JACK STARED AT THE airlock in horror. “I can’t believe it!” he gasped. “Who would possibly have locked it?”

“What do we do?” Irene shouted. “There’s no other place to go!”

Jack looked around and an idea suddenly came to him. “Yes there is – follow me!” He sprinted toward the rear of the starship as fast as his legs could carry him.

His wife ran after him. “Where are you going? There’s nothing back there!”

“The ship is lying horizontally,” Jack called back. “That means its propulsion system is exposed. At the rear of the ship are giant thrusters that maneuver the ship in space. They’re actually enormous tubes that lead deep inside the starship. We can crawl inside them and wait out the storm!”

The Behemoth was a giant starship almost a thousand feet long. It seemed to take an agonizingly long time for them to run the length of the ship. A tremendous sense of urgency pushed them along. Jack knew that a storm of high-energy particles were streaming toward the planet at speeds approaching one-third of the speed of light. I wish this planet had a decent magnetosphere, Jack thought. Then we wouldn’t be as defenseless as we are now. His hand throbbed painfully, but he did his best to ignore it.

After what seemed like an eternity the young couple reached the rear of the ship. As Jack had said, the Behemoth had three giant conical thrusters at the back. Two of of them were out of reach, but the third was accessible from the ground.

Jack climbed up onto the giant cone and then gave his wife a hand. The two then scrambled up. The cone narrowed as it neared the body of the starship, until it terminated into a long pipe. Irene’s eyes widened when she saw how small it was. “Jack – that’s less than three feet wide!”

“I didn’t say it would be comfortable,” Jack replied. He helped Irene inside first, and then quickly got down on his hands and knees and scooted as far inside as he could. The burns on his hand made it difficult to travel down the tube, but he had no choice. After about forty feet the rocket tube shrank in size and they were forced to stop.

“We’re not very far in,” Irene said in a nervous voice.

“This is the best we can do,” Jack replied. “We should be ok, though. The particles from the solar flare can’t possibly penetrate through all the shielding above us, and since they’re being emitted from the sun they’ll be falling out of the sky and going straight down to the ground. It’ll be tough for them to travel horizontally down this tube. Our exposure should be minimal.”

The couple waited as the warning siren continued to blare. After ten anxious minutes it finally stopped making noise.

Jack relaxed. “I think that’s the last of it.”

“Are you sure?” Irene asked dubiously. “Isn’t it possible that the storm knocked out the sensor array?”

“I doubt it,” Jack replied. “I think if it was going to do that it would have happened a lot sooner. We were seeing fried equipment before the bulk of the storm even hit.”

“But you’re still taking a chance,” Irene replied.

“It’s a chance I’m willing to take,” he said. “After all, we can’t stay in here forever.”

Jack cautiously scooted backwards out of the rocket tube. He then crawled off the starship, stood up, and looked around. The air traffic control tower was a complete wreck. The metal frame still existed, but the rest of it was nothing but a smoldering ruin. Other than that, Jack could see no sign that a solar flare had even hit.

“Well?” Irene’s voice echoed down the tube.

“It looks ok to me,” Jack replied.

“But you can’t see x-rays!” Irene protested.

“Trust me,” Jack said. “The storm is over. Solar flares are intense, but short – they don’t go on for hours.”

Irene reluctantly climbed out of the pipe and looked around. “I’m filthy,” she complained. Dark, black grime covered her white dress and was all over her hair. She tried rubbing the dirt off her hands but it didn’t do any good.

“Sorry,” Jack said. “I’m afraid those tubes don’t get cleaned out very often. People don’t usually spend much time in them.”

“I should hope not,” Irene retorted. “Seriously, though, Jack. You need to build some sort of radiation detector in your watch, or something. We really need a better way of checking to see if the solar flare has ended. Just going outside and looking isn’t going to cut it. For that matter, the siren should have some sort of ‘all-clear’ signal to let us know when the danger has passed.”

Jack nodded. “I’ve got instruments in the lab that can tell us – in fact, I used some of them to build the early warning system – but I just wasn’t planning on encountering a flare today. Come to think of it, according to the predictions put together by the weather department, another flare wasn’t supposed to happen for weeks.”

“I guess they don’t know what they’re doing,” Irene said.

