The Beam Turns Backward

It happened on the fourth watch. The beam reached the end of its arc and, instead of returning, unwound. Light walked back across the same craters, undoing shadows it had just made.

Iria did not touch the mechanism. The manual was clear and useless: if the sweep reverses, log the minute and do not correct it. Correction is how keepers fall out of their own shifts.

She wrote the minute. While she wrote, the letter under the weight warmed. Tomorrow’s date darkened, as if ink could blush. A second line appeared beneath the first, still in her hand: You waited. Good. There is a ship that will ask for a bearing toward a dock that no longer exists. Give it yesterday’s angle.

In the scope, a ship blinked into the black, running without a wake. Iria set the beam to yesterday’s angle. The ship dipped its lights once, grateful or warned, and was gone. The beam resumed its ordinary pride, forward, as if nothing on this moon had ever regretted a direction.