The gas giant Thesau, the ninth planet out from the star Tautee, expanded, then contracted, as if it were cookie dough in the hands of a huge, unseen child.

Egg-shaped.

Then round.

Then oblong.

The large planet went through wild contortions as it fought to somehow retain its shape.

And for a moment it seemed to have won the fight, settling into the round, swirling clouded shape it had had for millions of years.

Then the unseen child started pulling on it again and the gas giant expanded at its poles, then flattened almost as fast.

Every video screen throughout the entire system was focused on those images. Millions of Tauteean people watched, awestruck at the incredible forces at work.

Half a kilometer below the surface of the second moon of the fifth planet, the entire staff of the Kanst Energy Center -- thousands of researchers and scientists -- watched their screens in growing dismay. Some people turned away. Others sat on regulation chairs, no longer able to stand. The remaining few stared at the screens as if the sight betrayed them.

In the center of the fifty-thousand-kilometer building, Subcommander Prescott stood in the middle of the war room, watching the screens. Her assistant Folle stood beside her. The rest of the room was empty. No one else cared to see destruction in three dimensions.

The war room was a round amphitheater, and she stood at the focal point, in the bottom, below all the workbenches, the computers, and the seats. The circular screens showed her the Tautee system as if she were on a ship in space. The system surrounded her and covered the ceiling above her. Only the shiny steel floor, which reflected the images in a blurry, colorful fashion, showed that she was in the middle of her creation.

The Kanst Energy Experiment.

She had hoped to provide unlimited power for all her people. The studies had taken most of her life. The research built on research that built on research, some of it generations old. She had hired ten thousand of the best minds in the system to work on the project. Their analysis, the computer charts, and the projections all showed success.

How could it have gone this wrong?

"It's going to break up," Folle said. "Just like Hancee did."

Hancee, the moon where the energy experiment had taken place. Where she had lost three hundred of the best minds in the system.

Prescott shook her head, the movement making her head ache. Pain shot through her jaw. She was grinding her teeth again. She had shattered a tooth when Hancee broke up, but her pain had seemed minor then compared with the loss of a moon and her people. Her friends.

Her pain felt even more minor now.

The amphitheater was strangely silent. She couldn't even hear the hum of the computers. The air was cold -- the center fought a constant battle to keep the temperature steady within such a large space -- and she wore only her thin lab uniform. Somewhere she had lost the extra sweater she kept for the cold days, the days when the cold ate through her thin skin, all the way to her bones.

That didn't matter either. She had a feeling she would lose more than a sweater before the week was out.

The gas giant's shape changes took place in that silence. She almost expected to hear rips and tears as the planet changed shape. The sounds of an earthquake, maybe, the grinding of shifting rock under the unseen forces.

The silence was eerie.

But the silence was better than the cries of dismay she had heard two days ago, when this room had been full of her staff, when all the scientists had gathered to watch their success on Hancee.

A success that had quickly turned into a disaster of untold proportions.

Hancee had been the largest moon orbiting the gas giant. Two days after they started the experiment inside Hancee, something had gone wrong. Nobody knew exactly what had happened. The project was generating the expected power, and the transmission beam was being put on line to bring the power into the population.

Suddenly the three hundred men and women on Hancee no longer communicated with the Kanst Center -- or with anywhere else in the Tautee system. They were just gone, along with the power beam and the laboratories there.

Orbital photos showed nothing. The base was obscured by clouds of debris or gas. At least, her scientists thought it was debris or gas. It could have been anything, or something new created by the experiment. She had no way of knowing for sure.

She still didn't.

Two frantic days later, the rescue mission based out of the seventh planet finally received clearance to head for Hancee. It would have taken almost a week to get there, but the ships were still on the launchpad when the entire moon broke apart, scattering itself in small pieces in an expanding ring around the gas giant.

Now, less than a week later, the gas giant was shattering, torn apart by forces she couldn't even imagine.

Prescott glanced over at Folle's strained and tired face. Somewhere in the last two days, he had stopped touching her, even casually, a squeeze of the shoulder, a brush on the wrist, all those soft unconscious signs of support. The others refused to meet her eyes, but the loss of Folle's trust hurt even more. He was her right hand, her best friend, her second-in-command, and her sometime lover.

And he blamed her for all of this.

Underneath it all, so did she.

Not only was she legally responsible -- she set up the center, the team, and the research, and convinced the government the project would work -- but she was morally responsible. She had believed in the project with all her might.

But no one could blame her for silencing the doomsayers. There had been none. Everyone thought the project would work.

Even Folle.

Prescott, her thin, tiny frame showing the wear of the last week, sank down into a chair and closed her eyes.

She had to think.

She so much wanted to believe that something else besides the project had caused this destruction, that some cosmic coincidence had led to this.

She might be able to make herself believe that the small forces they had been working with could destroy a moon. That remote possibility was the very reason the experiment had been placed so far out, away from the populated center of the system. But the energy project couldn't have come close to generating even one-millionth of the force needed to tear apart a gas giant almost as big as their sun.

She hadn't caused this. She repeated the sentence over and over again. She hadn't caused this.

She hadn't caused this. It just wasn't possible.

But something was tearing apart the biggest planet in their solar system. And the destruction of the moon was damning evidence that her project had triggered something. What, she had no idea.

"You'd better watch this," Folle said.

She opened her eyes.

Folle was looking forward, at Thesau. The orange-and-yellow clouded planet filled the front screen. It seemed to have a large bubble forming on one side. As she watched, the bubble moved away from the center of the planet, pulling more and more of Thesau with it.

She stood. "This just can't be happening," she said to herself.

Folle placed his hand over hers.

She glanced at him in surprise. His anger seemed to be gone, replaced by resignation. He knew, as well as she did, what the bubble meant.

Strangely, it was his touch, his acceptance of the crisis, that nearly cracked her resolve. It was easier for her to watch when he blamed her. She could close it off, observe as a scientist instead of as a person.

Then he slipped his arm around her, strengthening her. She put her arm around him, hoping to give him strength in return. They would need it.

Because this was just the beginning.

She knew that now.

For the next hour they watched as the largest planet in their solar system spread out like jam on bread, forming the beginning of a huge ring that would someday, years and years in the future, fill the entire orbit around the sun.

The birth of the first Ring of Tautee.

There were fourteen more planets.

There would be fourteen more rings.

Copyright © 1990 by Paramount Pictures