Spindown

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At the time the two neutron stars were first spotted, when humanity was young, they were far apart.

Now, four hundred and thirty million years later, the dense spheroids of matter almost touched, and humanity was old.

Ashley, standing in the clear dome room that served as his bridge, looked at an airborne hologram of Felicity’s starship: a circle of spheres attached to a superconducting ring that generated a powerful magnetic field. Nearly two astronomical units ahead of Ashley, Felicity raced toward the neutron stars at near c, under the constant acceleration of a powerful mass beam that pushed against her magnetic field.

Felicity’s determination to stop the merger left a frown on his face. She’d be killed in the collision. If he had the authentic body of one of his long ago ancestors—people who had little control of their emotions—he guessed he would have balled his fists in frustration by now, or done something more dramatic. There was little he could do to prevent Felicity from succeeding, standing isolated in his own starship, Zephyr, riding on another mass beam with a vector that would take him past the two dense stars. And even if he could stop Felicity by force, he’d probably still lose his longest love, for he’d be violating her personal freedom, and he doubted their relationship would survive that emotional cataclysm.

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