Read Online Andie's Moon by Linda Newbery - Free Book Online Page B

and puzzling – and asking themselves questions about how it could possibly make sense. People used to think the sun went round the Earth, didn’t they? – she’d just read that Galileo had even gone to prison, for saying it was the other way round.
    How astonishing it was! How had she not been fascinated ever since she was old enough to gaze up at the sky?
    She heard footsteps in the hallway. Mum, in her dressing gown, looked round the door.
    “Put your light out now, Andie. It’s time you were asleep. Goodnight, love.”
    It was ten past eleven. Prune was already sleeping. Andie clicked off her bedside lamp and waited until her parents were in their room and the flat in darkness, allowed a little longer for them to fall asleep, then turned her light back on and continued reading.
    At last! Five to midnight, and all quiet. While she was putting on socks and sneakers, and pulling a warm sweater over her pyjama top, she heard the faint creak that meant Ravi was on his way up to the attic. She tiptoed out of the flat, remembering to put the door on the latch, this time, so that the cats couldn’t escape.
    He was there, setting up his tripod on the flat part of the roof. Andie gazed up. The night was beautifully clear, the sky spangled with stars – luring her closer, making her wish she could spread her arms and fly into them.
    “Hello! It’s lovely and clear tonight. I want to look at Lyra,” Ravi said, just as if he hadn’t virtually ignored her in the garden, last time they’d met. “It’s only small but it’s got one of the brightest stars in it, Vega.”
    “Does Kris know you come out here?” Andie asked, while he was adjusting the telescope.
    “Course! That’s why she was winding you up about the ghost. She knew it was me,” Ravi said, with his shy grin.
    “Wouldn’t she want to come, too? I mean, Patrick and Marilyn let her do whatever she wants – she wouldn’t have to sneak out, like I do.”
    “She did come up a couple of times. But she’s no good at staying awake, or waking up once she’s gone to sleep – and when she did, she had to stay in bed till ten in the morning, to get over it.”
    “It’s just – you know,” Andie tried, “I don’t want to leave her out.”
    Ravi looked at her in surprise. “Leave her out? Who’s leaving her out? She’s not bothered about this, and we are, that’s all. But I was telling you about Vega. You can’t miss it, even with just your eyes – it’s the fifth brightest star of all. Fifty times brighter than our sun. That’s a useful one for skyhopping. Here, look through the scope. See it, the really bright one?”
    “Yes, I think so.”
    “And if you look really closely at Delta,” Ravi continued, “which is left and a little bit down, you’ll see that it’s really a double! Can you see the two separate stars, very close together?”
    “Yes!” Andie said, after searching for a few moments. “And they’re different colours – one’s sort of reddish, and the other one’s white.”
    “That’s right. Now look with just your eyes, and I’ll show you the Summer Triangle – a triangle made by Vega and two other bright stars, Deneb and Altair. That’s useful to know, as well…gives you a good, er, landmark…”
    “Skymark?”
    “Okay then, skymark.”
    Soon Andie had various skymarks she could pick out for herself – even if she’d never know as many stars by name as Ravi did.
    “But they’re moving!” she exclaimed, finding that she had to keep making slight turns of the telescope.
    “They’re not. We are. The Earth’s turning – the stars stay where they are.”
    “Well, course.” Andie tried to pretend she’d always known this. And of course she had known – but how odd to see it happening, almost to feel it!
    “Now let’s come a lot closer to home,” Ravi said, when Andie was quite dazzled. “To the moon, I mean.”
    He positioned the tripod and focused, muttering, sounding pleased, then motioned Andie