She obeyed, and in its illumination he began to study the engraved plates, holding one of them in either hand.
After a while he gave me one of the plates to hold, and with his disengaged hand pointed successively to the constellation of Orion, to the stars Castor, Pollux, Aldebaran, Rigel, the Pleiades, Sirius and others which with my very limited knowledge I could not recognise offhand.

Then on the plate which I held, he showed us those same stars and constellations, checking them one by one.
Then he remarked very quietly that all was in order, and handing the plate he held to Yva, said: "The calculations made so long ago are correct, nor have the stars varied in their proper motions during what is after all but an hour of time.

If you, Stranger, who, I understand, are named Humphrey, should be, as I gather, a heaven-master, naturally you will ask me how I could fix an exact date by the stars without an error of, let us say, from five to ten thousand years.

I answer you that by the proper motion of the stars alone it would have been difficult.

Therefore I remember that in order to be exact, I calculated the future conjunctions of those two planets," and he pointed to Saturn and Jupiter.