Chapter 1

Paul trudged to the top of Observatory Hill. He headed for an outcropping of grey rock overlooking the campus. Sitting on it was a young woman he recognized from one of his classes.

He approached her. "Well, if it isn't Shy Anne," he remarked as he sat beside her on the rock.

"My name is Cheyenne," she replied tartly, "not Shy Anne."

"I'm Paul. I recognize you from our American Lit class. You sit in the front; I sit in back." Cheyenne turned from him. "You are sitting on my rock."

"I didn't see your name on it. Do you hold title to it somehow?"

"It's my favorite spot. I come here often, just to enjoy the view."

"So do I."

Paul regarded her. She was of medium height, slender and small-breasted with an oblong, oval face, strong jaw, high forehead and medium nose. She wore oval, wire-framed glasses with thick lenses. The bridge of her nose had an indentation, no doubt from a lifetime of wearing them. She had shoulder-length, brown hair that was parted down the middle. Her upper lip was a bit too short and her mouth a bit too wide for her face, and her lips had a tendency to part, revealing an overbite. Her eyes were widely spaced and deeply set, and had heavy lids that covered the top parts of her brown irises.

"So -- what are you doing up here?" he asked.

"I came here to be alone," she retorted tersely.

"Fine. I'll leave you alone."

Paul hopped off the rock. He headed toward a structure, dome-covered and resembling a short grain silo. Digging keys from his pocket he unlocked the door and stepped inside, pausing to admire the telescope sitting therein. With another key he admitted himself to a small workshop. Turning valves on an inverted tank he regarded readings on the gauges.

"So -- what are YOU doing here?" he heard a voice asked. Paul turned and saw Cheyenne standing in the doorway. "Do you belong here?"

"As an officer of the astronomy club, yes I do," he replied as he closed the valves on the tank. "I've signed up to use the equipment tonight. I'm going to try to get a photograph and a spectrogram of the Ring Nebula."

She looked over her shoulder at the telescope. "With that?"

"That? That's the school's 36-inch f/8. No, I won't be using that. It's reserved for astronomy majors -- upperclassmen and grad students. As a member of the club I may use the school's twelve-inch f/4 Schmidt."

"Where's that?" she asked.

Paul gestured her out of the workshop and locked the door. He tested the lock. Then he waved her out of the observatory building, locked the door and tested it. "Over here..." He led her to a small shed, this one secured with a combination lock. Spinning the dial, he unlocked it, the roof opening like a clamshell. "It's small," he said, patting the telescope the shed sheltered, "but it's still a pretty nice light bucket." Paul switched on the synchronous mount and picked up controls to slew the 'scope. "Seems to be in good working order."

After powering down the equipment he closed the roof and locked the shed.

"So you'll be back here after dark," she remarked.

"Quite a bit after. The ring nebula is in Lyra. That's a summer constellation. Since this is April, it won't rise 'til well after midnight. I figure it'll be in good viewing position around three in the morning."

"You're coming back here at three in the morning?"

"More like two," he said. "That'll give me time to get set up." Paul slipped the keys back into his pocket. He started heading down the hill.

"Are you headed back?" Cheyenne asked.

"Yeah..."

"Can I walk with you?"

Paul shrugged. "Why not?"

They headed down the hill. "So -- are you an astronomy major?" she asked.

"No. I'm a physics major. Astronomy is only a hobby. You?"

"I'm a humanities major," she replied. "I don't know what sort of work I'll do after I graduate. You'll probably have no trouble finding a job."

"I'll probably go to grad school," he said.

They reached the edge of campus. "Well," she said, "I'm headed to Warren House."

"I'm going to Cubley." He regarded her for a moment. "See you in class?"

"Yeah..." Cheyenne turned and headed in another direction.

Paul unlocked his dorm room. His roommate was polishing a pair of army boots. "Hey, Sandy," he said. "ROTC review coming up?"

"Yeah. I gotta figure out how to brasso these buttons without getting the shit on my jacket."

"Cut the buttons off, brasso them and sew them back on."

"Without that much work."

"I was just up on the hill and I ran into Shy Anne," Paul remarked.

"Really? What was she doing up there?"

"I have no idea."

"Genie knows her ... from her dorm floor. Genie's friends with her roommate. She's a strange girl ... a Fundie I think."

"Fundie?"

"Fundamentalist ... Jesus freak."

"She's in one of my classes," Paul remarked, "American Lit. She keeps to herself. Must be how Cheyenne turns into Shy Anne."

Paul lay on his bed in his clothes, trying to get some shut-eye. He was only about three-quarters asleep, knowing that his alarm would sound any moment now.

It rang. He shot out an arm to switch it off and then swung his feet to the floor. His roommate was asleep and snoring softly. Paul quietly picked up his backpack, quietly unlocked the door and stepped into the hallway.

