The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction

brighter, and a bit older than the sun. Peter called up its data. 47 Ursae Majoris bore the name of a crocodile king in Thai mythology, Chalawan, and had at least three planets. It could not be ruled out that an Earth-similar planet might be orbiting in its habitable zone. Therefore, radio messages had already been sent in its direction, twice, but they would not arrive until 2047 and 2049.
Or maybe not at all, because it looked like Chalawan had ended its existence for some reason. Peter imagined what this would mean for the inhabitants of a planet. If the mass in the center of its orbit went away, there would be nothing left to force it to retain that orbit—much like when a hammer thrower lets go of the hammer, the planet would henceforth race through the universe alone at its former orbital speed. Maybe the 47 Ursae Majorids had gotten lucky, and their star would have hurled the planet toward our solar system. Then they could arrive here in a few thousand years.
The likelihood of this fantasy was, of course, minuscule. It would be about as great as the chance that there was no mistake here. A star did not just up and disappear. Had he discovered something significant, or not? His telescope was hardly the most efficient. How, of all people, should he be the first to miss Chalawan and Alsafi? But maybe this was normal. The big star catalogs contained millions of objects. If two of them were missing, it would only be noticed when someone looked explicitly, for example, to answer astronomical questions about one or the other of the two stars.
What would be a logical sequence of events? Chalawan or Alsafi could have fallen victim to a stellar explosion, perhaps by a hitherto-unknown companion that supplied the necessary mass. However, this would have had to take place a few years ago for the explosion cloud to have had enough time to dissipate again to the point where it was no longer visible in his telescope. This proposition could be checked out with a more powerful telescope, because some remnant would still be found at the place of the former star.
That idea was countered by the argument that the two missing stars must have exploded some time ago, and without anyone noticing either’s change of brightness. But such stellar deaths were very interesting for researchers. That was why there were several worldwide search programs that scanned the sky for new light phenomena. They would have had to miss these two events.
Of course, it was also possible that his telescope was simply deceiving him. When he looked into the eyepiece, he didn’t see through the lenses and mirrors into space. He looked at a small screen that showed him everything that a very light-sensitive photo chip at the end of the beam path captured, and only after the image had been processed electronically.
Errors—artifacts—could creep in. The system reacted to inputs that did not meet its expectations by displaying inexplicable results. Sometimes objects displayed color fringes that were not there in reality, or there was background noise that had no basis in reality. But that whole stars should become undetectable?
Peter switched off the telescope. It moved, humming until it reached the safety position, pointed directly upward. Its resting state was something he always found amusing. If people rested in such a position, how different the world would look. Instead of beds, for instance, there might be something like sleeping vases that would hold their resting bodies.
What had happened to the e-mail he’d sent to the telescope’s manufacturer? The automatic reply had promised a response by Monday... three days ago.
He looked at the smartphone screen, but there were no new emails. The only notification was on the telescope app icon, where a symbol indicated an update he decided could wait until tomorrow. He put the smartphone in his pocket, folded up the music stand, and clamped it under an arm. Then he lifted the telescope by the central joint of the tripod and carried both of them into the house, taking them straight into the living room.
His blanket and pillow were already lying on the sofa. Franziska had prepared everything. He thought of her with a warm feeling.

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February 27, 2026 – Passau
“Dear Mr. Kramer,” the e-mail began.
Good, at least they hadn’t decided he was a huckster.
“Thank you for your message, and your patience that we are only responding to you today.”
Peter had just begun to wonder about it a few minutes earlier, and then the message showed up in his inbox.
“We do have some good news for you, though. We were able to understand the problem you described.”
That was great! Finally, confirmation that he was not making this all up. The company had gifted a few thousand telescopes of this type to amateur astronomers. If they asked everyone to use them to search for missing stars now, they’d get a big chunk of the cosmic neighborhood grazed in a short time.
“Our programmers have tracked down the error. The wayfinding algorithm was probably too intolerant of the input parameters at some points and then maneuvered itself into a dead end. Please download the latest version of our app, which has been available since midnight. With it, the errors you discovered should no longer occur. Thank you...”
He closed the message. So all this was supposed to have been nothing more than a software error? He’d seen that Sigma Draconis and 47 Ursae Majoris were missing... No, he hadn’t seen anything! That was the problem. He had no comprehension of how the software that analyzed the photo chip data worked. Maybe for some stupid reason it had shown only a black spot where each