Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [113]
Solly instructed Ham to kill the sound.
Kim wondered about the range of possibilities, whether they might not be able to travel one day to remote places and collect historically significant radio broadcasts. Of course, they’d have to get closer to home. At fifteen hundred light-years from Greenway, and sixteen hundred from Earth, no radio transmissions would yet have reached this far. It was fascinating to think what they could see if they had a telescope capable of looking at Earth, where at this relative moment Henry VI sat on the British throne and Joan of Arc was a schoolgirl.
Solly got up. “That’s as much as we can do for now. Want to go back to the workout room for a while?”
She was surprised he was willing to walk off at a time like this, even though the high-probability period was still hours away. “No,” she said, “I think I’ll hang on here.”
She was still there when he came back two hours later with sliced beef and fruit.
They lay awake talking long through the night, listening for the alarm. Now that they were here, on station in a place where she could see countless stars, clouds of stars, but no sun, she lost confidence. Silly to do that: she’d checked the math any number of times; the equipment was equal to the task; physical law was very precise about how radio waves traveled in a vacuum. But Hunter seemed so long ago, in human terms. And what evidence did she really have other than Kane’s sketch and a bogus set of logs?
Solly, who’d lived all his life in a star-traveling fraternity which assumed that the cosmos belonged exclusively to humanity, tried to encourage her, but his tone gave him away.
They spent most of the next day huddled over the instruments. Kim listened to the cosmic noise and watched the clock. She skipped lunch and tried to read, opening one book after another. Solly busied himself calibrating instruments that probably needed no attention.
They ate a light dinner and put on another King mystery. Just to watch, without participation. But Kim couldn’t keep her mind on it. They did not go to bed. At midnight Kim was sprawled on the couch, one arm thrown across her eyes, listening to the silence.
“It might take a couple more days,” Solly said. “Maybe even a week. Out here, we can’t be all that precise about where we are.” On the screens, the void rolled out forever. He was about to say something more when Ham spoke to them: “We have a hit.”
Kim came wide awake.
“Transmission acquired 12:03 a.m. No visual. It is an audio signal only. On standard frequency.”
“Run it,” said Solly. It was 12:06. “From the beginning.”
Kim sat up.
The speaker delivered a single blip.
Then, moments later, a pair of blips.
“Is it Hunter?” Solly asked the AI.
Three blips.
Four.
“Uncertain. It is artificial, with better than ninety-nine percent probability.”
Hammersmith had Hunter’s transmission characteristics in its files. Given time, and a sufficient sample, it would be able to establish identity beyond question.
“It couldn’t be anybody else,” said Kim, elated. “We’ve got them.”
She listened intently for more, but the speakers remained silent. Solly asked, “Is that all?”
“Yes. The signal arrived four minutes ago.”
“Ham, if you get any more, pipe it directly through.”
“They counted to four,” Kim said.
It started again.
One. Two.
“What the hell is that all about?” asked Solly.
Three.
“They’ve seen something.”
Four.
Kim wanted to scream for pure joy. “Something they can’t talk to. They’re trying to say hello.”
And again. One—
“What kind of hello is counting to four?”
“It’s the only common language they have. If it’s really a celestial, it can reply by counting to five.” She pressed her palms together and whispered a prayer to whatever power controlled such matters. Then she threw herself into his arms. “Solly,” she said, “It’s really happening.”
“Let’s hold on before we start to celebrate—”
The signal stopped. Kim let him go, pressed her palms together, and waited.
“If they’ve really got somebody else out there,