Solsphere (Part 1)

The ship’s exterior steamed unnaturally as the glowing red metal vaporized. Fazal sat at the violently shaking helm, his brain rapping against his skull, as he entered the hellish inferno of the star’s corona. His eyes were glazed walnuts and his mouth upturned like a mad clown. It would be his, all his.

Five million kilometers away Sujit sat quietly, monitoring his partner’s progress. Partner! When had this become about money? It had all started so innocently as all great discoveries usually do.

# # #

"What do you mean it’s all hydrogen?" Fazal’s look made Sujit sit back in his seat.

"Exactly what I said, it’s all hydrogen," Sujit repeated hoping he had not jumped to conclusions too quickly.

"Let me see the spectrograph."

Sujit handed him the printout and waited.

"Mmmhmm, yes well, hmm," Fazal mumbled scratching through his thick black hair. "This is preposterous, rescan it immediately. No star can be completely composed of hydrogen. I’m shocked you would even submit this to me. There must be at least some helium if not heavier elements."

Sujit took back the paper and began again - resetting the array, recalibrating the sensors, and rerunning the analysis - for the forth time. He grumbled in his mind as he worked. Check the prisms, too much sugar, not enough curry. Nothing was ever good enough. In India he had been the best student in ten years to come from a country of over two billion and here he was, just another lackey.

"Bring me a plasma coupling," Fazal yelled from another room. Sujit grabbed the stupid gizmo and walked it to his research advisor.

"Anything else Doctor Fazal?"

"Not right now," Doctor Fazal did not even bother to look up from his work, "just get that spectrograph done right this time."

Sujit walked back to his computer and lowered his pumpkin body to the seat.

The results made him want to scream. Doctor Fazal would not be pleased. As slowly as he could Sujit walked the printout to Fazal.

"Incompetent! How did you ever get admitted to graduate study?" Fazal leered. Sujit bit his lower lip to keep himself from busting the doctor across the jaw. "Get out of the way, I’ll do it myself."

The spindly little man prepared the instrument as Sujit watched. "Fine," he thought, "do it yourself. We’ll see who’s right."

After a couple minutes Fazal rose, his face was a wrinkled ball. "This data is wrong, completely wrong. The array must be damaged. Fix it." With that he stomped out of the room.

Fix it? How the hell do I fix it? Sujit decided it would be best not to ask Doctor Fazal at the moment. He headed for the ship library with a smirk on his face. Now who’s incompetent?

The next day Sujit again tried to analyze the star’s light for hints of composition and again was rewarded with the same wave numbers. None of this made sense. According to the manual and what Sujit saw everything was in perfect running order. Except, of coarse, the data kept saying the star was composed entirely of hydrogen. Entirely, not even a hint of any other element could be found. It was so strange.

Sujit considered it for a moment.

Stars form as a result of gravitational forces attracting clouds of space gas to one another. The gases clump together forming a sphere. As more gas is attracted the sphere begins to contract under the force of its own gravity increasing its density and heating up until poof, fusion initiates. Two hydrogen atoms form one helium atom, two helium atoms form one carbon atom and so on with energy released in the process. This energy pushes outward stabilizing the star’s contractions and preventing it from collapsing in on itself entirely.