{"product_id":"2940015735277","title":"Watchers of the Sky","description":"CONTENTS\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Prologue\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   I. Copernicus\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  II. Tycho Brahe\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e III. Kepler\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  IV. Galileo\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   V. Newton\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  VI. William Herschel Conducts\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e VII. Sir John Herschel Remembers\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Epilogue\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePROLOGUE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTHE OBSERVATORY\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt noon, upon the mountain's purple height,\u003cbr\u003eAbove the pine-woods and the clouds it shone\u003cbr\u003eNo larger than the small white dome of shell\u003cbr\u003eLeft by the fledgling wren when wings are born.\u003cbr\u003eBy night it joined the company of heaven,\u003cbr\u003eAnd, with its constant light, became a star.\u003cbr\u003eA needle-point of light, minute, remote,\u003cbr\u003eIt sent a subtler message through the abyss,\u003cbr\u003eHeld more significance for the seeing eye\u003cbr\u003eThan all the darkness that would blot it out,\u003cbr\u003eYet could not dwarf it.\u003cbr\u003e                        High in heaven it shone,\u003cbr\u003eAlive with all the thoughts, and hopes, and dreams\u003cbr\u003eOf man's adventurous mind.\u003cbr\u003e                           Up there, I knew\u003cbr\u003eThe explorers of the sky, the pioneers\u003cbr\u003eOf science, now made ready to attack\u003cbr\u003eThat darkness once again, and win new worlds.\u003cbr\u003eTo-morrow night they hoped to crown the toil\u003cbr\u003eOf twenty years, and turn upon the sky\u003cbr\u003eThe noblest weapon ever made by man.\u003cbr\u003eWar had delayed them. They had been drawn away\u003cbr\u003eDesigning darker weapons. But no gun\u003cbr\u003eCould outrange this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"To-morrow night\"--so wrote their chief--\"we try\u003cbr\u003eOur great new telescope, the hundred-inch.\u003cbr\u003eYour Milton's 'optic tube' has grown in power\u003cbr\u003eSince Galileo, famous, blind, and old,\u003cbr\u003eTalked with him, in that prison, of the sky.\u003cbr\u003eWe creep to power by inches. Europe trusts\u003cbr\u003eHer 'giant forty' still. Even to-night\u003cbr\u003eOur own old sixty has its work to do;\u003cbr\u003eAnd now our hundred-inch . . . I hardly dare\u003cbr\u003eTo think what this new muzzle of ours may find.\u003cbr\u003eCome up, and spend that night among the stars\u003cbr\u003eHere, on our mountain-top. If all goes well,\u003cbr\u003eThen, at the least, my friend, you'll see a moon\u003cbr\u003eStranger, but nearer, many a thousand mile\u003cbr\u003eThan earth has ever seen her, even in dreams.\u003cbr\u003eAs for the stars, if seeing them were all,\u003cbr\u003eThree thousand million new-found points of light\u003cbr\u003eIs our rough guess. But never speak of this.\u003cbr\u003eYou know our press. They'd miss the one result\u003cbr\u003eTo flash 'three thousand millions' round the world.\"\u003cbr\u003eTo-morrow night! For more than twenty years,\u003cbr\u003eThey had thought and planned and worked. Ten years had gone,\u003cbr\u003eOne-fourth, or more, of man's brief working life,\u003cbr\u003eBefore they made those solid tons of glass,\u003cbr\u003eTheir hundred-inch reflector, the clear pool,\u003cbr\u003eThe polished flawless pool that it must be\u003cbr\u003eTo hold the perfect image of a star.\u003cbr\u003eAnd, even now, some secret flaw--none knew\u003cbr\u003eUntil to-morrow's test--might waste it all.\u003cbr\u003eWhere was the gambler that would stake so much,--\u003cbr\u003eTime, patience, treasure, on a single throw?\u003cbr\u003eThe cost of it,--they'd not find that again,\u003cbr\u003eEither in gold or life-stuff! All their youth\u003cbr\u003eWas fuel to the flame of this one work.\u003cbr\u003eOnce in a lifetime to the man of science,\u003cbr\u003eDespite what fools believe his ice-cooled blood,\u003cbr\u003eThere comes this drama.\u003cbr\u003e                        If he fails, he fails\u003cbr\u003eUtterly. He at least will have no time\u003cbr\u003eFor fresh beginnings. Other men, no doubt,\u003cbr\u003eYears hence, will use the footholes that he cut\u003cbr\u003eIn those precipitous cliffs, and reach the height,\u003cbr\u003eBut he will never see it.\"\u003cbr\u003e                            So for me,\u003cbr\u003eThe light words of that letter seemed to hide\u003cbr\u003eThe passion of a lifetime, and I shared\u003cbr\u003eThe crowning moment of its hope and fear.\u003cbr\u003eNext day, through whispering aisles of palm we rode\u003cbr\u003eUp to the foot-hills, dreaming desert-hills\u003cbr\u003eThat to assuage their own delicious drought\u003cbr\u003eHad set each tawny sun-kissed slope ablaze\u003cbr\u003eWith peach and orange orchards.\u003cbr\u003e                                Up and up,\u003cbr\u003eAlong the thin white trail that wound and climbed\u003cbr\u003eAnd zig-zagged through the grey-green mountain sage,\u003cbr\u003eThe car went crawling, till the shining plain\u003cbr\u003eBelow it, like an airman's map, unrolled.\u003cbr\u003eHouses and orchards dwindled to white specks\u003cbr\u003eIn midget cubes and squares of tufted green.\u003cbr\u003eOnce, as we rounded one steep curve, that made\u003cbr\u003eThe head swim at the canyoned gulf below,\u003cbr\u003eWe saw through thirty miles of lucid air\u003cbr\u003eElvishly small, sharp as a crumpled petal\u003cbr\u003eBlown from the stem, a yard away, a sail\u003cbr\u003eLazily drifting on the warm blue sea.\u003cbr\u003eUp for nine miles along that spiral trail\u003cbr\u003eSlowly we wound to reach the lucid height\u003cbr\u003eAbove the clouds, where that white dome of shell,\u003cbr\u003eNo wren's now, but an eagle's, took the flush\u003cbr\u003eOf dying day.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47146409361648,"sku":"2940015735277","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940015735277","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}