If the greatest fulfilment in
life is to have one’s job and one’s hobby the same, the Serenth Observatory’s
staff were the luckiest folk in Korm.
Golden sunlight beat down upon
the peaceful dome, pouring marmalade crescents through the curved slits in the
walls and into the chamber where Cosmographer Sayor and his apprentice worked. Day
after day, in accordance with a meticulous survey plan, the telescope had targeted point after point upon the upward curving surface of the world,
searching out the secrets of Outer Matter.
Even at night there was work to
be done, the automatic camera being set to record the transient glows and
flashes which might betoken the presence of life elsewhere in this great hollow
of the universe. By day the instruments were manned in continuous relays; the
archives swelled with fresh photographs and with the finer though subjective
details recorded on the sketch pad. At hourly intervals the person at the
eyepiece would descend from the gimballed chair, to cede it to the next
observer and take on the other tasks – operating the dome, instructing the guide
motors, coping with the occasional visitor and keeping the place tidy and
clean.
Sweeping floors is all right, reflected the daydreaming
apprentice, Kren, provided that the floors are here. He never for a
moment regretted the prospect of spending his days in this austere environment,
miles from the centre of Serenth; it was worth the isolation, so long as he could take his turn at the
refractor. Soon now, his old mentor Sayor would stop blinking at the eyepiece
and the moment for the change-over would be at hand. Time at the ’scope was
shared fifty-fifty, despite the fact that it was only recently that Kren had
turned up at the door for the first time, as a gawky young amateur, to apply
for the post he now held.
Turning as he swept, the
apprentice glanced through a window, and what he saw made him straighten up. “Visitor
– I think,” he called out.
For, against the background of
the sun-drenched hills, a caped human figure made a tiny swirl of darkness on
the path that wound up from the city. Kren felt gleeful. Here was something to look forward to: a
chance to impress a member of the public.
Sayor continued calmly sketching.
Bald, comfortably round, and nearing retirement, he was every bit as conscious
as Kren of the fantastic luck that had given him a place among the elite who
enjoyed a vocation in life, but his love for his job had mellowed beyond the
thrill-prone stage, and he no longer derived quite such a boost from showing off
the Observatory to strangers.
“What kind of tourist have we got
this time?” he drawled. He did not turn round; his eye remained locked into its
to-and-fro checking rhythm as his pen traced the smoky outline of what might be
a mountain range about four hundred thousand miles away.
Kren seized binoculars and peered
at the approaching stranger’s rich cape and lordly stride.
“A Splasher, by the looks of him.
Striding along as though he owns the world.”
(We’ve
never had one of that set here before.
Thinks he’s going to impress us?)
A tall, aristocratic idler could
look big, but only when pictured in a small enough frame. Seen out here,
where fading distance tempted the eye into the legendary lands behind the sun –
Nobody could seem big here.
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