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Thomas Thiemeyer

Magma

A novel

Translated from the original German version by Vernon D. Cook

Imprint

For Max and Leon,
Whose adventure has just begun …

Verily at the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the eversure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros, fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them. From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Night; but of Night were born Aether and Day, whom she conceived and bare from union in love with Erebus. And Earth first bare starry Heaven, equal to herself, to cover her on every side, and to be an eversure abiding-place for the blessed gods. And she brought forth long Hills, graceful haunts of the goddess-Nymphs who dwell amongst the glens of the hills. She bare also the fruitless deep with his raging swell, Pontus, without sweet union of love. But afterwards she lay with Heaven and bare deep-swirling Oceanus, Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys.

After them was born Cronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire. And again, she bare the Cyclopes, overbearing in spirit, Brontes, and Steropes and stubborn-hearted Arges, who gave Zeus the thunder and made the thunderbolt: in all else they were like the gods, but one eye only was set in the midst of their fore-heads. And they were surnamed Cyclopes because one orbed eye was set in their foreheads. Strength and might and craft were in their works.

And again, three other sons were born of Earth and Heaven, great and doughty beyond telling, Cottus and Briareos and Gyes, presumptuous children. From their shoulders sprang an hundred arms, not to be approached, and each had fifty heads upon his shoulders on their strong limbs, and irresistible was the stubborn strength that was in their great forms.

For of all the children that were born of Earth and Heaven, these were the most terrible, and they were hated by their own father from the first. And he used to hide them all away in a secret place of Earth so soon as each was born, and would not suffer them to come up into the light: and Heaven rejoiced in his evil doing.

But vast Earth groaned within, being straitened, and she made the element of grey flint and shaped a great sickle, and told her plan to her dear sons.

And she spoke, cheering them, while she was vexed in her dear heart: “My children, gotten of a sinful father, if you will obey me, we should punish the vile outrage of your father; for he first thought of doing shameful things.”

Hesiod: Theogony

700 BC

Contents

Part 1 Prolog

Chapter 1

Part 2 The Awakening

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Part 3 The Scar

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Part 4 The Path

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Part 5 The Lighting

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Part 6 Conclusion

Chapter 55

Acknowledgments

Part 1
Prolog

1

19 May 1954

South Tyrolean Alps

The fog began to envelope him.

White wisps of vapor rose from the ground, gathered among the rocks and began to sweep over the rutted plateau like the souls of departed hikers. Sparse globeflower and Alpine forget-me-not leaves, which had survived the long winter here at two thousand five hundred feet altitude wedged between the cracks and crevices, were covered in a glittering layer of dew. Few hikers who ever wandered into this karst landscape, devoured by wind and water, knew that the coral outcroppings bore silent witness to the fact that this area had once been at the bottom of a sea some two hundred million years ago. The fifty-square-kilometer chaos of channels, crevices, ridges and dolinas was a maze of petrified waves, remnants of a primeval sea, that even experienced and well-trained mountaineers found difficult to navigate in poor visibility.

Professor Francesco Mondari of the Paleontology Department of the University of Bologna, was neither well-trained nor athletic. Although he was tall and slim, his fondness for expensive cigars had left him short of breath over the years. A morning glance in the mirror, coupled with the declining number of willing female students, bore witness to the fact that the relaxed life he had been enjoying lately had begun to leave its mark on him. But that would soon be over because he had sworn that when he celebrated his fortieth birthday next month, he would be changing his ways. Good nutrition, going to bed early and, above all, sports, would be on the agenda again.

Mondari put the thoughts about his future aside and peered worriedly over the rim of his glasses. The fog was getting thicker. Not enough for him to lose his bearings, but the weather was starting to worry him.

One of his students’ report on the coral outcroppings and their constant erosion had caught his attention and he had decided to use the semester break for what he called a small educational vacation. His specialty was Alpine marine deposits. The coral here should have provided him with an excellent insight into the structure and biodiversity of an ancient ecosystem, but at the moment, there wasn’t much to see. Visibility had dropped to less than ten meters, making it impossible for him to get his bearings. He opened the leather bag that was hanging on his belt and took out his old army compass. It was a souvenir from the First World War that his father had given him after his fortuitous return from the European battlefields. Mondari opened the metal case, whose green coating was already peeling off in spots, and looked at the red and white magnetic needle that pointed steadily north. The professor could have sworn that it was pointing in the wrong direction, but who was he to argue with the old heirloom? With a sigh, he struck out on the indicated path, but not without some trepidation. The compass could tell him which direction to go, but it couldn’t prevent him from falling into one of the countless crevices or ravines that crisscrossed the plateau. The Altipiano Delle Pale Plateau followed its own rules, one of which was never to venture out in bad weather. But how could he have known? When Mondari had reached the plateau two hours ago, the weather had looked fine and there was no sign that it was going to change. Although he had been warned down at the Pension Canetti in San Martino that a low was approaching, he never would have guessed that the weather could change so quickly here.

