V02
Measuring V
enus
A giant moon hanging over the desert watched a pair speed across early-morning toasted golden sands.
The overnight desert air smelt deliciously like warm toast, and zooming through it was Vincent the Vespa and Aunty Avril.
From under her white helmet, her ferociously-rimmed desert eye googles spotted Egypt’s enormous triangular pyramids.
The colossal coffins loomed into their path, and their pointy stone tips seemed to prop up the moon
While the silent moon magically stayed exactly the same size, the three-sided giants become larger and larger to Vinny and Aunty Avril.
“Which pyramid are we heading for?” Vinny called out, his engine humming with excitement.
“The tallest one!” Aunty Avril shouted back as a mouthful of gritty sand crunched between her teeth.
Sun god Re
At the base of the Great Pyramid, a shiny black scarab beetle emerged, its shell gleaming like polished glass.
It waited patiently, clearly expecting them.
When the scooter skidded to a halt — ten seconds late — the beetle puffed out his chest and spoke in a surprisingly regal voice, “I am Re, the one and only sun god.”
They stared at the tiny creature in awe.
“I am moments away from completing my morning rebirth,” Re continued proudly, “Rising from humble beetle to divine god.”
Each dusk, the celestial sky goddess Nut swallowed Re whole, and each dawn she gave birth to him anew.
“Fortunately,” Re added, glancing skyward, “Nut forgot to wind her alarm clock last night. She is running a little late.”
Above them, the sky yawned and stretched, and then urgently began seeping grey into pale blue.
“There’s one minute left,” Re whispered urgently. “Just enough time for your clue.”
He raised a delicate front claw, leaned close to Aunty Avril’s ear and murmured, “Use the point of the smallest pyramid.”
Before she could reply, the ancient heavens shimmered as Nut descended to gently consume Re, vanishing him in a dusty ripple of light.
Getting the measure of Venus
Holding her breath, Aunty Avril picked up her stellar parallax to calculate the distance of the still-visible evening star, otherwise known as the planet Venus, from the shortest pyramid’s point.
Later, after whispering the number to Vinny’s mechanical brain, she would note it in a top-secret notepad hidden in his engine.
Keeping a close watch out for strangers, the scooter noticed a thin bluish shadow.
“Aunty Avril,” Vinny hushed, “we have got company.”
“I know,” she said calmly, without looking up from her parallax tool.
Climbing back onto the seat, “Shadows don’t usually glow blue,” she said as Vinny sprayed sand before revving off in first gear.
“We are being followed, which means the game just changed,” she added.
Uneasy Pharaohs
The moon, sun and sky, suddenly very interested in what was going on, paused their celestial tasks to eavesdrop on the pair pursuing bluish shadows darting across the desert.
Buried pharaohs stirred from their afterlife to also listen in on Aunty Avril’s conversation with Vinny.
All were astonished to learn about humanity’s plans for an artificial star.
They were excited at their god-like authority being able to command a seeing-all object in the sky.
“We will become what we claimed to be,” they thought haughtily as the feline shadows disappeared.
Meanwhile, in London,
Marmalade contemplated how much Darjeeling tea he would require in his afterlife as he delicately sipped black tea from a cup decorated with black scarab beetles, and remembered to wind up his Florn alarm clock.