Jack shook his head. “They’re pretty smart people, Irene. Besides, I took a look at their model myself. It was very thorough and and it fit the available data. No, I think there’s some kind of local anomaly that’s causing all this. Something is disturbing that star – and maybe keeping Daniel from bringing the Liberty any closer.”

“Whatever it is, we need to get to the bottom of it,” his wife said. “We can’t live like this, Jack. It’s one thing if we know when the flares are going to happen – then we can plan around them. But this situation is just a nightmare. It threatens the whole colony.”

“I know,” Jack replied.

“So what do we do now?” Irene asked.

“I guess we start walking. After all, we can’t get inside the Behemoth and the tower is burnt to a crisp. We have no way to contact the colony and ask for a ride back.”

“You should have brought your pencil radio.”

“I know,” Jack said. “I just didn’t think I’d need it. Things haven’t exactly gone according to plan today.”

Irene interrupted him. “Speaking of things not going according to plan, I see trouble coming.” She nodded in the direction of the colony. In the distance Jack saw a bright red hovercar come flying toward them, raising a giant cloud of dust. Jack groaned.

The hovercar flew right up to Jack and them stopped abruptly. Even though it was flying several feet off the ground, its wake stirred up a cloud of gritty dust that quickly enveloped Jack and his wife. The couple walked out of the cloud, but not before it covered them in even more grime.

With a loud harumph, the car’s driver got out and slammed the door behind him. Another person climbed out of the passenger side. Jack knew who they were before he even saw them – the driver was Patrick Gamino, the colony’s administrator and unofficial mayor, and the passenger was Doug Garcia, the chief medical officer.

Before Jack could even say anything the mayor glared at him. “Look at you, young man! You’re filthy! What insanity have you been up to this time?”

“We had to–” Jack began.

“I don’t want to hear it,” the mayor snapped. “Do you realize what you’ve done? Why, that control tower is ruined – completely ruined! It’ll take months to rebuild it! Do you think we have nothing better to do than repair things?”

“Now wait just a minute,” Irene said sharply. “The solar flare did that. Jack warned you not to build it out in the open. He had nothing to do with that.”

“Oh yeah? Well, you two wanted to build it in the canyon wall! What kind of dumb idea was that?”

“It would still be intact if you’d put it there,” Irene retorted.

“This is still your husband’s fault, young lady,” the mayor snapped. “He promised us that no more flares would happen – gave us his word, even! You can see how much that’s worth.”

“No I didn’t,” Jack replied. “I said that, according to the evidence we had gathered, there was no indication another flare was imminent.”

“Blah blah blah,” the mayor sneered. “The point is, you said we’d be safe and we aren’t.”

“Stow it,” Doug interrupted. “Jack’s early warning system saved lives, and you know it. If it wasn’t for that warning we would have been caught totally off-guard. Thanks to Jack we didn’t have any major injuries, let alone fatalities. In fact, the only property damage we suffered was thanks to your own stupidity.”

“You’d better watch it,” the mayor warned. “I can have you shipped back to Earth, you know.”

“And I can flatten you with one hand,” Doug shot back. He turned his back to the mayor and looked at Jack. “I’m so glad you and your wife are safe. When I found out that Karen had left you here I was beside myself with worry. I should have known that if anyone could survive out here it would be you two.”

“Thanks,” Jack replied. “Speaking of which, you didn’t happen to bring along a medical kit, did you?” Jack showed him the burns on his hand, which Doug treated. When Jack’s hand was medicated and bandaged Doug spoke up. “That should do it. Give it a day or two and then your hand should be as good as new. You were a lucky man – that could have been a lot worse. I just can’t believe Karen left you behind.”

“You’re not the only one,” Irene grumbled. “I am definitely going to have a long talk with that woman.”

“I’ve already done that,” Doug replied. “She’ll think twice before she does anything that stupid again. Leaving the two of you behind – no matter how panicked she was – was just criminal.”

“There’s still the matter of the Liberty,” the mayor growled. “You Falcons are supposed to be competent but I’m sure not seeing it! Why, your ship is so dumb that it can’t even get near Myra. What is the matter with you people?”

Doug turned around and looked the mayor in the eye. “If you act like a jerk one more time, Patrick, I will break both of your legs and leave you here to rot. I have had it with you today.”

