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                        \W\HThe Main Sequence Blues\w\h                    

           
                Once upon a time there was a five-solar-mass star named 
           Brutus.  This five-solar-mass star was the biggest, meanest five-
           solar-mass star in the whole spiral arm.  Now the latest fad in 
           Brutus's stellar neighborhood was to get an energy high by 
           burning hydrogen in your core (where no one could see).  At 
           night, when few people were looking, Brutus and his buddies would 
           line up on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and "do" hydrogen.  
           They called themselves the Main Sequence.  
                
                Now Brutus could party up a storm: he could "do" more 
           hydrogen than his smaller friends, and could frequently be seen 
           even in the wee hours of the morning all energized up, spitting 
           up photons like crazy.  
                
                Soon Brutus burned all his core hydrogen, and the law 
           demanded he leave his friends on the Main Sequence and go off to 
           galactic prison.  Brutus was first assigned to the Red Giant 
           Branch.  Some thought this was just a phase he was going through, 
           and that he would be back soon, but for Brutus there was no 
           return.  
                
                "Hey man, do HELIUM, man," his big new friends would say.  
           "You'll reach a new high.  Do it, man, do HELIUM."  Since all his 
           'Giant buddies were into helium so, eventually, was Brutus, 
           becoming more energetic than ever before.  But before Brutus 
           expected it he burned out, he ran out of helium to burn in his 
           core. Brutus became depressed and contracted within himself.  
                
                "Hey man, do CARBON, man," some of the cooler stars would 
           say.  "It'll blow your mind, it'll dump your depression, it'll 
           ignite your innards.  Don't be a dwarf star, man, DO it!" 
                
                So Brutus did carbon, and it was even more fantastic than 
           they said, it was the best of any element yet.  The photons 
           pulsed through Brutus's photosphere like never before in his 
           entire life.  But after almost no time his carbon burned out, and 
           none of the other stars would sell him theirs, not even his down 
           and out white dwarf friends.  The only thing Brutus could do was 
           burn carbon around his core, which he did, as he did helium and 
           hydrogen as well, but it just didn't turn him on like it used to.  
           Brutus needed something else.  
                
                "Should I do SILICON, man, should I?" he asked his friends.  
                
                "That degenerate stuff?  Are you crazy?  I wouldn't touch 
           that stuff.  No way.  Uh-uh, "they all said.  "Just cool out, 
           OK?" 
                
                "You can't do it, you're not big enough," his smart friends 
           would say.  "Its 'da body weight, you don't have enough, so stay 
           off the silicon, man.  Stay off the silicon, you hear?" 
                
                But Brutus wouldn't listen.  When nobody was looking, he 
           tried to do silicon.

                
                
                
                One day one of Brutus's old flames came by the old stellar 
           neighborhood asking about him.  "Whatever happened to that big 
           hunk of gas?" she asked.  
                
                "Oh look, THERE he is, " some star replied, indicating a 
           super bright flare in the sky that slowly faded to nothing.  Even 
           stars that knew Brutus were shocked.  
                
                "Too bad," she said, "he never did know his limitations." 
                
                "Nonsense," Brutus's friends disagreed, "it was fate." 
                
                On one thing they did agree: the answer was blowing in the 
           wind.  
                
                
                                   THE END
                                                  

                   <Copyright 1984 by Robert J. Nemiroff>
               [Published January 1986 in Astronomy Magazine]