Saknarth

By MILLARD VERNE GORDON
(Author of The Planet of Illusion, Revolving World, etc.)
The Master Astrologer was willing to give his life—if only the torch of what little learning existed in the land could be passed on.
The lights upon the Morning Star. How well he remembered that phrase. Twenty years it must have been since Kwarit had whispered it to him, at the great trial where they had accused Kwarit of heeding the signals of the Evil One.
As he had been led away, he had managed to whisper to young Saknarth, then a mere neophyte, the strange phrase that had lingered, echoing and reechoing through the young student's mind all these years. From neophyte to the Master Astrologer of the Imperial Observatory. It would be more than forty years by the third planet's hurried pace. Did the lights still glow upon the Morning Star?
Saknarth glanced over at the chronometer. It would be a half hour before the Morning Star rose. There was work to be done; he must prepare the day's horoscope. He laughed to himself. What fools priests and rulers must be to believe that the stars foretold the future. What an upset if they learned how it all originated in the minds of astrologers—no more the guesswork based upon a knowledge of the past. Well, so far, thought Saknarth, my forecasts have been more or less true.
Seating himself at a little desk in the shaded glow of an oil lamp, he proceeded to write his prophecies, taking care to befog them with astrological formulae and mystic bosh.
A half hour passed. Already a dim light glowed deep in the eastern horizon. Now from low in the sky a blue star gleamed, a steady glowing mote of light heralding the dawn. The Morning Star.
Saknarth pushed back his stool from the desk and stood up. He glanced through the open panel at the planet. Then over to the largest telescope in the observatory, a twenty inch reflector. He applied his single round eye to the eyepiece and gazed at great Kurnal, largest of the inner planets.