The mayor opened his mouth to say something, but then thought the better of it. He turned toward the car but Doug grabbed him by the shoulder. “And you’re not leaving until all of us are ready to go. Do I make myself clear?”

Patrick grumbled, but said nothing.

“It’s ok,” Jack said. “Let him go. I’ve got some work to do here anyway. Before you leave, though, could you unlock the Behemoth? I need to let Daniel know what’s going on, and that starship now has the only functional FTL communication system on the planet.”

Doug turned to the mayor. “You locked Jack out of his own starship?” he asked incredulously.

“I locked everyone out,” the mayor replied. “I didn’t want someone to steal anything. It’s not safe, leaving it unlocked.”

The mayor reluctantly handed Jack the ship’s electronic keycard, which Jack took.

“Keep it,” Doug said. “Whatever you do, don’t give it back. It’s safest if it’s in your hands.”

The mayor shook his head. “I knew I should have left you at the colony.”

“I didn’t give you a choice,” Doug retorted.

After Doug said goodbye to the Falcons, the two men got in the car and drove off. Irene sighed. “What is the matter with him?”

“The mayor is Ed’s brother,” Jack explained. “He just hates me because of that whole mess with my claytronic stones.”

“But that was years ago!” Irene replied. “Besides, Patrick wasn’t even involved.”

Jack sighed. “Ed was never the same after what happened. He gave up inventing completely and retired, and died two years later. I think Patrick blames me for it. I still feel terrible about it all but I can’t go back and change it.”

“You don’t have to deal with this,” Irene said. “You have the support the colonists, you know. You could forcibly remove Patrick or have someone back home do it. For that matter, you could leave Myra and go found your own colony somewhere else. We don’t have to live here, you know.”

Jack shook his head. “I’m not going to get Patrick fired. He’s good at what he does, he’s done a lot for the colony, and he’s only hostile toward us. In fact, the only time it really gets bad is when things go wrong – like today. Most of the time he leaves us alone. If I were to have him removed it would be a selfish move purely for my own benefit. I’m just not going to do it.”

“It would be for me too,” Irene argued. “He hates me as much as he hates you. In fact, he might hate me even more.”

“That’s because – well, you know why. If I hadn’t gone back in time to save you none of this would have happened. Patrick probably thinks that you’re even more responsible for everything than I am, since you were the reason I acted the way I did.”

“It’s just not fair! You can’t let this go on forever, Jack. At some point you’re going to have to deal with him.”

“But not today,” Jack said. “Right now we need to see if Daniel’s made any progress, and then we need to check into those solar flares. There really shouldn’t have been one today. Something’s not right.”

Jack and Irene made their way to the bridge of the Behemoth. Jack turned on the ship’s communication system and was able to contact the Liberty. He was disappointed but not surprised to find that Daniel had made no progress in getting closer to Myra.

“What should I do, skipper?” Daniel asked. “Have you come up with any brilliant flashes of insight in the past half-hour, or do I need to let you sleep on this one?”

“I think we’re missing something,” Jack replied. “I have a hunch that whatever’s keeping you from coming here is also behind the rogue solar flares we’ve been experiencing. My advice is to head back to Earth. I’ll do some research on my end and find out what’s going on. Once I know what the anomaly is – if there is one – I’ll contact you and we can put together a plan to overcome it.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Daniel said approvingly. “I’ll be waiting for your signal.”

Daniel signed off, and Jack powered down the equipment on the bridge. He sank down into a chair and looked at his wife. “I wish I knew what was going on,” he said.

“I can help you with that,” a voice replied. A moment later a black-haired woman stepped through a doorway and onto the bridge. She was wearing an expensive gray suit and carried a black leather briefcase.

Jack looked at her in surprise. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I know you. Are you one of the colonists?”

“You may call me Eliza,” the woman replied. “Officially I am not here. After I leave you will not be able to prove that you spoke to me. But I can answer your question. The people that I work for have discovered the cause of the solar flares.”

Irene eyed here suspiciously. “And who might your employers be?”

“For now let’s just say that they’re people who want to see this colony survive,” the lady replied. “For obvious reasons they believe that the two of you are the best hope for saving it.”

“So the colony is in danger,” Jack replied. “The flares are getting worse, and they’re not going to stop.”

