No Muun Duck had been an astronomer for a long time. That in itself was no mean feat. You spend enough time traipsing about in the middle of the night, staring up at the sky with a strangely shaped metal tube, and people tend to get a bit nervous.

Luckily, Duck did most of his work out in the desert, far away from skittish villagers and their pitchforks. It was a fact that had generally worked to his benefit except for the small nuisance it had necessitated.

"Where do you want me to put this?" his small nuisance asked.

Duck looked at Gerfungle in the way that he always looked at his hapless assistant, as though he wanted to give him a sound flogging.

"Where do you think I want you to put it?"

Gerfungle frowned, which is a lot like saying a bird flapped.

"On the tripod where you always put it," Duck said after a few moments of concerted consternation.

"I knew that," Gerfungle said doubtfully.

Duck considered strangling his assistant but thought of the long trek home and settled on a well aimed clip behind the ears instead.

Despite Gerfungle's attempts at assistance, Duck managed to assemble the telescope while it was still dark. He settled down under the elongated hodgepodge of lenses and mirrors, took out a peanut butter sandwich from his trusty picnic basket, and felt a calm settle over him as the universe opened up before him.

Being an astronomer was the only thing that kept Duck on speaking terms with sanity. The vastness that swallowed him up through the lens enveloped him in a momentary vacuum of wonder that just about kept his marbles in order.

He nodded convivially at a constellation of stars that he knew on a first name basis and smiled blushingly at a suggestive constellation that he had only learnt about when he was of a young age.

With the twist of a knob and the turning of a sprocket, he lowered the angle of the telescope until it hovered over the horizon. The deceptive curve of the planet was just about visible over the mountains of sand. He grimaced slightly as an instant of professional astronomical offence shot through him.

Like most astronomers, Duck was a traditionalist. Planets were round and they orbited a sun; that is the way their elegant theories had imagined it. It was the way their logic tied everything up into a neat little bow. It was also the reason they had called their planet the Globe in the first place.

Granted, logic didn't have an esteemed place on a planet that pronounced the word 'scientific' with a few extra syllables. Still, it was no excuse for the blatant disregard that the Globe showed for common sense and basic reasoning.

Duck suppressed the urge to twitch. It was bad enough that the Globe was completely flat, but it was simply galling that it had also relegated its sun to an ignominious satellite. He grated his teeth angrily. If it hadn't been for those damn explorers then they would never have known for sure. Just as well they sailed off the edge, he thought, because if he got his hands on them he would have...

"What did you say we was watching for again?" Gerfungle interrupted.

The sudden interjection gave him such a start that he jammed his eye into the scope. He took a deep breath before turning to face Gerfungle. "For one blissful moment I forgot that you were here."

Gerfungle smiled knowingly. "My mom used to say the same thing."

"I'm sure she did," Duck acknowledged, resuming his telescopic vigil. "For the umpteenth time, we are going to observe the bicentennial Riggly meteor shower."

There was a reply of loaded silence as Duck felt Gerfungle frowning at the back of his head. "Pretty flashy streaks in the sky."

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