Seeing Stars Read online

the heavens, rubbing his hands together expectantly. ‘Where first?’ he wondered. As he cast his eye around the constellations he happened across the familiar pattern of Hercules. ‘M13 then!’ he thought.

  He crouched down to bring his eye in line with the makeshift finder-scope (one half of an old pair of binoculars gaffer-taped to the side of the telescope) and manoeuvred the scope until it was targeted on a point roughly one third of the way down the right-hand side of Hercules’ body, then he shifted his eye to the eyepiece. ‘Yes!’ he thought, ‘there it is!’ He nudged the telescope this way and that and twiddled with the focuser until he had a well focussed and centred image.

  M13, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules. A glittering ball of blue-white stars some twenty-two-thousand light-years away. No matter how many times he saw it it never failed to impress. He stood there drinking in the view, rapt. The longer he looked at it the more detail became apparent, he could resolve individual stars in the central cluster now and, here and there, filamentary strands of twinkling starlight stretched tens of light-years out into space. It looked, he thought, as if God had cast a handful of sparkling diamonds upon the velvety black void.

  Who knew how long he stood there staring at it: ten minutes? Twenty? Thirty? He cared not for his frozen fingers and numb toes. Eventually though, reluctantly, he decided to move on, to seek out new quarry. His next stop was M42, the beautiful fuzzy green nebula in Orion, with the four hot blue stars of the Trapezium blazing away at its heart. After that he visited the Pleiades and Hyades star-clusters as well as taking a close up look at Jupiter and Mars.

  He was just slewing the scope around to his next target, the twin galaxies M81 and M82 when-

  ‘YOU THERE. STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING!’

  The voice had come from above him. Startled he pulled away from the eyepiece and looked up. There, hovering about fifty feet above him was a car, he could feel the breeze from its four giant turbofans on his upturned face. Stencilled across its dark-blue underbelly in white fluorescent letters was a single word: POLICE. A moment later the police-car’s night-sun searchlight clicked on and Leonard threw an arm up over his eyes to protect them as he was speared by a shaft of brilliant white light.

  The police-car was descending now, all the while keeping that piercing beam of light focussed on him. He watched it, squinting at it over his forearm. It landed about a hundred yards away kicking up a shower of dust and gravel. For a moment the only sound was that of the turboprops winding down, then, with a click, one of the gull-wing doors opened.

  The police officer strode calmly across the roof towards him, he was silhouetted in the beam of the night-sun and Leonard thought he looked enormous, he was over six foot tall and stocky with it.

  ‘What in blue-blazes you doin’ up here boy?’ the cop asked him as he approached.

  Leonard was tongue-tied: ‘I’m j-j-just o-observing,’ he stammered. He was scared now. He could feel his heart thudding away in his chest and he seemed to have a lump in his throat.

  The policeman was close enough for Leonard to discern his features now. He had a flat pushed-in looking face with a wide jaw and a pronounced brow-ridge, his squashed nose looked like it had been broken at least once. He wore the standard-issue one-piece black uniform of the state-police, his black crash-helmet and shiny black boots gleamed in the reflected light of the night-sun, but what most drew Leonard’s attention was the squat snub-nosed machine pistol holstered at his waist. That and the night-stick he was casually twirling in his right hand.

  ‘Observing what?’ the officer demanded.

  ‘The sky,’ said Leonard, raising his hand uncertainly to point aloft.

  The cop didn’t take his eyes off Leonard, he just stared at his wavering finger and frowned. Leonard could see a vein pulsing in the side of his neck. After a few moments he began to feel foolish and he let his hand flop back down to his side.

  ‘The sky?’ asked the cop incredulously.

  ‘Er, yeah,’ replied Leonard, ‘I like to look the stars and-’

  ‘You got no Teevee boy?’

  ‘Err, yeah, I got a Teevee but-’

  ‘Name?’ the cop snapped at him. He ripped open one of the Velcro pockets on his bulky bullet-proof vest and produced a notebook and pencil.

  ‘Leonard James Burbridge.’ Leonard was sweating now .He shuffled his feet uncomfortably, he wanted to run but knew that he couldn’t. He kept looking at the machine pistol at the policeman’s hip.

  ‘Address?’

  ‘40679324 Walthamstow Tower.’

  The police officer jotted it all down. ‘Well Leonard,’ he said as he re-pocketed the notebook, ‘lets try again shall we? What the fuck you doing up here boy?’

