Venus, Mars, Jupiter--at first he could not tell one from another, though he watched them all.

He had studied astronomy among other things in school, but then it had been merely a hated task to be shirked and slighted and forgotten as one's palate forgets the taste of bitter medicine.

Up here, with the stars all around him and above him for many nights, he was ashamed because he could not call them all by name.

He would train his telescope upon some particularly bright star and watch it and wonder--Jack did a great deal of wondering in those days, after his first panicky fight against the loneliness and silence had spent itself.
First of all, he awoke to the fact that he was about as important to the world as one of those little brown birds that hopped among the rocks and perked its head at him so knowingly, and preened its feathers with such a funny air of consequence.

He could not even believe that his sudden disappearance had caused his mother any grief beyond her humiliation over the manner and the cause of his going.