By the time Isobel’s three nights were over, leaving La Silla had become something other people discussed on her behalf.
Her room had been needed for another arrival. Someone found her a different one. Her observing programme had been interrupted, then quietly replaced by work that appeared on several people’s schedules. Meals reached the control room at irregular intervals, usually after Ernesto reminded someone that she had not eaten.
The observatory had grown busy around her.
Astronomers who had barely glanced at her during the first night now came looking for the latest positions. Telephone calls arrived from people she knew by reputation. Fresh measurements appeared from other instruments, accompanied by questions she had already asked herself and hoped someone else might answer differently.
They did not.
The object was real. Its motion had been confirmed independently.
Its possible paths were narrowing.
Ernesto found her standing beside a fresh printout.
He put a mug on the desk and waited until she noticed it.
“Coffee?”
“Something resembling it.”
She took the mug without drinking.
He looked at the sheet.
Another observatory had supplied measurements spanning a longer interval. Isobel had worked through them twice before adding them to her own. The revised solutions occupied less space than the earlier ones, but Earth had not moved safely beyond them.
“I keep expecting another observation to change it,” she said.
Ernesto pulled out the chair beside her.
“Has it?”
“Yes.”
He waited.
“In the wrong direction.”
She placed the printout with the others.
There was still uncertainty in the orbit. She was careful about that when speaking to colleagues, and even more careful when writing anything down. But the uncertainty was becoming smaller around a conclusion she increasingly dreaded.
The estimates of size offered no relief either.
Every time she tried a more favourable assumption, she found herself checking whether she had chosen it because it was justified or because she wanted it to be true.
The telescope behaved better when they stopped arguing with it.
That was how Ernesto described the situation, although he would not have allowed the phrase into a maintenance report.
There were still movements they had not requested. The difference was that Isobel now recorded them before asking him to restore the original field. Sometimes the change offered a better comparison against the background stars. Once, a sequence of shorter exposures helped them recover a measurement she had almost discarded.
She tested each result.
Anything the equipment appeared to offer had to survive the same checks as the rest. She had no intention of allowing gratitude to replace evidence.
But she had stopped treating every interruption as lost time. Late that evening, the instrument paused between exposures. Ernesto glanced at the controls.
“That wasn’t me.”
“I know.”
A different field appeared.
Isobel studied it, then reached for the list beside her keyboard. Several comparison stars were visible more clearly here. She checked the position, considered the exposure and asked Ernesto to leave it alone.
He leaned back.
“You could at least look offended.”
“I’m trying to work.”
“So was I, three nights ago.”
She smiled, then began measuring.
The stranger entries in the control files had been copied and preserved.
Ernesto checked them at the beginning of each shift. The plotted amulet and its accompanying message remained unchanged. There was no signature, no useful trace of whoever had placed them there and nothing he could point to that explained the telescope’s behaviour.
Isobel kept the drawing beside the observing log.
She had begun speaking to the equipment when no one else was in the room.
At first it was no different from the remarks she had always made to an uncooperative machine. Then one night she found herself explaining why a particular measurement needed repeating.
The next sequence gave her the opportunity.
That frightened her more than the original faults.
She spent an hour checking whether her own instructions could have produced it.
When Ernesto returned, she told him what had happened.
He listened, examined the records and asked her to show him exactly what she had entered.
Neither found an answer.
Afterwards, she sat before the screen with her hands resting beside the keyboard.
“If you’re trying to help,” she said quietly, “I need to be able to check what you give me.”
Nothing replied.
The next exposure began.
Professor Valdés telephoned the following morning.
Isobel took the call in a small office while someone outside tried to locate a set of observations that had already been delivered to her desk.
He asked about the latest measurements first.
She gave him the figures and waited while he compared them with those he had received. There was a silence long enough for her to hear papers moving at his end.
“We need to keep extending the observations,” he said.
“I know.”
“Your caution in the report was right.”
She looked towards the open doorway.
“Are you telling me I’m wrong?”
“No.”
She sat down. For several seconds, neither spoke. Then Valdés asked whether she still had the drawing.
“It’s beside me.”
“And the original files?”
“Ernesto has copies of everything.”
“Good. There are people coming to see you.”
Isobel looked down at the small central shape surrounded by five others.
“From Cambridge?”
“No.”
“Who are they?”
“People who recognise what you found.”
She straightened in the chair.
“You’ve shown it to someone?”
“Yes.”
“And they know what it is?”
“They know enough to take it seriously.”
Outside the office, footsteps stopped. Someone called her name, then moved on when she did not answer.
“What have they got to do with the object?”
“That is one of the things we need to establish.”
Isobel waited for him to continue.
He gave her what he could: a group was being brought together in England; arrangements were being made for them to travel to Chile. They would contact the observatory before arriving.
“Can they help us?” she asked.
“I believe they can.”
She looked again at the message beneath the drawing.
Connection requires the six, bearing their own.
“How many people?”
Valdés paused.
“I’ll send you the details as soon as they’re confirmed.”
Ernesto was waiting when she returned.
He had a fresh image on the screen and an untouched plate of food beside her chair.
“Anything useful?”
“Some people are coming.”
He looked towards the passage, where two astronomers were discussing a telephone call neither wanted to make.
“More?”
“These may know something about our ghost.”
His expression changed.
Isobel sat down and drew the plate closer.
“He wouldn’t tell me much.”
“Professors rarely do when it matters.”
She looked at the latest image. The point had moved again, exactly where the revised calculations suggested it would.
Ernesto checked the controls.
“We’re ready when you are.”
Isobel placed the drawing where she could see it beside the screen.
“All right,” she said.
For the first time, Ernesto was unsure whether she was speaking to him.