Doppler Effect

By Jake Stephens

IlluStvation by Kristen Gardner

10

I almoSt smiled as my fingertips pressed the cool metal
of the gun barrel to the table, and I thought of how I
missed Dr. Peters.

For all his quirks, my lifelong friend had also
been my only real coworker at the observatory. We
knew we were going to be aStronomers from an early
age, and despite his unfortunate familial history of
mental illness, he had an amazing mind. In secondary
school, there was nothing he liked more than to lean
back on his porch on clear nights and Stare up at
Stars. And after university, we both landed positions
at the same lonely research lab, where despite Strange
philosophical tangents and tantrums, I always loved
to sit up late with him and discuss his theories on the
outer workings of the universe.

Then, a few months ago, he became agitated.
He kept ordering our scopes back to the same area,
keeping the same section of sky under observation,

until at laSt I became suspicious. I had to queStion him
about it.
“It’s really nothing, Ben. I thought I saw something

a while back; thought it might be a new event. It was
nothing, but I wanted to check.” His light blue eyes
jerked up towards the ceiling, that same direction.
“You know Id share any big discoveries with you,
right?”

He always was a terrible liar.

Peters Stayed late in the lab from then on, and was
always scribbling notes I could hardly read when I did
give in to the temptation to snoop. Refractory index...
angle of approach...new phenomenon... And assorted
jargon. I told myself it was nothing but the neweSt
awkward tick in a long series. Perhaps he intended to
write a book on the red-shifting qualities of objects
moving away from the viewer, and the corresponding
bluish coloration of approaching ones.