Binary Dwarfs
A short sci-fi story
“Professor, didn’t you just say that?”
With Arabelle Noah’s question, gravity tightened on the academy’s floating ship, T41NT3D. She grasped the desk as the weight of all her rings drew her hands further into the metal fixture. The airy finger bands suddenly felt more like hefty paper weights.
“Did I?” asked Prof. Mollusk, trying to remember the last word he said.
He scanned the amphitheatre and saw his students slightly agape, the brightness of the expanding star reflected an admixture of awe and disquietude from their faces.
A voice rasped through the PA system, “Activated gravity breakers on your boots.”
Arabelle felt the gravitational resistance lighten in her feet. She reminded the professor, “You wanted us to evacuate?”
The suction on the professor’s tentacles secured his standing by the hovering maps and equations. His home planet of Oud was not too far away from the binary dwarf star system.
Prof. Mollusk continued, “The temperature and hydrogen mass on Sirius A categorises it as type-A1.”
The basic facts that he just repeated had been said at the beginning of the lesson nearly forty minutes ago. Arabelle was utterly confused, as were her classmates, the siblings; Orchidia, Omega and Omen Others. Only the top four of their class were chosen to go on interstellar excursions. The rest of the class remotely viewed the spectacle.
“Yes professor, we know this main sequence dwarf star and its sister pretty well by now,” said Omega.
The repetitions annoyed Arabelle and the Others. In their heads, the students recapped the lesson in a matter of microseconds to what felt like a regressive eternity for the professor.
Just as Sirius B always remained in the shadow of her big brother, Sirius A, the Others remained in Arabelle’s penumbra.
Prof. Mollusk looked at Arabella, for a moment he thought she looked like her mother, Maithriya. He had taught her more two decades ago on his maiden voyage for the academy.
Arabella eyed Prof. Mollusk; the wrinkles from his forehead were gone, his jowls firmed and lifted towards his eyes and his ninth tentacle had regrown. Everybody in the academy knew how Prof. Mollusk lost his ninth tentacle!
The windows emanated an intensity of warmth and light that only the professor had felt before. His Oudian biology remained far more capable of withstanding the extremes of space than his students’ Earthly fragility.
Bewildered but not entirely surprised by the presumed hallucinations, “Students! The event horizon encroaches,” repeated Prof. Mollusk with confidence. He looked down at his ninth tentacle and realised what was happening.
T41NT3D’s thrusters fired at nearly full capacity. Gravity gripped the hull with increasing force, jet flames sputtered at the expanding halo of Sirius A.
Prof. Mollusk stated, “As Dr. Shaw King always used to say, ‘Gravitational collapse produces apparent horizons but no event horizons ... the absence of event horizons means that there are no black holes – in the sense of regimes from which light can't escape to infinity.’”
“So does that mean Sirius A will never collapse to become a black hole?” asked Omen.
“Almost perceptive, fledgling. But you’re thinking of Sirius B, that’s a brown dwarf and its mass will never allow it to. But big brother Sirius A is already reaching the final limit of its supergiant phase and is getting more and more unstable,” replied Prof. Mollusk.
A truculent brilliance enveloped the periphery of T41NT3D, the bigger binary star had burnt up all its fuel.
“Sirius A’s core is going to collapse!“ said Arabelle as she analysed the data on the overhead dashboard.
Heat from the star asserted itself the amphitheatre classroom and Omen felt his metal leg heat up at the nerve endings. Sweat dripped down his nose as he reached for one of the emergency helmets that Arabelle and his siblings had already put on.
T41NT3D began to violently shake, the professor’s suction doubled down and the students held on to their bolted desks.
Capt. Blinkowski to the comms system, “She’s gonna hold! But we’ve got a get a move on to the Slingshot!” The ship tethered to Sirius A’s photonic corona.
The gravity breakers on everyone’s boots doubled up. Arabelle and the Others firmly floundered about in their seats by the increasing gravitational pressure, it was far beyond the G’s they had trained for.
“Orchidia! Hold on!” said Arabelle.
In her desk seat, Orchidia then gave a concerned glance over at the boys, Omega and Omen. They felt the distant embrace of their big sister.
“Maithriya! Watch out!” said Prof. Mollusk.
Arabelle’s stomach clenched as she heard her mother’s name. The young Prof. Mollusk was much more full of surprises.
The metal pointer slipped out of the professor’s grip and struck Arabelle on the neck.
Arabelle grabbed the energised prop as it bounced off her, turned around at the Others and smiled. “Follow me!” She pointed it towards the exit at the back of the classroom.
The pods at the front of the ship seemed too far away. Like the push of a blizzard, with each heavy step Arabelle and the Others were slowed further by the weight of gravity. Omen’s right leg was much heavier with metal biology. Arabelle’s rings drooped her shoulders.
