So he buckled down and learned the new system.
Charlie put on Hans’ polarizing spectacles and looked around. He could see nothing. Light leaked around the guards of the spectacles and the glass in front of his eyes seemed opaque. He knew that he should be able to pick out the Sun, for he knew that the light from the sky, dispersed by the clouds of Venus, was polarized, made to wiggle up-and-down or sideways, instead of in all directions. He knew that these spectacles were supposed to blank out polarized light, let him see the Sun itself. But he could not see anything.
He turned slowly, blind behind the spectacles.
Hey, it was getting brighter! He swung his head back and forth, made sure he was not mistaken. “I got it!”
“False sun,” Hans announced dispassionately.
“Huh?”
“You’re a hundred and eighty degrees out of phase,” Mr. Qu’an’s voice announced. “You’re looking at the reflection of the Sun. Never mind, other people have made that mistake. But it’s not a mistake you can afford to make even once out in the bush…so keep trying#”
Charlie kept on turning — darn it, these specs fit so tight that he couldn’t even see his feet! There it was again! Was it false sun? Or the Sun itself? How far had he turned?
He turned until he was dizzy, seeing brightness, then darkness, several times — and realized that one brightness was brighter than that which it alternated. Finally he stopped. “I’m looking at the Sun,” he announced firmly.
“Okay,” Hans admitted. “Jigger with it. Fine it down.”
Charlie found that he could fiddle with screw settings on the sides of the spectacles and thereby kill the brightness almost completely. He did so, while swinging his head back and forth like a radar, trying to spot the smallest gleam that he could. “That’s the best I can do.”
“Hold still,” Hans ordered. “Uncover your right eye. Mark me.”
Charlie did as ordered, found himself staring with one eye down the sighter in front of the spectacles. Hans was thirty feet away, holding his Scout staff upright. “Don’t move!” Hans cautioned. “Coach me on.”
“Uh…come right a couple of feet.”
“Here?”
“I think so. Let me check.” He covered his right eye again, but found that his eye, dazzled by brighter light, could no longer pick up — the faint gleam he had marked. “That’s the best I can do.”
Hans stretched a string along the marked direction. “My turn. Note your time.” He took the spectacles, quickly gave Charlie a direction, coached him into place. The twO lines differed by about ten degrees.
“Figure your hour angle,” Hans said and looked at his watch.
The time was nine-thirty .. and the Sun moved fifteen degrees each hour…two and a half hours to noon; that’s thirty-seven and a half degrees and each minute on the face of his watch was six degrees, so — Charlie was getting confused. He looked up, saw that Hans had placed his watch on the ground and was laying out base line. Hans’ watch had a twenty-four hour face; he simply pointed the hour hand at the Sun and the XII spot then pointed along base line.
No mental arithmetic, no monkeying around — “Gosh, I wish I had a watch like that!”
“Don’t need it,” Hans answered without looking up.
“But it makes it so simple. You just — ”
“Your watch is okay. Make yourself a twenty-fourhour dial out of cardboard.”
“That would work? Yeah, it would! I wish I had one now.,’
Hans fumbled in his duffel bag. “Uh, I made you one.” He handed it over without looking up — a cardboard clock face, laid out for twenty-four hours.
Charlie was almost speechless. “Gee! Nixie, look at that! Say, flans, I don’t know how to thank you.”
~Don~t want you and Nixie getting lost,” Hans answered gruffly.
Charlie took it, aimed nine-thirty along his line, marked — noon and restretched the string to match. Base line, according to his sighting, differed by ten degrees from that of Hans. In the meantime, two patrol leaders had stretched a line at right angles to base line, along where the troop was spread out. One of them moved down the line, checking angles with a protractor. Mr. Qu’an followed, checked Charlie’s layout himself. “About nine degrees off,” he told Charlie. “Not bad for a first try.”