Eliza nodded. “You are correct. If you do not act soon the entire planet will be placed in serious jeopardy. Myra itself may not survive.”

The woman opened her briefcase and handed Jack a neatly-typed document. Jack looked at the document, puzzled, and began reading it. Irene stood behind her husband and read it over his shoulder.

“Do you know what that is?” Eliza asked.

Jack nodded as he kept studying the file. “I do. I’ve seen these before, although I haven’t seen one for this region of space before. This is a map of local spacial anomalies.”

“And black holes,” Irene added. “I see lots of black holes. Wow! I had no idea there were so many around us. They’re everywhere!”

“This is a highly unusual area of space,” Eliza replied. “Black holes are not common in this part of the galaxy but for some reason there is a local cluster of them. A very active local cluster.”

“I see that,” Jack said. “It looks like their immense gravity is leading to the creation of hundreds of tiny, unstable wormholes. Based on this data I’d say that the short-lived wormholes are temporarily linking the black holes together.”

“That’s weird,” Irene replied. “I didn’t know they could do that.”

Jack nodded. “It’s long been theorized that black holes may trigger wormholes that lead to other places in space. What I didn’t realize was that there was a way to tell where the wormhole went or what was on the other side.”

“It wasn’t possible until recently,” Eliza commented. “One of your own inventions made this map possible. But do you understand the significance of this?”

Jack frowned. “I see that the black holes are linking to each other. That makes sense, I guess – they would naturally try to connect to whatever was closest, and when it comes to gravitational anomalies you just can’t beat a black hole.” His eyes suddenly widened. “Of course! Those black holes – they’re crossing the path of the Epsilon Eridani system, aren’t they?”

Eliza nodded. “Not always, of course, but occasionally. And when they collapse–”

“–the spacial disturbance upsets the star’s balance,” Jack said excitedly. “That’s it! That’s what is causing the flares. The sun is constantly being disturbed so it’s becoming unstable. The violent flares are an indication of an upcoming stellar catastrophe!”

“I bet that’s what is keeping the Liberty at bay,” Irene added. “There’s probably some local activity in its path that’s disturbing spacetime. The time dilator just can’t work under those conditions.”

Eliza nodded. “They are also a direct threat to this planet. So far no wormhole has come into contact with Myra, which is to be expected given the immensity of space and the smallness of this world. But it’s only a matter of time before that happens. When it does, the planet will fracture.”

Jack looked at Eliza. “So what do we do? I mean, we can’t just go and turn the black holes off! And I don’t think we can move them, either.”

Eliza closed her briefcase. “That is up to the two of you. You must either find a way to solve this problem, or abandon the colony before it’s destroyed. You have been warned – and that is all the help we are able to provide.”

With that, the lady walked off the bridge and out the door.

“WHERE ARE THEY?” Jack Falcon asked anxiously. “Daniel should have been here an hour ago!”

His wife Irene smiled at him and shook her head. “Calm down, Jack! The Liberty will get here. Just be patient.”

Jack and Irene Falcon were standing just outside Star City’s only spaceport, waiting for their old friend Daniel Hollins to land with some much-needed supplies. The Star City colony was mankind’s first settlement outside the Solar System. It had been founded four years ago when an international conglomerate known as the Barclay Group had approached Falcon Technologies, a company founded by Jack’s grandfather. For three generations the Falcons had spent their lives inventing cutting-edge technologies, and after nineteen-year-old Jack developed a way of traveling between stars the Barclay Group decided it was time for Earth to branch out.

So Jack built the Behemoth, a giant starship that ferried 6,000 brave colonists from Earth to the planet Myra, a rocky, airless world that circled the star Epsilon Eridani. A year later Jack married his lifelong sweetheart Irene Goddard, and the new couple then moved to Myra to help the struggling colony. Together they had worked to turn mankind’s only interstellar colony into a self-sustaining city.

The colony had been built at the bottom of a deep, dry canyon that was twelve miles long and two miles wide. A pair of atmosphere makers that Jack had designed had spent the last four years filling the canyon with air. Even though the rest of the planet’s surface was uninhabitable, there was enough air inside the canyon to allow the colonists to go outside without a spacesuit. It would take decades for the rest of Myra to become terraformed, but the Falcons were patient. To them the end result – turning a dead planet into a live one – was well worth the cost.

