That evening had been their first time there together. They'd found a corner table and ordered drinks and sat in the glow of a small candle in a glass dish. Soft music flowed across the room. Carlisle had realized how little he knew about her, and how fascinated he was by even the trivia of her life. What had she been like in high school? What were her interests? What sort of home life did she come from? How did she really feel about him?
It was the happiest night of his life. He was with her, a cosmological golden age was approaching and he was looking forward to his career as a giant. By the end of the century he expected to rank with Hubble and Sandage and Penrose. This was a period utterly unique in the history of the world. A small group of men and women, for the first time properly armed with instrumentation and theory, were trying to make sense of the universe, how big it was, how old, whether the expansion was as precisely balanced as it appeared, and why that should be so. How galaxies formed. Whether strings existed. Why there was symmetry. It was a glorious time, and Carlisle was already part of it.
And he intended to make that journey with this magnificent creature at his side.
She had looked at him with undisguised pleasure. Now, he understood how easily she was reading him.
I like being with you, her eyes said. But she asked, "What's a standard candle?"
The wax candle burned cheerily on the table top. "If you took twenty of these out of a box, each one would probably put out more or less the same amount of light. So if we saw one on a rooftop, we could figure out how far away it is by measuring how dim the light has become. That's a standard candle. It's a light source that always radiates at the same level of intensity. We call it absolute luminosity. Whenever you see it, you can get a decent range estimate." He stopped and sipped his drink. "Cepheid variables are standard candles. You can always figure out how far they are. But they aren't bright enough. We can only see them on local rooftops. What we need is something that's visible in the next town. Or across the country."
"The blue stars," she said, almost breathless, as if she'd been running.
"Yes. The brightest blue stars in a galaxy always have essentially the same absolute magnitude. So we now have an intergalactic yardstick."
"I thought you could already measure distances with red shifts."
"A little bit," he said. "The redder the shift, the further the object. But the method's inexact." He looked at her across the rim of his glass. "They're subject to too many interpretations."
The candle glowed in her eyes. "Congratulations, Hugh."
Later, toward the end of the evening, he called the observatory. "Your numbers seem to work," Lowenthal told him.
Carlisle could still see the telephone, a big old-fashioned rotary wall model; could hear the soft tinkle of a piano solo; could smell warm wax on the still air. Judy sat angled in his direction, watching, her eyes locked on him, waiting for a sign.
"Thanks," he said into the phone.
He looked at her. Thumbs up.
Carlisle had always been something of a Puritan. But that night a different set of universal laws were in place. He bought a round of drinks for a group of strangers at the next table, puzzled them by toasting "candles everywhere," embraced Judy, and threw a twenty-dollar tip onto the table.
They drove to her apartment, Carlisle leading the way. (No sly suggestions about leaving one car in the lot; he would never have been so obvious.) But it hadn't mattered. At her doorway, she had slipped into his arms, and he became intensely aware of the pressure of her left breast. The other was also engaged with him, but Carlisle had found that the sensation was more intimate, more intense, when he concentrated on one at a time.
She had moved against him, subtly, and invited him in, so to speak. And it was over for Carlisle. He remembered her lips, the line of her jaw, her breathing the sound of the wind in the trees.
She did not draw away. Not then, nor for many years.
Next day, during the late afternoon, Lowenthal called and asked him to come out to Kitchener. The Director's voice was somber, and Carlisle knew there was trouble. Nevertheless, he hadn't pressed; he was a drift in a euphoric state and nothing could shake him. He put the call out of his mind and completed his classes for the day. Then, after a deliberately casual meal, he had driven back up the mountain.
"You do seem to be correct," Lowenthal assured him. By then, he had been director at Kitchener more than ten years. He was lean and polished, self-effacing and eminently well-mannered, a rare breed among the pushy egos who dominated the field. "The blue stars work. Unfortunately, we're late. Sandage and Tammann got there first. It's even been published. Damned thing's been on my desk for three days. I saw it this morning."
Carlisle recalled staring out across the mountaintop. And he remembered what Lowenthal had said next, would always remember it: "Don't worry. It's bad luck. But you'll be back. You're too good not to be back."
"How can you sit there and tell me that the universe has no edge?"
He loved those early evenings, when her mysteries were still new to him, deeper and darker than the spaces between the galaxies. And far more enticing.
They became Friday-night regulars at Spike's, and went to the movies and shows on Saturday. Carlisle floated through his days with a warm sense of well-being, anxious only to get to the weekend.
She invited him to Franklin to address her U.S. history classes on how scientific progress since the turn of the century had influenced the course of events. Since Carlisle wasn't entirely clear on the course of events, he needed help from her. But they pulled it off together, talking about atom bombs and computers and gas engines and the glee with which many of the churches had embraced the Big Bang.
They had met at the Kane Planetarium, where Carlisle had been a part-time lecturer. She'd been at their Star of Bethlehem program, had sat off to his fight with a man who'd looked like a football player. After the show, she'd asked a couple of questions, and then drifted away with her companion. He saw her several times after that. She was alone or with girl friends in subsequent visits, and they had always exchanged a few remarks on the presentation. It took a while before he got up the nerve to invite her to dinner.
On the evening after the history class, he had taken another major step forward. She'd been happy with his performance, and he saw a window of opportunity. "Maybe Everett was right," he said, mysteriously.
She frowned between pieces of beef. "Who's Everett?"
"An astronomer. He suggested there might be a universe for every possibility. A place where every wave function is realized. If an event is possible, somewhere it happens."
That got her attention. "That's science fiction," she said. But he could see that the notion appealed to her.
"It's only an idea." He looked at her, and then blurted the thought that had crossed his mind, even though he knew it was not prudent. That it might scare her off. "If there's anything to it, somewhere out there, you and I are wearing each other's rings."
It was an electric thrust. An uncharacteristically daring move.
She held him in suspense momentarily. And squeezed his hand.
Somewhere out there, you and I are wearing each other's rings.
She said yes a few months later, and they went to a little Unitarian church on a Massachusetts hilltop, where the only religious symbol was a stylized carbon atom. Judy's family, who were Catholic, were visibly displeased, and suspected the arrangement had something to do with Carlisle. But it was Judy's idea. Carlisle didn't care, had no strong religious views one way or another, and would have married her in a Fiji Island ceremony if she had asked.