The Pinprick Hours
In the fifth hour of the constellations’ duty, the hill was lit by Doctor Josiah Smallport and his lantern. He settled his tripod in the tall grass. He mounted his telescope and placed his stool by it, rucksack tucked underneath. As he, with one hand, aimed his telescope for Jupiter, he, with the other, rolled up his trouser cuffs and untied his boots.
Resting his soles and ankles into the grass’s soil and breeze, he screwed his face into the telescope’s eyehole. He focused the lens with his left hand as he unbuttoned his vest and took out his pipe. Then he sat back out of his view and struck a match. His breathing, unbuttoned, swung loose as his linen sleeves.
Pipe now in mouth, he leaned back in and looked up at his Jupiter. They were holy things, the belts of Jupiter, raging burns in a symphonic circle, stark against the dark void. No, they were not as clear as Doctor Josiah Smallport had seen them, but he had fine recall and imagination. He could make out the planet’s red dot, a 10, 159-mile pinprick. He breathed in from his pipe, imagining that the gas giant’s storms flowed through his own lungs. His breathing fell in with the wind.
It wasn’t only arrays of stars that could humble Smallport, but details too. He was proud of that.
A painful puncture in his left foot sat him bolt. He caught the tail of a rustle slipping out of his lantern’s domain.
He gritted his teeth around his pipe. ‘Bastard.’
He helped his foot into his lap and, in his unsteady, saturating light, spanned his skin with his thumb, looking for the bite. He could feel it, and squinted to see the dot of red. It was panic, hypochondria, or venom that made his blood thicker and heart faster. He looked back where he’d come. It was a distance to the speckles of town. Venom would do well over a distance.
He removed his pipe. ‘Bastard.’
Smallport licked his thumb and rubbed it in orbit around where he felt that venomous pressure. Then he set it back down and cradled his pipe. Numbed, rubbing his leg, he sighed into the night sky. The astronomer puffed a couple more draughts.
It was a clear night, and all the universe was before him. The vast sweep of stars, planets, and moons fell out there. At this moment, the Earth had humbly moved itself between himself and the tyrannical Sun. Sacrificially. Night did not ask for attention. She cultivated her hidden details.
He closed his eyes and smiled. Then he grinned. Venom, was it? Alright.
Footfalls sounded at the edge of his hill. They were accentuated with metal. They were accentuated with chains.
Smallport stood erect as a rabbit, his pipe falling to the grass. He stepped to put the telescope between himself and the newcomer, using the movement to steady his blood. He wasn’t comfortable with it racing through him so quickly now. He rubbed his left foot against his right.
The chained figure came hunched and stumbling up into Smallport’s light. Smallport’s blood quickened at the thick grey stripes the stranger wore. They had gone red at his side, but the grey was more concerning.
The stranger collapsed onto Smallport’s stool and the chain between his feet struck its wooden leg. He fell doubled over himself, so all Smallport saw was thinning hair and a peeling scalp. The stranger pressed both his hands to his wound.
‘Food?’ the stranger coughed. ‘Water?’
Smallport’s rucksack lay beneath the stool. Smallport said nothing. He wide-eyed watched, and lay a comforting hand on his telescope, careful not to tilt it away from Jupiter’s storm. He was troubled in the gut – stranger or snake? He swallowed and settled it for a second.
The stranger turned his bowed head towards the tripod, finding its bronze engraving.
‘A doctor?’
‘You read?’ Smallport found that the night air steadied his words.
‘I read D-R. You take oaths.’
‘I’m not that kind of doctor.’
‘I’m innocent.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I said I’m innocent.’
‘I know.’
The stranger groaned and kicked the tripod. It was a weak kick. Smallport’s hand held the telescope in place, trained on the planet 367 million miles estranged. The stranger used shaky breaths to sit himself up. He took his hands off his seeping wound. Smallport’s gaze went there briefly before the stranger’s watery eyes caught him.
‘I’m dying, Doc,’ he said.
Suddenly feeling like his own unsettled innards might spill, Smallport rebuttoned a third of his vest. ‘Okay.’
He made no move but watched the seeping red spot stain more of the stranger’s grey belts.
‘You can look if you like,’ Smallport said.
‘What?’
‘In the telescope?’
The stranger barked a laugh but then eased forward. His trembling neck craned his eye to Jupiter’s rage. Smallport followed and found Jupiter for himself. It was a pinprick of whose secrets he was privy to. He and this stranger.
The stranger came out of it. ‘That’s meant to do something for me?’
Smallport stepped back. He thought the stranger might strike but, instead, he fell double again. Smallport thought he might be dead, but he came back up with the discarded pipe. The stranger coughed in a draught, staring at Smallport’s bare feet.
‘Bastard,’ he said. Then he fell off the stool.
Smallport’s throat constricted. Perhaps it was only from watching a man die. Steady, he reclaimed his stool. He sweated in the warm air and looked down at the pipe in the stranger’s hand. It was coated, in and out, with dead blood. Smallport wouldn’t touch it.
He reclaimed his view of Jupiter. He found it difficult to keep focus. He adjusted the lens and blinked. Each blink seemed longer than the last. Each breath, too. Jupiter turned grey. Smallport tried to colour it in. The planet was far.
In the sixth hour of the constellations’ duty, they were joined by a pipe-lit hill in Earth’s night.