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smiled.
    The guests flanked him and the aide gave the shears to Evelyn, who passed them to Charlie. Two others held the ribbon for him. “On this eighth day of April,” he said, “in the two-thousand and twenty-fourth year of our era, and the two hundred and forty-eighth of the independence of the United States, in the name of the United Nations, I declare this facility, Moonbase, to be operational.”
    He cut the ribbon. An electric motor in the wall hummed and the doors opened. Beyond, Main Plaza lay in darkness. But a spotlight mounted atop the administration building blinked on, highlighting a park, a cluster of elms, some benches, and a pool. Then the overhead solar panels brightened, and daylight came to the parks and shops and restaurants and overhead walkways.
    Applause began. At first it was restrained and polite. Almost perfunctory. But someone cheered, and it built and became a crescendo and went on and on and on.
    NEWSNET . 12:30 P.M. UPDATE
(Click for details.)
    BUDDHA’S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATED BY ADHERENTS WORLDWIDE
    DID NASA CONSIDER ALL-WOMAN CREW FOR MARS?
    Leaked Report: Best Way To Ensure Psychological Stability
    Deny Politics Influenced Current Assignments
    TRANSGLOBAL GETS CHICKEN LITTLE PRIZE FOR WHITE PLAGUE COVERAGE
    Falsely Reported That Zambesi Virus Is Airborne
    “Scared Wits Out Of Millions”
    34th Annual Award By National Anxiety Center
    Baseball:
    AARON BROKE RUTH CAREER HR MARK 50 YEARS AGO TODAY
    Hit 715th Against LA Dodgers In Atlanta
    Aaron’s Total of 755 Still Unsurpassed
    TOKYO FERRY CAPSIZES
    Hundreds Feared Lost
    Eyewitnesses Say Boat Was Overcrowded
    TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE TODAY
    Sky Spectacular Visible Across Much of U.S.
    VATICAN DENIES POPE SERIOUSLY ILL
    Innocent “Exhausted But Fit”
    MOONBASE OPENS TODAY; VP PRESIDES OVER CEREMONIES
    Beaver Meadow Observatory, North Java, New York. 12:38 P.M.
    Wesley Feinberg had twice won the Nobel Prize for his work in calculating the age of the universe and for establishing the relation between gravity and quantum effects. He was also director of Harvard’s AstroLab in central Massachusetts. He was respected by his peers, treated like a minor deity by the graduate students, and granted every perk by the institution, which was delighted to have him. The latest perk: temporary assignment to the Beaver Meadow Observatory in North Java, New York, which was in the path of the eclipse.
    Feinberg was happy to go. And not only because of the celestial event. He was a bachelor, a man who’d devoted his life to astronomy and discovered it wasn’t quite enough. The trip to Beaver Meadow got him out of the apartment he’d grown to detest, and threw him in with a new group of people. The reality of his existence puzzled him. He’d accomplished everything he’d ever wanted, had gone well beyond what he’d thought possible. Yet he sensed that something round and dark had moved across the essence of his own existence, blocking off the light.
    Beaver Meadow wasn’t a big facility. It had only three telescopes, the largest being a forty-five-inch Clayton-Braustein reflector, which would relay images onto an eighteen-foot wallscreen. The observatory had reserved a prime-location computer for him, overlooking the wallscreen. The director, Perry Hoxon, asked whether he required anything else.
    Hoxon was a busy and innocuous little man. Feinberg explained he was not working on a specific project. In fact, he would have been content to sit quietly outside on one of the benches in the adjoining park, and simply enjoy the eclipse. But yes, he was certainly grateful for the prime location. (He would in fact have been irritated had it not been offered.)
    Now, as the event unfolded, he wondered whether he shouldn’t have gone outside and watched from the parkinglot. Several hundred people had crowded into the facility. Kids were laughing, babies crying, and there was a minimum level of conversation that did not subside even during the final moments before