He trudged toward Observatory Hill. Overhead stars shown and he reflected on how his luck was holding -- the weather forecast for clear skies overnight had held true. He reached the summit of the hill and admitted himself into the main observatory.

Once inside the workshop he turned valves on the tank and then on another device. With a loud hiss and a cloud of vapor, liquid carbon dioxide from the tank filled an aluminum mould and froze into a hockey-pucked sized, white disk of dry ice.

Slipping on a heavy glove Paul picked up the disk.

"What are you doing?"

Paul jumped and spun around. He saw Cheyenne standing in the workshop doorway. "Holy shit!" he exclaimed. "You startled me! What the hell are you doing here?"

"I couldn't sleep. I thought it would be interesting to see astronomy in action."

"As long as you don't get underfoot," he replied. "And -- don't touch anything."

"What's that?" she asked, pointing to the white mass he held in his gloved hand.

"Dry ice."

"So, that's how you make dry ice..."

He waved her out of the workshop and the building, locking and testing doors behind him. Then, he unlocked the shed and switched on dim, red work lights. On a bench he set the disk of dry ice and with a screwdriver broke off a chunk.

"Why the red lights?" Cheyenne asked.

"It lets you see while preserving your night vision," he replied.

"What's the dry ice for?"

"To chill the CCD detector," Paul replied as he slipped some dry ice into a receptacle on the telescope's detector. "It reduces thermal noise. Liquid nitrogen would be better but dry ice is easier to handle. We'll give that a chance to cool down."

"It's a pretty night," she remarked. "I usually don't look at the stars. Which one is the ring nebula?"

"You can't see it with a naked eye." He pointed to a bright star in the Eastern sky. "That's Vega -- the bright star in Lyra. The nebula is near it. Paul manipulated a keyboard and a sky map appeared. He selected a menu of deep sky objects, positioned the mouse over Lyra and selected it. The computer began slewing the telescope in that direction.

Picking up a hand controller, Paul peered through an eyepiece. Pressing buttons on the controller he fine-tuned the telescope's attitude. Looking into another objective he adjusted the focus and then waved Cheyenne over. "Look in here -- but don't touch anything."

She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and leaned toward the eyepiece. "I can't see anything."

"Take off your glasses." He put the controller in her hand and positioned her thumb on a thumbwheel. "This is the focus. You're looking for a ghostly doughnut floating in space."

Cheyenne smiled broadly. "Yes -- I think I see it."

"Now, we're going to take an exposure," he said. "We'll try fifteen minutes." He adjusted the focus again and then pressed a key on the keyboard. Holding the controller he peered intently into an eyepiece connected to a slave 'scope attached to the main one.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Please, don't distract me," he replied. "What I'm doing is hand-guiding the exposure. This guide 'scope is trained on a nearby star and I'm keeping that star dead-centered in the crosshairs ... The mount has a clock drive to track the earth's rotation. For a photograph I need to compensate in case the mount's a bit out of alignment ... which it is..." He pressed a button on the control. "Shit!"

"What happened?"

"I pushed the wrong button... 'scope went the wrong way." Paul reset the exposure and resumed peering into the eyepiece, now and then pressing buttons to keep the telescope trained on his objective.

"Paul..."

"PLEASE ... Don't distract me. Okay?"

"Okay..." Cheyenne paced back and forth.

"Hey -- if you're bored ... Remember, I didn't invite you here."

"I'd like to be useful."

"Then -- watch that computer screen and tell me when the exposure is over."

"How will I know it's over?"

"The image will go blank."

Paul continued to peer into the eyepiece, pressing buttons to adjust the telescope's position whenever the star strayed from the crosshairs. "It's done," she remarked.

He put down the controller and rubbed his eyes. "Let's take a look." He reviewed the image on the computer screen, the screen intensity set low. "Yes ... I think that's a keeper. Now, I'll hook up the spectrophotometer. That'll require a longer exposure. I think we'll go for forty-five minutes."

Paul made adjustments to the equipment and started the exposure. "You're not hand-guiding this one?"

"No. No need. The spectrophotometer won't care if the image is smeared."

Cheyenne looked at the sky. "It's too bad there's no moon," she remarked.

"We're damned lucky there's no moon," Paul retorted. "Otherwise it would wash out a deep-sky object like the Ring."

"I'd like to see the moon through an instrument like that."

"It's too big a 'scope. It would be an unpleasant experience -- like staring at a two hundred watt light bulb." He scanned the sky. "There might be a couple of interesting objects, though." He pointed to the west. "That looks like Saturn."

"How can you tell?"

"After a while," he replied, "you learn what these objects look like."

Cheyenne approached the computer keyboard. "I want to look at that image again..."

Paul pushed her hands away. "Please -- don't touch anything. This computer isn't good at multitasking. We shouldn't disturb it while it's acquiring data."

"Sorry ... That ring. How far away is it?"