A Cosmic Blunder

Stevens is antsy; the New Times photographer who has just finished taking his portrait has never looked through a telescope, and Stevens can't wait to get him to the eyepiece. It's what he lives for. He jokes that he's going to have to be more careful, though, now that his excitement for indoctrinating others has cost him the discovery of a lifetime.

His friends sympathize. Fellow astronomer Tom Polakis says he hopes he'd be so big-hearted if the same thing happened to him. "I think I'd react that way, that I'd be glad just to have been a part of it," he says, but then adds: "On the other hand, I would be bummed if somebody who didn't even own a telescope took a look in mine and said, 'Hey, what's this thing you missed?'"

Stevens, however, is philosophical: "There's nothing I can do about it . . . I might as well just not have been there," he says. "What I really get ticked off at is the fact that they're only using two names on them and they were using three and four . . . That's what ticks me off, not because I didn't see it. You know, this is one of those things that happened, you know? It happened that way. I can't change history."

There's also nothing he can do about the weather. After picking out a few objects through the rapidly disappearing holes in the cloud cover, Stevens and Bopp give up for the night. They tear down the telescope, load it into Stevens' tired station wagon, and start the long drive home.