Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [11]
At least they did to Ian. 'They look different, somehow,'
Vicki noted. `The stars, I mean.'
`They will have moved to different positions in the next few thousand years,' Ian explained. ‘Pegasus will be closer to Andromeda and the Seven Sisters get more spread out, if I remember my astronomy. A break-up in the family, if you like.' Ian chuckled at his witty pun, then realised that Vicki had not understood it and he cursed to himself that he hadn't saved that one for Barbara or the Doctor.
Vicki, in the meantime, seemed mesmerised by the soft-velvet indigo night spreading out before her. `No, that isn't what I meant,' she continued, without taking her eyes from the star-filled heavens.
'They seem so much clearer. At home, when I used to look at the sky from the building I lived in, well - you could hardly see the stars at all. Except in winter, and even then, they were so faint...’
`Where was this?' Ian asked. It occurred to him that he knew so little about his young companion's past life on an Earth in his own far future.
`New London. Liddell Towers on the South Circular Road.'
Vicki blinked what could have been a tear from her eye, but was probably just moisture from the chill of the oncoming night. Èvery evening, I went up to the roof and looked out into space. That seemed like the future to me. ‘ A future, anyway. An open road to the stars.’
Now Ian understood her question about the sky looking different. 'Ambient light,' he said. 'In towns, even in my time, the street lighting often made seeing anything in the sky difficult. When I was a boy...' He stopped, aware that his tenses were all gone to pot - a habitual problem for the unwary time traveller. `When I will be a boy, I should say,' he noted with a broad grin. 'I used to go on holiday to a cottage in North Wales, out in the country where the nearest neighbour's house was about a mile away. My brother and sister and I used to fish in the river and play cricket in the fields and at night we'd take my father's telescope and try to name all of the stars.' He knelt down beside the teenager and pointed up. 'There, on the meridian. That's Orion, the hunter.
In Greek mythology, Artemis, the goddess of the Moon, fell in love with Orion and neglected her duty of lighting the night sky. Her twin brother, Apollo, seeing Orion swimming, challenged his sister to shoot an arrow through a tiny dot in the ocean, which she did without realising that it was her lover that she was killing. When she discovered what she had done, she placed Orion's body in the sky for all eternity. Her grief explains why the Moon looks so sad and cold.'
Ì see him,' said Vicki excitedly, her eyes transfixed on the patch of sky that Ian was pointing to. 'That's a beautiful story.
Poor Artemis.'
Ian smiled at the girl, warmly. `The big star at the top left is Betelgeuse. Bottom right is Rigel. In the middle, you see that little shiny thing that looks like a boy scout's badge? That's the Horsehead Nebula, a globular cluster of stars. The three stars in the belt are called Orionis Zeta, Epsilon and Delta.
Now, trace a straight line up from Betelgeuse and you hit Polaris, the pole star. That's in Ursa Minor. Down and a little to the left, you'll find Castor and Pollux, the twins of Gemini.
And those two bright lights just above the horizon, they are Venus and Jupiter. I can never remember which is which. In ancient times, astronomers didn't know the difference between planets and stars. Because the planets roam across the sky in their orbit around the sun, the sky watchers of olden times called them "wandering stars", thinking that they were lost and trying to get home. A bit like us, really.'
Vicki turned, a look of grim determination on her face. ‘I want to visit all of them,' she said. 'With you and Barbara and the Doctor. I never ever want to go home.’
From behind, the sound of distant voices made them turn to see Barbara helping the Doctor struggle with considerable difficulty up the steep incline. It was Barbara who was speaking. `Certainly the Romans were