It must have been more than fifteen minutes since he had last taken a rest to catch his breath and the difficult hike in the thin air was too much for him. He could feel himself breaking out in a sweat in spite of the chilling cold. He looked at the compass again and stopped. Now the needle was suddenly pointing in the opposite direction, the direction he had just come from. He stood there confused. It had been less than five minutes since he had last looked at the needle, but he had always made sure he wasn’t straying for his course. And now he suddenly needed to make a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn? That was absurd. Surely he would have noticed that. What was going on here?

He looked around helplessly. Now he was completely enveloped in fog and mist. It had come in so fast that he hadn’t even had the chance to reach the nearby Rosetta mountain cabin. As he began to panic, he did something embarrassing, something that was proof of his own weakness. He cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted into the fog.

“Hello. Is anyone there?”

There was no answer.

“Can anyone hear me?”

Silence.

“Give me a sign if you hear me.”

Nothing.

“Help me, I’m lost!”

Now it was out. His confession of helplessness had left his mouth and flown out into the world. Torn between hope and fear, he listened for an answer in the white wall of fog. Nothing. He suddenly remembered the emergency equipment he had been talked into taking along with him in the valley below. It was a small whistle. He put it between his thumb and forefinger and blew into it. Once, twice. The shrill sound hurt his ears, but he tried again without success.

He was completely alone.

He swore, turned around and headed in the opposite direction, the direction that the compass supposedly indicated was north. This time, however, he didn’t take his eyes off the needle. He wasn’t going to let himself get turned around a second time.

He hadn’t gone far before the needle began turning left, then right and then making a complete revolution. Mondari held the compass so close to his face that the tip of his nose almost touched it, staring at the needle in disbelief. For some unknown reason, it didn’t seem to know which way was north. He tapped on the green-lacquered case, but the needle didn’t stop dancing. Maybe there was something metallic or even some mineral deposits in the area, but the idea was absurd. There were huge deposits of limestone, but there was no metal. Maybe the thing just wasn’t working anymore. Today just seemed to be one of those days when anything could happen. He put the compass away, leaned back on a nearby ledge and took a sip from his canteen. Just calm down and don’t panic, he told himself Mondari reached into his backpack and pulled out a bag of raisin scones that the plump landlady at the boardinghouse had given him. Deep in thought, he pulled out his notebook and opened it. There was an entry for the 18th of May, 1954. I’ve completed my preparations for the climb to Forcella del Mièl. I’m going to get something to eat and then get to bed early. I am planning on starting the ascent by 6:30 at the latest so I can be back in the valley before it starts to get dark.

That had been yesterday afternoon when he was not having any second thoughts about the climb. He shut the notebook and put it back. What should he do now? Theoretically, the bad weather could pass as quickly as it had come. On the other hand, he had heard stories about how the mountain peaks had remained shrouded in clouds for weeks. Should he just sit back and wait to see what happened? Or should he try to find his way back? Neither choice suited him, especially when he couldn’t rely on his compass. He finally decided to give his anxious mind a few minutes rest and wait here a while. The rocks around him looked promising so he decided that he may as well just start his investigation here. That would also distract him from thinking about what might happen if it started to rain.

He shoved another scone in his mouth, closed his food bag and reached for his geologist’s hammer. Pointed in front and tapered in the back, and with a rubber handle, it was an indispensable tool for every geologist. He also had a hardness scale, an assortment of stone chisels, a card with measurement tables and a field book in which he would carefully note each find. Along with all the provisions he needed for the day, it all weighed around six kilos, not including any samples he might pick up. A piece of cake if you were just out for a day trip.

He began his examination on the roundish rock he was sitting on. After a few well-placed blows, he managed to knock off some sizeable chunks of rock. He examined the whitish breaks with a practiced eye. Definitely a reef facies. Ammonites, crabs, sea lilies and the remains of goniatites. A mixture of petrified pieces of shell and coral was embedded in the beautifully formed calcite crystals. Late Triassic or early Jurassic, but he couldn’t be more precise without a suitable fossil guide. Professor Minghella, one of the most prestigious micropaleontologists in Italy, would be able to date them more precisely with just one look though. The inclusions were barely deformed, which suggested that this plateau was raised en masse and had thus survived the folding phase relatively unscathed. Mondari nodded grimly. His student’s tip had been good, which would earn the boy a laudatory entry in his grade book. He broke the chunk of rock into five smaller pieces, kept the two nicest ones and tossed the rest away. Then he returned to his work on the rock he had been sitting on. On the spot where he had broken off a piece, a different colored background was now showing through. That, in itself, was nothing unusual. Corals tended to build their limestone palaces on abandoned sites of older corals, which sometimes caused different nuances of color. The corals could sometimes grow up to half a meter per year, layer upon layer. Even today there are active coral reefs, such as the Great Barrier Reef. But compared to the Triassic builders, those corals were bloody newbies.

