The Last Days of Krypton - Kevin J. Anderson [101]
The most sensitive radio dish in the array picked up a constant stream of static punctuated by pops, brief whistles, and indecipherable clicks. Jor-El left the speakers on at all times in his laboratory, white noise in the background. Though Donodon had told him that space was peppered with inhabited star systems and unusual civilizations, Krypton’s neighborhood seemed empty and quiet.
Wanting to stay close, Lara joined him in the research building, and he was glad to have her here. At times he could see she still ached from the loss of her parents and young brother. Jor-El had felt a similar heaviness in his heart since the death of his father. Though the old man’s lingering degeneration had been a long time coming, the sadness at losing him was no less.
Lara commandeered one of the broad lab tables for herself. After tying back her hair to keep it out of her way, she spread out sketchplates, notes, and piles of documents, working on her own historical documentation. “I like being out here with you.”
“It’s mutually beneficial,” he said. “You can be very inspirational.”
She continued diligently writing down lines of text, etching a rough draft before permanently inscribing the words in memory crystals. She mused aloud, “I’ve always kept a journal, but this feels more important now. Somebody has to chronicle these events for posterity. Can you think of a better historian than me?” Her mouth quirked in a teasing smile, warning him that he’d better not contradict her.
“I can’t think of a better anything than you.” Jor-El leaned over, curious to peek at how she might be portraying him in her journal.
She self-consciously covered the text, then gave him a mysterious look as if she’d been waiting for exactly the right moment. “I have other news for you, Jor-El. Special news—”
The background listening-post speakers crackled with a burst of static, a whisper that seemed unnatural. Jor-El discerned sounds that were indisputably words. Startled, he strained his ears. “What’s that?”
The static roared again, faded, then cleared to be replaced by a deep, somber-sounding voice. “—anyone can hear me. I send this message because I have no other hope. Someone out there must listen.” Another crackle and squeak of static drowned out the next words. “—repeat for as long as I can.”
Jor-El raced to the control deck and sent a command to pull together other signals from the observation array. By combining the outputs of the twenty-three dishes, he hoped to strengthen this faint transmission, perhaps even find an optical counterpart. He and Lara both stared as a blurred image formed on one of the holographic condensers, then sharpened to show a hairless emerald-skinned man with a heavy brow ridge.
“My name is J’onn J’onzz from the planet Mars. My race is dying. My civilization is falling to dust. Please save us.”
Having glimpsed a tantalizing fragment of the message, Jor-El spent hours recording the repeated signal, barely blinking, never turning his attention away. He used every known technique to filter out distortions and anomalous spikes caused by cosmic background interference. The transmission must have been traveling across space for years, if not centuries, and a few hours would certainly make no difference to the fate of the forlorn Martian. But Jor-El was a man of action, and Lara loved him for it.
She assisted him in hooking up equipment, recording data, adjusting connections. Finally, after the signal had been processed and amplified, the two of them stood together, listening.
On the crackling screen, the heavy-browed Martian said, “By the time you receive this, my civilization will be dead. History has swept across us like an unquenchable fire. We thought our race would last forever. We thought nothing could harm Mars, because we had a perfect society, an advanced people with highly developed technology. We were wrong.”
The green-skinned man bowed his head. “I am the only one left alive, and how long can I survive? My wife, my family, all lost.” The skin on the alien’s face rippled and sagged.