Contact - Carl Sagan [97]
"It's like stamp collecting. I used to collect stamps when I was a kid. You could send a letter to somebody in a foreign country and most of the time they'd write back. It didn't matter what they said. All you wanted was the stamp. So that's my picture: There's a few stamp collectors on Vega. They send letters out when they're in the mood, and bodies come flying back to them from all over space. Wouldn't you like to see the collection?"
He smiled up at her and continued. "Okay, so what does this have to do with finding the primer? Nothing. It's relevant only if I'm wrong. If my picture is wrong, if the five people are coming back to Earth, then it would be a big help if we've invented space flight. No matter how smart they are, it's gonna be tough to land the Machine. Too many things are moving. God knows what the propulsion system is. If you pop out of space a few meters below ground, you've had it. And what's a few meters in twenty-six light years? It's too risky. When the Machine comes back it'll pop out-or whatever it does-in space, somewhere near the Earth, but not on it or in it. So they have to be sure we have space flight, so the five people can be rescued in space. They're in a hurry and can't sit tight until the 1957 evening news arrives on Vega. So what do they do? They arrange so part of the Message can only be detected from space. What part is that? The primer. If you can detect the primer, you've got space flight and you can come back safe. So I imagine the primer is being sent at the frequency of the oxygen absorptions in the microwave spectrum, or in the near-infrared - some part of the spectrum you can't detect until you're well out of the Earth's atmosphere…"
"We've had the Hubble Telescope looking at Vega all through the ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared. Not a hint of anything. The Russians have repaired their millimeter wave instrument. They've hardly been looking at anything besides Vega and they haven't found anything. But we'll keep looking. Other possibilities?"
"Sure you wouldn't like a drink? I don't drink myself, but so many people do." Ellie again declined. "No, no other possibilities. Now it's my turn?
"See, I want to ask you for something. But I'm not good at asking for things. I never have been. My public image is rich, funny looking, unscrupulous-somebody who looks for weaknesses in the system so he can make a fast buck. And don't tell me you don't believe any of that. Everybody believes at least some of it. You've probably heard some of what I'm gonna say before, but give me ten minutes and I'll tell you how all this began. I want you to know something about me."
She settled back, wondering what he could possibly want of her, and brushed away idle fantasies involving the Temple of Ishtar, Hadden, and perhaps a charioteer or two thrown in for good measure.
Years before, he had invented a module that, when a television commercial appeared, automatically muted the sound. It wasn't at first a context recognition device. Instead, it simply monitored the amplitude of the carrier wave. TV advertisers had taken to running their ads louder and with less audio clutter than the programs that were their nominal vehicles. News of Hadden's module spread by word of mouth. People reported a sense of relief, the lifting of a great burden, even a feeling of joy at being freed from the advertising barrage for the six to eight hours out of every day that the average American spent in front of the television set. Before there could be any coordinated response from the television advertising industry, Adnix had