It was not exactly the reaction Alma had expected.
Of course, the explosion and the falling star had been overwhelming, but the most unbelievable part had been the child inside the star. She hadn’t even mentioned that, and Hugo and Shirin already seemed shocked.
Hugo was leaning forward, gray elbows on gray knees. “When you say you saw a ‘star explode,’ are you referring to a supernova?” he asked. “That is, the death of a massive star during which its core collapses and its outer layers are blown off?”
Here was the word that had eluded Alma last night. “‘Supernova,’” she repeated. “Yes, that’s what I saw! I saw it through my quinte—through my telescope.”
“At what time did you see this?”
“Around midnight,” Alma replied, her excitement increasing at Hugo’s interest. “Why? Did you—did you see something?”
Hugo leaned back and gestured to the open telescope cases. “As I said, astrophysics is my latest hobby. And as it happens, I was also stargazing last night. My telescope is not very powerful, but I did see some … unusual astronomic activity, including a possible meteor and—”
“Okay, this is too bizarre!” interrupted Shirin, who was now pushing off the table so that her seat rotated around and around. “My sister was talking on her phone incredibly loudly until so late last night. And even after she hung up, I couldn’t sleep so I was just lying there looking out my window, and I didn’t see any explosion, but I did see a fiery thing falling out of the sky! At first, I thought it was some really crazy lightning, but maybe it was a meteor, like Hugo said?”
“A meteor—is a meteor a star?” Alma asked. Inside her, the spark flared.
“Meteoroids are bits of space stuff—pieces of comets or asteroids or even other planets,” Hugo replied. “When they enter Earth’s atmosphere, most meteoroids immediately burn up, producing the fiery glow that we call a meteor—or, unscientifically, a falling star. Fascinating fact: approximately 20,000 tons of cosmic dust falls to Earth each year. So seeing a so-called falling star is not an uncommon occurrence.”
Alma shook her head as disappointment welled up, dousing the light. That wasn’t what she’d seen. She wasn’t explaining it right. “It was—it was a star, a real star,” she stammered. “Glowing, sort of reddish-gold. It wasn’t moving at first. And then—and then there was this wave of light, and it was like the star came flying out of the sky. I watched it fall all the way down and land somewhere behind my house!”
Neither Shirin nor Hugo responded right away. Alma studied the ground, embarrassment building with every ticking second. They had seen something, but they had a reasonable explanation for it—an explanation that didn’t include a golden star-child. She wondered if she should leave before she looked even crazier.
Then Shirin said, “You know, I’ve seen meteor showers, and they’re gorgeous—aren’t they gorgeous?—but that thing last night was different.”
Hugo was pushing his glasses up and then down, up then down. “There is such a thing,” he said, “as a runaway star. It can sometimes happen during a star system collision, or when a star gets too close to a black hole—or after a supernova, as you describe. The star is essentially catapulted through space at an extremely high rate of speed.”
Alma jerked her head up, mouth open. “That must be what we saw! It was a runaway star!”
“What if?” Shirin cried back. “That would be amazing!”
“However,” Hugo continued, shaking his head, “the fastest recorded runaway star is US 708, which is moving at around 2.7 million miles per hour. That star is incredibly far away from us, but even if the sun—the closest star to Earth—were traveling that fast, it would still take it almost thirty-five hours to get to Earth. You wouldn’t be able to watch it fall in a few minutes, as you’re describing. And, of course, if a star actually fell into the Earth, we would be incinerated. Apologies, but what you’re describing is impossible.”
Alma heard Hugo’s explanation, but in her mind, she was seeing the supernova detonate and the Starling being flung toward Earth again, and she was sure that this was what she had seen. Maybe it was impossible, but it sounded like Shirin might actually believe her—and Hugo was at least offering hypotheses.
“Well, I want to know more anyway,” Shirin said. She drumrolled on the table, then pointed to the quintescope case. “Is that what you saw the falling star with, Alma? Can we see?”
“Yes, I have”—Alma pulled the case upward—“I have a—”
“Hey, weirdos!” The voice came from behind Alma, near the door of the classroom.
Alma’s heart stopped. Her breath caught in her throat.
And the handle slipped from her grasp.
The crash was extraordinarily loud, the velvet lining apparently doing little to cushion the fall. The cones cracked against each other. There was a sound like glass scraping across metal. Shirin shrieked. Hugo winced.
“Telescope,” Alma whispered. “I have a telescope.”
“You had a telescope,” the voice from behind her said.