In front of Jack and Irene was a large, barren piece of ground that served as the landing field. It was surrounded on three sides by the sheer walls of the canyon. At the far end of the field was the giant starship Behemoth. The giant starship was rarely used anymore, but occasionally the colony would need to send someone to Earth for some much-needed supplies or replacement parts. The ship was the colony’s only way of leaving the planet.

Behind them was a three-story-tall metal tower that served as the planet’s only air traffic control center. The tower was also the tallest building on Myra, as the rest of the colony had been built underground. Jack would have preferred to build the spaceport underground as well but they colony’s mayor had rejected that idea.

Jack glanced at his watch and sighed. “I just don’t understand. What could be keeping them? We’re only eleven light-years from Earth – the Liberty should be able to cover that distance in a matter of hours. I’ve done it many times myself!”

The Liberty was the first interplanetary spaceship that Jack ever built. He had used it to travel to the moon and, later, to tour the Solar System. When Jack invented his faster-than-light drive he decided to retrofit the Liberty with it instead of designing a new starship. Since that time he had developed newer and faster ships, but his first one still had a special place in his heart.

“Maybe they got a late start,” Irene suggested. “Keep in mind, the two of us ordered a lot of equipment! It’s taken Daniel six months to get everything you asked for. He may have discovered at the last minute that he forgot something, and had to have a part flown in to the Falcon Spaceport.”

Jack shook his head. “I talked to Daniel myself just this morning. He told me that he was at Dad’s spaceport and the Liberty was ready to go.”

“Well, worrying about it isn’t going to make your starship get here any faster,” Irene pointed out. “Just think about what you’ll be able to do after it arrives! We’ll be able to make Xenolab I a genuine laboratory, stocked with the latest equipment. It’ll be almost as good as our lab back on Earth.”

“It will be nice to work with modern tools again,” Jack admitted. “We’ve spent years scrounging around as best we could. I would’ve had this equipment flown in years ago but the colony just wasn’t ready for it.”

“I’m afraid that food, water, sanitation, and power are a bit more important than gamma-ray emitters,” Irene teased. The red-headed girl looked up into the empty sky. She was about to say something but was interrupted by a voice behind her. “Hey Jack!”

The young inventor turned around and saw Karen Miller standing at the door to the control tower. Karen, a trained biologist, was the spaceport’s only employee. She came by the tower once a day to see if they had any messages, and she worked there on the rare occasion when a ship was landing or taking off. Otherwise she spent her time managing the colony’s hydroponics gardens.

“Got a message for you, Jack,” she called out. “That friend of yours wants to talk to you.”

“Finally!” Jack exclaimed. He sprinted over to the tower and ran inside. His wife shook her head and calmly followed him. When she got inside the building and climbed upstairs she saw that her husband was already talking to Daniel on one of the room’s small viewsecreens.

“That just doesn’t make any sense,” Jack was saying. “How is that possible?”

“That’s what I want to know!” Daniel replied. “There we were, cruising right along, and then – bam! – the kronolator stopped working and we dropped back into normal space. As far as we can tell there’s nothing wrong with the unit itself. I’ve even had your Dad check it out – in fact, he’s down there now looking it over.”

“Can you turn it on?” Jack asked.

“Sure,” Daniel replied. “I can turn it on and off all day long. I just can’t go any further in your direction. As soon as I tell the ship to head toward Myra the drive cuts out immediately. I can go anywhere else – I just can’t head your way.”

Jack looked puzzled. “Does the sublight drive work?”

“Sure,” Daniel replied. “But keep in mind that we’re still half a light-year away from you. As fast as your sublight drive is, it’s nowhere near faster-than-light. It would take us years to reach Myra at that speed.”

“So the kronolator works, but it won’t let you travel to Myra?” Jack asked, confused.

“How is that possible?” Irene asked.

“It’s not,” Jack complained. “I’ve never heard of anything remotely like that before! It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Well, let’s start at the beginning,” his wife said. “We’ll figure this out. Now, you designed the kronolator to achieve faster-than-light travel by manipulating the flow of time, correct?”

