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Updated: May 28, 2025
The Kalis began purring contentedly, as though space were no more than a huge living room, and they were beside a comfortable fireplace, looking up at their all-powerful mistress. The dust-cloud was farther away than Ato had guessed. Long before they reached it, his instruments began to waver. He looked at a star-map. Meanwhile, Nea fed rows of figures into a humming calculator.
He started, hastened into his room, tore off his coat, replaced it with a quilted smoking-jacket, sprang lightly to his table, seized a planisphere, or star-map, which he had succeeded in obtaining that night from a small working astronomer's shop in the Edgeware Road, and, mindful of the terms of his oath and the decided opinion of Robert Green, scurried hastily, but very gingerly, down the stairs.
Meanwhile the Prophet was conscientiously fulfilling his promise and keeping the oath he had pledged his honour over, although he had to work under a grave disadvantage in the total loss of his planisphere, or star-map. He entered the butler's pantry precisely on the stroke of eleven, and found it, to his great relief, untenanted.
Nature, with all her shining mysteries, her distant reticences and revelations, calmed the turmoil within him. He looked upon the area railings and upon the sky, and smiled. Then he looked for the star-map. He perceived in a very prominent position upon a silver salver, the bradawl laid out, according to order, by the obedient Mr. Ferdinand.
Had a good star-map been at hand, the process would have been a simple one; but of Bremiker's "Hora XXI." no news had yet reached England, and there was no other sufficiently comprehensive to be available for an inquiry which, in the absence of such aid, promised to be both long and laborious. As the event proved, it might have been neither.
Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that the Berlin astronomer had two circumstances in his favour apart from which his swift success could hardly have been achieved. The first was the possession of a good star-map; the second was the clear and confident nature of Leverrier's instructions.
He entered the big oval room, lighted from overhead by the great star-map in the ceiling, and crossed to his desk, with the viewscreens and reading screens and communications screens around it, and as he sat down, he cursed angrily, first at Harv Dorflay and then, after a moment's reflection, at himself. He was the one to blame; he'd known Dorflay's paranoid condition for years.
"Very poor, my dear, very irregular indeed." "It's the best I could do," said the Prophet, still politely. "I daresay," replied Mr. Sagittarius. "I daresay. Where's your star-map?" "I'm afraid I don't know," answered the Prophet. "I left it in the pomade." "The pomade!" "Yes, the butler's own special pomade, and it seems to have disappeared." "Very careless, very careless indeed.
"A labour-saving device for mariners, navigation reduced to kindergarten simplicity," he answered gaily. "From to-day a child will be able to navigate a ship. No more long-winded calculations. All you need is one star in the sky on a dirty night to know instantly where you are. Look. I place the transparent scale on this star-map, revolving the scale on the North Pole.
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