Doctor Who and the Empire of Glass | Page 8

their way through the
timbers fastest. One good sneeze could bring the place down around his ears.
Things had been different on his previous visits. He was used to whoring and drinking
with Gianfrancesco Sagredo in his palace on the Grand Canal, or debating natural
philosophy with Friar Paulo Sarpi in the Doge's Palace. Sagredo was in Syria now,
drawing a diplomat's salary and, no doubt, raking commissions off crooked merchants
and rapacious pirates. Sarpi, by contrast, was still recovering from the fifteen stab
wounds he had suffered during the attempt on his life by agents of the Pope. Galileo had
seen the wounds, and was amazed at his old friend's survival. One of the stilettos had
entered Sarpi's right ear, passed through his temple, shattered his jaw and exited through
his right cheek. Sarpi had claimed that God was smiling on him that day. Galileo couldn't
help thinking that if that was God smiling, what must his wrath be like?
He hauled himself up the ladder and on to the platform. The air was cold, and the
platform gave slightly beneath his bulk. Just his luck if a strut snapped, sending the
greatest philosophical mind in Christendom tumbling into the alley below. Thus did God
check the excess pride of man.
He walked to the edge of the platform, past the velvet-shrouded object in the centre and
the chair beside it, and gazed out across the city. The sky was the deep purple of grapes,
and tinged with fire along one edge where the sun had descended beneath the line of
houses. Soon it would be night. The moon had already risen like a plate of burnished
pewter sent spinning across the sky.His moon. The object given to him by God for his
own personal glory. The flambeaux that burned across the city, illuminating the distant
campanile tower with fitful light, mirrored the searing ambition in his heart.
He reached out and tugged the velvet cloth off the shrouded object, throwing it carelessly
across the chair. The spyglass beneath - brass half-covered with scarlet cloth - shone in
the last few glimmerings of sunlight. About the length of his arm, it sat on a tripod

inscribed with calibrations, symbols and Latin inscriptions. He had constructed it in his
own workshop in Padua, based on what his friends and his spies had heard of Hans
Lipper-shey's work in Germany, but he wouldn't be telling the Doge that. No, as far as the
Venetian nobles were concerned, he had invented the whole thing himself. What to look
at? He could turn it North, towards the Italian coast, and onwards towards Padua and
beautiful Marina. Or he could turn it South, gazing out into the Adriatic Sea and the
incoming fishing boats.
He smiled to himself. Marina would be asleep and the fishing boats would wait. No, there
was only one choice. He swivelled the spyglass upwards and aligned it roughly towards
the silvery disc of the moon. By eye he could make out the mysterious shapes that lay
across its surface like veils, but with the spyglass he could make out rough circles and
lines that changed their appearance as the sun moved in relation to them and its rays
struck them at different angles. Nobody else had seen what he was seeing! The
knowledge almost made him drunk with delight.
He removed the leather cap from the glass lens and sat down in the chair. Leaning
forward, he gazed through the glass. Perhaps tonight God would inspire him to discover
what these shapes were, and why they changed.
The moon's surface was startlingly white - bone white - with fuzzy grey shapes marring
its perfection. Galileo forgot the cold, and forgot the uncomfortable position that he had
to adopt, as his eye scanned the surface, looking for -
He jerked back suddenly, almost upsetting his chair. That couldn't be right. Surely not.
He bent down and gazed through the lens again, then blinked a couple of times. Perhaps
what he had seen was a mote in his eye, or a bird passing across his field of view. He
looked again. It was still there: an object, too small to recognize but too large to ignore.
Its shape was circular, like a discus, and it spun rapidly while moving in a straight line. It
was moving at an angle, but there was no doubt that it was heading away from the surface
of the moon and towards him.




Chapter Two
"Would you like me to row for a while?" Vicki asked. "Or are you just resting for a
moment?" Steven tried to detect some note of sarcasm in her voice, but she was too good
for that. He tried to mutter a sarcastic rejoinder, but he was panting