The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction by Brandon Morris (red white and royal blue hardcover TXT) 📕

not you. And right now is a perfect time. I’ve got Greta’s apartment, and everything’s going smoothly at school, so all I have to do is show up for class. I’ve never had so much time to think about my life.”

So Greta was out with the director. But what Franziska was saying sounded even more threatening than a fling with a younger lover. She seemed to be questioning her whole life. Was this her midlife crisis? He didn’t want to change his life, and Franziska was part of it. Wasn’t it normal to be annoyed with each other sometimes?

“Yes, then,” he said, “I hope it’s good for you. I just wanted to tell you that I—”

“I know, Peter. As I said, it has nothing to do with you. It’s about me. You can’t help me with that, except to leave me alone for a while.”

“How long?”

“Don’t expect to see me for at least a week. Greta has gone to Berlin with José. I can use her apartment for that long.”

“I see.”

“I know you don’t understand, my darling. That would be a miracle, and I’m not asking for that. After all, I don’t understand myself. That’s why I need some time.”

The passive-aggressive undertone had disappeared. Franziska now reminded him again of the woman he’d met so many years ago, except that there were some noticeable wrinkles on her face. She stopped in front of him and stroked his cheek. Her hand was warm. He would have liked to hug her now, but didn’t dare.

“Well, I’ll be on my way.”

She turned away, slipped on her boots, and reached into her coat pocket. She seemed irritated for a moment, then remembered that the set of keys was in Greta’s apartment.

“Can you get into Greta’s apartment without a key?” he asked.

“Yes, there’s always a key under her doormat.”

“Good.”

She turned to him and opened her arms for a hug.

Peter was confused. The confusion was similar to when he was first in love. It was a long time ago, but he remembered it well because it was so intense. This confusion was a little different, though. It sat heavily in the back of his mind.

Working helped him whenever he was confused. But, he could distract himself even better by looking into the infinite distance of space. He didn’t even have to use a telescope for this, but it helped because the need for careful handling took extra concentration.

The telescope moved to the first star. He had made a note in the list for each candidate, whether or not it was on the spherical shell. This one was not. The telescope jerked, then moved east briefly and returned. The smartphone vibrated. A star glittered in the exact center of the image—that it was a yellow dwarf was not visually apparent. To verify, he would have to record the spectrogram. The telescope might have found the wrong star, but this was unlikely. Peter checked the surroundings. There was no other star of comparable brightness within a few degrees. No, he could cross this candidate off the list.

Then it was the next one’s turn. The telescope only took 20 seconds before it stopped again and his cell phone vibrated. This star was still shining, too. At least it existed 57 years ago, when the light he now saw left the star. He was looking into the past, something he had never been as aware of as he was now. All the missing stars that he’d discovered so far were at least 40 light-years away from Earth. So the event that wiped them out must have happened more than 40 years ago. Didn’t that mean that the sun was safe for a long time?

Not necessarily, he continued in his mind as he searched for the next star. This was a process that could take a while. First it had to spread through the universe and reach a star. Then, once there, it had to somehow affect the star in such a way that, if it succeeded, the star eventually vanished.

The star catalog that the Stockholmers used was only ten years old, so at that time the lost stars still existed. Now they were gone, telling him the process took ten years at most.

No, that was not true. It could still be in progress with other stars. Holinger had named some yellow dwarfs that were on the spherical shell and had not disappeared. What if the process had something to do with size? Perhaps it was gradually consuming the victims. A larger star would thus last longer. Or maybe someone was building massive structures around these stars, Dyson spheres that shielded all radiation. Something like that would undoubtedly take more time for larger stars. The sun was somewhere in the middle, size-wise. Its activity changed in a known 11-year cycle. There was no sign, at least at present, of the action of any process that would cause it to go extinct.

The vanished stars would then have had to be smaller than the sun. Peter hadn’t taken a close look at their masses and diameters, but from memory, he knew that 47 Ursae Majoris is—was—a bit bigger than the sun. So, his nice theory, like any theory can, failed with the first rebuttal. Holinger was right: He had to uncover more stars that could no longer be detected. The more specimens he had, the more likely he would be to ascertain their similarities.

His cell phone vibrated and Peter looked through the eyepiece. A small star was there, shining brightly.

He immediately entered the next coordinates.

01 44 4,08 -15 56 14,9

Lrf! V xabj sebz jurer V pnzr

Vafngvnoyr nf sver

V fuvar naq pbafhzr zlfrys

Rirelguvat V gbhpu gheaf vagb yvtug

Rirelguvat V yrnir vf abguvat ohg nfur

V nofbyhgryl nz gur sver

March 5, 2026 – Passau

‘Start,’ he typed. Now it was getting exciting. The telescope started moving. He counted 35 seconds and it stopped at the next star. He briefly examined the image