Shipyards on Saturn
“Imagine it!” he continues, spilling ash over the floor. “A moon! Just like ours, but different.”
He wonders at her expression as he adds: “No loving tonight, Anna. I must spend more time with Saturn.”
The marvels come fast, but not thick. The planets are too hazy for that. Not as hazy as the Orion nebula, but next year he will resolve that into its individual stellar components. Hard gems. There is thickness in air, but he has no way of working out which other worlds have atmospheres. He will try to think of a way.
He whistles as he works. A tune by Orlando Gibbons. It is not too old, nor too young. It is a safe age, a medium vintage. He is anything other than an elitist, despite his rejection of the Newtonian model of gravity on the basis of insufficient mechanical data. No, he likes middling music and other average things. Neighbours, stature, pressure, as well as political opinions. He whistles the air, and it is not too thick, not too thin. Not regular as clockwork, because that’s still inaccurate. The escapements in current use can’t be trusted to maintain the same rhythm.
Carefully, he assembles a larger telescope in a longer tube. Bigger lenses, stronger pulleys. Massed upright in one corner of the attic, the other tubes resemble the pipes of an organ. They don’t play. Why should they? Besides, they aren’t in tune.
He swings the finished instrument to the skylight. The windmill churns. He fixes his eye to the lens. He bites his lip.
The probability of any event occurring in a given space. That’s another problem his mind is planning to confront. A result of his interest in games of chance. To win a world on the draw of a card! What would that entail? What if it was a world on the far end of his telescope? Not much he could do with such winnings. Better to win a world closer to home, this world, which turns under his home. But can you ever truly own something which is under you? Shoes, beds, a mistress. Death will snatch them away eventually. The best that can be done is to rent them for a lifetime. Amend the statement. To rent a world in a game of chance! He scratches his head. He frowns, his fingernails fitting neatly into the grooves of his brow. That doesn’t sound right.
He is walking with his new mistress in the fields between the windmill and the sunset. They are returning from an evening at the theatre. His distaste for city lights is the obverse of his love for the stars. But he enjoys meeting friends, eating out, shopping for wigs and cosmetic powder.
“I’m sorry for hurrying you, Oona,” he says, as they splash through the puddles. “But I have a date.”
And before she can pout, he adds: “With Saturn.”
She is not a slow walker, despite her dainty feet and tight shoes, but he suddenly finds that the slack in her arm has played out. They have been holding hands all day, but now he feels she is drawing back. He must pull hard to keep her going. For a moment he wonders if she has lost affection for him. Then he realises she is demonstrating a principle of Newtonian physics. To keep something moving in a straight line at a constant speed does not require a force, except to balance the force of friction. When a force moves through some distance, it does work and uses up energy.
“Very kind of you, Oona,” he murmurs, “but this is not the time or place for practical experimentation.”
And to stall her second pout, he adds: “It has rings, you know. I’m the only man to see them. In mythology, Saturn was the child of Uranus. Don’t worry. In Dutch, that’s not a joke.”
The heavens are a blanket full of holes, constantly repaired by the spinning looms on the skyline. No, it’s a trick of the light. They are windmills. Do they need sweeping?
Time to select the largest tube and the biggest lenses. It is almost as if he has been warming them up with envy. The most powerful telescope ever constructed is soon ready to propose marriage to the firmament. It is a cornucopia to be filled with wonders, a horn of plenty without the bend. Most men dream of them already full. Not he. This one was always empty. He is generous to his tools.
