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JACK McDEVITT - Standard Candles
The observatory was warm in the mist. Light spilled out of the administrative
windows on the second floor, and played against the moving trees at the edge
of
the parking lot.
Carlisle was driving too fast, kicking up gravel, alternately flooring and
releasing the pedal. He was impatient with the long uphill climb. The wipers
sloshed back and forth, and the branches shut off the sky.
There would be a short staff tonight, because of the overcast. But he didn't
care about viewing conditions: the Andromeda galaxy could have been blazing
overhead, flooding the mountains with light, an d he would not have been more
excited.
His printouts had worked their way out of his inside jacket pocket. He pushed
them back down, affectionately. The numbers were gorgeous, and they flowed
through him, and warmed him. My God, how he loved blue stars.
The road went up and up, and at last he bounced out of the forest and rolled
into the parking lot. He jerked to a stop beside Boddiker's van and was out of
the car, not caring about the cold drizzle, not stopping to lock up. He
climbed
the three concrete stairs at the front of the building, caught his breath, and
went inside.
Toni Linden was standing by the coffee machine. He waved the printout at her
and
said "I've got it -- "and kept going.
Lowenthal was not in his office, so Carlisle went hunting for him and found
him
down in the lower level control room arguing with Boddiker. Boddiker's thin
features were in their negative mode, and the little red spot that always
showed
up on his crinkled skull when he got excited was glowing. His voice was high
and
he was jabbing his index finger at the Director. Carlisle didn't know what it
was about, and didn't care. He did not back out of the room as a respectful
young postdoc should have, didn't even wait for them to recognize him, but
simply excused himself and shouldered into the conversation. "I think we've
got
a new standard candle," he said.
Judy had also been part of that night. He'd known her only three weeks, but he
had already fallen victim to every familiar romantic symptom: his voice
betrayed
him in her presence, she completely dominated his thoughts, and the knowledge
that she was seeing other men drove him wild. He had even come to accept the
improbable notion that a higher power had designed events to bring them
together. All he needed to do was find a way to hold onto her.
Even now, fifteen years later, she could jack up his pulse. He'd been right:
Judy Bollinger had been worth any effort. Unfortunately, he had only recently
come to understand what that really meant.
She had blue eyes that he could never quite see the bottom of. A trim jogger's
body. And a smile that was once again troubling his nights. Carlisle,
 
returning
to the observatory for the last time, considered the varieties of that
resonant
gaze.
In their early days, she had worn her auburn hair short. Judy was about
average
size, but because Carlisle was tall she had to reach for him, and she had a
trick of standing on her toes, stretching toward him and holding her mouth up
to
be kissed, funneling everything she had into her lips.
On that night of nights, when he had so much to celebrate, he had hesitated to
call her. It was, after all, late on a weekday evening, and he was still
treating her carefully, anxious to do nothing that might damage the
relationship. Don't be overeager. Patience counts, whether one is measuring
the
distances between stars. Or pursuing a beautiful woman.
But it was an opportunity to impress her.
He had used the phone in the conference center.
"Hugh?" She sounded pleased to hear his voice, and his spirits soared.
"I'm at Kitchener," he said. "Things are happening." His tone had undoubtedly
been self-important.
But she chose not to notice. "What is it?"
"Judy, I've had a major breakthrough. I've found a standard candle."
"Are you sure?" She had sounded delighted, as if she knew what a standard
candle
was.
"I thought we might celebrate."
"I'm on my way. Wait for me."
And she was gone before he could explain he was thinking about Saturday.
He parked in the slot marked DIRECTOR, got his empty cartons out of the trunk,
and paused before letting himself into the building. The mountaintop was
still.
He had stood out here that night, watching her lights come up the access road.
(The road was dark now, cold and untraveled, save for the contractors who came
in the daylight to remove everything that was of value.) Her white two-door
Ford
came out of the trees right there, and she'd parked over by the reserved
spaces,
under the security lights at the supply entrance.
The security lights were out now. For good. The Foundation had started closing
down Kitchener's operations two years ago. Much of the action had gone to the
southern hemisphere, where there was less light and pollution and a richer
field
for investigation. Carlisle supported the action, had even dissuaded Lowenthal
from campaigning against the vote.
 
But it had cost him. Many of his old acquaintances, some whom he'd counted as
friends, no longer talked to him. Furthermore, he would be going back to the
classroom. His dreams of greatness were probably over.
He unlocked the door, let himself in, and turned the lights on. The well in
which the eighty-inch Cassegrain reflector had rested was shadowy and cold.
"How far can you see with it?" she had asked. She was wearing a yellow sweater
thrown over her shoulders. Odd that, after so long he would remember the
details.
It was a naive question. "To the edge of the universe," he'd answered. That
was
not quite true, of course. They could see as far as the Red Limit, which was
the
farthest point from which light has had time to reach Earth since the
creation.
He had supervised the removal of the telescope only the week before. It was on
its way to Kitt Peak, where it would become a backup.
Judy had stood beside him, in this doorway, barely rising to his shoulder. But
her physical presence had been overpowering.
She taught history at Franklin High School, which was now a shopping center.
She
knew damned little science, and less cosmology, but she seemed perpetually
interested in what Carlisle was doing. Her father was a policeman, and she was
a
product of public schools and state universities, not blessed with life's
advantages as he had been. She talked about wanting to write the definitive
history of the McCarthy era. Everything hadn't come out yet, she'd said. His
links with Hoover. Deals with Nixon. During all the years he knew her, she was
gathering materials, and planning the book. Sometimes she read extracts to
him.
Carlisle, who had always found the social sciences boring, got caught up in
the
narrative. He was often appalled that government officials could have acted
with
such perfidy, and she told him more than once that she loved him because he
had
retained the ability to be outraged. "Don't ever lose it," she warned.
They were watching Boddiker, who was in the observer's cage. "He's our cluster
specialist. What they're doing now is hoping the sky will clear. It won't. But
if it does, they'll take pictures toward the galactic interior, so they can
compare optical results with x-rays. Over there is the imaging center."
Babble,
babble. He winced now to think of it, but it all seemed to charm her, and
she'd
squeezed his hand when she thought no one was looking.
Lowenthal was gone a long time. Carlisle wasn't worried: he knew he was right;
he had checked his results carefully. So he suggested they go celebrate.
"Isn't that bad luck? Before you get confirmation?"
"Maybe. But in the meantime, I get an evening with you. Worth whatever comes
of
it."
 
