Read Online Borrowed Light by Anna Fienberg - Free Book Online

light-gatherer, this instrument was, and I had it in my very own back garden.
    A T EIGHT O’CLOCK , Ruth announced that it was Jupiter Night, and the family came out to investigate. They stood around in the grass, Mum holding sleepy Jeremy, Dad with his hands in his pockets.
    â€˜Jupiter is the largest of the planets in our solar system,’ Grandma told me. ‘And tonight it is in position for us to see it.’ I moved toward the telescope, but she clicked her tongue. ‘Listen first, and you’ll know what you’re looking at.’
    â€˜Well don’t go on too long, then,’ my mother said, looking at Jeremy who whimpered in his sleep.
    Ruth ignored her. ‘So,’ she breathed expansively, ‘did you know, Callisto, that Jupiter is a giant world, the brightest planet after Venus?’
    â€˜What is it made of?’ I asked, proud of my question.
    â€˜Green cheese and puppy dogs’ tails,’ grinned Dad, and tweaked my ear. I scowled at him.
    â€˜On the contrary, the core of Jupiter,’ replied Ruth loudly, ‘is composed of melted rock, and is even hotter than Earth’s core. There’s a shell of ice around the core and over that an atmosphere of hydrogen that is thousands of kilometres thick.’
    My father began to pull up weeds. He hummed the Star Trek theme under his breath. Soon a bundle of limp dandelions lay in his arms, so he excused himself and wandered off to Mum’s compost heap.
    I began to finger the telescope. It was growing harder to wait.
    â€˜Through the telescope,’ Ruth went on, ‘you may see the poison clouds around Jupiter—they look like bands of different colours. They rush around at vast speeds—and on one band there is the Great Red Spot.’ Ruth brought out this last phrase with relish, like a chocolate she’d been saving for me.
    â€˜What’s that?’ I asked. I imagined a giant leak of blood, unstoppable.
    â€˜A storm that has been raging for over three hundred years,’ Mum answered quickly, before Grandma could open her mouth.
    â€˜Is that true?’ I looked from my mother to my grandmother in amazement.
    Caroline gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Well, I am the encyclopedia’s daughter, am I not?’
    Ruth smiled happily. ‘Yes, the Great Red Spot was discovered by Galileo, the first man to point his telescope in its direction. Thanks to him we’ve been able to see the storm raging ever since.’
    I stored that piece of information away. It made me shudder, it was fascinating and horrifying, the idea of a storm continuing forever. All that lashing rage and fury,with no horizon of forgiveness at the end. I looked at my mother, who was looking at
her
mother, and wondered why Caroline had never told me anything about this.
    â€˜Before the telescope was invented, no one knew that Jupiter was the mightiest of the planets,’ Grandma Ruth went on. ‘But it is named after the most powerful of the Roman gods. And you know, Jupiter’s gravity is so strong,’ here Ruth lowered her voice to a whisper, so that I had to stop fingering the telescope and lean closer, ‘it keeps other members of the solar system
captive
!’
    â€˜Oh Mother, for heaven’s sake!’ cried Caroline. ‘Why do you have to put it that way?’
    â€˜Who’s captured?’ I asked.
    â€˜Asteroids, dark matter, moons—your namesake, of course!’
    â€˜What?’
    Ruth looked at Caroline, her eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘There are sixteen known moons that spin around Jupiter.’ Ruth turned to me. ‘Four of these you’ll be able to see with the telescope and one of them is called—
Callisto
!’ Ruth stood back to gaze at me, like a painter who stands back to see the effect of his last brushstroke.
    â€˜You knew that, silly,’ said Mum, shifting Jeremy to the other shoulder. ‘I told you about it years ago, but you were