He moistened his thumb and rubbed the exposed area. It was strange that it was so much darker than the layer above it. It was probably been caused by a change in the ocean current that could have infused a new variety of nutrients and minerals, which had affected the color of the coral. But ocean currents didn’t normally change that fast. The color change should have been gradual, but there was an abrupt change here. There might have been a hundred or perhaps five hundred years maximum between the two layers, a blink of an eye in geological time and far too short a time for such a drastic change.

Mondari started to sweat. He had already stumbled on something important – and in such a short time. Wonderful! And if that wasn’t enough, he noticed it was starting to get brighter around him. A light breeze had come up and was carrying away the clouds of fog. He could already see blue sky shining through in many places.

He rubbed his hands together. The adventure was just beginning.

With renewed zeal, he set about clearing off the strange underlying layer. The considerable hardness of the underlying rock made it easy to remove the crumbly upper layer. After about an hour, he had managed to clear away about one square meter of rock. He straightened up, panting. He took off his glasses, wiped the sweat from his eyes and examined his work. His hand was trembling, partly because he was no longer used to field work, and party because he was finding it hard to suppress his excitement. He set the hammer aside and took a step back. What presented itself to his curious eyes was unusual. It appeared to be a sphere, an orb stuck in the middle of the calcite. By looking at the curvature of the exposed rock and extrapolating, he estimated its size to be about two meters in diameter. The substance it was made from had nothing in common with the surrounding coral. It was made out of some shiny, grayish metallic material. Consequently, it couldn’t be a product of the reef building. He suddenly remembered his compass and he placed the device on the exposed rock. The needle began to spin like crazy. Maybe the sphere was really made out of metal. But whatever it was, it was obviously a foreign body and did not belong here. It wasn’t uncommon, however, for coral to grow over everything in its path. The fact that the sphere had been enveloped by the coral meant that it had already been there before the reef formed. So, it had to be two-hundred to two-hundred-and-fifty-million-years-old. Not only was its age unusual, but also its form. A perfect sphere, like the perfect circle, was a product of mathematics, the human mind. Aside from short-lived phenomena like perfectly shaped soap bubbles, they did not occur naturally. And such perfection never lasted. The ravages of time always distorted every symmetrical body, and the older it was, the more misshapen it was.

Francesco Mondari had to take a deep breath. A two-hundred-and-fifty-million-year-old metal ball was not easy to comprehend. How on earth could such an object exist? As was his nature, the professor tried to think of a natural cause. Could some kind of mineralization process cause such a huge geode? If so, he had never heard of any. Spherical mineralization occurred mainly in hydrothermal areas and they formed iron oxide compounds, such as goethite or hematite, which would be one of the reasons for the strange behavior of his compass. Knobby or round shapes were not uncommon there, but these oolitic shapes were rarely larger than ten centimeters in diameter. Maybe he had just discovered the largest hematite sphere ever documented …

Mondari straightened up. He shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions. He opened his bag and reached for his Mohs hardness scale. Although he was not a trained mineralogist, being able to use this archaic-looking tool was part of the everyday life of a geologist. The hardness scale consisted of ten minerals, each with increasing hardness, beginning with the chalk-soft talc and ending with the hardest of all substances, the diamond. Hematite was somewhere between a five and a six in hardness, between apatite and feldspar. He grabbed the feldspar and tried to scratch the sphere with it, but as hard as he tried, he was unsuccessful. The feldspar left a white trail, which meant that it was much softer. Perhaps the sphere was a particularly hard type of hematite. But Mondari didn’t feel like working his way up the scale, so he reached for corundum with a hardness of nine. That would probably work since hematite was much softer than the corundum. He scraped the red-black material across the surface. It too left a white trail, but he didn’t think it came from the sphere. Mondari moistened his fingers, rubbed the spot and examined it using his magnifying glass.

Nothing.

Not even the slightest scratch.

