Commander Benedict kept his eyes on the rear plate as he activated the
intercom. "All right, cut the power. We ought to be safe enough here."
As he released the intercom, Dr. Leicher, of the astronomical staff,
stepped up to his side. "Perfectly safe," he nodded, "although even at
this distance a star going nova ought to be quite a display."
Benedict didn't shift his gaze from the plate. "Do you have your
instruments set up?"
"Not quite. But we have plenty of time. The light won't reach us for
several hours yet. Remember, we were outracing it at ten lights."
The commander finally turned, slowly letting his breath out in a soft
sigh. "Dr. Leicher, I would say that this is just about the foulest
coincidence that could happen to the first interstellar vessel ever to
leave the Solar System."
Leicher shrugged. "In one way of thinking, yes. It is certainly true
that we will never know, now, whether Alpha Centauri A ever had any
planets. But, in another way, it is extremely fortunate that we should
be so near a stellar explosion because of the wealth of scientific
information we can obtain. As you say, it is a coincidence, and
probably one that happens only once in a billion years. The chances of
any particular star going nova are small. That we should be so close
when it happens is of a vanishingly small order of probability."
Commander Benedict took off his cap and looked at the damp stain in the
sweatband. "Nevertheless, Doctor, it is damned unnerving to come out of
ultradrive a couple of hundred million miles from the first star ever
visited by man and have to turn tail and run because the damned thing
practically blows up in your face."
Leicher could see that Benedict was upset; he rarely used the same
profanity twice in one sentence.
They had been downright lucky, at that. If Leicher hadn't seen the star
begin to swell and brighten, if he hadn't known what it meant, or if
Commander Benedict hadn't been quick enough in shifting the ship back
into ultradrive--Leicher had a vision of an incandescent cloud of
gaseous metal that had once been a spaceship.