Even the fastest hyper-velocity stars inside our own galaxy moved at only twelve hundred kilometers a second. Ben had made the same objection the night before.
Dr. Müller held his hands out. “We don’t have the answers right now; that’s why we need your help.”
“What is it?” Ufuk Erdogmus asked. “Have you been able to image it?”
The list of options was slim. Up to five solar masses, it might be a non-rotating neutron or quark star, but this would be no more than fifteen kilometers across. At twenty billion kilometers distant, it was probably impossible to see. Could it be a black hole? Or perhaps something more exotic, perhaps an encounter with dark matter? They should have detected something—if not in visible light, then in x-ray or infrared or some other spectra.
Then again, thought Ben, astronomers were usually only staring at very specific parts of the sky. Very few projects ever tried to look at wide swaths of the sky. Some that did, like the Sloan and Catalina sky surveys, detected thousands of unknown objects that nobody had had a chance to look at yet. It was a subject he dabbled in, ever since he had participated in the Red Shift survey in the 80s. He had his own collection of anomalous objects he researched as a hobby.
Dr. Müller shook his head. “No, we haven’t been able to detect anything except the gravitational signature. Whatever Nomad is, right now it is almost directly behind the sun.” Which made Earth-based telescopes and orbiting platforms almost useless for trying to look at it, he didn’t have to explain.
“Until we get some confirmation,” Dr. Müller added, “secrecy is of the utmost importance. We don’t want to create panic.”
Ben’s stomach fluttered. “Wait, you said it was coming from the direction of the sun. What exact direction?”
“We’ve sent information packets to all of your emails, including our best guess at the right ascension and declination—but in general terms, from the direction of Gliese 445.” Müller locked eyes with Ben.
Ben returned his gaze, the fluttering in his stomach rising into his throat.
Gliese 445.
THIRTY YEARS EARLIER…
December 5th, 1989
Harvard Campus, Boston, Massachusetts
“WHAT THE HELL is that?” Bernie jabbed a finger at his computer screen.
Paul, his research partner, had his attention focused on a small TV jammed into a corner of a shared office at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He stared at a grainy image of people on top of a wall, hacking off chunks of concrete with crowbars and pick-axes. “That’s the Berlin Wall coming down!” Paul replied. “The end of the Cold War. Amazing, huh?”
“Not that. This!” Bernie pointed at his glowing green display again. “A bright flash at Gliese 445.”
After combing through twelve-years’ worth of data collection from the first all-sky optical survey, the Red Shift project, Bernie had never seen anything like it. “Gliese 445 is a red dwarf in the Camelopardalis constellation, usually not visible to the naked eye.” He grabbed a sheaf of papers and shuffled through them. “But it just had a massive wide-spectrum flash. Too fast for a nova, but not regular like a pulsar, either.” He squinted and checked other data. “And it doesn’t have the signature of an M-dwarf.”
Paul sighed, his eyes still glued to the TV. “There are a million things we can’t identify. Just make a note and move on.” Outside it was darkening, the lights coming on between the red brick buildings of the Harvard campus.
“Sure, you’re right.” Just the same, Bernie pushed a floppy disk into the drive of the IBM/400 minicomputer and saved the data. He could look at it later. Maybe he’d get Dr. Müller to take a look at it sometime.
6
CHIANTI, ITALY
AN IMAGE DANCED in front of Jess’s eyes, a black hole ringed in brilliant white, framing a small boy’s face. Two children played in a white field of snow, laughing. The image faded, but the boy’s face remained. Jess blinked, fully opening her eyes, and the boy smiled.
“Zio,” the boy said, turning away, “zio, sveglia.”
Blinking again, Jess turned from the boy and looked around her at rough-hewn rock walls adorned with finely detailed hanging tapestries. Twenty feet overhead, large wooden beams supported a ceiling of terracotta tiles, and a huge dark wood chandelier hung down from there, almost to head height. Sitting upright, she found herself surrounded by a sea of brightly colored pillows. A man sat on the foot of the bed, by her left leg, while two other men stood at a distance in the corner of the room. The small boy retreated and pulled on the man’s arm.
The man at the foot of her bed looked familiar, his long black hair pulled back in a ponytail over broad shoulders and his face square-jawed with a scar above his left eye. “Signora, how are you…?” Leaning forward, he touched her leg.