The Last Days of Krypton - Kevin J. Anderson [32]
Though he was impatient to make a presentation to the Kryptonian Council, he did as Alura instructed. He healed.
Finally, two days before his wife believed he was ready to travel, he got up and packed for his trip. He could have sent a direct message via the communication plates, but he preferred to do this in person. Since he had lost all his hard data, he wanted to face his brother, describe exactly what had happened, and get his advice. With Jor-El’s aid, he could speak directly to the Council, and they would not be able to brush off his claims as hysteria.
Or maybe his brother would decide there was little to worry about, that a simple geological explanation could account for what he had seen. Zor-El could only hope that was the answer…but he couldn’t be sure.
After Alura changed the bandages on his severely burned arm and side, he kissed her and set off for his brother’s estate.
CHAPTER 11
Angry, but not surprised that Commissioner Zod had confiscated the Phantom Zone, Jor-El insisted on doing something useful before he left Kandor and returned to his estate. He had plenty of other important projects to occupy his time and his mind.
With Rao staring like a gigantic bleary eye from the western sky, Jor-El used his access to ascend to the very top of the Council ziggurat. On the highest open-air platform, sharp-tipped condensers sprouted like steel thorns around a viewing radius, projecting a highly detailed hologram of the giant red sun. Even at night, collectors from the opposite hemisphere captured the solar image and projected it to Kandor exactly half a day out of phase. Therefore, according to the priests and politicians, the sun never actually set in Kandor.
Many Kryptonians saw the projected orb as an object of worship or a beacon to the heavens. Intrepid artists, diligent philosophers, and reverent priests smeared protective creams on their faces and sat on special benches around the safe perimeter. Wearing masks or goggles to shield their eyes, they gazed for hours into the bright face of Rao, searching for inspiration or enlightenment in the churning gases.
For Jor-El, though, the high-resolution projection was useful as a solar observatory. Oily ripples of heat made the air shudder around the hologram, which, like a caged beast, never seemed to stay still. The star churned and roiled, its plasma layers boiling. Magnetic field lines trapped dark sunspots; feathery streamers of the corona wafted outward.
In addition to the telescopes he had placed on his own rooftops, Jor-El had constructed a similar—if smaller—solar observatory on his estate. Here atop the main Kandor temple, though, the image clarity was greater. Among his many fascinations, the life cycle of the gigantic sun had occupied much of Jor-El’s time over the past several years.
He adjusted the thick goggles over his face and walked around the blazing image, always studying. One of the artists sketched furiously, using his fingers to make swirls and patterns in colored levitating gels; Jor-El could see many technical inaccuracies in the young man’s representation, but he didn’t think precision was the artist’s goal. A middle-aged woman wearing a philosopher’s gown with a ragged collar sat cross-legged on the hard tiles in front of a bench; she nodded cordially at Jor-El, though he didn’t recognize her. The group of red-robed priests did not take their eyes from the swollen sun. The power and fury of the red giant was enough to inspire religious awe, and not surprisingly, some people worshipped Rao as a deity.
Jor-El was one of the few who dared to suggest that their god might be dying.
Eschewing the available seats, he stood on the fringe of the three-dimensional image, as close to the shimmering heat as he could stand. The solar storms, the magnetic anomalies, the dark sunspots like diseased patches—all were signs of an unstable sun. How could the priests, the Council, the artists, and the philosophers not recognize such obvious danger signs?
The bloated red star was undergoing its final stages of evolution. After countless