“Play your games, Sarein, but never forget who you are and where you were born. The trees sense a tremendously difficult time ahead, though they will not tell even green priests what is in store. A day will come when you will be glad of your allies on Theroc.”

42: DR. GERALD SERIZAWA

42DR. GERALD SERIZAWA

Oncier blazed brightly, an infant sun engulfed by the nuclear fires of its newly dense core. Though much smaller than the system’s primary star, this burning gas giant melted the hearts of the formerly frozen moons.

Media reports of the successful Klikiss Torch continued to spread throughout the Hanseatic colony worlds and into the Ildiran Empire, delivered by fast vessels on trade routes. Serizawa’s recorded interviews had intrigued listeners on a hundred worlds. He’d had his glory and his fame—enough of it, in fact. Now the real work began.

Though the newborn star was small and relatively cool, Serizawa could not look at the roiling plasma without filters across the viewing windows. Projection screens on the consoles displayed magnetic maps viewed through specific portions of the spectrum. It was a marvel and an oddity.

He had studied the strange ephemeral images taken shortly after the gas planet’s ignition—crystalline ejecta shaped like perfect spheres, glittering globes that seemed to fly away from the flaming new sun. Margaret Colicos had seen the same thing. Serizawa had tried to explain it simply and easily; with so many media scanners around, he did not want to alarm anyone, or make it appear that he didn’t know what was going on. Still, the unusual phenomenon had defied explanation, even after repeated analysis.

He was thankful that the incident had not occurred again.

Running a palm across his perfectly smooth scalp, Serizawa shivered. He felt perpetually cold aboard the metal-walled observation platform. Though he stared at the glowing ember of the tiny star, none of the warmth penetrated his pale skin to his bones. He always walked around the station with goose bumps on his arms, no matter how he adjusted the environmental controls.

Because the density gradient was so steep, the nuclear combustion zone in Oncier’s core was only a thin shell, but sufficient to light the hydrogen fuel. The small sun was a hurricane still settling down, but nothing much had changed in weeks.

There were dramatic shifts, however, on the four moons.

A week from now, the first Hansa ships would arrive bearing planetary engineers, terraforming specialists, and geologists. With special shelters and massive equipment, they would drop down to the warming moons and begin long-term plans for converting them into habitable worlds. Exciting times lay ahead.