Dark Star

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TALBY WAS COUNTING stars again.

He didn’t remember exactly when he’d lost count. Probably they were all noted down somewhere neat and official in the astronomer’s records—or had he disconnected the tracker? It was hard to recall. There seemed to be something about uncoupling all the scientific instruments a while back, uncoupling them because it seemed blasphemous for such splendor to be reduced to a mere listing in a book.

Anyhow, the number didn’t matter, did it? There were plenty of stars to go around, and if the muddlers back on Earth wanted records of them, let them come out here for themselves and do their own tracking. Talby didn’t see how anyone could appreciate a star by using mere mathematical charts.

But he kept counting. It was easy. It was natural. It made a man free—one star, two stars, and baby makes three.

With only the naked eye, most navigators could distinguish only a few degrees, magnitude, but Talby had had more practice than most navigators. And he lived his work.

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