Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

why I mean to broadcast the view of the explosion over the general intercom

system. I know what you’re going to say, Ailiss. I remember very well that

the last broadcast we got from home had a nasty emotional effect on ship

life as a whole, but I’m persuaded that a good deal of time and experience

has intervened, and that the people have both the stamina and the right to

see the end come. Nor is it an ordinary way for a world to end; Dr. Kamblin

tells me that a supernova happens in a galaxy on the average of less than

once every three

And all the Stars a Stage 139

hundred years. It will not be pleasant to watch, but it will be spectacular.

I for one shall take some pride in that; I counsel you all to try to do the

same.”

The Sun hung there in the screens, calm, steady, about the size of a fist.

It would have looked like that, in its present swollen state, to someone on

a satellite of the next-to-outermost planet of the home system. Nothing

seemed to be happening; but along the bottom of the screen was a thin

ribbon of color, like a tape-recorded rainbow-only the screen on the bridge

was big enough to bold all seven decks of it, for the complete spectrum was

13 feet long-along which vertical lines, striations and shadings shifted

and shuttled. In the doomed star the eternal blacksmith was forging more

and more iron, more and more cobalt, more and more nickel, more and more

zinc . . .

And then, at first so slowly that the motion in the image seemed to be only

an illusion brought on by staring, and then faster and faster, the Sun