had set and a slight breeze was beginning to stir the leaves of the giant oak tree at the entrance.
"Well, the next time you're in my office we'll have a long talk about it," said Stoddard, edging down the steps. "But right now I've got to get home for dinner."
"The observation would consist simply in determining whether some distant event occurred at the time predicted," Arnold mused. "Let's see, what would be the easiest thing to observe?"
At that instant his eye was attracted to a star faintly visible near the eastern horizon. "I've got it!" he cried. "We could observe an eclipse of one of Jupiter's satellites. If the solar system has really shrunk as much as the Xi effect predicts, it should occur way ahead of time."
"You mean do a kind of repeat on Roemer's work," said Stoddard, "only with a light time corresponding to the whole distance to Jupiter instead of the diameter of the Earth's orbit?"
"Exactly!"
Stoddard could feel the net closing around him. He knew that once his partner in crime became infatuated with an idea it was useless to try to discourage him. "Well, I guess we've looked for less hopeful things. Only I can't seem to remember what they were."
"Listen," said Arnold, his eyes shining, "is there a class at the ten-inch tonight?"
Stoddard considered, "This is Wednesday, isn't it? Nope, don't think there will be one."
"Then what's to stop us from making the observation right now— tonight?"
"Nothing, so far as I know, except maybe a nice thick fog." He heaved a sigh of resignation. "Come on, let's take a look at the Ephemeris. Maybe there aren't any eclipses tonight."
But the American Ephemeris said otherwise. An occultation of Jupiter I was scheduled for Thursday, October 5th, at four hours eight minutes and ten seconds of Greenwich Civil Time.
Arnold was delighted. "I'll meet you at the ten-inch at seven-fifteen tonight. O.K.?"
"O.K."
"We can stop in at my house for a drink afterward."
"We'll probably need one," was Stoddard's grim comment, "after we find out how much the universe has shrunk."
The lamp over the desk threw grotesque shadows around the circular room making the telescope and pier look like some giant insect flattened against the curving walls of the dome. At that moment, however, Stoddard was in no mood to appreciate the projective geometry of shadow pictures. Like all other manually operated observatory domes in the world, the one on the ten-inch at Western Tech opened only with the utmost reluctance. At length in response to an effort worthy of superman, Stoddard forced the
