He began trying to plan a model with three thousand stars in their
orbits, trying to find some simple way of moving them. The others
watched in fascination. They apparently felt that the diagrams he was
drawing were some kind of scientific spell. Ser Perth was closer than
the others, studying the marks he made. The man suddenly pointed to his
computations.
"Over and over I find the figure seven and the figure three thousand. I
assume that the seven represents the planets. But what is the other
figure?"
"The stars," Hanson told him impatiently.
Ser Perth shook his head. "That is wrong. There were only two thousand
seven hundred and eighty-one before the beginnings of our trouble."
"And I suppose you've got the exact orbits of every one?" Hanson asked.
He couldn't see that the difference was going to help much.
"Naturally. They are fixed stars, which means they move with the sky.
Otherwise, why call them fixed stars? Only the sun and the planets move
through the sky. The stars move with the sky over the world as a unity."
Dave grunted at his own stupidity. That really simplified things, since
it meant only one control for all of them and the sky itself. But
designing a machine to handle the planets and the sun, while a lot
simpler, was still a complex problem. With time, it would have been easy
enough, but there was no time for trial and error.
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