The professor leaned back and thought. What he had found was not hematite, that was for sure. But what was it? With trembling fingers, he put the corundum back in its place and reached for the cloth bag that lay in a special compartment of the box. He opened it up and took out a metal pin with a diamond tip. He had never needed it because it wasn’t every day that a geologist needed to test something that had the hardness of a diamond. The gem sparkled in the sun. Mondari carefully applied it to the surface of the sphere. Diamonds were made from pure carbon that had come under such enormous pressure deep inside the Earth that its crystalline structure had changed. Diamonds were hard, but they were also brittle. If they were dropped, they could easily break. Mondari had spent a considerable sum for his hardness scale out of sheer vanity and he would have been willing to pay almost twice the price in order to have a real diamond in his collection. It was an investment that he had hoped to impress his female students with. He had never dreamed that he would actually need the diamond someday.

The crystal-clear tip scraped over the surface of the sphere with an unpleasant sound. Mondari looked through his magnifying glass. There were no abrasions, no scratches, no trace of any effect whatsoever. It would seem that the two materials were of equal hardness. The professor increased the pressure. The scratching got louder, but still there was no effect. He felt like David fighting Goliath. Sweat began running down his forehead and gathering on the tip of his nose. He impatiently wiped it off. This just couldn’t be true. What had he discovered? He increased the pressure again. The sphere would have to give at some point.

His hands were already starting to hurt, but he didn’t want to give up, so he pressed down again with all his strength. Suddenly he heard a crack.

Mondari stared incredulously, first at the pin, and then at the crumbled tip. The diamond had been pulverized. A pile of dust was all that was left of his valuable possession. He looked in vain through his magnifying glass for any sign of a scratch. The surface of the sphere didn’t show any signs of damage whatsoever. Francesco Mondari began to get angry. He started to feel a completely irrational hatred for the primeval object that seemed to be defying all his efforts.

With trembling hands, he reached for his hammer and chisel. He put the tip of the chisel into one of the numerous notches covering the orb, raised the hammer and struck down with all his might. Sparks flew. The chisel bounced back and the air was filled with the piercing clang of the metal. He struck again. And again. The hammer vibrated in his hands, and still there was no change in the surface of the sphere. Now he was furious. He was starting to get hot and the sun was stabbing him in the neck. He struck once more, and suddenly – he could hardly believe his eyes – a crack appeared on the surface of the sphere.

Ha! Mondari had triumphed. In the long run, nothing could withstand his obstinacy. He had finally managed to damage that damn piece of metal. He struck once more and a long, paper-thin crack appeared. And it appeared to be growing. Then he heard a sharp, satisfying crack come from the material.

Mondari straightened up and stretched his arms to relax his cramped muscles. Everything seemed to be hurting him. Tonight, he would spend some time in the sauna and then have a massage. But until then, there were still a few hours of hard work ahead of him and right now, he needed a break before he set about trying to enlarge the crack. Although he was dying to see what was inside the ball, he knew that he shouldn’t act precipitously. Impatience nearly always lead to mistakes, and he couldn’t afford to make mistakes. First, he had to document his previous efforts. No detail should be left out when he started his report later on. So, he took out his pencil and began to record what he had done so far. He made some drawings of the landscape, the geologic stratification and the structure of the coral to complete the picture.

About ten minutes later, he closed his notebook, put a rubber band around the scuffed cover and turned back to his work. The approximately fifty-centimeters crack had appeared along a meridian and with a little luck, he could enlarge it with the chisel. The substance appeared to be extremely brittle. More brittle and even harder than the diamond was. Maybe he had stumbled across a new kind of chemical compound, a new material. He might even be able to give it a name. He would call it Adamant, the indomitable – the gray metal from Greek mythology. The discovery of such a substance would secure him a place in the annals of the field of geology. His name would appear in textbooks and he would become famous all over Italy. What a beautiful dream. Mondari was, however, realistic enough to know that it was far more likely that he was on the trail of some already-known compound. A compound that had hardened through special geothermal processes. He also may have just had a defective diamond. The simplest explanations were often the right ones. He was honest enough with himself to know that the chances of actually discovering something new these days was almost nil. Still, he didn’t want that to dissuade him because the sphere was, after all, a remarkable discovery.

He put on his work gloves, pointed the chisel again and hit it with all his might. The metal literally screamed. With the next blow, he felt the chisel penetrate a few millimeters into the gap. Now things were starting to get interesting. He was sure he was only a few more blows away from getting an answer. He let the hammer fly again. Suddenly he felt a change. Something strange was happening. The air filled with the sound of the splitting of a large object – as if something huge was whistling through the air. Mondari instinctively ducked and looked anxiously around in all directions. He didn’t see anything unusual. The high plateau looked peaceful in the morning sunlight. He heard the cry of a jackdaw in the distance. And still the sound was there. Now it sounded more like a pant or like the wheezing of some giant creature. At the same time, a strange odor began rising out of the ground. It smelled like scorched stone after it had been heated to a very high temperature. Alarmed, Mondari lowered his hammer and stood up. He cautiously took a step back, his eyes still fixed on the sphere. He couldn’t explain why, but he swore that the strange odors and sounds were coming from the sphere. While he wiped his sweaty hands on his pants, he noticed that the ball had begun to change color. It became silvery in spots and then turned white. Then it started to glow.

