Star of Scorpio

Usage examples of antares.

Here in the Napier system, the Antares Nebula was a hundred times larger than it was in the night skies of home.

For four hundred and thirty winters, Antares had been the real-life version of the red stars with which Altan children decorated theirfala bushes at Christmastime, an ochre beacon hoveringlow over the Colgate Mountain Rangeeach eveningafter sunset.

Withnothing left to burn, the fusion reaction thathad longpoweredAntares’ inner engineflickered,anddied.

The distance between Antares and Alta was such that it tookthenovawavefront125 years to cross the gulf of space betweenthem.

When thefirst photonsfrom the explosionfinally reached the colony world, they burst forthin a phenomenonthatquickly became known as Antares dawnlight.

Whiletheseandmanyothereffects are of interest only to astronomers,Antares’ death had carried with itone consequencethat affected thelivesof everyoneon Alta .

In addition to vaporizing everything around it – including the hapless ships and crewsthen in transit across the Antares system – thesupernovadisruptedstar travel throughout the region,cuttingAltaofffrom therest of human space.

That, at least, had been the situation before the AntaresS upernova.

He had commandedASNS Discovery , one of the three old interstellar cruisers thatwerest randed in the system when Antares exploded.

It was a nasty habit of his whenever he contemplated the Antares Nebula, brought on undoubtedly by the fact that his own life had been inextricably linked to the nebula ever since it blazed bright in Alta’s night sky.

These were the captains and executive officers of the ships that had gathered in the Napier system in preparation for entering the Antares nebula.

Around it, etched dimly in glowing red paths that were not quite straight, were the foldlines of the Antares Foldspace Cluster.

On it, the dimly glowing paths from Antares emanated like the strands of a spider web.

Another pathway originated inside the Antares Nebula and arched across the screen to terminate in a star with the odd name of Eulysta.

Within the high-energy environment of the Antares Nebula, the human fleet glowed like a string of tiny iridescent soap bubbles adrift in a hellish sea.