I propped my left elbow up on the open window, feeling safe enough that he and I were separated by the width of the van and a closed door. “I’m not riding with you,” I said, deciding it was better to put this on myself than on “mommy.”
“Get in,” he repeated. “We’re going to the observatory. It’s just a half-mile from here.”
I shook my head.
“You think a cripple can’t drive,” he said.
“I think an obnoxious know-it-all can’t drive,” I replied.
He closed his eyes. His upper lip began to quiver. For an instant I thought he was going to cry. For an instant I thought I had gotten to him. For an instant I thought maybe he was human. In that instant I was wrong.
It was anger.
When he opened his eyes, I could see it. The anger. It was all he could do to contain himself. The quivering lip was the lid rattling on a pot that was about to boil over.
He managed to collect himself enough to say, “Everything I said last night is true. My dad was working with the FBI to set a trap for one of the Space Cadets. I wasn’t supposed to know about it, but I overheard him more than once on the phone. I don’t know who it is, but you’re going to help me find out, so get in.”
“I’m not riding with you,” I said.
“Fine, then. You can walk.” Warrensburg turned away from me and started the van. I stepped back to make sure he didn’t run over my toes.
He put the van into gear and then turned back to look me in the eye.
“Jason,” he said, “I need your help.”
I stood motionless, hoping my eyes betrayed no emotion.
“Please,” he said, “I need your help.”
And he drove away.
Don’t get me wrong, I know when I’m being manipulated. I also know that one of these days my curiosity is going to get me killed. Stephen Warrensburg pretended to be nice. “Please, I need your help.” And that was all the excuse my curiosity needed. Oh, well, I thought, the park office is down that way.
The park office was a couple of hundred yards up the road. I went in and paid fifty cents for a photocopied trail map. I stepped back outside and oriented myself with the map. Across the main road through the park about a hundred yards or so north from where I stood, the van was parked. He was waiting. Waiting for my curiosity to get the best of me.
I folded my map, stuck it in my pocket, and headed north.
A yellow metal gate blocked the road to the Von Braun Astronomical Society’s facilities. The van was pulled up parallel to the gate to avoid sticking out into the main road. I saw him watching me in the driver’s side rearview mirror. He leaned out of his opened window and twisted back toward me.
“There’s a combination lock on the gate,” he said. “You can probably guess what the combination is.”
Before I could offer a guess he said, “Three, one, four, one, five.”
I could feel his stare tracking me as I walked past his open window and to the lock.
“You would think a group of scientists could do better than that,” he said.
“Scientists are literal,” I said. “A scientist would think that no one would ever guess the combination was pi because the lock has no decimal point.”
He chuckled. It was one of those polite chuckles you use when you want the other person to think you’re listening. I was not fooled by the Mr. Nice Guy routine. My curiosity, though, continued to use it as an excuse to proceed. I swung the gate open.
Stephen started the van and pulled through the gate. He leaned out his window and looked back toward me. “Would you mind closing and locking it behind us, please?” said Mr. Nice Guy.
I did and walked past the van on the passenger side. He inched along beside me.
“Might as well get in,” he said. “We’re going another couple of hundred yards.”
Well, it was eighty-something degrees, and the van was air-conditioned. I opened the door and climbed in.
From the elevation of the van, I had a better view. The road was one-lane and asphalt. Along the right side of the road, about fifteen yards down a slight incline, was a wall of trees. A variety of hardwoods with broad leaves. Up the incline to the left was a grassy field about thirty yards wide. At the other side of the field was a hedgerow, and through the hedgerow I saw—
“Campers,” Stephen interrupted my thoughts. He must have seen me scoping out the area. “That’s the State Park campgrounds.”
Up ahead the road took a sharp right. Just before we took that right, Stephen stopped and killed the engine. He turned toward the grassy field which at that point was a lot less grassy.
“Overflow parking,” he said. “Not a lot of parking down around the observatory. But that night my dad and I were up here . . .”
He turned to face me. “There should have been plenty of parking,” he continued, “but Dad parked here.” He nodded back toward the field.
“Left me in the car and walked to the observatory. January twenty-first,” he said.
He turned away—back toward the field.
“January twenty-first, last year,” he said. “He was meeting one of the Space Cadets.”
He made an abrupt turn back to stare me in the eye, “Where was your dad January twenty-first of last year?”
“Home!” I said without hesitation.
Truth is I had no idea where my dad was last year on January 21. January is the best month of the year for astronomy. Summer humidity interferes with the clarity of images in telescopes. And in winter, the earth rotates toward a region of space that contains more stars. The winter night has more to see than the summer night. My dad takes off a couple of days every January to attend a star party with some of his colleagues at the university. Was last year’s star party on January twenty-first?
“Home?” Stephen Warrensburg interrupted my thoughts. “You sure?”
“Home,” I said.
10
You can study distant galaxies without ever leaving the comfort of your own planet, because the laws of the universe are the same everywhere. For example, the Canis Major dwarf galaxy is about twenty-five thousand light years from earth. When you consider that one light year is about six trillion miles, the Canis Major dwarf is a galaxy far, far away. And yet, the Law of Gravity works just as well there as it does here. Maybe too well if you happen to live there, because, thanks to the gravity of our own Milky Way galaxy, the Canis Major dwarf is being torn apart. That little galaxy with all of its stars and any planets it may have is being gobbled up by our much larger galaxy.
Andromeda is a large, spiral galaxy like the Milky Way. It’s between two and three million light years away. On a clear night in a dark place, you can see Andromeda with the naked eye. It’s the farthest object you can see without a telescope or binoculars. And yet, Newton’s Third Law of Motion—for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction—works just as well there as it does here. So if you’re stepping into a canoe somewhere in Andromeda, you still have to make sure it doesn’t shoot out from under you.
The most distant galaxy from us is called Abell 1835 IR1916. Astronomers believe it is more than thirteen billion light years away. And yet, out there—way, way, way out there—two plus two still equals four.
It just