The Three Suns of Amara

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THERE WAS always something new under the Three Suns.

Always new and usually inexplicable—if not downright crazy. On the astronomers’ charts the Three Suns bore dull number-plates: CXY

927340, CXY 927341, CXY 927342. The men from Earth called them simply by their colors: Blue, Yellow, Red. It seemed more than coincidence that these were the three primary colors. But if it were more, who could explain it?

Who could explain even half of what happened in the everchanging light of the Three Suns?

For instance, there was the orbit between them of CXY 927340/2-A. (Men again ignored the number-plate. To them, it was Amara.) Amara was a coveted only child, a living planet, and the Three Suns shared it among themselves with scrupulous justice.

Ethically, that made sense. Physically, it was mad. Mathematicians, who had retained their sanity after years of grappling with the hoary Problem of the Three Bodies, would tend to sink into melancholy after attempting to produce on paper proof of what they indisputably saw in the vicinity of the Three Suns. And this despite the whole mountain range of data concerning the vagaries of gravitational fields which had grown into being since interstellar travel became commonplace.

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