Page 2 of See the Stars

‘Come see this, Alice.’ Her grandfather poked his head around her door. Nine-year-old Alice wriggled in her bed. Sleep was still weighing her eyes closed. She was warm and cosy, and for a moment she wanted nothing more than to stay where she was. But only for a moment.

‘It’s Betelgeuse,’ said her grandfather. ‘It’s burning brighter than usual.’

Alice clambered out of bed, all thought of sleep forgotten. Betelgeuse was one of her favourite stars. It changed its brightness more than most, it was a lovely orange colour, plus its name sounded like ‘beetle juice’ and always made her giggle.

‘Do you want to come, Eddy?’ she offered, feeling generous. Her big brother was in the top bunk and she gave him a prod.

‘Sod off,’ he replied, rolling over so his back was towards her.

Her grandfather smiled. ‘Are you sure, lazybones?’ he asked. ‘This might be the night. Maybe we’ll discover a new comet. You know, the first time I thought I saw one was . . . ’

‘ . . . the year Alice was born,’ finished Eddy. ‘We know. You tell us all the time.’ Alice couldn’t see Eddy’s face, but she felt like she could hear his eyes rolling.

‘Auspicious it was,’ said their grandfather. ‘I knew she’d be something special. Of course, the next night was too cloudy. The curse of a comet-hunter, clouds. Still, it’s clear tonight. There’s always a chance we’ll see something that no one has ever spotted before.’

‘With a broken ten-year-old telescope held together by tape?’ Her brother muttered his words into his pillow.

‘It’s a great telescope,’ defended Alice. ‘Grandpa built it himself. And yes. Why not?’

‘Let’s leave him be,’ said her grandfather. ‘He needs his beauty sleep. Come on, we’ll go.’ He handed Alice her winter coat, a handme-down from her brother, which she put on over the top of her pyjamas. ‘Orion awaits.’

Alice followed him down the stairs, trying not to notice how much he relied on the banister for support. She pulled on her wellies when she reached the back door and ran out after him as he made his way to what her mother called the shed, and he called his observatory.

She couldn’t help but look upwards as she went. ‘The view will be better through the telescope,’ said her grandfather. ‘Even with your young eyes.’

‘I know,’ she said, hurrying after him. ‘But still . . . ’

‘I can’t help myself either!’ he exclaimed, looking up. He stumbled over a gardening fork Alice’s mother had left on the grass.

‘Careful, Grandpa,’ said Alice, alarmed.

‘That mother of yours shouldn’t leave tools on the ground,’ he grumbled, putting it to one side. ‘Not when you and I have our gaze on the stars.’

‘There,’ said her grandfather, stepping aside from the telescope.

He’d set it up carefully just outside the shed so they were away from any lights in the house but could pop inside when they needed to take notes, sheltered from the cold Yorkshire nights.

Alice put her eye to the viewfinder, closing her other eye to better focus.

The telescope was old and the lens a little distorted, but her grandfather had carefully calibrated it to compensate, and her view was good.

There was Orion. She spotted the belt first, and then followed the central star downwards to locate the fuzzy nebula.

There it was, the star an orange hue as if it had been mixed with egg yolk. ‘I see it,’ she told him. ‘Betelgeuse.’

‘It’s not quite ten million years old,’ her grandfather said.

‘But they reckon it will end with a supernova explosion within a hundred thousand years.’ He laughed.

‘Seems like a long time to us, but it’s not much of a lifetime for a star.

That’s what happens sometimes, when a star burns so bright and big and wanders the skies.

’ He put his hand on Alice’s shoulder. ‘Worth it, though, for the adventure,’ he added. ‘I bet.’

Alice looked at the star. No disrespect to her grandfather’s telescope, but she longed to look through something more powerful, to see the finer details of the star for herself. Maybe even the bow shock that she’d read about.

‘Perhaps that’s why I’m so old,’ her grandfather continued. ‘I stayed put and played it safe. No blaze of glory for me.’

‘But just last week you thought you saw a new comet!’ Alice blinked. Her grandfather had woken her up then too, but clouds had covered the area by the time she’d reached the telescope.

‘And I made a note in my logbook,’ he said. ‘I reported it too, just like I did the one when you were born. But it was too cloudy to verify. Likely just a nebula. The Crab hangs around that part of the sky.’ He grunted. ‘Story of my life.’

‘No it’s not,’ said Alice. ‘You’ll find something.’

‘Maybe,’ said her grandfather. ‘You don’t need fancy equipment. Just to be looking at the right bit of sky at the right time and tracking things carefully.’ He tapped his logbook, full of meticulous observations. ‘That would show the professionals. Who needs the Hubble, eh?’

Alice pulled at the Sellotape hanging from the telescope.

‘They name the comet after you, you know,’ continued her grandfather.

‘If you find it first and report it to the British Astronomical Association. Imagine that. The Thorington Comet. Named after a postman from Yorkshire and his nine-year-old granddaughter.’ He smiled.

‘It would be quite something, wouldn’t it? ’

‘It would,’ said Alice. She didn’t mention that she was officially a Thorington-Jones; she’d already started to use only her grandfather’s surname when she could, much to his delight.

They looked at each other, and she saw the light of the stars reflected in his eyes.

She loved these moments: the two of them together while the rest of the world was sleeping.

She couldn’t even remember her father; she was too young when he had died.

But when she was with her grandfather, out here, she felt as though nothing was missing from her life.

She looked back through the telescope. ‘It’s gone blurry,’ she said.

‘The focus knob has come loose again,’ said her grandfather, with a tut.

He started fussing around the equipment.

‘And now I’ve got tape stuck to my hand,’ he added, trying to shake it off.

‘I bet Galileo didn’t have these problems.’ He glanced at his watch.

‘Come on. The sun will be up soon. Let’s get you another couple of hours of sleep.

Your mum will be back from her shift soon and she’ll have my guts for garters if she finds you out of bed again. ’

Alice pulled off the loose covering of the focus knob and reached inside with a pair of tweezers. When the focus was out, through trial and error she’d developed a special way of adjusting it from within the machine. ‘Try that,’ she said.

Her grandfather peered through again. ‘You’ve fixed it!’ he said. ‘Well done.’ He looked away from the telescope, at Alice. ‘Don’t forget me and my old telescope when you’re at NASA in a few years’ time.’

‘I’m nine,’ said Alice.

‘You’ll grow,’ he replied. ‘And you’ve got a talent for it.

Your mum never did, and that brother of yours, pah, he’s lazy like your dad.

But you’re different. You’re like me. You might be the one who discovers a new earth-like exoplanet.

One day future generations will all move to Planet Thorington. ’

He put his hand on her shoulder again and they exchanged smiles.

Then he looked back through the telescope.

‘It’s stunning, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘We might find something new, we might not. But it doesn’t really matter when what’s up there is so .

. . ’ He searched for the word. ‘Spectacular,’ he declared finally.

He smiled at her. ‘Who knew that burning balls of gas hundreds of light years away could be quite so beautiful?’ He stepped aside and Alice looked through again.

‘You knew,’ she said, taking it all in. ‘Thanks for waking me up.’

‘You’ve got postman’s blood in you,’ he said. ‘We’re early birds. But we don’t want to catch the worms. We want to see the stars.’