Polaris

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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.

A point. 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 a sun.

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?”

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