Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [115]
“No,” he said. “Any ship in close to Alnitak would have to be heavily insulated against radiation. The Hunter would have no way of knowing directly whether it had a crew, or whether it was automated. The only way to be sure is to talk to them. And even that wouldn’t tell you definitely because you could be dealing with an AI.” He thought about it some more. “I think you’d have to go over physically and shake hands.” He grinned. “Or shake whatever. Until then it’s strictly guesswork.”
At first she didn’t remember where she was. Hunter was sending again. Blip. Blip. Blip—The pattern now was one-three-five-seven. Inviting the other vessel to send a nine. Did the fact that they’d changed the sequence mean they’d gotten an answer?
She was back on the couch. Solly had thrown a spread over her.
“They’ve been at it for about two hours, I think,” he said.
“You think?”
“There was a break in midsignal. It continued for fourteen minutes. They may have gone behind something. Maybe that gas giant you mentioned.”
It was after four A.M. Four hours since they’d picked up the Hunter signal. “Do you want to go back and get some sleep?” she asked.
“Yeah. I think I’ve had enough of this for one night. How about you?”
“I’m going to stay with it.”
“Okay.” He got up, bent over her, kissed her lightly. “I never would have thought they might actually have discovered something but got ignored. Hey, we found a bona fide celestial out there, but they wouldn’t talk to us. Where’d they go? No idea.”
“Well,” she said, “I hope we get more than this” She looked at the monitor, which was blinking out the new count. “I can see myself sitting in Agostino’s office with a recording that does nothing but produce blips from the Hunter.”
Solly stopped in the hatchway. “If nothing else,” he said, “we can prove beyond any doubt that Kane faked the logs. Whatever these transmissions might really be about, none of them were recorded.” He started to peel off his shirt. “Call me if anything happens—”
Then he was gone and she was yawning, snuggling back under the spread, listening to the radio noises. One, three, five, seven. Over and over.
But she was awake now. She got up and got some coffee. Mission control was always cooler than the rest of the ship. Life support wasn’t quite correct. “Come on, Valiant,” she said. “Answer up.”
She drank the coffee. The Hunter group kept transmitting.
The bearing on the radio signal pointed directly to Alnitak. They’d come out of hyper somewhere near the star, as she thought, probably in the neighborhood of the gas giant. And there they’d met another sight-seer.
The incoming signal changed.
One. Two. Three. Five.
Five?
Then eight.
Kim flicked on the intercom. “I hear it,” said Solly, from his quarters. “What does it mean?”
The system went silent.
“It’s a new series,” she said. “A little more complicated. Solly, I think they might have got a response.”
“Why?”
“Why else veer from a simple series?” She was conjuring up the scene on board: jumping up and down, clapping one another on the back, screaming congratulations.
“So what’s the next number?”
“Thirteen,” she said. “If it’s really happening, that’s what they’re listening to right now. Thirteen blips from the other ship.”
“It would be nice if we had something a little more concrete to speculate with.” But he came back to mission control in his pajamas and squeezed her hand. “I hope you’re right.” The squeeze developed into an embrace.
She was right. She was sure of it. And in that moment she was supremely happy.
Solly held onto her and rocked her back and forth while they waited for the next series.
When it came, she counted eleven. That was all: eleven blips.
“What is it this time?” asked Solly.
“Who knows?” she said. “Eleven’s a prime number. But it should be a response to something the other ship sent.”
“Such as?”
“One, two, three, five, seven. All primes. Or maybe