“Right,” Jack replied. “There’s no way to exceed a speed of 186,000 miles per second in space. So, to get around that, my kronolator alters the flow of time around the starship. Since it can control how much time is passing it can cross vast distances very quickly.”

“That means the drive depends on the ability to manipulate time. Right?”

“Of course,” Jack replied. “You know that! You’re as familiar with the kronolator as I am.”

“Then the problem is obvious,” Irene said. “If there’s nothing wrong with the drive itself then there must be some anomaly near Myra that is keeping the kronolator from altering the flow of time. In other words, outer space must be broken. It’s the only logical conclusion.”

“But we’ve made the trip from Earth to Myra many times!” Jack protested. “This has never been a problem in the past.”

“Then something must have changed,” Irene replied.

“She’s making sense,” Karen said. “We have had a lot of strange things happening around here recently.”

Jack nodded. “Now that’s true. All right. Daniel, just to be on the safe side, can you ask Dad to perform one last system-wide diagnostic? I want to be completely sure that this isn’t some computer-related glitch. Then we can turn our attention to–“

Jack was interrupted in mid-sentence by an ear-shattering siren. He winced involuntary. Karen immediately panicked. “Not again!” she screamed. The biologist ran out of the tower at top speed.

Daniel looked confused. “What’s that awful noise?”

“It’s the colony’s solar flare advance warning system,” he explained over the noise. “I installed it last month. I hate to do this but I’ve got to go. We’ll talk more later.”

Jack reached over and turned off the tower’s equipment, and then he and his wife raced outside. In the distance they saw a silver hovercar driving away at top speed.

“Hey!” Irene shouted. “She took our hovercar! What’s the matter with her?”

“She panicked,” Jack explained. “The last solar flare almost destroyed her hydroponics garden, which would have wiped out our food supply. She’s probably going to make sure it’s properly shielded.”

“But she could have waited for us!” Irene glared angrily at the vehicle as it disappeared out of sight. “Now what are we going to do? We can’t stand here, Jack – if we’re outside when that solar flare hits we’ll be dead for sure!”

Jack glanced back at the control tower. “It’s not shielded enough to protect us,” he said at last. “It’s worse than useless. We’ve got to find a way to get underground.”

The couple quickly took stock of their surroundings. The spaceport was located at the far end of the canyon, several miles from the rest of the city. When the spaceport was built people felt that it should be located as far away from the settlement as possible, in order to protect the colony from space accidents. The only nearby objects were the steep rock walls of the canyon.

“I don’t see any other vehicles here,” Jack said.

“Of course not,” Irene snapped. “We’re the ones that drove Karen out here! I can’t believe she’d do this to us. How much time do we have left?”

“The solar satellite should give us about fifteen minutes,” Jack replied.

Irene gasped. “We can’t possibly walk twelve miles in fifteen minutes!”

“I know,” Jack said. His mind raced, and then he had an idea. “Couldn’t we ask someone in the colony to come out and rescue us?”

Irene shook her head. “I don’t know. Even if they left right now it would be hard to travel all the way out here, pick us up, and then make it back to the colony before the flare hit.”

“But we can try,” Jack argued. He turned around and raced back into the air traffic control tower. The young inventor powered up the equipment and tried hailing the main colony. Several tense minutes went by but no one answered.

“Great!” Irene said at last. “I guess everyone’s underground now.”

“Which is where they should be,” Jack pointed out. “Everyone knows what to do when a solar flare hits. This is really my fault – I should’ve connected this system to the colony’s underground announcement system. Not doing that was a bad mistake.”

“We can discuss that later,” Irene shouted. “We’ve got to do something now!”

At that moment the microphone in Jack’s hand suddenly surged with energy, giving him a powerful shock. Jack involuntary dropped the microphone. Oh no, Jack thought to himself, the first wave of the flare must have arrived! He hastily reached over to turn off the tower’s master power supply, but it was too late! As his hand touched the switch the power converter exploded in a shower of sparks, burning Jack and sending him flying backwards. The energy surge traveled through the power lines to the tower’s primary mainframe, which burst into flames!

Irene helped her dazed husband to his feet and the two raced downstairs. Jack’s hand throbbed painfully, but he chose to ignore it. I’ll deal with it later, he decided. If we don’t get underground right now my hand will be the least of our problems.

As soon as they had cleared the now-smoking building Irene stopped. “I thought you said we had fifteen minutes!”

