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you could create experiments to test your ideas. The universe was your laboratory. You had to wait for Nature to come up with a test case.
    For a few days, Art watched the images flowing down from the spaceborne observatories and listened to the discussions, hard to understand, of the energy that was being released. One figure, of all the discussions of billions and trillions and quadrillions, jumped out at him. The Alpha Centauri supernova was currently ninety percent as bright in Earth's sky as the midday sun.
    Of course, said the commentators, that would last at most a month or two. Then the star would dwindle rapidly in brightness to its original level and probably less.
    President Steinmetz had chimed in, offering reassurances. The supernova would have major effects, he said, on climate; but those would be felt in the Southern Hemisphere. Art was a lifelong weather buff. At his home in Olney, less than twenty miles from the White House, he had listened. Then he downloaded scores of weather maps and satellite images, and tried to decide what a ninety percent increase in incident solar radiation, all in the Southern Hemisphere, would do to the Earth's lands, oceans, and atmospheric circulation patterns. It was summer below the equator, a double summer.
    It didn't take more than a couple of days for Art to realize that he had no idea what was likely to happen. Worse than that, the dozens of analyses made by the professionals all seemed to come up with wildly different answers. President Steinmetz was a smart man, but his principal job today was to soothe an alarmed public.
    On Day 14, February 22, the supernova was reported to be as bright as ever. Art packed into his solar electric van the hundred kilos of possessions that really mattered, locked up the house, and headed for the vacation house in the Catoctin Mountain Park.
    He had agonized over whom to tell, and what to tell. His sister, his neighbors, his colleagues at Syncom? "Get out while you can." They would, very reasonably, ask, "Why?" He had no good answer. Suppose nothing much happened? Suppose all the heat from the supernova caused a few big thunderstorms, and nothing more? He'd have put a lot of people to a lot of pointless trouble—if they took any notice of him, that is. To some of his friends he was already the man who had cried wolf.
    Worry about what you do, boy. Then you'll be way ahead of most people. His grandfather had told him that, over and over, half a century ago. Art could hear him still. Finally, twenty-seven days ago, he had headed for the mountain cabin. He would return to Olney as soon as he was sure that his worries were pointless.
    Seven days ago, on March 14, the problem of going home had become orders of magnitude more complicated.
    Art went across to the gas stove, lit a burner, and set a kettle on top. While the water was heating he turned on the radio. Most people didn't seem to understand what survival was all about. It wasn't that you abandoned modern amenities, like health monitors and web wandering and silver bullets. It was that you made sure they ran independent of external supplies, like the little radio with its built-in fifty-year battery of doped fullerenes; or else you made sure that you could do without them if you had to. When the electricity failed, you went to gas and oil for light and heat. When those ran out, you turned to wood and tallow candles.
    They would never run out, at least in Art's lifetime. The whole of Catoctin Mountain Park was his for the taking. He couldn't use one-hundredth of the fallen trees and broken limbs within a mile of the house, brought down by the screaming winds of the previous three weeks. There was wildlife aplenty.
    But some things, even if you could do without them, you would sure miss. Art dumped boiling water on freeze-dried coffee, sniffed the aroma with pleasure, and added a spoonful of creamer. You could buy milk easily enough, if you were willing to walk half a mile down to the farm.