by Dave Leys
and that in an easy motion until the stars became streaks of light across her view. This was fun, but she needed to know what to look for.
She pulled away from the telescope and surfed the internet for information. There was a website listing the constellations visible from the Southern Hemisphere. Some of them had strange names she didn’t quite know how to pronounce – Delphinus, Andromeda. Maybe she should look first for one she already knew - the Southern Cross. Surely she could find that. Apparently the cross would be lying on its side, as if it had grown tired and lain down to sleep on the soft bed of the night sky.
To find the Southern Cross you first had to find the Pointers. So she put her eye back to the scope and began to look for them – Beta Centauri and Alpha Centauri – two bright stars that were easy, according to the website, to spot.
But as she swung the telescope around she saw something extraordinary – the clear shape of a silver disc, and it was moving up and down in a strange fashion. Was it what she thought it was? A flying saucer? Unbelievable! Her heart began to beat fast. The silver disc turned and flew through the inky blackness.
She heard a sound – a strange beeping – what was it? She tore herself away from the telescope and poked her head out the window, staring all around. Standing in the yard outside her bedroom was her brother, Peter. He was holding a long piece of bamboo with a black string tied to one end, and at the end of that string was fixed a small silver dish. He was waving it back and forth across the face of the window and making a high-pitched beeping. In fact he was so engrossed in his task he didn’t notice his sister was staring straight at him.
‘Peter!’ she screamed. At the sound of her voice he dropped the bamboo and scuttled off into the darkness of the backyard, yelping in delight.
What a nuisance! Why was he trying to spoil her fun? She ran her hands through her hair in frustration and went out to her parents to complain. She found her mother on the phone, and her father was cleaning out the car in the garage, so she decided to confront Peter herself.
Walking into his room Lisa found him sitting at his computer playing a game. He was still puffing, having run straight back from the yard. There was a roar as he piloted a spacecraft through a maze of stars, tracking a red and silver rocket. Every so often he would grunt and fire his weapons.
‘Why are you such a twit?’ she asked.
Peter didn’t turn to her, only mumbling over his shoulder, ‘Bored already?’
‘No! What?’ she said in exasperation.
‘With the telescope.’ He paused the game and swivelled in his chair to face her, grinning. ‘I’m not surprised. It’d be nice if there was exciting stuff out there, you know, aliens, space battles …’ He motioned to the computer screen. ‘But let’s face it, all there really is, is a bunch of stupid, moronic stars.’
‘You’re the moron,’ she shot back, but he had turned around to his game now and was intent on killing the aliens that attempted to elude him.
Wandering to her room, her arms swinging listlessly by her sides. She bit her lip in annoyance and sat down again. Holding the telescope she peered out into the night. The stars, even with magnification, seemed a long way off. They all looked the same – little pin pricks of white light. Maybe her brother had a point. Why bother looking at stars? All they did was sit there, the same every night.
Sighing, the telescope dropped from her grip. She needed a drink of water. On the way to the kitchen she decided she would stop for a minute and see if there was anything on TV. She flopped into the couch and switched it on.
From channel to channel she skipped, over sport and cartoons, and then suddenly she saw a ghostly image – black and white – of an astronaut. She leaned in closer and turned up the volume. The sound was crackly, as if his voice was coming from down a long, broken tunnel, but she could just make the words out.
‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’ He was standing on the surface of the moon next to the ladder of a spacecraft wobbling slightly from side to side as if he was floating underwater. The scene shifted to a bunch of men watching with glee on their faces, and then back to the moon as two astronauts planted a flag.
She had heard about this - the first moon landing, in 1969. The whole world had stopped to watch it on their TVs, and now here was she, just as fascinated as they must have been forty years ago. The documentary detailed all that humankind had learnt about the moon. Named Luna by the Romans, Artemis by the Greeks, modern science had mapped and sampled its cratered highlands, its lava plains and its mysterious dark spots.
What a strange globe the moon was! With no atmosphere there was no rain, no wind, no weather at all. It must be a silent, spooky place. She began to daydream about standing on its white, chalky surface.