“The solar particles must be traveling faster than I predicted,” Jack explained. He sprinted across the landing field at top speed.

“Where are we going?” Irene shouted, as she ran close behind him.

“To the Behemoth,” Jack said, pointing. “She’s shielded against radiation. It’s our only chance!”

As Jack and Irene raced toward the enormous starship they heard a roar behind them. Jack glanced back and saw that the entire air traffic control tower was now in flames. Jack winced at the sight. I hope the colony is ok, he thought.

With only moments to spare the young couple finally made it to the starship’s airlock. Irene ran up to the door and yanked on it. It did not move. She anxiously pressed the ‘open’ button but nothing happened. “It’s locked!” she screamed.

I wanted to let everyone know that two books are about to be serialized on this blog! The first one is Jack Falcon and His Quantum Singularity, which will start on November 22.

The second book to be serialized is the second book in the Stryker series, In the City of Tomorrow. It will begin appearing on December 17.

Both of these books have already been completed. I hope you enjoy them! Meanwhile, I’ve started work on the third book in the Stryker series, The War of the Artilect.

The day will come when all of those who commit such horribly evil acts will be forced to face every last thing that they have ever done. They will be confronted with the weight of the evil that they so gleefully engaged in, and will be crushed in shame. They will bow down and acknowledge the sovereignty of Jesus Christ, and they will be unable to run from their shame or guilt or even put it out of their minds. They will face everything that they have done and they will bear their shame and guilt forever.

Nobody gets away with anything. They may put off the day of judgment but it will surely come, and they will face – and suffer for – every last one of their crimes. It doesn’t have to be this way; they could repent of their sins and run to Christ, but those who do not will bear their guilt.

It is impossible to imagine (and I do not want to try) the weight of sin and shame that will be felt by those who have committed great offenses – Mao, Stalin, Hitler, etc. They will feel everything that they have done to every last person, forever. The torment they will face cannot even be imagined.

It is worth keeping in mind the fact that all of those who do not rush to Christ to be saved will be damned forever, in a horrible way, and will be forced to face every last one of their sins. There will be no bravado in that day; there will be no seared consciences to protect them – nothing will stand between them and the reality of everything they have done. They will not be able to claim ignorance as a defense, for there will be no defense. They will be completely unable to escape the consequence of their sins, for they chose to reject Christ to the bitter end.

And their suffering will never end.

This is a collection of essays that explore many topics surrounding the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Eschatology is a difficult subject that can be very confusing, and for that reason many people abandon it altogether. I believe it is well worth taking the time to study and understand it. The Lord even promises a reward for those who “hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.” (Revelation 1:3) It is my hope that after studying this subject your heart will also say “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” (Revelation 22:20)

The book can be downloaded free-of-charge right here:

Even So, Come, Lord Jesus – PDF file.

Paperback copies of the book can be found here:

Even So, Come, Lord Jesus – paperback; 161 pages. $9.

Editor’s note: This is something I wrote years ago, when I was studying the doctrine of justification.

“Paul explains that for the one who believes in the Lord, like Abram, God credits him with righteousness but does not credit his sins against him because he is forgiven. Justification does not mean that the believer is righteous; it means that God credits him with righteousness, so that in the records of heaven (as it were) he is declared righteous.”

This is where the Catholic church missed the boat. They believe that our justification is tied to our righteousness: we are justified because we lead perfect lives, and those who fail lose their justification. This is why many accuse Catholics of salvation-by-works, and the accusation is valid. Being justified due to leading a sinless life is a very different thing than what Paul talked about in Romans. We are justified because God credits us with righteousness despite our sins: it has nothing to do with the good deeds we’ve done and everything to do with God’s declaring us righteous.

If we believe that we are saved because of the lives we are leading then who are we really trusting for our salvation? How can we be said to be trusting Christ when we are depending on our own conduct?

I am righteous because God chose to credit me with the righteousness of Christ. That’s all there is to it.

I’ve put together a new book that chronicles a great many dinosaur sightings that have been recorded throughout recorded history. This 193-page scrapbook has a lot of great pictures and other evidence to support the idea that dinosaurs and man actually lived at the same time.

You can download the whole book right here, free of charge:

Dinosaurs In History