There was no answer, but the gate was unlatched, so I opened it.
I followed the path, and when I reached the back of the house, I saw a softly glowing pink globe across the yard — a Chinese lantern hanging from a wooden post near a tall, rectangular building. The lantern light did little to illuminate the yard. I could not see the building very well, nor much of what lay between me and it. But the building was the tallest structure nearby — easily two stories tall. This, then, must be the tower Regina Szal spoke of.
I stood still, trying to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. The lantern bobbed gently in the warm breeze. The same breeze carried soft laughter from that direction. Wishing for a flashlight, I walked with uncertain steps along a paved path toward the sound.
As I went farther into the yard and my eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, I saw that the building was an odd wooden structure, about the width of a two-car garage and a little longer. Its roof was pitched like a house’s roof but seemed to cover only half the building. The other half was open and I could hear the murmur of voices through it, a woman’s laugh. There were no windows on the first floor, but the path led to a door. I reached it and knocked.
The conversation above me stopped. “Ms. Kelly?” I heard a woman call from above.
“Yes,” I shouted.
“Oh, darn! We missed the news! I’ll be right down, Irene,” she said. “Bernard, hit the switch so she doesn’t trip and fall.”
I heard the clumping sound of someone hurrying down wooden stairs, her voice calling up, “Well, I don’t want her to think she’s come across vampires out here.”
A light came on at a high window, then at the porch where I stood. I blinked in its sudden brightness. The door was thrown open by a woman wearing a plain white cotton shirt, straight-legged Wranglers, and dusty cowboy boots. She had straight strawberry blond hair cut bluntly just above her shoulders, and long, lean legs. She had eyes the color of brown sugar and a warm smile that carried just a hint of mischief in it. She extended a hand. “Hi, I’m Regina.”
“Irene,” I said, taking it. She had a firm handshake.
“Welcome to the Szal Observatory,” she said, grinning more broadly when a man’s voice complained, “Regina….” She glanced up and said, “Come on in, I’ll show you around.”
I entered a plain room with a concrete floor. There was a large concrete pillar at one end of the room; near us, the wooden stairway. On either side of us were other rooms. “That was going to be the darkroom,” she said, pointing to the room on the left. “But it’s just storage now. Bernard wants to get a CCD system.” Seeing my puzzled look, she said, “He could tell you more, but basically, it’s a way of using computers for astrophotography.” She pointed to the pillar. “The telescope rests on that, to keep it level and still.” She turned and pointed to a small, darkened office area, “That’s where the computers are. Come on upstairs. I’ll let you catch a glimpse of my husband before he makes us turn all the lights out again.”
She hit switches as we passed a landing, darkening the space below.
Waiting patiently above us was a big man holding a ginger-colored cat. The man had an athletic build, one that suggested he didn’t have a desk job. He was wearing loose trousers and a T-shirt that was stretched tight across big shoulders. The shirt had Chinese characters on it.
He wore a close-cropped beard and had tied his straight black hair into a ponytail. He stood on an elevated platform in the open-roof area, next to a large white telescope.
“This is Bernard,” Regina said, introducing her husband. He had gorgeous green eyes and a face that was otherwise made up of imperfect features — a slightly crooked smile, a nose that had been broken at least once in its lifetime, a small scar just below one cheekbone — features that nevertheless made an appealing combination. I decided it was the smile — he didn’t look as though he had to work hard to find it. I smiled back and shook his hand. I glanced down and was amused to see he was barefoot.
“Glad to meet you,” he said. The cat wriggled loose and headed downstairs. “That was Stanley,” Regina said. “Stan for short. We used to have another one named Livingstone. Poor Stan outlived his partner in exploration.”
“Sorry we lost track of the time and missed the news,” Bernard said. “We’ve got great viewing tonight — better than anything you could see on TV, anyway.” He snapped out the lights. “Give your eyes a few minutes to become dark adjusted.”
I let my gaze travel upward and saw a sugar-brushed sky. A city dweller, I had become estranged from this bright and shimmering canopy.
“Have a seat, Irene,” Regina said, turning on a flashlight that gave off a red light. She guided me to a chair along a window-lined wall. Sitting in it, I could see for miles in several directions. The warm night air felt good. I looked back at the half roof.
“It’s a sliding roof,” she said. “It’s sort of a large, rolling skylight. We pull it closed when we aren’t up here.”
“You picked a good night,” Bernard said, keying some numbers into a handheld device that was about the size of a calculator. The telescope moved. He looked through the eyepiece. “Air is nice and dry, so the city lights aren’t reflected up very far from the horizon.”
“She didn’t come out here to see M objects,” Regina said, laughing. She opened an ice chest, reached in, and pulled out a Budweiser. She twisted off the top and handed it to me before I could decide if I wanted it. “One for you, Bernard?” she offered.
“Sure.”
“What’s an ‘M object’?” I asked.
“Messier object,” Bernard answered without looking away from the telescope. “Messier was a French astronomer. He started making a list of unusual blurry objects he saw through his telescope — this was back near the time of the American Revolution. Eventually, he compiled an astronomical catalog of over a hundred objects. He really was a great observer — his list is still used. M one, for example, is the Crab Nebula. M thirty-one is the Andromeda galaxy. Some of the most exquisite objects in the sky are Messier objects.”
Regina was looking at him as if he had recited love sonnets. “Bernard built this telescope,” she said
