials and costs; yet her intent, dark-eyed face dominated it all.

  Beyond her, the Emperor saw a vague, star-shimmering image of vast ships ferrying megatons of equipment and thousands upon thousands of technical specialists from all parts of the Hundred Worlds toward Earth and its troubled Sun.

  Then, as the equations faded and the starry picture went dim and even the woman's face began to pale, the Emperor saw the Earth, green and safe, smelled the grass and heard birds singing, saw the Sun shining gently over a range of softly rolling, ancient wooded hills.

  He closed his eyes. You go too far, woman. But how was she to know that his eldest son had died in hills exactly like these, killed on Earth, killed by Earth, so many years ago?

  CHAPTER TWO

  He sat now. The Emperor of the Hundred Worlds spent little time on his feet anymore. One by one the vanities are surrendered. He sat in a powered chair that held him in a soft yet firm embrace. It was mobile and almost alive: part personal vehicle, part medical monitor, part communications system that could link him with any place in the Empire.

  His son stood. Prince Javas stood by the marble balustrade that girdled the high terrace where his father had received him. He wore the gray-blue uniform of a fleet commander, although he had never bothered to accept command of even one ship. His wife, the Princess Rihana, was at her husband's side.

  They were a well-matched pair physically. Gold and fire. The Prince had his father's lean sinewy grace, golden hair and star-flecked eyes. Rihana was fiery, with the beauty and ruthlessness of a tigress in her face. Her hair was a cascade of molten copper tumbling past her shoulders, her gown a metallic glitter.

  "It was a wasted trip," Javas said to his father, with his usual sardonic smile. "Earth is… well," he shrugged, "nothing but Earth. It hasn't changed in the slightest."

  "Thirty wasted years," Rihana said.

  The Emperor looked past them, beyond the terrace to the lovingly landscaped forest that his engineers could never make quite the right shade of terrestrial green.

  "Not entirely wasted, daughter-in-law," he said at last. "In cryosleep, you've aged hardly at all…"

  "We are thirty years out of date with the affairs of the Empire," she snapped. The smoldering expression on her face made it clear that she believed her father-in-law deliberately plotted to keep her as far from the throne as possible.

  "You can easily catch up," the Emperor said, ignoring her anger. "In the meantime, you have kept your youthful appearance."

  "I shall always keep it! You are the one who denies himself rejuvenation treatments, not me."

  "And so will Javas, when he becomes Emperor."

  "Will he?" Her eyes were suddenly mocking.

  "He will," said the Emperor, with the weight of a hundred worlds behind his voice.

  Rihana looked away from him. "Well, even so, I shan't. I see no reason why I should age and wither when even the foulest shopkeeper can live for centuries."

  "Your husband will age."

  She said nothing. And as he ages, the Emperor knew, you will find younger lovers. But of course, you have already done that, haven't you? He turned toward his son, who was still standing by the balustrade.

  "Kyle Arman is dead," Javas blurted.

  For a moment, the Emperor failed to comprehend. "Dead?" he asked, his voice sounding old and weak even to himself.

  Javas nodded. "In his sleep. A heart seizure."

  "But he is too young…"

  "He was your age, Father."

  "And he refused rejuvenation treatments," Rihana said, sounding positively happy. "As if he were royalty! The pretentious fool. A servant… a menial…"

  "He was a friend of this House," the Emperor said.

  "He killed my brother," said Javas.

  "Your brother failed the test. He was a coward. Unfit to rule." But Kyle passed you, the Emperor thought. You were found fit to rule… or was Kyle still ashamed of what he had done to my firstborn ?

  "And you accepted his story." For once, Javas' bemused smile was gone. There was iron in his voice. "The word of a backwoods Earthman."

  "A pretentious fool," Rihana gloated.

  "A proud and faithful man," the Emperor corrected. "A man who put honor and duty above personal safety or comfort."

  His eyes locked with Javas'. After a long moment in silence, the Prince shrugged and turned away.

  "Regardless," Rihana said, "we surveyed the situation on Earth, as you requested us to."

  Commanded, the Emperor thought. Not requested.

  "The people there are all primitives. Hardly a city on the entire planet! It's all trees and huge oceans."

  "I know," he said drily, "I was born there."

  Javas said, "There are only a few millions living on Earth. They can be evacuated easily and resettled on a few of the frontier planets. After all, they are primitives."

  "Those 'primitives' are the baseline for our race. They are the pool of original genetic material, against which our scientists constantly measure the rest of humanity throughout the Hundred Worlds."

  Rihana said, "Well, they're going to have to find another primitive world to live on."

  "Unless we prevent their Sun from exploding."

  Javas looked amused. "You're not seriously considering that?"

  "I am… considering it. Perhaps not very seriously."

  "It makes no difference," Rihana said. "The plan to save the Sun—to save your precious Earth—will take hundreds of years to implement. You will be dead long before even the earliest steps can be brought to a conclusion. The next Emperor can cancel the entire plan the day he takes the throne."

  The Emperor turned his chair slightly to face his son, but Javas looked away, out toward the darkening forest.

/>   "I know," the Emperor whispered, more to himself than to her. "I know that full well."

  He could not sleep. The Emperor lay on the wide expanse of warmth, floating a single molecular layer above the gently soothing waters. Always before, when sleep would not come readily, a woman had solved the problem for him. But lately not even lovemaking helped.

  The body grows weary but the mind refuses sleep. Is this what old age brings?

  Now he lay alone, the ceiling of his tower bedroom depolarized so that he could see the blazing glory of the night sky of Corinth, capital planet of the Hundred Worlds.

  Not the pale tranquil sky of Earth, with its bloated Moon smiling inanely at you, he thought. This was truly an Imperial sky, brazen with shimmering lights that glittered and sparkled like a thick sprinkling of gleaming gemstones. But they were not true stars, the Emperor knew. The inner reaches of the Procyon system were strewn with rubble, asteroids, the makings of planets that never coalesced because of the star's massive gravity field. Debris, thought the Emperor. Still, they shine beautifully. No moon rode in the sky; none was needed. There was never true darkness on Corinth.

  A few true stars shone feebly through the glittering haze. One particularly bright one: diamond-hard, brilliant. Procyon's dwarf-star companion. A star that was halfway toward death.

  That is what the Sun will look like one day, the Emperor realized. Once that companion had been a normal star, fully as large and bright as Procyon itself. When it collapsed it spewed out lethal waves of heat and radiation that scrubbed all life from the surface of Corinth. When the first explorers from Earth had found the planet, it was blackened and barren, its atmosphere just beginning to stabilize after its terrible ordeal.

  That is why Corinth was made the capital of the Empire. It was useless for any other purpose. No one wanted it, so the Imperial Court was free to build on it without hindrance.