THE sobs were overwhelming. “Stop it Rai… What’s the point?” the diaphragm of Rai’s tightly clutched speakers vibrated. “I… I still don’t believe this.” Rai screeched like a banshee. She almost couldn’t hear herself amidst the earsplitting noise of the sensors. “How long is it… before …” Kobayashi left it at that. Gumilev replied as if he was asking the same question to himself. “Fifteen minutes at the most.”
He was checking the time over and over again. Probably he was still counting the seconds. All of them were looking at a bright blue light almost eight thousand light-years away. “Are we… I mean, is it going to be quick?” Kobayashi managed to ask looking at the reflection of the blinding light on Gumilev’s glass helmet.
“Eta Carinae!”— He remembered hearing the name during his days at the Institute. The name was unusual like the rest of the names. The information was ordinary. Eta Carinae, a hyper-giant star — more than hundred times the mass of the sun.
The little black printed letters on the costly paper with the Institute’s watermark read, “It is possible that the Eta Carinae hyper-nova could affect the Earth, but the damage is likely be restricted to the upper atmosphere.” Or was it written in some other way? Kobayashi could not remember, but what he did remember was that those little black letters were as deceptive as Gumilev’s stoic face
“We have lost contact with others. Everyone,” Rai stated the obvious and she knew it. She simply wanted to make herself hear those words.
“The radiation burst hit the Earth two minutes ago,” Gumilev said looking at the round grey ball suspended in darkness, which was once called “Earth”— “I think it’s all over by now.”
“How long will we wait?”
The other two could not understand Rai’s question but they did not look at her. Everybody avoided looking at each other, because all one could see was the reflection of their own faces on the coated fibreglass of their helmet.
The sensors that monitor radiation level inside the space station continued to make frantic noises. Wait? For how long? All Kobayashi could think of was a watermark.
