Page 23 of Measure of the Stars

“I’ll douse the lights,” Fern said, turning to go as Delauney opened a window.“The moon’s bright enough.”

Wes approached the device carefully, not wanting to startle this strange man wearing Delauney’s face.“Delauney...what exactly does this do?”

Delauney barely looked at him, too busy adjusting the various halves of the telescope.“It refracts light into a prism, and the mirrors can adjust the light so that you can see the colored rays radiating from the spheres in the heavens,” he said.“Like the sun,” he added, when Wes just stood there.“Or the moon, but I think that the moon is like...like a mirror itself, but it’s imperfect, so it’s hard to explain.If you measure the strands of color and determine whatelsemakes those same strands, you can almost map out what the sun and the moon are made of.”

“Aren’t they made of stone?”Wes asked.That was what his tutors had said, at least, in Wes’ dim recollection of his paltry science lessons.

“I think the sun might not be solid,” Delauney said.“I’m almost certain that it’s rotating, in any case.Look here, you can make out the light coming from the moon.”He jostled Wes closer to the device, practically shoving him into position.When Wes looked through the lens, he expected to see the moon reflected on a mirror or glass, but instead, he saw what seemed like hundreds of minuscule lines.

“I don’t know what I’m looking at,” he said carefully.

“It’slight,” Delauney said.“The same light you see from the moon with the naked eye, but translated into measurable lines that wemightbe able to replicate with elements on earth.That means we can determine what the moon and the sunare.”Delauney was practically shaking with excitement.“With something like this, you could map the universe.”

Wes stepped back, examining Delauney’s flushed, bright-eyed expression.“That’s what those numbers and diagrams were on the ship.All those pages...”

Delauney blushed again, but the enthusiasm was still there, clearly stronger than his tendency to laugh off serious matters.“Oh, yes, but I was using imprecise means to measure them.You see, I have this theory.We know that the earth moves.”

“Wedo?”Wes asked.

“Well, yes,” Delauney said, as though it were common knowledge.“You’re a sailor, you’d know that.People in Katoikos figured it out eons ago.But if the sun also moves, which I’m fairly certain it does, then we can use tools like this to measure it.”

“Right,” Wes said, feeling more lost than ever.

“I learned about it when a professor from Gerakia came by our lands,” Delauney said, taking over at the helm of the bewildering device.“Professor Monroe.He had a version of this that he could show children with a prism and a box, and I was fascinated by it.He teaches in the astronomy department of the Aviary, now.It’s a college in Gerakia.”

“Did you study there?”Wes asked.

Delauney drew back, a shadow falling over his face.“Ah.No.No, I couldn’t get in.”

“But the way Fern put it, you practically designed this,” Wes said, gesturing to the device.

“Modified it,” Delauney said softly, already starting to shrink into himself.“It’s just a hobby, you know.Every gentleman needs one.”

“I don’t think it is,” Wes said.

“Don’t try to convince him, son.”Fern approached with a new cat in his lap.“It’s no use.I’ve certainly tried.”

“But it’s still an excellent piece of work,” Delauney said, smiling weakly at Fern.“Who knows what it could do in the hands of an expert.”

Wes wanted to say that Delauney sounded like an expert, or at least someone who was on his way to becoming one.Wes felt fascinated by this new aspect of Delauney, drawn to him like a ship caught in a current.

“Does anyone else know about this?”Wes asked.“The work you’ve been doing?”

“It isn’twork,” Delauney said.“And Ned knows that I’ve always been interested in the stars.You have to have basic knowledge of their movement to be a navigator.I would prefer it if you didn’t tell him the extent of it, though.I don’t mind you knowing, but Ned would be concerned by how, ah, how distracted I can get.”

Wes frowned slightly, looking at Fern.Fern gave him a helpless shrug.Wes barely knew Delauney, and now Delauney was trusting him with something he didn’t even share with his closest friend.A part of Wes still wanted to hide in the belly of the ship and pretend like his stint in the sailor’s library never happened, but a larger part felt a sudden, surprising kinship with Delauney.He had also been forced into a role he didn’t seem to want, denied the life he could have led.He looked into Delauney’s nervous expression and wondered who had made him feel like he wasn’t good enough to admit his own intelligence.

“Explain it to me again,” he said, watching Delauney’s eyes glimmer with a secret, hidden fire.“You said that you use a prism.How does that work?”

“Oh, let me show you,” Delauney said, wrapping an arm around Wes’ shoulders.“You’re certain that you don’t mind?I know that I can ramble when I get started.”

“No,” Wes said, still looking into Delauney’s eyes.“I don’t mind at all.”

***

DELAUNEY HAD NEVERfelt so elated before.

He didn’t know what he had expected from Wes.He’d spent the entire walk to Fern’s home trying not to bolt, and he’d been mortified when he finally got over his excitement enough to realize that Wes had no idea what Delauney’s spectroscopewas.At best, he’d expected Wes to be mildly confused, which was the only reason he’d asked him to come along.Wes could be judgmental at times, particularly of the nobility, but he was also such a serious fellow.He was always staring at people as though he was trying to take them apart and figure out how they worked, and that was the closest Delauney had ever come to his own approach to light.