“That is … fascinating,” Beatrice said, blinking rapidly. “But do go on. Did you see wind-whales, or asteroids? Were you attacked by pirates?”
“We were fortunate enough to avoid pirates, as well as the French navy. As to the rest, I am afraid there is little to tell.” She took another careful bite of her roast. “I spent most of the journey in my cabin.”
She did not confess the reason for this, which was that her mother had kept her forcibly confined there for almost the entire voyage—at first to prevent Arabella from attempting to escape the ship and return to Mars, and later, or so she had said, to protect her from the unwelcome attentions of the airmen.
“Surely you cannot have spent the entire time in your cabin? Does the trip not take a year or more?”
“That depends upon the positions of the planets.” Arabella paused, then pointed to her place setting. “Suppose my dinner-plate is the sun, and my bread-plate the Earth. My wine-glass, then, would be Mars; both orbit around the sun, but Mars is further away than Earth, do you see?” She picked up her glass in her right hand and held it above her lap so that the glass and the two plates were all in a line, with the large plate between the small plate and the glass. “Now, when Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the sun, as you see here, the trip does take well over a year, and because of the expense and difficulty very few ships undertake it. We call this ‘conjunction.’” She shifted her wine-glass to her left hand and set it down just beyond her bread-plate, so that the glass and the two plates were again in a line, but this time with the small plate between the glass and the large plate. “But when the two planets are on the same side of the sun—we call this ‘opposition’—they are much closer together, and the voyage from one to the other takes as little as two months. This is our situation at the moment, as it happens.”
Suddenly Simon brightened, taking a keen interest in the conversation for the first time. “Two months, do you say?”
But Beatrice appeared puzzled. “Why is it that when the planets are far apart it is called ‘conjunction,’ but when they are close it is ‘opposition’? This seems contrary.”
“It is because of Mars’s position in Earth’s sky—a rather parochial point of view, in my opinion. Conjunction is so called because Mars and the sun are very close to each other in the sky when seen from Earth; at opposition, they are on opposite sides of the sky.”
But Simon seemed uninterested in details of astronomy. “You say that few ships will undertake the long voyage because of the expense. Is the cost of passage on the short voyage more … reasonable?”
“Oh, yes! Much more so.” This, as it happened, was a subject very close to Arabella’s heart. Ever since her arrival at Marlowe Hall, whenever a newspaper should happen to fall into her hands she eagerly perused the shipping news, taking especial note of ships accepting passengers to Mars. Though the expense was, of course, very far beyond her means, she eagerly drank in every detail, stoking her impossible fantasies of running away to London and returning to the land of her birth. “At the moment one could take passage for as little as two hundred pounds.”
“Two hundred pounds!” gasped Beatrice.
“Two hundred pounds…,” mused Simon.
“The accommodations at that price would be Spartan, to be sure, but with so many ships departing at this time, you would find no difficulty in obtaining a berth.”
The conversation went on in that vein for some time—Arabella being amazed, once again, by the degree to which most Englishmen were ignorant of even basic astronomy—but only Beatrice participated, Simon having again fallen silent and pensive. His gristly roast lay untouched upon his plate, and he stared at it with pursed lips and tense shoulders.
Suddenly, with only the briefest of courtesies, he rose and excused himself from the table. Beatrice’s eyes followed his retreating back with an expression of deep concern.
“I…” Arabella stammered. “Have I said something improper?”
“I do not believe so. He has been more than usually troubled these last few days, but I know not what might be the matter.”
The two women ate their dinner in silence for a time, while various sounds of motion and activity echoed down the hall. Beatrice became increasingly anxious as Simon’s absence lengthened, and finally she excused herself to see what might be keeping him.
Alone at the table, Arabella was left to examine her dinner-plate, bread-plate, and wine-glass, which sat where she had left them at the end of her astronomical disquisition.
The bread-plate and wine-glass were so very close together.…