Jerry Oltion - Never Saw It Coming

“You made fun of me,” she said when he reached her at the TV station.

“I was making fun of everybody,” he said. “But I apologize. Let me make it up to you. Have you ever looked through a telescope?”

She admitted that she hadn’t, and she asked if it would be okay to bring a camera crew to film the asteroid’s discoverer observing his discovery.

“Only if you can shoot under starlight,” he told her. “Astronomers don’t like bright lights. It blows our night vision and we can’t see anything for half an hour afterward.”

She laughed. “That’s why you were so upset when you came to the door. I’ve always wondered.”

“You didn’t think maybe it was because you woke me up at four in the morning?”

“You said ‘Turn off the fucking light,’ not ‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’ That was a first.”

“Ah. Okay. So are you coming?”

“Sure,” she said.

He gave her directions to his dark-sky site, feeling a little like a fisherman who reveals his favorite stretch of stream. If she talked it up on the news, he would never find any peace up there again. But she showed up alone just before dark, driving a hybrid Chevolt, and she wasn’t made up for the camera. Without makeup, she looked every bit as hot in person as she did with it on TV.

He introduced her around like an old friend, enjoying the looks his buddies gave her, and him. She helped him set up his scope, holding the truss tubes while he settled the secondary cage into place.

Craig’s observing site was on a high ridge about fifteen miles south of town. The Sun was already down in the west, but the sky still held a touch of red near the horizon. In the east it was growing dark enough for the first few stars to pop out.

“It’s pretty up here,” Andrea said.

“One of my favorite spots in the world,” Craig admitted.

“Is this where you were when you discovered the asteroid?”

He laughed softly. “Nope. I was in my driveway.”

She laughed with him. “The truth is never quite as prosaic as you’d like, is it?”

“People don’t want the truth, that’s for sure,” he said.

“No, I suppose they don’t.” She looked at the other astronomers, fast becoming silhouettes in the deepening twilight, then turned back to Craig. “It’s funny how it all worked out. We started a panic—” She held up her hands to forestall his protest. “You and I and about a million other people started a panic, but it wound up resurrecting the global economy. Who knew that would happen?”

“I sure didn’t.” Craig took a medium-power eyepiece out of the box and fitted it into the focuser, then swung the telescope down toward the southwestern horizon. A little hunting with the finder scope brought Saturn into view. He centered it up in the eyepiece and focused, getting the rings and four of its major moons as crisp as possible, then said, “Come have a look at this.”

She stepped around to his side of the telescope and looked into the eyepiece. “Oh my God!” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

“Now that response I knew would happen.” He let her look for a bit, then said, “See that black line in the ring? That’s the Cassini Division. It’s about as wide as the Atlantic Ocean. And see those little dots on either side? Those are its moons.”

“Are any of them as big as your asteroid?”

“Much bigger,” he said. “My asteroid’s about ten miles across. Those moons are maybe a thousand.”

“Ah. Not as big as Mars, then?”

“Hmm?”

“You told me your asteroid was as big as Mars.”

He felt the heat in his face, was glad it was too dark for her to see him blush. “I did, didn’t I? One more thing to live down. But it’s considerably closer at the moment. It looks bigger than Mars.”

“I’ve heard guys say that before.” She looked away from the eyepiece and gave him a mischievous grin.

He laughed. “I’m trying to imagine the circumstances under which that could actually have happened.”

“Okay, so I made that up.” She stepped away from the telescope. “So show me your great big asteroid, why don’t you?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

He swung the telescope high, looking for the familiar dot that had made him both famous and infamous at once. A meteor slashed overhead, and Andrea gasped. Several of the other astronomers oohed and aahed.

“Make a wish,” Craig said.

“I think I’ve already got mine, thanks,” said Andrea.

The tone of her voice left very little to the imagination. Craig looked over at her, then up at the deepening sky. This could turn out to be a far more interesting night than he’d bargained for.

That was one of the things he loved about astronomy. You never knew what you’d find out there in the dark.