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.He has not answered any of her telegrams, but he fears that eventually he will have to, because it will turn out to be the thing that points them to Planet X.It is nearly too much.And he’s out here, and poor Mary is at her wit’s end, and he is faced with the ridiculous figure of Constance.Clyde comes to the end of his recitation with a little rise onto his tiptoes as he describes the need to take exposures at opposition.It is shoptalk, but Alan sees that Mrs.Lowell has in fact been listening very carefully.She is no stranger to the mechanics of a planetary search, after all.“And is there no one else,” she queries Clyde finally, “assisting you?”“Well, Barber here.”“But Mr.Barber, I gathered that you were engaged in an entirely different enterprise.From what I gather from V.M.and from Roger, you’re still wasting your time trying to correct Percy’s math.”“I’m rerunning the residuals,” he says.“So you’re not assisting Mr.Tombaugh at all.”“Well, only as he needs it.He’s very capable.I’ll put my hand in at the comparator now and then when the going gets rough.”“Rough,” Mrs.Lowell scoffs.“Tedious, ma’am.”“Tedious! Tedium never kept Percy from anything.I don’t know what you expect, but maybe you’re used to being treated softly.A little competitive spirit never hurt anyone.A little fight.” She pushes on: “So you’re telling me, Mr.Tombaugh, that you, a high school graduate without a college degree and without any formal education in the field whatsoever, are the sole man in charge of the entire Planet X search, with Mr.Barber putting his oar in as you happen to need it but only occasionally.”“Yes, ma’am.”“And you’re operating Abbott’s telescope all on your own, without supervision from V.M.or Dr.Lampland or Mr.Barber here or anyone.”Alan can’t stand it, it’s just too much.“But he doesn’t need it, ma’am,” he growls.“He’s just doing exposures.You don’t need a degree to take a photograph.”“It’s not a matter of needing a degree precisely, Mr.Barber; it’s more a matter of accounting for appearances.I suppose this doesn’t make any sense to you as I have a feeling what your position is concerning appearances in general, you don’t have much use for them.But consider how it might seem from my end.” Mrs.Lowell accepts a cup of tea from Mrs.Wroth and sets it gently on her papered lap.“All this money, observatory money, not to mention Abbott’s money and Roger’s money, and not only what’s been needed to build the astrograph but also to keep it maintained and to pay you, Mr.Tombaugh, your ninety dollars every month for nearly a year, during which you’ve found nothing, and to acquire the plates and the developer and everything else, and simply the expenses that are involved in keeping you around, Mr.Tombaugh, your mail and your laundry and keeping the upstairs of the Main Building presentable so that it doesn’t look like a dormitory as I know it used to when Mr.Ross and Mr.Greene were here, all of that, and all the years that Percy spent looking for the planet, and all the time he spent on his calculations, and the computers who helped him with all of it, all of their years, and now that it’s all up and running again the whole project is handed off to you, Mr.Tombaugh.Of all the people in the world it could be handed to, it is handed to you, and no wonder you’ve come up empty.” She tests her tea.“I think you’d have to agree it just looks peculiar.”“You should see Barber’s office,” Clyde says.“He’s been working for months.”“The residuals.” Mrs.Lowell sighs.“Well, but that work has been done, Mr.Tombaugh.Poor Percy did it already.All those years he spent at it, and the only thing he lacked was the instruments, and now we’ve got them.I don’t see what you hope to discover, Mr.Barber.Surely it’s not a shortcut.”He says, uncomfortably, “It’s by way of a backup.”“To this one,” Mrs.Lowell clarifies.“Just in case.”“So you too would seem to agree that putting this boy Tombaugh at the head of the whole search is a little peculiar.”“No,” he parries.One has to be in the room with Clyde while he sits at the comparator to get a sense of how avidly Clyde goes after the plates, how stupidly, insanely patient he is, how uncomplaining he can be even in the face of a freezing fog that teases a milky veil over the sky and insinuates itself into the greased workings of the 13-inch and into your bones, so that even through the Navaho rugs and the buffalo robe you get a chill down your neck spreading to your core, to the heart of you.He is a hell of a worker is the point.“Of all the people in the world least likely to miss a suspect, Clyde is the one least likely to miss it.But you’re talking fifty thousand objects on some of these plates.It’s just common sense to give him some backup.”“But what else are we paying you to do, Mr.Tombaugh, anything else?” Constance has a lightsome air now.“Is this not to be expected of you, to not miss things on all these plates you’re exposing?”“If you could only see what one looks like,” Clyde says, “maybe you’d understand.”She answers this with a tiny huff and turns to Alan again.“And all these useless reductions, surely that’s not all you do.You must have some other means of occupying yourself.At a hundred fifty dollars a month you had better have.”“I’m with Dr.Slipher on the Variable Atlas.”“Still,” she sighs.“Will it ever end.”“It’s useful,” he says.And it is very tiresome, but it is steady and uneventful and just the thing he needs now, as it leaves him time for the residuals and, more important, to tend to Mary.“And it keeps us in good with Shapley.”“Oh, Shapley!” she curses.“Shapley isn’t anyone! Shapley’s only there by accident; that should have been Percy’s job, if he’d lived.” She heaves another despairing sigh and mutters, “Take all this stuff off of me,” and Mrs.Wroth sweeps down and removes her tea and the papers.“Mr.Barber, as you can imagine, the gossip doesn’t get to me the way it used to, but I still manage to hear things eventually.I can’t let you leave without my asking you about this business with poor Florence Morrow.What an outlandish thing for you to do.”He says, “It was a present
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