TOTAL ECLIPSE

CHAPTER 1 PART 1

IT WAS SPRING WHEN JULIA CAME TO THE OBSERVATORY.

Everybody noticed her arrival. Almost no one noticed that it was spring The birds on the mountaintop were noisy. Some of the low peaks were turning from white to a pale egg blue. The air warmed and swelled and thickened, impeding progress a little around the steep site Scientists sweated when they climbed up the ridges where the tele scopes were housed. And the tourists arrived.

Far beneath the circling hawks their car hoods flashed at regular intervals as they rounded the bends in a well-spaced line. An hour later the windows of the staff sidence trembled as the first of the cars turned, in low gear, into the parking lot.

The tourists did not realize they were being watched. During the long days' wait for night, the astronomers and their support staff would work or sleep or read or talk. When spring brought the visitors they would stare at them through the lounge windows of the staff residence. The were tinted and if the visitors noticed anything it was their own reflection. Lomax had been too embarrassed to stand in the lounge and intercept strangers' glances when he first came to the observatory. It was like participating in someone else's love affair Messages, ricocheting between the visitors and their mirror images and back again, were personal, swift, subliminal. But after a month or two the sight became so familiar that Lomax allowed himself to watch more intently.

For the scientists, removed from their homes for days or weeks or months, the bickering families were reassuring and the women were interesting. The men commented on their clothes, hair and legs. At the time there was an Italian in residence who loved feet.

"Oh God, oh God, look at her toes," he moaned as a woman passed by in flip-flops.

"Lovely teenage daughter just arrive. She did not want to come to observatory today She feel sick at traveling road around and around mountains. She prefer to lie by pool in a very small bikini. She put clothes on today only with utmost reluctance," a Russian commented helpfully. A few of the scientists glanced up at the lovely teenage daughter but most of the men were dozing or reading. An Englishman was sulking because the recently arrived copy of the Astrophysical Re-view was on someone else's lap. Someone wrote a letter home Some one played solitaire with a worn pack of cards.

"Her first sexual experience still await her She can dream of this event and imagine what it will be, but nothing can really prepare her for gift of love that awaits her. "

Now almost everyone was looking at the teenage daughter Only Doberman remained in his corner, shortsightedly bent over his com puter printout.

The Englishman seized his moment.

"If you're not reading that, perhaps I could He gestured to the Astrophysical Review and then eased it out of Lomax's hands. Lomax let it go. He was watching the girl. She sloped along behind her parents and young brother. Her hair had the sheen of frequent brushing. Her lips were dissatisfied They pouted.

"Good feet, good feet," said the Italian knowledgeably.

The girl neared the window and, seeing her own image, stared as if encountering a lover She bridled and looked up at herself from low ered lids Her lips parted to reveal a shining brace of some complexity.

"Aaaaah. So slender, so supple, her walk the self-conscious walk of young woman who is begin to know own body. Face so clean from all stresses and monstrous strains that harass wrinkles. And mouth. Let us take mouth now..."

But Yevgeny's audience had been diverted.

Professor Berlins was crossing the parking lot He was explaining something waving his arms around and nodding vigorously at his own words. At his side walked a strikingly attractive woman She was not a tourist. Tourists wore baggy pants and sneakers and sloppy sweatshirts. This woman wore a short, simple dress that touched her body in enough places to reveal its shape. She looked, thought Lomax, as though someone had sculpted her. At this distance he could see only outlines but all the angles and proportions that are most pleasing to the human eye were somehow right about her of the chin to the neck, the shoulder to the arm, the rise of the breast, the taper of the ankle.

"Oh God, oh God," breathed the Italian Lomax concluded her feet were good too.