The Inquisitive Jesuit Riccioli had pointed out that if the heavens were sown with stars, some near and some far, and if the Earth were looping round the Sun in a vast ellipse, then the positions of those stars with respect to one another should shift during the course of the year, as trees in a forest changed their relative positions in the eyes of a traveler moving past. But no such parallax had been observed, which proved (to Riccioli, anyway) that the Earth must be fixed in the center of the Universe. To Hooke it only proved that good enough telescopes hadn't been built, nor precise enough measurements made. To obtain the level of magnification he needed, he had to construct a telescope 32 feet long. To annull the light-bending effects of the Earth's atmosphere (which were obvious from the fact that the Sun became an oval when it rose or set), he had to aim it straight up – hence the demand for a vertical shaft to be bored through Gresham's College. Gresham's antique mansion was now like an ancient plaster wall that had been mended so many times it consisted entirely of interlocked patches. It was solid scar tissue. This made the work more interesting for Daniel, and taught him more than he'd ever cared to know about how buildings were put up, and what kept them from falling down.