  Leonard thought that the cop looked mad now, his pushed-in face was turning red, his protruding brow was furrowed and his lips made a fine bloodless slash across his face. He wasn’t twirling the night-stick anymore, he was gripping it tightly in his right hand, his knuckles had turned white.

  ‘I... I’m only stargazing,’ Leonard protested hoarsely. ‘I’m not doing anyone any harm.’ Suddenly he felt close to tears.

  And what the fuck is this?’ The cop rapped the telescope with his night-stick.

  Leonard flinched at the sound of the night-stick rattling against the metal rods that held his scope together. ‘It’s my telescope,’ he said quickly, ‘I use it to look at the stars, it gives me a close up view.

  ‘Show me,’ said the cop. He looked sceptical.

  Leonard slewed the telescope around to Jupiter, he nudged the scope up and down, left and right until the planet was neatly centred in the field of view. ‘There!’ he said as he stood aside to let the cop look.

  The policeman squinted into the eyepiece. ‘I don’t see anything,’ he said.

  Leonard showed him how to work the focuser, he twiddled it in and out.

  ‘Oh, OK, I see something now,’ said the cop after a while, ‘Like a little disk with a couple of dark bands across it. What is it?’

  ‘That’s Jupiter. It’s a planet, it’s about four-hundred-million miles away.’

  The policeman straightened up and faced him. ‘What does it do?’ he asked.

  ‘What? Err... Well it err... It doesn’t really do anything,’ Leonard admitted, he was sweating now, despite the cold. ‘I... Well, I just like looking at it.’

  ‘You’d rather look at this than at Lana Johansson?’ the policeman asked him, his voice heavy with irony, ‘You queer or something boy?’

  ‘Yes, I mean no,’ Leonard replied, flustered, ‘I just-’

  ‘Aw, fuck this!’ said the cop. Without warning he raised one jack-booted foot and smashed it into the side of the of the telescope.

  Leonard watched aghast as the scope toppled over and crashed down onto the roof amidst what seemed to him a cacophony of breaking glass and splintering wood. The main mirror holder was smashed wide open and he watched, horrified, as the mirror rolled away on its edge across the gravelly surface. It teetered this way and that before finally landing face down on the abrasive stones.

  Leonard let out a cry of alarm and dashed forwards to retrieve it but the officer, seeing the cause of his consternation, made a grab for it too. The cop was closer and faster than Leonard, he scooped up the mirror and held it in front of him, examining his face in its tarnished surface.

  ‘You want this boy?’ the cop asked him.

  ‘Yes,’ croaked Leonard, his voice barely audible, ‘Please.’ Tears were welling in his eyes. He watched with a growing sense of dismay as a horrible twisted smile spread across the policeman’s ugly features.

  The cop holstered his night-stick and slowly raised the mirror up above his head, holding it up in both hands.

  ‘No!’ Leonard sobbed, ‘Please don’t.’ He fell to his knees, openly weeping now. ‘Please don’t,’ he entreated feebly.

  The cop hurled the mirror downwards with all his strength. Leonard watched in horror as it slammed down onto the roof in front of him kicking up a show
er of gravel. It broke into three pieces.

  One of the pieces of the shattered mirror fetched up close to where Leonard was kneeling, with a shaking hand he reached out and picked it up. He stared at that broken shard of silvered glass for several minutes, turning it over and over in his hands, the tears flowing freely down his cheeks. Finally he looked back up to the smirking cop. ‘Why?’ he sniffled, holding up the broken mirror like an offering, ‘Why did you do this?’

  ‘Go home,’ the policeman instructed him sternly, ‘Go and watch your Teevee!’

  Leonard didn’t move. He knelt in the gravel holding up the fractured piece of mirror like an offering of supplication.

  ‘I said go home!’ the cop growled menacingly. He leant forward and yanked the fragment of mirror from Leonard’s hands, the jagged edge cut a deep gash across Leonard’s right palm.

  Leonard didn’t move, he stared stupefied at the blood oozing from his wounded hand.

  ‘I won’t tell you again buddy,’the cop said, drawing his night-stick from its holster.

  Slowly, like a man coming out of a trance, Leonard lifted his eyes from his bleeding hand and looked the officer in the eye. He saw nothing in the policeman’s ugly flat face but hatred and contempt and fear, he felt sorry for him. Leonard rose shakily to his feet, his aged calf-muscles complaining, and stood face to face with him. His tears had dried up now.

  ‘Good night officer,’ he said, working hard to keep his voice from wavering. Then he turned and walked slowly back