Джек Макдевитт - Standard Candles

Something more than Carlisle's blue stars was needed. Something on a qualitatively different scale.

And while he and a host of others thought it over, Sandage and Tammann proposed the Type I supernova. It was visible at enormous range, and it had a reasonably consistent absolute luminosity. The downside was that you had to find one. But it was a method with promise.

Now that someone else had thought of it, it seemed obvious. Carlisle sighed.

He stared at the empty well that had housed the Cassegrain, and could almost feel her standing beside him.

Her departure was followed quickly by divorce papers. She assured him she would harbor no bitterness, and she did indeed look unhappy. But she rejected his last minute attempt to salvage the marriage. He was stunned. Carlisle had believed that, when the moment came, she would draw back.

He reacted by throwing himself into a new project. Teams from several research centers were making a coordinated effort to map a sixty-degree wedge of the universe, out to about three hundred million light years. That target area would later be extended, but Carlisle set up and personally led the Kitchener group.

During that period, while he categorized galaxies, and recorded their positions, he waited for her to come back. The long days passed, and he gradually adjusted to his new existence. She was after all not the only woman in the world.

Meanwhile, the various teams involved in the mapping project were counting more galaxies than theory allowed. By a factor of two or three. On a cold February night in 1990 he had poured himself some hot chocolate, and sat down with his assistants. They'd gone over all the models, and could not explain their results.

Why?

Construct an explanation, any explanation, that fits the observations. Easy to say.

He threw the switches, and the building went dark. There must have been a time when he should have seen what was happening, when he could still have acted before they were flung apart like bodies with reversed gravities. God help him, but even now, with the benefit of all this hindsight, redial not know what he could have done differently.

He stepped out into the moonlight, closed the door behind him, and locked it. The metal felt hard and cold.

The wind blew across the mountaintop. Carlisle started down the steps when he noticed that a black car had pulled in behind his. He stared, trying to see who was in it. A couple of kids, maybe. Planning to park.

The driver's door was open. The interior light blinked on, and Judy stood before him.

She was radiant. Lovely. But visibly reluctant.

"Hello, Hugh."

She came around to the front of his car and stopped. Hope rose in Carlisle's breast. And resentment. And a flood of other emotions. "Judy," he said, "what are you doing here? How did you know I'd be here?"

She smiled. "Last day before they shut it down. Where else would Hugh Carlisle be?"

He stared at her. "I'd given up on you."

"As well you should." She glanced at the observatory. "It hurts to see it like this. That surprises you, doesn't it?"

"Yes," he said. "I thought you'd come to resent it."

"It was part of you. Part of us." She shrugged. "I'm sorry to see it go." "I'm glad you came."

"Thanks. So am I. But don't get she wrong idea. I just wanted to be here. At the end."

His voice had grown thick. He thought about the infinity symbol on his ring. (He'd stopped wearing it about three years before she left, because he'd gained weight and it no longer fit.)

"Spike's has closed down too. But I'd like to buy you a drink. Somewhere."

She pursed her lips. And smiled again. "I'd like that."

Somewhere every possibility occurs. He might indeed be one of a near-infinite number of Hugh Carlisles. And most of them were standing alone in this parking lot.

But Carlisle was in the right universe.

The stars were warm and bright and went on forever.