Out of the Blue by Sarah Ellis Page A

the dome began to turn until the moon was framed perfectly. “The moon is a good choice for tonight. First quarter is good for shadows, you can really see things.” She typed at the terminal and the telescope turned. “Okay, have a look.”
    Megan slid into position. The moon filled her vision. Light grey, like plasticine. Clear, with a sharp edge of darkness, and huge. Two smooth areas against a rougher area, and little pockmarks dotted over it.
    â€œThe top blob is the Sea of Tranquility,” said Natalie, “and the one below is the Sea of Nectar. Not really seas, of course—plains.”
    â€œFancy names,” said Megan, holding one eye shut with her hand.
    â€œYes, I like them. The features of the moon were named three hundred years ago, and they went in for more romantic names than we do nowadays. The Lake of Dreams, the Bay of Rainbows.”
    â€œWhat are those pimple things?”
    â€œCraters. Probably the result of asteroid collisions. See the one with the bright dot in the middle?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œThat’s Theophilus, sixty-seven miles wide, one of the biggies. The dot is a mountain at its center, catching the light.”
    â€œWow.” Megan stared. What did it remind her of? Oh, yeah, drops of water from the canoe paddle. But these things were miles wide. It would take days to walk across them. She tried to imagine walking on the moon. “It’s hard to believe that it really is the moon and not, you know, made up. Do you spend a lot of time here?”
    Natalie looked through the second eyepiece. “Yup, and in the winter it gets really cold. Sometimes I seem to spend all my time twiddling with the computer. But other times I don’t work at all. I just stare. I like the flip that my mind does when I realize that I’m not looking out into space but back into time.”
    â€œBack? I don’t get it.”
    â€œDo you know about light-years?”
    Megan shook her head.
    â€œWell, distances in space are so huge that we use light-years as a measure. A light-year is how far light travels in a year, about six million million miles.”
    â€œWow, but how does that mean we’re looking back in time?”
    â€œWell, if a star is ten light-years away then we are seeing it as it was ten years ago.”
    Megan’s brain started to hurt. “But we’re still seeing it right now.”
    â€œRight now here, but not there. I had a professor who used to say that looking out into space is looking elsewhen rather than elsewhere. The stars we’re seeing may not even exist anymore.”
    â€œWhat a rip-off!”
    Natalie laughed. “I never thought of it that way. I guess I’m just used to living in two times.”
    â€œFind me one of those light-year stars.”
    â€œOkay.” Natalie typed away at the computer for a minute, and the telescope moved above them in the darkness. “Here’s Vega, twenty-seven light-years away. Fifty-eight times brighter than our sun.”
    Megan looked and looked, trying to believe that she was looking into the past. She started to feel as though she were floating, with nothing to hold onto. Something in her got big. She was falling into space, evaporating, going fuzzy at the edges. She caught herself grabbing onto the chair.
    Natalie was talking. “It’s all there. The whole history of the universe, written in the sky.”
    Megan thought of the asterisk leading to the small print, the truth. A message from each star.
    Natalie continued: “All that information and we’ve only figured out how to read the tiniest bit of it.”
    It sounded as if Natalie were talking to herself. It was very relaxing.
    â€œMegan, can I ask you something?”
    Uh-oh. End of things being relaxed. Was this telescope thing just going to be an excuse for some revolting sister-to-sister talk? Was this question going to be, How come you’ve been acting like such a