Awe-inspiring. The nova was a brilliant, glorious phenomenon, all red and blue energy as the white dwarf star suctioned matter from its red supergiant companion. Then it blasted off in a furious explosion, creating a gaseous cloud visible throughout the galaxy. Astronomers on several planets viewed it through their telescopes.
We, however, chose to view it more up close and personal. We parked just a couple of light-years from this particular nova and were enjoying the view as the nova was only just now becoming visible at this distance. We were ahead of the game, seeing this before even planet-side astronomers would.
“Wow,” said Sarah. “That’s just amazing!”
“Agreed,” I replied. “I’m glad we decided to do this. It’ll be a few years before anyone back home gets to see this.”
“Unless there are others doing what we’re doing right now.”
“I don’t think anyone else even knows about this nova yet,” I said. “I think we got lucky to spot this thing when we did.”
“That’s true,” Sarah said.
A beep on one of the monitors drew her attention. “Uh, Sam,” she said, and I could hear the slight uptick of her voice as she said that. “Is the nova supposed to be doing that?”
“Doing what?” I hadn’t looked at the monitor but was viewing it through the screen to my left.
“Look,” was all she said in response. And indeed, something very major was happening. “I don’t think it’s supposed to be moving toward us that fast.”
I checked the monitor over her shoulder — and suddenly I got very concerned. “It’s moving right toward us,” I said. “At energy levels that are far higher than what this nova should be able to produce. Hang on. I’m going to get us out of here.”
I jumped back into the pilot’s seat and fired up the engines. Then I steered us hard to port and jammed the engines into a high-thrust vector at an angle perpendicular to the energy wave that was just now bearing down on us. Sarah kept watch on the monitor. I kept us on an escape vector.
We slipped past by a very narrow margin. As it was the energy overwhelmed our engines, and we were set adrift for a couple of hours while our engines recovered.
“What was that?” Sarah asked, her eyes wide.
“Something we’ve never seen before, I think,” I replied. “Do we have all that data logged for review?”
Sarah nodded.
“Then we’ll get it back to the astronomers and scientists post-haste and see if they can make sense of it. Because a white dwarf that small should not have been able of that level of destruction. Something else is going on here.”
After that, we set course for home. This was a mystery for another day.
