park office was a couple of hundred yards up the road. I went in and paid fifty cents for a photocopied trail map. I stepped back outside and oriented myself with the map. Across the main road through the park about a hundred yards or so north from where I stood, the van was parked. He was waiting. Waiting for my curiosity to get the best of me.
I folded my map, stuck it in my pocket, and headed north.
A yellow metal gate blocked the road to the Von Braun Astronomical Society’s facilities. The van was pulled up parallel to the gate to avoid sticking out into the main road. I saw him watching me in the driver’s side rearview mirror. He leaned out of his opened window and twisted back toward me.
“There’s a combination lock on the gate,” he said. “You can probably guess what the combination is.”
Before I could offer a guess he said, “Three, one, four, one, five.”
I could feel his stare tracking me as I walked past his open window and to the lock.
“You would think a group of scientists could do better than that,” he said.
“Scientists are literal,” I said. “A scientist would think that no one would ever guess the combination was pi because the lock has no decimal point.”
He chuckled. It was one of those polite chuckles you use when you want the other person to think you’re listening. I was not fooled by the Mr. Nice Guy routine. My curiosity, though, continued to use it as an excuse to proceed. I swung the gate open.
Stephen started the van and pulled through the gate. He leaned out his window and looked back toward me. “Would you mind closing and locking it behind us, please?” said Mr. Nice Guy.
I did and walked past the van on the passenger side. He inched along beside me.
“Might as well get in,” he said. “We’re going another couple of hundred yards.”
Well, it was eighty-something degrees, and the van was air-conditioned. I opened the door and climbed in.
From the elevation of the van, I had a better view. The road was one-lane and asphalt. Along the right side of the road, about fifteen yards down a slight incline, was a wall of trees. A variety of hardwoods with broad leaves. Up the incline to the left was a grassy field about thirty yards wide. At the other side of the field was a hedgerow, and through the hedgerow I saw—
“Campers,” Stephen interrupted my thoughts. He must have seen me scoping out the area. “That’s the State Park campgrounds.”
Up ahead the road took a sharp right. Just before we took that right, Stephen stopped and killed the engine. He turned toward the grassy field which at that point was a lot less grassy.
“Overflow parking,” he said. “Not a lot of parking down around the observatory. But that night my dad and I were up here . . .”
He turned to face me. “There should have been plenty of parking,” he continued, “but Dad parked here.” He nodded back toward the field.
“Left me in the car and walked to the observatory. January twenty-first,” he said.
He turned away—back toward the field.
“January twenty-first, last year,” he said. “He was meeting one of the Space Cadets.”
He made an abrupt turn back to stare me in the eye, “Where was your dad January twenty-first of last year?”
“Home!” I said without hesitation.
Truth is I had no idea where my dad was last year on January 21. January is the best month of the year for astronomy. Summer humidity interferes with the clarity of images in telescopes. And in winter, the earth rotates toward a region of space that contains more stars. The winter night has more to see than the summer night. My dad takes off a couple of days every January to attend a star party with some of his colleagues at the university. Was last year’s star party on January twenty-first?
“Home?” Stephen Warrensburg interrupted my thoughts. “You sure?”
“Home,” I said.
10
You can study distant galaxies without ever leaving the comfort of your own planet, because the laws of the universe are the same everywhere. For example, the Canis Major dwarf galaxy is about twenty-five thousand light years from earth. When you consider that one light year is about six trillion miles, the Canis Major dwarf is a galaxy far, far away. And yet, the Law of Gravity works just as well there as it does here. Maybe too well if you happen to live there, because, thanks to the gravity of our own Milky Way galaxy, the Canis Major dwarf is being torn apart. That little galaxy with all of its stars and any planets it may have is being gobbled up by our much larger galaxy.
Andromeda is a large, spiral galaxy like the Milky Way. It’s between two and three million light years away. On a clear night in a dark place, you can see Andromeda with the naked eye. It’s the farthest object you can see without a telescope or binoculars. And yet, Newton’s Third Law of Motion—for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction—works just as well there as it does here. So if you’re stepping into a canoe somewhere in Andromeda, you still have to make sure it doesn’t shoot out from under you.
The most distant galaxy from us is called Abell 1835 IR1916. Astronomers believe it is more than thirteen billion light years away. And yet, out there—way, way, way out there—two plus two still equals four.
It just goes to show that Stephen A. Warrensburg is not from this universe. The laws of his universe and the laws of mine are not the same. His numbers and my numbers don’t add up.
“Caldwell, you don’t understand the greater truth,” he said. “You think I’m an obnoxious know-it-all, and you’re wrong. I don’t know it all. I only know what’s important.”
I noticed he didn’t deny the “obnoxious” part.
He continued, “I was supposed to graduate from high school when I was fifteen. I should have been halfway through college by now. But whoever put me in this wheelchair took all that away. And they took my father.”
“Everybody says it was an accident.”
“Everybody’s wrong. Somebody tampered with the brakes.”
“Warrensburg,” I said, “you’ve already told me that your dad left you out here in the car. Who was it? Who tampered with the brakes?”
He hung his head and mumbled, “I fell asleep.”
“What?” I heard him; I just wanted to make him say it again. And he did.
“I fell asleep.”
“You didn’t see anything? You didn’t hear anything?”
He lifted his head, took a deep breath, looked at me and said, “No. No, I didn’t see anything. No, I didn’t hear anything. But