With a mixture of fear and amazement, Francesco Mondari watched as the glow seemed to follow thin lines that clearly resembled some sort of writing.

He backed farther away.

The outside of the sphere was changing dramatically now. More and more mysterious patterns and marks began to appear. And if that weren’t enough, the crack he had made in the stone also began to glow. The bleeding wound now divided the stone over a length of around a meter. Deep inside, Mondari heard a cracking and breaking sound – as if the object were under tremendous pressure and was threatening to burst at any moment.

Now panic-stricken, Professor Mondari had only one thought: put as much distance between himself and the enigmatic object as possible. He ran, stumbling and faltering, in the direction he had come from, completely forgetting about his bag, his valuable hardeness scale and his notebook. He even left the compass, a souvenir of his deceased father, carelessly behind. He just wanted to get away as fast as he could. He ran, but the many rocks and crevices prevented him from escaping. He tripped, cut his knee, pulled himself back up and staggered on in pain.

He hadn’t gotten more than ten meters from the globe when the plateau around him was illuminated by a blinding beam of light. The scorching heat made the air glow, burned off his clothes and ate through the upper layer of his skin. His hair became a collection of burning embers that blew away in a cloud of ash.

A last beastly cry escaped his throat.

Francesco Mondari suffered a quick death. The blazing light vaporized his body into a cloud of organic matter. All that remained of him was a haze of white dust that was quickly carried away into the blue sky by the refreshing northeast wind.

Part 2
The Awakening

2

Fifty years later …

It was snowing again. Although yesterday was the official beginning of spring, the entire parabolic antenna was now covered in a thick blanket of snow. The white-painted metal framework, on which the world’s second-largest rotating radio telescope rested, blended into the surrounding hills, creating a jumble of blindly-cut sharp edges and gray surfaces. A huge steel ear, listening to the songs of the stars. At one hundred-meters in diameter, the Effelsberg dish, which took sixteen powerful electric motors to rotate, was pointed now at the zenith.

Marten Enders, the administrator of the telescope, rubbed last night’s sleep from his eyes and stared at the numbers on the big digital clock. Five minutes before eight. Just enough time for some coffee and a biscuit before the next repositioning had to be made. He stared glumly at the gray sky while filling his cup. There had been something about that in the weather reports. It had been getting colder in recent years. Maybe the earth really was headed for another ice age. Perhaps the Gulf Stream had already changed its course and no one had heard about it because their governments didn’t know how to sell the bad news appropriately.

He was sipping his lukewarm drink again when he heard a beep.

“Marten?” The voice belonged to his assistant, Jan Zietlow, whose real name was Janette, a name she loathed with all her heart.

“Huh?”

“It’s time.”

He looked at the clock. She was right. He pounded on the big red button with the palm of his hand. A bell sounded over the outside speakers and orange warning lights on the compound began to flash. Moments later, the massive three-thousand-two-hundred-ton metal monster began to move, first vertically and then horizontally, in search of magnetic radiation. The servos howled as the tubular structure rattled over the rails.

“What’s on the agenda for this morning?” Enders asked, yawning, as he turned away from the spectacular sight. Noticing his coffee cup was empty, he went over to refill it.

“Didn’t you read the schedule?” Jan asked with a half critical and half amused look.

“Morning people like me basically leave the details to their indispensable and underpaid assistants,” he said, smiling. “That allows us to pay more attention to the more important astronomical details.”

Jan gave him an amused look. “You don’t say. “Like giving that French woman a tour in about …” she glanced at the clock, “… forty minutes? Or did you forget about that too?”

“Alsatian, not French,” Enders said, raising his forefinger admonishingly, “… a subtle difference. The group from Strasbourg.” He emphasized the ou. The coffee started to work and his mood began to change. “How could I forget? Actually, it’s not my job to show people around, but I’ve gotten used to having a lean staff on the weekends when FC plays. I was so busy yesterday that I didn’t even hear the results.”

“Two to one for Bremen,” she shot back.

Enders stroked his chin and sighed. “That’s no surprise. But let’s talk about more important things. What is it they want? Oh yes, a directed radio scan of Orion. Orionis Alpha seems to be back in the public eye lately.” He crossed his arms behind his back and began to pace back and forth across the gray-green carpet. “Orion, the great hunter, whose origins go back to the Babylonian Gilgamesh period. But the god first became really popular in Greek mythology. There, he was the son of the god of the sea, Poseidon. He was so handsome that even the goddess of chastity, Artemis, wanted to break her vows because of him. But the constellation was also known in other cultures. The Egyptians saw it as the god of death, Osiris, ruler of the underworld. The Teutons thought they saw a plow and the South Sea Islanders thought it was a boat, and so on.”

