The sight of it set the hair up all over Van’s head. What if you were living around a star like that, thought Van, just living on some nice, sweet little planet. What if your daylight sky was boiling with neighboring suns as big as beachballs. And then, oh, my God, what if you flew too low and too close to one. In just a few dozen human lifetimes, the constellations would warp like putty. The heavens would turn against you and your world, and would blow you away at half the speed of light. You and yours, your innocent civilization, expelled into some unbearable icy exile, never to be retrieved.