Blake's Nova
A Science Fiction Story

by
Cliff Lazar
cliff[shift+2]lazardev.com
Copyright (c) 1993, by Clifford W. Lazar
Right to reproduce restricted to copyright holder.

    The time is 2050. Corny Blake, is an irascible astrophysicist. "I gave up the warmth of a good woman to sit in this god forsaken frozen chair tonight. And last night and every night for the last year," he grumbles.
    He is dressed in a heavy fur parka, shivering and sitting in the cat seat of a telescope, high in the Andean mountains of Chile. He is scanning the southern universe, following the path back to the big bang. His specialty is the evolution of stars.
    He is collecting data on the precursors of super novas. He developed a theory to predict novas.
    He sits in his frozen chair and he pontificates to the grad students below in the observatory. "If you buy the Big Bang, then novas are every thing. We're not made of hydrogen and helium we're made of heavier elements: carbon, oxygen, iron in our blood, calcium in our bones. All those elements come from novas. We, my uneducated assistants, are the children of novas."
    He is observing a cluster of stars he feels are likely to nova based on their location and the time of the other known novas. "Can you think in four dimensional space?" He yells to the bemused students. Three dimensions tell you where they were. The fourth dimension tells you when."
    The students make the crazy man sign, whirling their fingers to their heads and laughing. Jane, a grad student supports him and is laughed at too.
"Laugh, laugh at this," he yells.
    He is on the money when a star goes nova when and where he predicted--no one ever predicted a nova before.
The students crowd around the telescope. "Watch it on the instant replay, morons!" He yells. Jane stands back, proud of Blake.
    Blake is invited on talk shows. Jane drives him. But he is so full of himself, he ignores her.
    He meets the President. At a state dinner he sits next to a politically powerful religious zealot, the Most Reverend John Truly. Blake explains that the is looking at stars that existed 5 to 10 billion years ago. Truly states that religious scripture declares that the universe was created by the Lord 6115 years ago, not 5 or 10 billion years ago.
    Blake insults Truly as a total fool. Blake asks to be moved to a different table.
    He is awarded the Nobel prize and is invited to Stockholm to give a laureate address.
In preparation for the address he plots the novas known to have occurred in the last 4000 thousand years and plots in four dimensions where and when they occurred. He plots them in a computer and then he makes a straw on wood model in four dimensions.
He is horrified to discover that the extrapolation indicates that our sun will be the next in line--one hundred years from now.
    He keeps his model a secret. "No one will believe this," he says. He checks and rechecks his analysis.
    In Stockholm, Blake, dressed in white tie and tuxedo, has to fight his way past a fundamentalist picket line. Signs declare Blake a blasphemer. Jane struggles with the crowd to protect her astronomer.
    Must up and disheveled, Blake addresses the leading scientists and politicians of the world. His speech begins like many with a droning acknowledgment of those who helped him--precious few. He doesn't thank Jane. Heads bob in boredom.
He then segues into his new findings and reveals that the analysis that led to his successful prediction of a nova has led him to an even more startling prediction -- that our sun will nova in 95 to 105 years.
    Recognition is slow. Waves of bored scientists jerk into attention and start talking to the people next to them. The din makes it impossible to hear the rest of Blake's speech.
    Scientists begin to laugh. Others wad up their programs and throw them at the stage. Blake ignores them and continues talking before the screaming faces and the shaking fists. The chairman of the event calls for order. He is hooted down. Scientists get up and walk out of the hall.
    Blake ignores them and continues. He concludes his address to a nearly empty hall. He offers copies of his paper and is rudely rejected by most and even pushed out of the way at the exit of the hall. He becomes as laughing stock and is dismissed as a fool. He loses his funded chair as professor of Astronomy at USC.
    Without his knowledge, Jane, who is rich, arranges a professorship for Blake. He labors in obscurity for ten years, teaching astronomy to morons at Podunck College in Arizona.
    While on a sabbatical to a satellite he discovers Blake's comet -- a gigantic Jupiter-sized planet than will swing by the sun in five years. He meets his Jane again on the satellite.
    She got a graduate job at the college. "Don't I know you?" he asks. Jane is his graduate assistant, she tells him. She believes in him. It doesn't dawn on him that she has been a graduate student for 15 years.
    A year passes. He gets white hair. He and Jane are living together. She never works on her thesis.
    The Sun is cooling a little. Climatic changes have begun occurring on Earth. Winters are getting longer, sea levels are dropping, sun spot cycles are disturbed. The Fraunhoffer lines of iron are getting more distinct. The neutrino count from the sun increases. All the precursors of a nova. Blake renews his predictions about the sun going nova. He gets a ton of hate mail for the fundamentalists. All the letters are identical.
    Blake calls for a project to deflect the path of Blake's comet into the sun to dislodge the center of gravity and shift the core to more combustible hydrogen. Astronomers point out that the comets would then make a close pass on the Earth, coming within four earth diameters. Cataclysms would occur.
    The usual conflict occurs. The danger is a eighty years away. The comet will pass too close to the earth. Hundreds of millions will die in earthquakes, tidal waves and famines.
He is forced to appear on low life talk shows to get his point across. His opponent is John Truly, backed by hundreds of Truly Believers. Blake argues, "Yeah a hundred million would die but 20 billion would survive. Where are your priorities? We're trying to save the solar system here. All of humanity is not chopped liver."
Truly says that Blake is a heretic. If the end is near then it's God's will. To oppose God is the devil's work.
    The New York Times rejects his letters. Blake fights for his theory and again is laughed at.
    Blake sees an opportunity to use a Strategic Defense Anti-Asteroid Missile to deflect the Comet. Jane arranges a tour of the facility. They sneak to the satellite control center. They are caught. Blake sets off an alarm and they escape. They commandeer a missile cruiser and fly to their meeting with Blake's Comet. He would sacrifice his life and Jane's and hundreds of millions more to save the solar system.
    "Dying right is what every scientist wants to do; I'm just speeding up the time!"
    "We are," she says.

Fade to white.

The End

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