«You'd make a good case if it were not for the fact that most sentient races are omnivores.»

«We have thought long and hard on that.»

Ye cats. I was going to have to think long and hard on that.

«Why did you call, Beowulf Shaeffer?»

Oh, yeah. «Look, I know you don't want to know what the Core looks like, but I see something that might represent personal danger. You have access to information I don't. May I proceed?»

«You may.»

Hah! I was learning to think like a puppeteer. Was that good? I told my boss about the blazing, strangely shaped white patch in the Core. «When I turned the telescope on it, it nearly blinded me. Grade two sunglasses don't give any details at all. It's just a shapeless white patch, but so bright that the stars in front look like black dots with colored rims. I'd like to know what's causing it.»

«It sounds very unusual.» Pause. «Is the white color uniform? Is the brightness uniform?»

«Just a sec.» I used the scope again. «The color is, but the brightness isn't. I see dimmer areas inside the patch. I think the center is fading out.»

«Use the telescope to find a nova star. There ought to be several in such a large mass of stars.»

I tried it. Presently I found something: a blazing disk of a peculiar blue-white color with a dimmer, somewhat smaller red disk half in front of it. That had to be a nova. In the core of Andromeda galaxy, and in what I'd seen of our own Core, the red stars were the biggest and brightest.

«I've found one.»

«Comment.»

A moment more and I saw what he meant. «It's the same color as the patch. Something like the same brightness, too. But what could make a patch of supernovas go off all at once?»

«You have studied the Core. The stars of the Core are an average of half a light-year apart. They are even closer near the center, and no dust clouds dim their brightness. When stars are that close, they shed enough light on each other to increase materially each other's temperature. Stars burn faster and age faster in the Core.»