“And what do you think of when you look at it?” Jan’s eyes had that sparkle he’d been noticing lately.

He smiled. “Mostly about a dense concentration of stars and interstellar gas. In some places it’s so dense that gravity causes it to collapse and begin to create new stars. A sort of star nursery, so to speak. Besides, its stars, Orionis Alpha and Beta, are also known by their common names of Betelgeuse and Rigel. One is a red and the other blue, two giants we can expect to get some interesting findings on in the near future.

Jan cradled her chin in her hands. “I love it when you start to lecture. It always reminds me of the first few hours of the seminar on general astronomy with Professor Habermann.

“He was giving that seminar when I was still as young and innocent as you,” Enders smiled. That must have been twenty years ago. I hear the old man is still lecturing, although he has long since retired. And, apparently, he’s still quite popular. He’ll probably still be making the women swoon even when I’m old and gray myself.”

Jan smiled mischievously. “I think you have a good chance of following in his footsteps. Your lectures have that certain something too.”

Marten shrugged his shoulders. “It’s just about the easy money for me. Brussels pays well for a few hours of observation. And we can use every cent we can get.” He stretched and went over to Jan. “As you will see …,” and with that, he gave her a scornful look, “… I know the weekly schedule by heart. I looked it over again while you and that good-for-nothing from the computer study group were watching that stupid Hollywood flick. Was it really romantic?”

Jan gave him a cool look. “That wasn’t some stupid Hollywood flick. It was Contact with Jodie Foster. It was because of that movie that I started studying astrophysics in the first place. I’ve seen it at least twenty times and I still think it’s good. It really has a cult following, something you would know if you had the slightest interest in cinema. Besides, Daniel is not a good-for-nothing. He’s quite intelligent, and he’s funny.”

The repositioning of the radio telescope ended and the warning lights turned off. The warning system sounded one more time, indicating that the repositioning had successfully completed.

“Are you two getting serious?” Enders quipped while he set his watch to the large numbers of the digital clock on the wall.

“Jealous?”

Jan quietly mumbled something that sounded like idiot, and turned back to her monitors.

He wondered why he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He had felt for some time now that she felt something more for him than mere friendship and he was flattered. After all, he was no longer young, he had a chair at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and was a devoted family man. He certainly didn’t want to risk it all by starting a relationship with a student. The tragedy was that Jan was as smart as she was cute. No, cute wasn’t the right word, he decided. She was beautiful. A veritable beauty who appeared to be filled with a deep inner calm and confidence in her own destiny, as if she thought it was a light that would never go out. God how he had wished that there had been a woman in the overly macho astrophysics department before, no matter how unattractive. He had never dared dream that a woman like Jan Zietlow would someday appear. What he liked most about her was the ease with which she faced new challenges. She had an entirely natural way of tackling mathematical problems. Jan never had to think about an abstract computational problem. She could feel the solution, just as every human being can feel the difference between up and down at birth. She did calculations so intuitively that you would have thought she possessed an extra sensory organ. It was little wonder that she had gotten offers from research facilities all over the world. The fact that she had decided for Effelsberg and Bonn, and thus for him, was something he had never fully understood.

He finished the last of his coffee and watched the dance of the snowflakes. What irony. He had finally achieved his dream; he had found his profession, or rather, his vocation, had gotten the job he had always dreamed of, was married and had two wonderful children, and now this student had come into his life. This wondrous, desirable manifestation. A woman as profound and enigmatic as the night sky itself. And it was precisely this woman who, or so it would seem, had fallen deeply in love with him. If he were only a few years younger and unattached, he would have been in paradise.

But it wasn’t a perfect world. Perfection only existed out there in space. Out there where new stars formed out of huge, multi-colored nebulae and pulsars glowed like beacons in the night. Lately, that was the place he dreamed of most often.

“Sorry if I said something to offend you,” he muttered. “I just don’t know how to deal with the situation. Everything is so complicated.”

“Complicated? What’re you talking about?” Her eyes continued to be fixed on the monitor.