The voices from the TV caught her attention again.
‘The whole solar system is within our grasp. We have sent probes to photograph the cloud belts of Jupiter, the Galilean moons and the rings of Saturn. We have even sent an unmanned spacecraft to the red planet – the Mars Rover! Watch the amazing footage it has beamed back to us on Earth of the surface of Mars.’
Lisa held her breath as she watched vast plains of reddy soil broken by rocks, gentle craters and a strange greyish horizon - photo after photo of an alien planet. When the documentary finished she could feel herself rising off the couch, as if she was in zero gravity, and floating back to her room.
She picked up the Astronomical Refractor gently, reverentially, and focused it on the heavens. It was incredible. The solar system began to open itself up to her. She could look all night … but she had to share it with someone.
‘Peter!’ she called out loudly. ‘Come quickly, there’s something happening in space!’
Peter arrived at her door, slouching with his hands in his pockets. ‘I was busy playing my game,’ he said. ‘What did you say?’
‘Quick, there’s something happening in space!’ she repeated.
He was about to turn and leave but something about the tone of her voice and the gleam of her eyes snared him.
‘Huh,’ he said, and sidled up to her. She handed him the telescope and he put his eye to it. Not seeing any gun battles, any explosions, any alien fighters, he put it down, shaking his head wearily, and started to rise.
‘What are you talking about? There’s nothing happening,’ he said, ‘just a bunch of stars.’
‘Wait,’ she said softly, putting her hand on his arm and guiding him back to the Astronomical Refractor. ‘Look again.’
He put it once more to his eye, and as she began to whisper in his ear about shooting stars, solar wind, interplanetary dust, comets and asteroids, about constellations and the wonders of the Moon, inch by inch he became caught, just like his sister, by the gravitational pull of the universe.
Backyard Cricket Fanatic
Simon pulled his baggy green cap over his eyes, hitched his trousers up, and heard the scream of a thousand fans. He smiled, thanked them, and then pushed his cap back up to see his fans – a bunch of cockatoos – take wing and rise from the wattle tree next to the back fence.
Simon and his sister Melissa were what you might call backyard cricket fanatics. They would play in their long, leafy yard for hours and hours and hours. They would take turns batting and bowling, jumping up in the air and shouting ‘Howzat!’ They would add commentary in the style of the radio and stand with their hands on their hips watching the ball sail over their heads.
The only time they didn’t enjoy backyard cricket quite so much, the only time it became really annoying, the only time, in fact, they wished instead they were inside with their computer games, was when their father decided he would play with them.
Their father was enormous, and wielded the willow at their bowling like he was swatting at flies. When he came out to bat they were doomed to watch him smash the ball into the far corners of the backyard.
It was the height of summer
– a forty-degree day – and they were just setting up to play. Simon hammered the stumps into the ground, which was hard, dusty and dried out, while Melissa rolled her arm over to practise her slow ball. They heard the slam of the back door and out walked their father, Big Kev. They both sighed.
‘Hey kids,’ drawled Big Kev. He pulled his singlet up and scratched at his stomach, which was large and hairy. ‘Your mother’s gone into town. Little bit of shopping. Thought I might come out and spend some time with you. Whatcha doing?’
Simon held up the bat. What did he think they were doing, digging for treasure?
Big Kev smiled. ‘Excellent,’ he said. He walked over and grabbed the bat from Simon. It was well understood that their father pretty much only ever batted. Occasionally he might bowl to you if you were lucky, but he certainly never, ever fielded. It was always left to the two children to chase the ball, rolling under bushes and hobbling over the stony bits at the back to retrieve it.
Big Kev settled into his batting stance and beckoned at his son to bowl. Simon gamely ran up and pitched the ball up only to watch his father lean back and casually hit it along the ground to the back fence.
‘Four,’ said Big Kev grandly. ‘Nice way to start your innings, don’t you think?’
Melissa nodded quietly and ran down to get the ball. It was so hot there were heat shimmers