"Moving _stars_?" Doc said when I told him. "Good Lord, Roy--"
* * * * *
Ethel Pond knocked just then, interrupting him. She came in and had a
beer with us and talked to Doc about his plan for educating Joey at
home. But she couldn't tell us anything more about the kid's new
fixation than we already knew. When she asked him why he stared up at
the sky like that he'd say only that he wants something to remember
Charlie by.
It was about nine o'clock, when Ethel went home to cook supper. Doc
and I knocked off our cribbage game and went outside with our folding
chairs to get some air. It was then that the first star moved.
It moved all of a sudden, the way any shooting star does, and shot
across the sky in a curving, blue-white streak of fire. I didn't pay
much attention, but Doc nearly choked on his beer.
"Roy," he said, "that was Sirius! _It moved!_"
I didn't see anything serious about it and said so. You can see a
dozen or so stars zip across the sky on any clear night if you're in
the mood to look up.
"Not serious, you fool," Doc said. "The _star_ Sirius--the Dog Star,
it's called--it moved a good sixty degrees, _then stopped dead_!"
I sat up and took notice then, partly because the star really had
stopped instead of burning out the way a falling star seems to do,
partly because anything that excites Doc Shull that much is something
to think about.
We watched the star like two cats at a mouse-hole, but it didn't move
again. After a while a smaller one did, though, and later in the night
a whole procession of them streaked across the sky and fell into place
around the first one, forming a pattern that didn't make any sense to
us. They stopped moving around midnight and we went to bed, but
neither of us got to sleep right away.
"Maybe we ought to look for another interest in life ourselves instead
of drumming up one for Joey," Doc said. He meant it as a joke but it
had a shaky sound; "Something besides getting beered up every night,
for instance."
"You think we've got the d.t.'s from drinking _beer_?" I asked.
Doc laughed at that, sounding more like his old self. "No, Roy. No
two people ever had instantaneous and identical hallucinations."
"Look," I said. "I know this sounds crazy but maybe Joey--"
Doc wasn't amused any more. "Don't be a fool, Roy. If those stars
really moved you can be sure of two things--Joey had nothing to do
with it, and the papers will explain everything tomorrow."
He was wrong on one count at least.
The papers next day were packed with scareheads three inches high but
none of them explained anything. The radio commentators quoted every
authority they could reach, and astronomers were going crazy
everywhere. It just couldn't happen, they said.
Doc and I went over the news column by column that night and I learned
more about the stars than I'd learned in a lifetime. Doc, as I've said
before, is an educated man, and what he couldn't recall offhand about
astronomy the newspapers quoted by chapter and verse. They ran
interviews with astronomers at Harvard Observatory and Mount Wilson
and Lick and Flagstaff and God knows where else, but nobody could
explain why all of those stars would change position then stop.
It set me back on my heels to learn that Sirius was twice as big as
the Sun and more than twice as heavy, that it was three times as hot
and had a little dark companion that was more solid than lead but
didn't give off enough light to be seen with the naked eye. This
little companion--astronomers called it the "Pup" because Sirius was
the Dog Star--hadn't moved, which puzzled the astronomers no end. I
suggested to Doc, only half joking, that maybe the Pup had stayed put
because it wasn't bright enough to suit Joey's taste, but Doc called
me down sharp.
"Don't joke about Joey," he said sternly. "Getting back to
Sirius--it's so far away that its light needs eight and a half years
to reach us. That means it started moving when Joey was only eighteen
months old. The speed of light is a universal constant, Roy, and
astronomers say it can't be changed."
"They said the stars couldn't be tossed around like pool balls, too,"
I pointed out. "I'm not saying that Joey really moved those damn
stars, Doc, but if he did he could have moved the light along with
them, couldn't he?"
But Doc wouldn't argue the point. "I'm going out for air," he said.