The four-count continued to come in. The durations between individual blips varied, indicating they were manually tapping out the signal. The complete count usually ran about eight seconds. The sequences were divided by almost a minute.
“Are we using the multichannel?” Kim asked. Just in case the celestials transmit and their antenna happens to be pointed in the right direction, Ham would be able to hear it.
“Yes. We’ve got them covered. But don’t bet the lunch money.”
They were between signals. Kim tried to imagine the state of mind in the Hunter, and wondered what they were seeing in their scopes, what they had found. Had it been possible, she would have cheerfully killed Markis Kane. Hadn’t it occurred to them that an event like this might generate future interest on the order of a later intercept of the original signals? That therefore they should provide for posterity?
Solly looked at the timer. “They’re late.”
The silence stretched out. It went to five minutes. Seven minutes.
“Maybe they gave up,” he said.
“No.” That couldn’t happen. You don’t give up if you’re sitting there looking at a celestial. “They wouldn’t do that.”
“They might if the celestial took off.”
Her stomach sank. It was a possibility she had never considered. She’d assumed that a star-faring species would necessarily show the same raging curiosity in this type of situation that she would. Call it the Brandywine Fallacy.
But if there had been a meeting, and if it had been terminated abruptly, it wouldn’t explain the subsequent events. No, it couldn’t be that simple.
“They’re probably trying something else,” she said. “Something that’s not showing up in a transmission.”
“For example?”
“If I were there and I got no response on the radio I’d start flashing my lights. There’s even a possibility that a connection has been made, that they’re getting ready to exchange gifts and pledge mutual friendship. Maybe they’ve opened hatches and are waving at each other. None of that would show up on FAULS.”
“That last is a possibility you can discard. There hasn’t been time for anybody to get into a pressure suit.” He looked into her eyes and frowned: “Are you all right?”
“If this goes on, Solly, I’m going to be an emotional wreck.” She stared hard at the image of Alnitak as if by an act of will she could make out what was happening. At this moment, hidden in the light show coming in from the giant star, were the images of the Hunter and the other. “Got a question for you,” she said.
“Sure.”
“Would there be a way to know whether there are lifeforms on another ship? That is, if we ran into something, but it stayed quiet, do we have sensors that could reach in there and determine somebody’s on board?”
“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 alclass="underline" 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 they sent the first five odd numbers.”
Solly shook his head and eased himself into a chair. “Kim,” he said, “we don’t really have anything here.”
“Well, what did you expect?” she demanded, pushing away from him. “We knew it would be a one-sided conversation. Short of pictures, this is as much as we could have asked.”
Again the system was quiet. They waited and the silence stretched out past fifteen minutes. “Maybe they’re trying to decide what to do next,” she said.
“What would you do?”