Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

vanadium; and after that, with increasing rapidity, chromium, manganese,

iron, cobalt, nickel and zinc. The rest of this history, alas, we know all

too well.

‘We have seen it before.~

This time the silence was actually long, and screaming with shock and

tension. jorn bad no need to ask any questions. Though he had not

understood a tithe of the technicalities of Kamblin’s explanation, the as-

tronomer’s final remark could have reference to nothing else but the Great

Nova.

The Sun was going to go, the same way.

After a while, Kamblin went on, almost in a whisper. “We were fortunate in

several ways, as a planet. For one, consider the great distance of our

orbit from the Sun; since you’ve been studying other nearby systems lately,

youll have some appreciation of bow unusually long our One Astronomical

Unit is. Secondly, life apparently evolved here very late, after our

Sun,had gone through most of its swelling phase-a

54 lames Blish

process which takes about a thousand million years for a star the size of

ours. But it is just as bad, I’m afraid, to arrive at the end of this

process as it would have been to have suffered its growing pains.”

“How much longer will it last?” one of the section chiefs asked.

“Not very long. The core temperature will have to reach 5,000 million

degrees before the explosion takes place, and that may take a good fifty

years-“

“Fifty yearsl” Ailiss said raggedly. “Dr. Kamblin, that’s not-“

“I know,” Kamblin said gently. “It seems a stunningly short term for an

astronomical process; but bear in mind, Ailiss, that all such processes are