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Hitty rested her weary head against the window-frame and sent her wearier thoughts upward to the stars; there were the points of light that the Chaldeans watched upon their plains by night, and named with mystic syllables of their weird Oriental tongue, names that in her girlhood she had delighted to learn, charmed by that nameless spell that language holds, wherewith it plants itself ineradicably in the human mind, and binds it with fetters of vague association that time and chance are all-powerless to break, Zubeneschamali and Zubenelgunebi, Bellatrix and Betelguese, sonorous of Rome and Asia both, full of old echoes and the dry resonant air of Eastern plains, names wherein sounded the clash of Bellona's armor, and the harsh stir of palm-boughs rustled by a hot wind of the desert, and vibrant with the dying clangor of gongs, and shouts of worshipping crowds reverberating through horrid temples of grinning and ghastly idols, wet with children's blood.
"In the constellation Orion, which contains the most beautiful cluster of stars in the heavens, and is visible all over the inhabitable world, are four stars which form a parallelogram. See them on the map? Betelguese and Rigel, at the extreme opposite corners, are of the first magnitude, and the others that form the other corners are Bellatrix of the second and Saiph of the third magnitude.
Shining up through the long grasses, the five-pointed white stars of the little marsh bell-flower are no more dismayed by the stately beauty of the tall blue bell-flower over the fence, with its long strings of blossoms set on edge like dainty Delft-blue saucers, than the Pleiades are shamed by the splendor of Aldebaran and Betelguese on a bright night in November.
"I never saw that huge W before " said Peter. "You don't mean Cassiopeia? Her chair isn't there, but over to the north " "No, no there. Rigel, the upper right corner, down to the left, the Dog-star; up to Betelguese, down to the left again to Procyon, and up to the brightest of all the stranger, not usually there " Spenski clutched him. "I was watching the bigger configuration, and didn't notice.
More than 2,200,000,000 times as much heat as the earth receives, goes out into space. And this enormous amount of heat is but a poor fraction of the heat of 400,000,000 suns, few of which are so small as ours. A single star, Betelguese, has recently been computed to be 215,000,000 mi. in diameter, and therefore larger than 10,000,000 suns like ours.
"Come on, you clowns, knock it off and tell me why you called a hard-working man away from his drafting table to come up to this play room of yours. What have you got up your sleeve this time?" "Oh, that's too bad," said Arcot, leaning back comfortably in his chair. "We're sorry you're so busy. We were thinking of going out to see what Antares, Betelguese, or Polaris looked like at close range.
"Yes, suh, Cap'n Ban; but Cap'n Carse was going into a pow'ful lot of trouble. An' he was worn an' tired, an' he only had a space-suit an' a raygun, an' you know he wouldn't stop for anything till he'd done what he set out to. I kind of feel ... I dunno ... I dunno...." "By Betelguese!" swore Ban Wilson, "if he doesn't come soon I'll take that damned Porno apart till I find him!"
As Seaton slowly shifted the field of vision, angling toward and across the celestial equator and the ecliptic, they beheld in turn mighty Rigel; The Belt, headed by dazzlingly brilliant-white Delta-Orionis; red Betelguese; storied Aldebaran, the friend of mariners; and the astronomically constant Pleiades. Seaton's arm contracted, swinging Dorothy into his embrace; their lips met and held.
Then after a heavy pause, "How are you getting on with the stars?" "Oh, I learned the diagrams in that nice little book you sent me, but I'm afraid I've forgotten most of them now. I feel rather superior about Betelgeuse, though." "So do I. We might start a Betelguese Club." "What would we do at it?" "Oh, read papers.
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