They took both cars and went down the mountain to Spike's. Spike's was a quiet
bar back in the trees off Observatory Road, about a mile from the foot of the
mountain. It was favored by the staff at Kitchener and the science department
at
UEI because management catered to them, hosted their frequent celebrations and
parties, and made it a point to treat them like VIP's.
That evening had been their first time there together. They'd found a corner
table and ordered drinks and sat in the glow of a small candle in a glass
dish.
Soft music flowed across the room. Carlisle had realized how little he knew
about her, and how fascinated he was by even the trivia of her life. What had
she been like in high school? What were her interests? What sort of home life
did she come from? How did she really feel about him?
It was the happiest night of his life. He was with her, a cosmological golden
age was approaching and he was looking forward to his career as a giant. By
the
end of the century he expected to rank with Hubble and Sandage and Penrose.
This
was a period utterly unique in the history of the world. A small group of men
and women, for the first time properly armed with instrumentation and theory,
were trying to make sense of the universe, how big it was, how old, whether
the
expansion was as precisely balanced as it appeared, and why that should be so.
How galaxies formed. Whether strings existed. Why there was symmetry. It was a
glorious time, and Carlisle was already part of it.
And he intended to make that journey with this magnificent creature at his
side.
She had looked at him with undisguised pleasure. Now, he understood how easily
she was reading him.
I like being with you, her eyes said. But she asked, "What's a standard
candle?"
The wax candle burned cheerily on the table top. "If you took twenty of these
out of a box, each one would probably put out more or less the same amount of
light. So if we saw one on a rooftop, we could figure out how far away it is
by
measuring how dim the light has become. That's a standard candle. It's a light
source that always radiates at the same level of intensity. We call it
absolute
luminosity. Whenever you see it, you can get a decent range estimate." He
stopped and sipped his drink. "Cepheid variables are standard candles. You can
always figure out how far they are. But they aren't bright enough. We can only
see them on local rooftops. What we need is something that's visible in the
next
town. Or across the country."
"The blue stars," she said, almost breathless, as if she'd been running.
"Yes. The brightest blue stars in a galaxy always have essentially the same
absolute magnitude. So we now have an intergalactic yardstick."
"I thought you could already measure distances with red shifts."
"A little bit," he said. "The redder the shift, the further the object. But
 
the
method's inexact." He looked at her across the rim of his glass. "They're
subject to too many interpretations."
The candle glowed in her eyes. "Congratulations, Hugh."
Later, toward the end of the evening, he called the observatory. "Your numbers
seem to work," Lowenthal told him.
Carlisle could still see the telephone, a big old-fashioned rotary wall model;
could hear the soft tinkle of a piano solo; could smell warm wax on the still
air. Judy sat angled in his direction, watching, her eyes locked on him,
waiting
for a sign.
"Thanks," he said into the phone.
He looked at her. Thumbs up.
Carlisle had always been something of a Puritan. But that night a different
set
of universal laws were in place. He bought a round of drinks for a group of
strangers at the next table, puzzled them by toasting "candles everywhere,"
embraced Judy, and threw a twenty-dollar tip onto the table.
They drove to her apartment, Carlisle leading the way. (No sly suggestions
about
leaving one car in the lot; he would never have been so obvious.) But it
hadn't
mattered. At her doorway, she had slipped into his arms, and he became
intensely
aware of the pressure of her left breast. The other was also engaged with him,
but Carlisle had found that the sensation was more intimate, more intense,
when
he concentrated on one at a time.
She had moved against him, subtly, and invited him in, so to speak. And it was
over for Carlisle. He remembered her lips, the line of her jaw, her breathing
the sound of the wind in the trees.
She did not draw away. Not then, nor for many years.
Next day, during the late afternoon, Lowenthal called and asked him to come
out
to Kitchener. The Director's voice was somber, and Carlisle knew there was
trouble. Nevertheless, he hadn't pressed; he was a drift in a euphoric state
and
nothing could shake him. He put the call out of his mind and completed his
classes for the day. Then, after a deliberately casual meal, he had driven
back
up the mountain.
"You do seem to be correct," Lowenthal assured him. By then, he had been
director at Kitchener more than ten years. He was lean and polished,
self-effacing and eminently well-mannered, a rare breed among the pushy egos
who
dominated the field. "The blue stars work. Unfortunately, we're late. Sandage
and Tammann got there first. It's even been published. Damned thing's been on
my
desk for three days. I saw it this morning."
 

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