Lab Notes: a novel by Gerrie Nelson Page B

been saved by the bell. Sometime in the middle of the night (after the Jivaro state of happiness wore off) she had analyzed the situation and concluded that the natema was the culprit, and she was willing to put the incident behind her. But something in Gabriel’s manner told her that, as far as he was concerned, the matter had not yet been settled.
    Returning from the Friday evening sailboat races, Vincent walked into the living room, peeked under the lid of the baby grand, then headed upstairs to his telescope with Huck at his heel. He climbed the spiral stairs to the cupola, flipped on the light and studied the room’s celestial wallpaper.
    Dark blue stick figures, representing the galaxies, covered the light gray background above the windows and tumbled down into the spaces between them. Interspersed among the stars; astrolabes, telescopes and sextants floated through space.
    Vincent ran his index finger past Perseus, then along the configuration of Andromeda to Pegasus. Down one leg of the winged horse, he found what he was looking for: Hidden in the busy wallpaper pattern was a series of faint numbers recorded by a careful hand.
    Vincent had studied the copious jottings a few nights earlier. Checking them against his star chart, he discovered that some of them were dates and coordinates of right ascension and declination, representing the space addresses of celestial bodies. The numbers had obviously been placed there by Dr. Harry Lee.
    At first, it seemed a bit macabre exploring the universe with a dead man as a guide. But Vincent soon developed a sense of astral kinship with the murdered scientist. After all, he occupied Harry Lee’s office and laboratory and lived in the house originally built for him.
    Until now, Vincent had set his telescope to the hand-written celestial coordinates, but he had not yet tried the single numbers—obvious earth-bound compass headings—listed below them.
    As for the strings of numbers and letters lightly penciled low on the wall, close to the baseboard, he had no clue. But their decoding would have to wait for another day. Tonight was the night for the compass headings.
    Vincent stepped over the dozing dog and peered closely at the wallpaper. “Let’s see here: three hundred twenty degrees.” He swiveled the powerful telescope toward the far shore of the lake, then switched off the light. After giving his pupils time to dilate in the darkness, he looked through the eyepiece.
    Ever-so-slowly he angled the lens downward, all the while reporting his progress to the dog lying at his feet. “Nothing, nothing…nothing…There!” he shouted. He had located the blurry horizon. Then after a series of infinitesimal moves, he picked up a nebulous cluster of ground lights. He reached for the focus knob and moved the lights in closer…closer…
    At the far edge of his consciousness, a telephone rang. But the blurred lights out there commanded his attention.
    Vincent played with the adjustments for several seconds before he realized he was holding his breath. He straightened up, exhaled and scratched his chin through his beard. “This is like asking an elephant to tiptoe,” he told Huck.
    The phone stopped ringing.
    After what seemed like hours of incremental adjustments to the telescope, a psychedelic array of lights appeared before him. On the other side of his lens, human arms and heads bobbed in and out of view in a frenzied environment of flashing colors.
    Vincent pulled back his focus slightly to get the broader picture. Then he chuckled. “What do we have here?”
    A distant ringing began again.
    Vincent sharpened the focus. And before his amazed eyes appeared a lakefront two-story floating bar and dance floor called The Pelican Club —according to a red neon sign on the roof. The second-story writhed with hyper animated bodies. From Vincent’s vantage point, it appeared like a bacchanal of flexing Adonises and undulating Aphrodites moving to the rhythms of colored strobe