Sight of Proteus

“I wonder why somebody would go to all that trouble to make a complete fool of himself.”

“Come on, Gina, we both know why.”

“Oh, I guess you’re right. Money will always do it.”

Of course.

It’s the usual sensation mongering; the news services will say anything for an effect.

The ship climbed steadily and laboriously up, away from the plane of the ecliptic. Finally, the parallax was sufficient to move the planets from their usual apparent positions. Mars, Earth, Venus, and Jupiter all sat in constellations that were no part of the familiar zodiac. Mercury was cowering close to the sun. Saturn alone, swinging out at the far end of her orbit, seemed right as seen from the ship. Bey Wolf, picking out their positions through a viewport, wondered idly how the astrologers would cope with such a situation. Mars seemed to be in the House of Andromeda, and Venus in the House of Cygnus. It would take an unusually talented practitioner to interpret those relationships and cast a horoscope for the success of this enterprise.