Pip was busy in the Pebble Ring Observatory, trying very hard to look helpful. She stood on a low stone step with her red scarf tucked tight under her chin, using both hands to brush silver dust off a brass chart table. Tonight was comet pebble night, and Tovin had said the sky-watching work needed careful hands. Pip wanted those hands to be hers.
Outside, the moon turned slowly, and the silver pebbles on the ground rolled in soft little arcs, chiming like tiny bells. Through the open dome slit, the telescope waited inside the copper dome gone the color of old sky. Pip could almost feel the important evening beginning.
Then she heard a sharp creak.
One of the beam-sails overhead — long wooden panels that caught the moon’s pull and helped guide the comet pebbles safely past the observatory — shifted out of place. Pip looked up just in time to see it tilt the wrong way. A first sprinkle of comet pebbles, tiny bright bits from the coming shower, wavered in the air and began drifting toward the telescope dome instead of over it.
“Uh-oh,” Pip whispered.
A few pebbles tapped the copper roof. One slid toward the narrow dome entrance and skittered along the edge. If more followed, the safe shower would turn into a pile right where the dome needed to open.
Pip hugged the brass chart table and stared from the tilted beam-sail to the drifting pebbles. She could dash to the sail and try to push it straight. She could run for Tovin, who would know the proper way to fix it. Or she could grab at the pebbles before they reached the entrance.
The first pebble slid closer. Pip had to choose fast.
What happens next?
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