The Book of Revelations had predicted it all.Īs high in the sky, the black star grew brighter, the chant grew louder, and the basalt center of the planet reverberated with its power. This, coupled with worldwide famine and the disintegration of international economic structure, demonstrated more than a mere coincidence of events. In the form of the Common Market, the Holy Roman Empire had risen, and with the statehood of Israel the Jews had returned to the Promised Land. Students of the Bible had seen it too, the falling into place of biblical symbols that heralded the event that was now at hand. From Laos to Lebanon brother had turned against brother, fathers against children school buses and marketplaces exploded daily in the growing din of preparatory lust. Now democracy was fading, mind-impairing drugs had become a way of life, and in the few countries where freedom of worship was still allowed, it was widely proclaimed that God was dead.

Under Caesar they had cheered while Christians were fed to the lions, and under Hitler while Jews were reduced to charred remains. The wars, the turmoil of recent centuries had been mere rehearsals, a testing of the climate to determine when mankind would be ready to be led.

The precise moment predicted by the Old Testament when earth history would change. It was the sixth month, the sixth day, the sixth hour. It was the sound of the OHM, ringing upward to the heavens and inward to the pre-biblical core of the earth. With hands joined and heads bowed, their voices rose until the vibration could be heard and felt everywhere. In caves, basements, and open fields they had gathered midwives to the birth, some twenty thousand strong. It was the sound of voices human, yet not, growing in devout cacophony with the heightening potency of the star. For from the very bowels of the earth there came a distant sound. He feared he was alone with it, but in fact he was not. It grew brighter now and the constellations shuddered-or was it trembling hands on the eyepiece as the astronomer struggled to stifle his confused cry? From Capricorn, Cancer, and Leo pieces had suddenly flown, finding each other with magnetic certainty, melding into a pulsating galactic ember. A movement in the galaxies that should have taken eons occurred in the blinking of an eye.Īt the Cape Hattie observatory, a young astronomer sat stunned, reaching an instant too late to activate the camera that might have recorded it: the splintering of three constellations that produced the dark, glowing star.

The Omen by David Seltzer