Oxford Time Travel 01 - Fire Watch by Connie Willis

Author:Connie Willis [Willis, Connie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-0-307-57342-1
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 1984-11-21T16:00:00+00:00

They set up in front of the high school. Meg did not see the four anywhere. It was not even possible to see the sun’s disc through the gray blanket of clouds, though it was possible to get an image through the telescopes.

“We have contact,” one of the redheaded boys said at 8:21, and there was some scattered applause.

“Sun?” Laynie said.

“Behind the clouds,” Rich said.

Everyone was going through the motions of setting up telescopes, cameras, binoculars for projecting an image on the snow. Nobody looked at the sky. The elderly couple let Laynie look through a pinhold viewer made out of an oatmeal box, even though there was nothing to see. Meg walked Laynie around the outside of the high school and told her all about not looking at the sun unless she had her special glasses on that Daddy had made for her.

At 9:04 she found her scientists where they had been before, on the tennis courts around the other side of the building. They were setting up their equipment, most of which was short, fat, and the same faded khaki as the missile in the park. They were all talking animatedly at each other and nodding at the sky.

At 9:05 the clouds around the sun began to be pushed away in a ragged circle and the sun’s disc began to shine very thinly through. Meg made Laynie put her special glasses on. At 9:17 the sun came out and everybody cheered. Meg walked Laynie back around to the front of the school where Rich had the telescope set up. Rich looked frantic, which meant he was hopeful. He and Paulos were wearing eye patches made of kleenex and masking tape. It began to get dark in the west, a purple-blue darkness like a summer rainstorm. Meg looked through the telescope at the last sliver of the sun, still shining too bright to look at in the now completely blue eastern half of the sky.

At 9:24 Paulos said, “She’s a-coming.” Meg picked Laynie up and started edging away from the men in the direction of the tennis courts. It began to get very dark. Laynie clung to Meg’s neck and squeezed her eyes shut under the mylar glasses. Shadows rippled suddenly over Meg like a shudder. She looked up.

And was caught by the eclipse. There was a flash, like the captured light from a diamond, and then it was there, suspended in the sky The sky was not totally dark. Reflection from the snow. The science teacher had explained it yesterday in the auditorium. He had not explained how beautiful it would be. The sky was a dawn blue with pink shining from the retreating clouds like a coming sunrise. In the center of the fragile blue the sun flared out on all sides from behind the moon.

Meg pried Laynie’s arms loose from around her neck and took her glasses off her. “This is it, Laynie honey,” she whispered. “Look at the clips.”

Laynie turned around shyly, as if she were being introduced to someone.

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