Free The Best of Bova: Volume 1 by Ben Bova Page B

resettled on a few of the frontier planets. After all, they are primitives.”
    “Those ‘primitives’ are the baseline for our race. They are the pool of original genetic material, against which our scientists constantly measure the rest of humanity throughout the Hundred Worlds.”
    Rihana said, “Well, they’re going to have to find another primitive world to live on.”
    “Unless we prevent their Sun from exploding.”
    Javas looked amused, “You’re not seriously considering that?”
    “I am . . . considering it. Perhaps not very seriously.”
    “It makes no difference,” Rihana said. “The plan to save the Sun—to save your precious Earth—will take hundreds of years to implement. You will be dead long before the first steps can be brought to a conclusion. The next Emperor can cancel the entire plan the day he takes the throne.”
    The Emperor turned his chair slightly to face his son, but Javas looked away, out toward the darkening forest.
    “I know,” the Emperor whispered, more to himself than to her. I know that full well.”
    * III *
    He could not sleep. The Emperor lay on the wide expanse of warmth, floating a single molecular layer above the gently soothing waters. Always before, when sleep would not come readily, a woman had solved the problem for him. But lately not even lovemaking helped.
    The body grows weary but the mind refuses sleep. Is this what old age brings?
    Now he lay alone, the ceiling of his tower bedroom depolarized so that he could see the blazing glory of the Imperial Planet’s night sky.
    Not the pale tranquil sky of Earth, with its bloated Moon smiling inanely at you, he thought. This was truly an Imperial sky, brazen with blue giant stars that studded the heavens like brilliant sapphires. No moon rode that sky; none was needed. There was never true darkness on the Imperial Planet.
    And yet Earth’s sky seemed so much friendlier. You could pick out old companions there; the two Bears, the Lion, the Twins, the Hunter, the Winged Horse.
    Already I think of Earth in the past tense. Like Kyle. Like my son.
    He thought of the Earth’s warming Sun. How could it turn traitor? How could it . . . begin to die? In his mind’s eye he hovered above the Sun, bathed in its fiery glow, watching its bubbling, seething surface. He plunged deeper into the roiling plasma, saw filaments and streamers arching a thousand Earthspans into space, heard the pulsing throb of the star’s energy, the roar of its power, blinding bright, overpowering, ceaseless merciless heat, throbbing, roaring, pounding . . .
    He was gasping for breath and the pounding he heard was his own heartbeat throbbing in his ears. Soaked with sweat, he tried to sit up. The bed enfolded him protectively, supporting his body.
    “Hear me,” he commanded the computer. His voice cracked.
    “Sire?” answered a softly female voice in his mind.
    He forced himself to relax. Forced the pain from his body. The dryness in his throat eased. His breathing slowed. The pounding of his heart diminished.
    “Get me the woman scientist who reported at the conference on the Sun’s explosion, ten years ago. She was not present at the conference, her report was presented by a colleague.”
    The computer needed more than a second to reply, “Sire, there were four such reports by female scientists at that conference.”
    “This was the only one to deal with a plan to save the Earth’s Sun.”
    * IV *
    Medical monitors were implanted in his body now. Although the Imperial physicians insisted that it was impossible, the Emperor could feel the microscopic implants on the wall of his heart, in his aorta, alongside his carotid artery. The Imperial psychotechs called it a psychosomatic reaction. But since his mind was linked to the computers that handled all the information on the planet, the Emperor knew what his monitors were reporting before the doctors did.
    They had reduced the gravity in his working and living sections of the palace to