Where Hollis had beached Alvin, the water around the stromatolites was clouding with streamers of brown and red bacteria whose membranes were already evolving precursors of chlorophyll. The rains of Judgment Day had passed, leaving the horizon cloudless and golden hued. The Atlantic was as calm as a quarry pool, and the noon sun shone sapphire pink overhead as the first of what should have been an enduring lineage of sun-loving organisms displayed the rudiments of pseudopodia— which in an epoch or even a millennium, would enable its descendants to move more efficiently and devour their neighbors.

But this was not to be. As if from jealousy of Gaia, the Sun struck back. Directly overhead, a stream of ghostly beads erupted through the corona. The most powerful telescopes ever invented might never have seen them against the backdrop of the blazing pink disk. If the Sun had been eclipsed at that moment by the Moon, and if the objects had been emerging at an improbable angle in which they were not themselves eclipsed, the right equipment might have detected three tiny stars scintillating on the edge of the corona.

There was no hope of anyone knowing what they were or where they were headed. As quickly as they appeared, they disappeared.

And there was no question, if there had been someone to ask it, of their being a natural phenomenon. They burned with great power, yet emitted no neutrino glow.

Nor was there any question of their remaining captives of the Sun’s gravity. They were moving at more than two thousand kilometers per second and still accelerating when, where they had been, the solar magnetic fields collapsed. And then, changes that even unaided eyes could see spread over the heavens. In the tidal pools between clusters of stromatolites, shadows weakened inexplicably, yet the sky remained cloudless.

The Sun itself was failing—and failing fast.

On the eastern horizon, the red hull of the Moon was rising; but it faded simultaneously with increasing darkness. Now the tide pools reflected stars. Among them, Saturn and Mars burned brightest. Mars, the nearer of the two was, at this point in its orbit, more than fifteen light-minutes from Earth, and four minutes farther from the Sun. Nearly twenty minutes would be required before Mars could repeat the Moon’s vanishing act; but before those twenty minutes could pass, the sky was on fire.

29

The Stars Will Speak

No one could say with certainty when the change came over Joshua. All anyone could be certain of was that, as year gave way to year, proving that in the now-timeless world of the Cat there was no particular need to worry or to hurry, proving that Joshua had indeed been right about letting tactics give way to logistics, Joshua began worrying more and more about tactics.

As Justin saw it, the change, although not yet threatening the routines of what was slowly growing to resemble a stable society, had come to Joshua with the arrival of his daughter. The Cat had not yet traveled a light-day when Cherene was born to him. She was celebrating her seventeenth birthday and the ship was still less than halfway to the dwarf when the glare of the nova filled the sky astern.