…All Is Bright

By Michael Teasdale

A glowing array of dashboard lights illuminated the cockpit. Halpin summoned the viewscreen, swinging the decaying majesty of the dying star into sharp focus. Withered and blue, it shuddered in its death throes, belching red rings of cosmic flame into the inky void.

“Hello at last.” Halpin smiled, flipping a series of switches before fumbling behind the control bank, blindly seeking out the bottle of Amaretto he had stashed for just this occasion.

“Here’s to you, bright eyes.”

Halpin grasped the bottle, twisting the cap off with his teeth while his other hand punched in commands long-practiced on the lonely voyage.

He poured the last of the liquor into a chipped tumbler. Another safety violation. If this were the sim, he’d be docked points by the dozen, but the time for sims was over and it was Christmas Eve.

Toasting the anti-gravity unit for holding out this long, he turned his attention back to the screen and the target ahead.

The neutron star glared back at him, fifteen times the mass of the Earth’s own Sun, a cantankerous gas giant, spasming through the terminal moments of its incalculable existence.

Grimacing, he pondered the star’s lonely death, lost in a sea of darkness. A blip on the celestial radar, yet humanity’s best hope for the future.

Leaning back in the worn-out chair, he rubbed at his greying scalp. “Hey, computer. Play something festive, would ya?”

Static crackled, and a cheerful burst of flutes piped through the overhead speakers. A moment later, the velvet tones of Dean Martin filled the cockpit.

Halpin’s face creased in a crooked grin. He raised the glass to his lips, letting the sweet nostalgia of the amaretto carry him back to his own Christmas past. He brushed a finger over the photograph pinned to his dashboard. The kind, tired eyes of his wife looked up from the creased paper, and beneath them shone those of his newborn son.

A light tremor jostled the craft. The magnetic waves of the collapsing star were reaching him, probing and investigating his presence. On the neutron gauge, crimson lights blinked out one by one, replaced by a cool emerald glow as the craft’s ramjet scoop began collecting its galactic plunder.

Halpin swallowed hard and put the glass aside, his mind still lingering on the memory of that first family Christmas. Baby watching from the crib. Sarah dressing the tree. Placing the star on top and switching on the lights. Hearing the baby’s chuckle meld with the yuletide radio.

The briefing came just a day later, and he had accepted it without hesitation. A neutron star, located within reachable distance, offering a permanent solution to Earth’s grim reality. The planet’s resources were finished. Rinsed out, used up, and tossed away. Just a teaspoon of neutron energy could change everything, powering the off-world outposts for generations.

Of course, the risks were high…

The ship shook again. The gauge continued to fill, too slowly for Halpin’s liking. He looked away, nervously humming to Tom Waits tinkering on the piano.

“Silent Night,” sang Tom, “Holy night. All is calm…”

On the viewscreen, the neutron star went supernova.

Even stationed this far from the epicentre, he knew he was far from safe. He closed his eyes against the brilliant light flooding the cockpit, clinging instead to the driftwood of memory.

They’d built a snowman in the backyard on the morning of his departure. The baby was too young to understand, so they’d taken a picture. Sarah promised to show it to him when he was old enough. That had been four years ago, on another Christmas Eve, in a place that felt like another lifetime. Now here he was, at the end of a journey he’d always known might be his last.

Fear wormed its way inside him like the light penetrating the craft. Outside, the star bloomed into a vast, sapphire sphere of cosmic rage. Expanding, reaching out to smite and punish him for the hubris of thinking that he could capture the fire of the gods and deliver it, like Prometheus, as a gift to humankind.

Sparks flared from the terminals, and flame-retardant foam burst from hidden panels. Metal groaned all around him. He glanced down at the display readout that flashed fiery warnings. The antigravity unit gave out under the pressure, and the amaretto glass lifted gently into the air.

Halpin’s head felt like it would burst, yet his eyes, bulging under the pressure, stayed fixed on that last red light, the final notch on the neutron tank.

Come on! Fill, damn it!

In a moment of glorious relief, it finally winked green.

Around him consoles sparked and smoked while his shaking fingers hammered the controls. The craft’s engines groaned, shuddered, and then aggressively burst into life, accelerating away from the grasping talons of the raging, dying star.

Two hours later, his checks completed and the supernova just a pale, blue dot in the infinite nothingness, Halpin entered the coordinates and lay down in the stasis booth.

It would be another four years, luck-be-willing, before the craft made it home with the harvested energy. By that point, his son would have grown to be a boy, but he would be safe. He would have a future. There would be time to catch up, to make things right again.

Halpin kissed the photograph and pressed it to his chest. The stasis booth closed overhead, and he settled into an ageless slumber.

In the dream that followed, he crunched through a layer of crisp white snow, over the remnants of a familiar lawn, arriving at the door to a cozy-looking house. Fairy lights twinkled in the window while laughter, music, and the sound of festive cheer resounded from within.

He stopped on the porch, took one last look at the starry sky, turned the handle, and stepped into the light.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Teasdale is an English writer of strange fiction and occasional travel memoir whose stories have previously appeared in the UK publications Novel Magazine, Litro Magazine and the science fiction anthology series Shoreline of Infinity. He has called six different countries home and currently lives in Transylvania, Romania with his partner and their two cats.

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