MD3PAD 94-96

[Toby G Levy]

        Chapter 10 begins with a paragraph from the unpublished sermons
of Wicks Cherrycoke in which he equates man and God to planets circling
the sun.

        The children rush to the orrery in the corner of the room in
Wicks has been telling his story of Mason and Dixon. They want a
demonstration of the Transit of Venus. Tenebrae and Ethelmer find
themselves pressed close together and do a bit of flirting.

        The orrery includes a newly discovered planet named "Georgian"
but eventually became Uranus.  The planet had been added by the German
engineer Dr. Nessel who was going around America updating all the
orreries to include the new planet. He fashions each planet by hand,
and each is a little different from each other.

        Wicks explains that the observers must mark as exactly as
possible the times of the beginning and end of the Transit. With all the
times of observations from all over the world, scientists would be able
to compute the value of the Solar Parallax, which Wicks defines as "The
size of the Earth, in seconds of Arc, as seen by an observer on the
surface of the Sun."

        Another visitor to the room calls the measurements "A vector of
desire." This visitor is another college man on winter break. He is
Depugh, the sun of Uncle Ives LeSpark.

        Wicks returns to the story with Mason and Dixon waxing rhapsodic
over the event of the Transit.

Toby