Spud,16, and Edith,15, watched the Army Corps of Engineers dude--actually a GS13 civil service type-- roll the transit up and down the concrete drain stack for what was to be watershed Lake Ollie Davenport. The device was solidly set on its tripod, and leveled painstakingly with the bubbles and knurled screws. The man rolled it through its vertical range, and apparently the cross hairs followed the centerline of the stack. This was the final reading. The South one. The West, North and East readings had apparently been acceptable.

The GS13 grinned at the contractor who was building the lake. The stack suited him. It was straight and vertical and three hundred feet tall, though only six feet square. There were two rings of guy cables at hundred foor intervals.

When the lake reached operating depth, the water would overflow into the mouth of the stack and fall three hundred feet down, then rush south two hundred feet through an aqueduct through the base of the high, narrow earth dam, and wander on, a happy little brook, through the wooded hills. Certain species could no longer migrate upstream, and others would perish as the water was warmed, basking in the lake, but the towns of man downstream would know less flooding. Progress.

The skinny boy and voluptuous girl watched the construction crew drive away, locking the steel-pipe gate across the dirt and gravel road behind them.

The lake was just beginning to fill. It would take all of the summer to begin to overflow. The pair of vandals hiked out onto the road across the top of the dam, then climbed the sown grassy slope, down to the exit end of the aqueduct.

Spud liked the walk on that Edith, so he followed the fleshy jiggles up the cool concrete tunnel. The aqueduct was round, apparently the same size in square feet as the square stack, which was four feet of hollow space inside foot thick walls of concrete and rebar. Edith could walk standing straight down the exact middle of the tube. Spud had to crouch a trifle.

The bright sunny day dimmed sharply as a big puff of cumulus covered the summer sun. The tunnel went pitch dark. Spud was prepared. He drew a cheap plastic flashlight and said "Wow."

Their ears rang. The wow echoed back and forth and up and down, changing pitch and mixing with itself until it sounded like a bell tolling, fading slowly to silence.

"Yee-hee-hee-hee-haa-haa." yelled Edith and the bells tolled for them.

Spud kissed the crazy thing, and they made the bells toll for a fit of giggling.

They reached the elbow, where a massive ramplike turn from up and down to sideways was coated with slick, epoxy-like polish. Something meant to last years with gritty muddy water at 126 pounds per square inch hammering at it.

The GS13 was almost right, with his high-dollar transit. The slight crook in the stack obscured less than half of the opening at the top. A marvel of engineering. The tiny square of sky was deep blue.

"And thar she blows!" Spud said excitedly. "My arithmetic was right. That's gotta be Poleax."

"Polack? what do you see?" Edith said. "Oh, my. A star. In broad daylight."

Spud was still high. "Yep, and at this time of day, in this month, looking straight out from the center of the Earth, it's the Twin. Castrate's brother, Poleax. I got that book of star charts out of the library and made notes. That's why I wanted to come here. Other than to violently rape and sodomize some redhaired flooze."

"I gotta be home for supper. If I see a flooze, I'll tell her you're out here looking at the stars and chortling." Edith teased.

"I did the thing with the sun shadow, and a protractor and a clock. Hey, where we are in the Eastern zone, the sun is highest at one thirty eight PM. But this is with my own eyes, direct confirmation! Seen it my own self."

"Direct confirmation of what?" Edith was getting testy.

"That the sun is in Gemini."

"No, dull boy the Sun is in Cancer."

"Wrong." Spud exulted.

"And the signs of the Zodiac--"

"Mean nothing of course."

"Party blanket. Wet pooper." Edith said.

They left the tunnel, after chiming the bells a few more times, and crawled through the fence and dug Spud's Trail 90(remember them? Yellow and built around a piece of pipe?) out of its hiding place in a thicket and buzzed to Edith's home.

After supper, Spud popped in to help Edith do dishes, and handed her a Royster pocket notebook. On one fingerprinted page were the following figures.

Where the sun really is in the constellations
Aries 19 Apr - 13 May for 25 days
Taurus 14 May - 19 Jun for 37
Gemini 20 Jun - 20 Jul for 31
Cancer 21 Jul - 9 Aug for 20
Leo 10 Aug - 15 Sep for 37
Virgo 16 Sep - 30 Oct for 45
Libra 31 Oct - 22 Nov for 23
Scorpius 23 Nov - 29 Nov for 7
Ophiuchus 30 Nov - 17 Dec for 18
Sagittarius 18 Dec - 18 Jan for 32
Capricornus 19 Jan - 15 Feb for 28
Aquarius 16 Feb - 11 Mar for 24-25
Pisces 12 Mar - 18 Apr for 38

Edith glared. "Who the pluper is Oafy oochus?"

"The snake toter. He ain't no sign. But he covers a big chunk of the belt."

"Oh, dear," Edith said.

"Huh? What?"

"According to your sky, me and you is teetotal beware look out run incompatible. In spades."

Spud slipped his Royster booklet back in his pocket. "Ah, what do stars know, anyway?"