As the spaceship entered the corona, the outermost layer of the sun’s atmosphere, the black backdrop of space above turned a magenta all-pervading in its radiance. Below was a clear view of the sun’s chromosphere, twinkling with countless needle-shaped structures: discovered in the nineteenth century, they were jets of incandescent gas emanating from the surface of the sun. They made the atmosphere of the sun look like a burning grassland, where each stalk of grass was thousands of kilometers tall. Underneath the burning plain was the sun’s photosphere, a sea of endless fire.

From the last images relayed from the Vechnyy Buran, people saw Misha rise to his feet in front of the giant monitoring screen. He pressed a button to retract the protective cover outside the transparent dome, revealing the magnificent sea of fire before him. He wanted to see the world of his childhood dreams with his own eyes. The view was distorting and rippling; that was the half-meter-thick insulation glass melting. Soon the glass barrier fell in a sheet of transparent liquid. Like someone who had never seen the sea facing the ocean wind in rapture, Misha spread his arms to greet the six-thousand-degree hurricane that roared toward him. In the last seconds of video before the camera and transmission equipment melted, one could see Misha’s body catching alight, a slender torch melding into the sun’s sea of fire….

What sight would have followed could only be conjecture. The Vechnyy Buran’s solar panels and protruding structures would have melted first, surface tension making silver beads of fluid of them on the spaceship’s surface. As the Vechnyy Buran traversed the boundary between the corona and chromosphere, its main body would begin to melt, fully liquefying at a depth of two thousand kilometers into the chromosphere. The beads of liquid metal would cohere into a huge silvery droplet, diving unerringly toward the target its now-melted computers had calculated. The effect of the sun’s atmosphere would become apparent: a pale blue flame would emanate from the droplet, trailing hundreds of meters behind it, its color gradating from the pale blue, to yellow, to a gorgeous orange at the tail.

At last, this lovely phoenix would disappear into the endless sea of flames.

JANUARY 13TH, EARTH

Humanity returned to the world as it had been before Marconi.

As night fell, undulating auroras flooded the sky, even into the equatorial zones.

Facing television screens filled with white noise, most people could only guess and imagine at the situation in that vast land where war raged.

JANUARY 13TH, MOSCOW FRONT LINE

General Baker pushed aside the division commander of the Eighty-second Airborne and the assorted NATO frontline commanders attempting to drag him onto a helicopter. He raised his binoculars to continue surveilling the horizon, where the Russian front was rumbling in advance.

“Calibrate to four thousand meters! Load number-nine ammunition, delayed fuse, fire!”