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The Stars Have Secrets

Prologue

February 1976: near Dayton, Ohio. On a small farm, far away from bright city lights, a six year old boy named Peter was visiting his grandparents. He sat on the spacious front porch of the farmhouse with an assortment of nuts, bolts and screws laid out before him. He was camped under a tripod, its three legs enclosing him like bars. With a look of intense concentration, Peter held up a wingnut and carefully attached it to an extension of one of the tripod legs. His head supported a triangular tray that attached to the three extensions. After securing the remaining two wingnuts, he climbed carefully out from under the tripod and admired his work. Not bad for a six year old, he thought to himself.

Just then his grandfather emerged from the house, carrying a precious little tube about two feet long. At one end was a precision ground glass lens; at the other, a ninety degree elbow. Peter’s eyes lit up at the sight of it. Scattering the nuts and bolts all over the porch, he rushed up to his grandfather. "Is it time yet, grandpa? Is it time yet?"

His grandfather chuckled. "Almost, Petey, almost. Now clean up those bolts before your grandma falls and breaks her neck."

"Yes, grandpa."

Peter completed the task with characteristic eagerness as his grandmother appeared at the front door, holding a sweater. "If you catch cold out here again young man, your mother isn’t going to let you visit anymore," she scolded gently, pulling the sweater over his head.

"Aw, she worries too much," was Peter’s muffled reply.

Once he was sufficiently bundled up, his grandmother turned him loose. He ran full speed down to where his grandfather was setting up the tripod. He watched with bright blue eyes as Grandpa carefully attached the tube. Now, the pile of wood, nuts and bolts was complete- a telescope. The word rolled off Peter’s tongue like honey.

The sun was sinking slowly in the west, and grandpa was finishing up his fine-tuning of their handmade instrument. Peter had stood by his grandpa’s workbench for weeks, watching a true craftsman at work. Grandpa had painstakingly ground the mirror from scratch into the correct shape. He had fashioned a length of aluminum tubing, painted black on the inside, into the telescope’s body. Peter only had a vague idea of what the telescope actually did, but still the concept fascinated him. He knew that somehow the little lens could make things appear closer. Kind of like his binoculars, only stronger.

Daylight slipped into twilight. Finally, the moment had come. At long last, Peter’s weeks of waiting were over. Grandpa had promised him something special, but Peter had no idea of what he was about to behold. He was perched atop a stepladder, scanning the western horizon with his little 7x35 binoculars. Next to him, poised and ready, was the reassuring presence of the telescope. Peter’s gaze wandered upward, and suddenly he spotted a bright, white twinkling star in his binoculars. "Grandpa, Grandpa, what’s that?" Peter asked, not taking his eyes off it.

It was often said that Grandpa had the sharp, steady eyes of a hawk. After years of patient observation, he knew the night sky better than the back of his hand. He followed Peter’s line of sight, and almost instantly declared, "Why, that’s Rigel, Petey. The foot of Orion."

"Wow," Peter gasped, with typical childlike wonderment. He lowered the binoculars and stared, trying to spot the little star with his eye. The words "Rigel" and "Orion" danced in his head like sprites.

Then Grandpa spotted what they were looking for at last. "Petey, look," Grandpa said in hushed tones. Peter lowered his binoculars and followed his grandpa’s outstretched arm. There, just above the clear southwestern horizon, something was beginning to take shape. Above the last purple glow of twilight, a fuzzy star had appeared.

"Quick, quick, turn the telescope on!" Peter hopped up and down on the top of the stepladder, causing it to teeter. All thoughts of Rigel flew out of his head like bats out of a cave.

"Now, now, patience Petey." Grandpa put a steadying hand on his shoulder. "Just look at the big picture for a few minutes."

Patience wasn’t Peter’s strong suit, but he obeyed Grandpa’s suggestion. And very soon, he saw the "big picture" Grandpa was talking about. As the minutes passed, the fuzzy star grew brighter and brighter, until it was a bright, oval, ghostly glow. Out of the glow, pointing up and to the left, streamed a magnificent white tail. Peter thought that somehow, out in space, time had stopped. For this apparition looked to him like a missile poised to strike the edge of the world- a cosmic bullet with a trail of fire. How could it be suspended there, not moving?

Smiling broadly, Grandpa clapped Peter’s shoulder and said, "Petey, meet Comet West."

Open mouthed, Peter looked from his Grandpa back to the sky. As he watched the comet, silently burning in the cold depths of space, he underwent a transformation. This experience, which Fate had placed before him, would change him forever. Like most of life’s milestones, this one was totally unexpected. All the pieces had to fall together perfectly in order for it to happen. If the sky had been cloudy, if his grandfather had been ill (which he often was), if Peter’s parents had taken him with them on their trip rather than leaving him at the farm… Any one of these things could have caused Peter to miss his appointment with Comet West, and his destiny.

Peter smiled at his grandfather in the darkness. In that moment, Grandpa knew. He saw the change in Peter’s face. Like a ship changing course, so Peter’s life would head in a new direction. That Grandpa John Ford had played a part, he was glad.

* * *

July 1995: the icy depths of the outer solar system. Here, numbers have little meaning. The denizens of this part of space have been keeping their own time for eons, oblivious to the tick marks of humanity. The whole of human history amounts to no more than the blink of an eye in the cosmic time scale.

An interloper has intruded into the realm of the Giant Planets. Throughout its long life, this rogue spends most of its time on the very fringe of interstellar space, well beyond the orbit of frigid Pluto. But every once in a while, it succumbs to the Sun’s "come hither". Pulled by gravity, it begins a long, slow arc that carries it on a tour of the solar system, through the domain of titans like Jupiter and Saturn. During this journey it transforms- from a dirty snowball of rock and ice to a grand, glowing fountain of liquid and gas. In the process, a comet is born.

The Sacramento Mountains- Cloudcroft, New Mexico, Earth: A lone observer makes a momentous discovery. Ironically, this man has spent the greater part of his professional life in search of such of a find- only to come up empty. But on this clear summer night, he makes the discovery of a lifetime- by accident.

Roughly 700 miles from Cloudcroft, near Stanfield, Arizona, a second man makes the same find simultaneously. He is a casual but knowledgeable skygazer. He too stumbles into his discovery accidentally, using a telescope borrowed from a friend. Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp, very different yet alike in their passion for astronomy, are now forever linked in the history books. Their find will turn the astronomical community on its ear; indeed, the whole world will take notice. For Comet Hale-Bopp has arrived.

For John and Peter Ford, the discovery has particular significance. For most of his sixty-six years, John has patiently scrutinized the heavens, hoping to attach his name to a comet. One day after Hale-Bopp is discovered, he and Peter are on a late night observing run. While scanning the sky with a powerful reflecting telescope, John "discovers" the comet again. Neither he nor Peter knew at the time that Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp had already staked a claim on this piece of cosmic real estate. When John submits his find to the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, he is regretfully informed that he is too late, and the Ford name remains unknown in the astronomical community. Grandfather and grandson thought wistfully of Elisha Gray, who in 1876 filed a patent for his "telephone" mere hours after Alexander Graham Bell had filed his. Now they knew how Elisha felt…

The last time Comet Hale-Bopp passed the third planet from the Sun, its occupants were building the Pyramids in Egypt, and Stonehenge in England. More than likely they noted its passage, marveling in awe and perhaps terror at its magnificent apparition. Perhaps the ancient peoples of Earth gave it a name- no one knows. Today, although the comet phenomenon is clearly understood, it still provokes the same reactions of wonder (and occasionally terror) in those who behold it. The more things change, the more they stay the same…

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