Free Selby Snowbound by Duncan Ball Page A

astronomers tell me that it’s a real life-saver. They’d be lost without it.’
    ‘A life-saver, eh? What’s on the other side of the map?’ Dr Trifle asked. ‘There seems to be a whole lot of other stars.’
    ‘One side has the stars that we see from the southern part of the world. The other side has the stars they see in the north.’
    ‘Suddenly I want to get that telescope out again, ‘Dr Trifle said.
    ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea!’ Percy cried. ‘How would you like to look through a proper huge telescope?’
    ‘That sounds like fun,’ said Mrs Trifle. ‘Which one?’
    ‘Do you know that new telescope, the one they call Sky Eye?’
    ‘The one they sent up in a rocket?’ Mrs Trifle asked.
    ‘That’s it. Let’s have a squiz through it.’
    ‘But how can we do that?’ Dr Trifle asked. ‘It’s way up in space.’
    ‘Yes, but it’s controlled from a tracking station on the ground — about a hundred kilometresfrom here. I know the people there. I’m sure they’ll let us use it. There’s no one actually up there with the telescope, of course.’
    ‘I don’t understand how it works,’ Mrs Trifle said.
    ‘Simple: they send up signals to move the telescope this way and that and tell it where and when to take pictures.’
    ‘But how do they see the pictures?’ Dr Trifle asked.
    ‘They’re sent back through the air — it’s all beeps and squeaks and dots and dashes. These go into a computer and the computer de-wonkifies them.’
    ‘It de-whats them?’
    ‘They’re usually wonky — all blurry and everything — so they have to be kind of smoothed out before you can actually see them properly. Come on, let’s drive out there. We’ll take some photos, put them on a disk and then bring the disk back here to look at on your computer.’
    ‘Isn’t it amazing what they can do these days? When I was a girl there was none of this fancy stuff,’ Mrs Trifle said, and the three of them headed for the car.
    ‘I wish I could go with them,’ Selby thought. ‘I’ve read all about the Sky Eye. It would be so much fun discovering new comets and galaxies. Oh well, at least I’ll get to see the pictures on the computer later on. Hmmm, I wonder what Percy’s book is like.’
    Selby lay down on the lounge next to the swimming pool in the back yard and read a chapter on spying in
Everyday Stars for You and Me.
    ‘Crumbs,’ he thought. ‘I never knew you could use sky telescopes to spy on people all the way down on the ground. That would be even more fun than looking at the stars! Oh, I love all that spy stuff.’
    As the sun set and as the first stars began to appear, Selby held up
Percy Peach’s Planet Plan
to see if he could tell which star or planet was which.
    ‘The problem with this thing,’ Selby said, lying on his back and using all four legs to hold the map up, ‘is that when I hold the map, I can’t see the stars anymore because the map’s in the way. I give up. It may be a life-saver for some people but it’s only a life-complicator for me. Maybe it’s better to just look at the stars and planets and not worry about what silly names we’ve given them.’

    Late that night the Trifles and Percy Peach returned.
    ‘I won’t stay,’ Percy said at the door. ‘You can look at the photos by yourselves.’
    ‘But don’t you want to see them?’ Dr Trifle said.
    ‘I’ve seen a lot of stars and planets. Besides, I’ve got to be back in the city by morning and it’s a long drive.’
    Selby watched as the Trifles excitedly put a diskette into the computer and started looking at all the photos they’d taken with the Sky Eye. There were dry and craggy planets and strange swirling galaxies with lots of colours like exploding fireworks.
    ‘These pictures are so wonderful,’ Selby thought. ‘They take my breath away.’
    ‘It’s all very nice,’ Mrs Trifle said finally. ‘But I think I like the Earth better than the stars. It’s all kind of cold out there and it’s nice and warm