Marten cleared his throat. He was irritated. Did she really not know what he was talking about or was she just egging him on? No, he decided, she knew exactly what he was talking about. She was just trying to lure him out and wanted him to take the first step. If he had only kept his mouth shut. But now that the cat was out of the bag ande it didn’t make any sense to keep beating around the bush. “Oh, come on, Jan. I’m talking about us. About you and me. And our feelings for each other.” Good god, now he was talking like a parrot. But it didn’t matter. He had been putting the matter off for far too long. “I know you feel something for me,” he continued, “and it’s not that I’m totally uninterested in you, but I cannot and will not risk my marriage. Uninterested is perhaps a bit harsh though because I really like you a lot. It’s just not love, understand? I’ve been thinking about it for a few weeks now and I really think I have a solution. I think you should accept that offer from Berkeley. It’s really a top-notch job. There, you can be involved in the construction of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array and you could be part of the most important astronomical construction project of the next decade from the very beginning. What an opportunity. It pays far better than the job here does.” He pointed at the control room, packed with computers and monitors. “You’re not going to find anything here that would compare with that. Besides, I’ve always thought from the very beginning that you were destined for greater things. By the way, I’m not the only one who says that. Your colleagues at the institute feel that way as well.” He smiled sadly. “If you’ll allow me to give you some advice, go out and learn as much as you can. And if you return someday, you can take over the entire operation here.” He could feel tears coming to his eyes. Hell, now he was starting to get sentimental. But what he was finding embarrassing was that Jan still hadn’t said a single word. She was just sitting there staring at the TFT display over which columns of numbers were racing. Her fingers began to fly over the keyboard and a look of astonishment spread across her face.

“Jan?”

There was no reaction.

“Were you even listening to me?”

“Huh? What did you say?” She had finally awakened from her trance. She rolled her chair back and gave him a troubling look. “Sorry for not paying attention, Marten, but you need to come over and take a look at this.”

“What’s so important that it can’t wait a few minutes?” He stepped behind her and looked at the tables trickling across the screen like drops of water. It only took a few seconds for him to grasp the meaning of what was happening.

“A supernova? There has to be a mistake. Wait a minute.” He slid behind the keyboard and started comparing the readings on the display with the system calibration. Great god, the levels of radiation were astronomically high. He shook his head. Maybe there was an error reconciling the data. Maybe they had gotten a virus, although that was nearly impossible with their Linux operating system. But try as he might, he couldn’t find anything. The system was fully operational, and so was the data that was pouring in like a storm surge. “Which one is it,” he asked.

“Orionis Alpha,” Jan replied. “Betelgeuse. It’s not there anymore. Vanished, gone, exitus. It went supernova while we were talking.”

“Please tell me we were recording all that.”

She nodded. “Everything. From the very first second. But the best is yet to come. I just scanned all the intranet databases to see if anyone has preempted us with the discovery and there was nothing. Nowhere. We’re the first to see the explosion, Marten. The first!”

Marten Enders was completely overwhelmed. Only now, after some delay, did his thoughts start to come together. “Betelgeuse, you say? Pretty young for such a sudden death.”

“Young, yes,” she replied as if she had been waiting for the question, “but it’s been unstable for quite some time. All indications were that it was going to explode sometime in the near future. The recent fluctuations in the radiation levels should have given us a clue. But no one was counting on it happening so fast.” She shook her head. “We’re probably the first ones to see it because hardly anyone is interested in Orion at the moment. It was pure luck. If the Alsatians hadn’t come, other institutions would have come for sure.” She was beaming from ear-to-ear. “If it becomes a nebula, can I name it after myself?”

“Not if it collapses into a neutron star or a black hole.” Marten Enders was still stunned. Without even thinking about what he was doing, he went over to one of the large panoramic windows overlooking the entire valley and looked up into the sky. The clouds had parted in spots and the pale blue of the early morning sky was beginning to shine through. The silver streak of the crescent moon was visible, and next to it … he caught his breath.

Toward the southwest, the direction in which the telescope was pointed, a new star had appeared. A wonderful, shimmering disk that was greeting the day like a newly kindled torch. If he had had any doubts about the veracity of their discovery, they suddenly vanished.

“I think we’re going to have to cancel the meeting with the Alsatians today,” he muttered. “I want the whole team out of bed and here in less than an hour. They can shower and brush their teeth later, I just want them here. We have a ton work to do.”

“I’ll take care of it right away.” Then something else occurred to her. “What was that about my great career at Berkeley?”

“Berkeley? Did someone say something about Berkeley?” Marten couldn’t help but smile. So, she had heard his little lecture after all. He was pleasantly taken by surprise and he was secretly relieved that she wanted to stay. He needed her now. He needed her unerring expertise, her logic and her way of doing things. “Now what do we do?” he asked. “Who should we call?”

Jan’s cheeks glowed. “To put it in Jodie Foster’s words, we’re calling everyone.”