Arabelle turned her head back to see if the professor was behind them, only to notice that he looked even younger. The blinding light shone through the amphitheatre and bounced off silhouettes she didn’t recognise.
The professor stood in the same position by the holographic whiteboard, except he still taught a classroom full of students. Arabelle noticed one of them had long green and red streaks in her hair, that were so out of style. An old photograph of her mother flashed in her mind.
“Slingshot recoiling now!” announced Captain Blinkowski.
The Others called out in unison, “Professor!”
Prof. Mollusk looked around the amphitheatre, high pitched echoes flung at him from the back of the room. He couldn’t see where they were coming from. Shelves full of floating embryos gyrated with the flow of gravity. The glass behind him glowed as the star remained at its supergiant apogee.
Maithriya observed, “Eridani A has us in its gravitational halo, professor.”
“Worry not, fledglings. Capt. Smectar is the best pilot in our quadrant. Plus our ship, P41NT3D is brand new!”
Maithriya felt a kick in her stomach. She caressed her protruding belly.
Arabella suffocated in an ever-heating air bubble at the back of the amphitheatre, she entered the exit corridor with great resistance. The Others followed. They left the professor behind with his divine hallucinations.
The thrust from the ship was in a tug of war with the gravity of the stars that were fully a supergiant.
“Evacuation protocol initiated. Two minutes to Slingshot. Enter the escape pods and initiate launch sequence,” announced Capt. Blinkowski.
“Professor, is this level of gravity safe for my baby?” asked Maithriya as she fought it through towards the corridor with her fellow students. The grating of the boots were bone crushing, slowing down the students with each step.
Arabelle and the Others reached the end of the corridor past the amphitheatre’s exit, Omen was ten paces behind. The weight of his leg slowed him down.
Prof. Mollusk carried Maithriya and four of her fellow students through the exit. His Oudian physiology allowed him to bear excess weight and gravitational pressure.
Omen dragged his right leg and made indentations in the perforated metal flooring. Arabelle, Orchidia and Omega waited inside the escape pod, signalling Omen to hurry!
Beneath the flashing red lights, the professor saw white sparks appear in the corridor. The perforations in the floor dilated with the increasing gravity. When the emergency lights stopped flashing, the professor couldn’t see where he was walking anymore.
Arabelle ran back to the corridor, Omen couldn’t bear the weight of his leg anymore. It was stuck in one of the dilated perforations, gravity pulling it through. Arabelle pulled at it with all her might. Her rings magnetised on the alloyed limb and her hand was stuck.
“Leg it!” shouted Omega. “There’s not much time!”
Arabelle looked at the inscription on her rings which read, To live in the eternal present there must be death to the past, to memory. In this death is timeless renewal. It was her mother’s favourite quote and Arabelle never understood why.
Maithriya felt Prof. Mollusk’s tentacle that guarded her from gravity’s pull. She never realised how strong he really was. With no light for the professor to have his bearings, his feathery tentacles began to droop closer to the metal floor with each step in the dark and all his bottom limbs could feel were the indentations below.
Arabelle read the words again and again until they stood still in her memory. The magnetic charge that stuck her to Omen’s leg was too strong to break free from. She tried to move her hand through the rings but the force of gravity had tightened them around her fingers.
Orchidia and Omega ran out the corridor towards their younger brother. Arabelle arm sank further into the tightening sinkhole along with Omen’s leg. The force of gravity didn’t let go.
Contractions in Maithriya’s belly gave her a gut-wrenching stomach ache as the professor reached the escape pods with all five of his students. Yet he felt that something was missing.
The countdown to Slingshot began at thirty seconds.
The professor looked back into the corridor, he see-sawed between déjà-vu and jamais-vu and stared into a memory that hadn’t yet happened. An indistinct haze pulled him in both directions of time, the present moment stretched beyond its centre.
Twenty… nineteen… eighteen…
Omega remembered the failsafe in Omen’s leg, only he knew about it and using it meant Omen would lose his leg again. Arabelle hand was still entangled with the metal leg.
There wasn’t’ enough room for both of them to escape the further enclosing perforation, Omega had to choose between Omen and Arabelle. Orchidia stepped behind them both, as Omega prepared to use the failsafe.
Prof. Mollusk remained in a temporal coup, he couldn’t decide which moment he belonged to. Inside the escape pod, Maithriya held on to her aching belly, the others helped rest her legs up. The professor lay one of his tentacles behind her head as she passed out from the intensity of the pain.
At the door, Prof. Mollusk peered into the corridor and in the dreamlike state he became overwrought with indecision. The rivers of past memory and future merged into an ocean of entangled potentiality.
Ten… nine… eight…
Arabelle looked up at the Others and said, “There’s not much time.”
Omega, Orchidia and Omen stepped towards the door with all their might, the tenacity of gravity too formidable.
Four… three… two…
The professor extended his ninth tentacle towards the approaching Others. The escape pod’s door shut tight.
One…
Slingshot
