The Astronomer – Part 1: Dark Sky

The observatory crowned the highest ridge for miles, a white dome, a ladder of steel steps and a telescope as long as a bus. The members' night was over. The car park was empty. Lena had arranged to keep the key until dawn.

She was forty-four, an astronomer by training and now a research director, patient as a glacier and rather bossy. Marcus was thirty-nine, a veterinary surgeon, warm and capable, who had told her one night under a meteor shower that his deepest wish was to be told exactly what to do.

Under the dome, with the shutter open on the stars, she gave him the terms on a clipboard. His limits and hers: no marks, nothing painful, nothing humiliating beyond the game, no leaving the dome. The word was Eclipse.

"Say it."

"Eclipse."

"If you say it, I put down the clipboard. We watch the sky and talk."

"Yes, Doctor."

"Not yet." She pulled on a long dark observing coat and clipped a red torch to her belt. The dome's lights dimmed to a faint crimson. Her voice dropped low and level. "Assistant. You have been careless with the instruments. Do you deny it?"

"No, Doctor."

"Good. Then you will learn the discipline of the observer." She pointed at the floor beside the telescope. "Kneel there. You will not speak unless I ask you a question. You will not move unless I tell you."

He knelt. She walked the dome's floor in a slow circle, checking the mount, the clock drive, the eyepiece, her back to him, ignoring him for ten whole minutes. It was perfect. It was agonising. It was exactly what he had wanted.

"Are you content?" she asked, without turning.

"Content, Doctor."

"Good. The observation will be long."

Continue the story: Part 2 – First Light.