3

Dr. Ella Jordan, newly appointed professor of seismology in the University of Washington’s Department of Geology, geophysicist, specialist in continental drift and associate of IRIS, a global coalition of leading earthquake centers, tried in vain to stop the coffee from puddling on the Monday edition of the Washington Post. She swore under her breath as she quickly moved her papers to safety. She had only recently moved into her new office in Bell Hall, the office of the Earth & Environmental Sciences Department, but in that short span of time, she had already lived up to her reputation of being the proverbial elephant in a China shop. Fortunately, this trait was only evident when she got nervous, but when it happened, it could have devastating consequences. A spilled coffee cup was only a minor occurrence. She knew she was clumsy, but she could neither control it nor do anything about it. She had inherited it from her father, a man who was as awkward as he was a genius. She had gotten the motto, press on at any cost, from him. A smile stole across her face as she thought of her old mentor. Too bad he had passed away, she could have used his encouragement right now.

The brown liquid had penetrated the first few pages of the newspaper and was well on its way to the sports page. Ella ran to the snack room, put the coffee cup in the sink, tore off some paper towels from the dispenser and hurried back to try to keep the liquid away from her papers. The whole table was covered, but her workbook had been miraculously spared. Luckily, the Washington Post proved to be surprisingly absorbent so there wasn’t much left of the mess after a while. Ella, who hadn’t bothered to make a copy of her lecture notes, sat back in relief. It would have been disastrous if she had been forced to cite the references on plate tectonics from memory. She had trouble remembering a simple shopping list. Her notes were the only thing that kept her from sinking. It was a shame about the paper though. The editorial had interested her. With a brusque motion, she tied her red curls into a ponytail, wiped her wet hands on her jeans and put on her rimless glasses. While she was carrying the wet paper to the wastebasket, she scanned the first few lines.

Cosmic Catastrophe in Orion. Is It a Threat?

Last Sunday, March 22nd, a team of German scientists discovered a supernova in the constellation of Orion. The star Betelgeuse, which formed Orion’s shoulder, was completely destroyed in the massive explosion. The star, which scientists have long suspected was unstable, was a so-called supergiant, a star that was many times the mass of our own sun. Once a star consumes its supply of helium, it begins to collapse. When this occurs, it releases tremendous amounts of energy. In some cases, the radiation level surpasses that of the entire galaxy. Fortunately, we on Earth will be safe from Betelgeuse’s massive release of radiation due to the fact that it is some four hundred light years from our solar system. However, the resulting supernova will radiate so strongly over the next few days that it will be brighter than the moon before it fades. Both the International Space Station and the Hubble Telescope have discontinued their current observations and have focused on the spectacular celestial event. Astronomers around the world are now involved in the analysis of the data on the supernova, which is expected to reveal important knowledge about the structure and origin of the universe.

With a shake of her head, Ella tossed the newspaper into the trashcan. The headline read like a doomsday scenario from an old style disaster movie from directors like Jack Arnold: It Came from Outer Space. On the other hand, the phenomenon in the sky was quite spectacular. She had even caught a glimpse of it herself through the holes in the cloud cover the previous night. Hopefully, she would get a better look at it in the coming nights. Ella sighed. She would have liked to read the rest of the newspaper, but for obvious reasons, that was no longer possible. The sheets of paper were already beginning to dissolve. With a sudden inspiration though, she fished the front page out of the wastebasket, cut out the front page with the headlines, took two paper towels and dabbed it dry. It would make a nice souvenir of her first day as a real professor. She put the paper on a shelf, tossed the rest of the pages in the trash and set about cleaning up the rest of the spill. She didn’t want the whole world to find out about her problem. It was embarrassing enough that she couldn’t even sit quietly at her desk during her prep time.

She could already hear sounds coming from the neighboring lecture hall. Judging from the muffled voices, the shuffling feet and the clatter of fallen pencils, it wasn’t exactly just a few students who were planning on taking Geotectonics I by Dr. Ella Jordan either. Ella wondered whether the subject was really that popular or if the great interest had something to do with her reputation. A reputation she had won, not only because of her unorthodox views, but also because of her bold, if not risky research methods. Her book, which bore the dazzling title of Hades, had become a bestseller over the years. It was mainly a first-person narrative of her expeditions into the realm of erupting volcanos. Her portrayals of life-threatening situations appeared to be more appealing to many people than many thrillers. In addition, the text was illustrated with spectacular photos. For example, the one showing her dwarfed by a huge wall of shooting magma. The picture had literally gone viral. The fact that the situation had been far less dangerous than it looked due to the long focal length, didn’t seem to matter. The result was all that counted. Since the picture was published in the National Geographic, she had been known as the crazy lady who put her life in danger in order to achieve her goals. Crazy or not, the fact was that there were only a few researchers in the world who would venture as close to an active volcano as Ella.