“To hell with your crap about the beauty of science! Explain this fucking answer!” Alan exclaimed, as stunned as the rest of them.
“That’s the most exquisite possible answer”, Hans started exhilarated. “Think about it, on the one hand, it is very simple, while on the other, it’s exceptionally delicate. There is also the sense of a positive beginning. I mean, they did not start their answer with ‘minus one’…”
“He’s got a point”, Marcela murmured.
“You are totally right, Hans, but there might be another meaning to it… from Chemistry, for instance”, Sergey took part in the conversation.
“But yes, of course, how could I not think of it?” Hans exclaimed. “That’s the number of hydrogen… In its usual form it has one proton, one neutron and one electron.”
“And is the most widespread element in the Universe…”
“What do you mean? Really?”, Norman was uncomprehending. “How so, the most widespread? Isn’t it a gas?”
“That’s correct, it is a gas at a specific pressure and temperature, but what is more essential is that it is the basic component of all the stars in the known Universe. It composes about 98% of the entire matter in the Universe. Do you want us to continue?”
This time Hans typed without waiting for an answer:
4661- T, 0539- W, 0392- О TWO
2+2=4
…the screen answered to him. “Wow! See that? It’s working! The language of Mathematics is the language of space!” exclaimed Hans triumphantly.
“What now? How long are we going to exchange simple equations? Ask him something more serious.” Norman frowned.
331
…Hans typed.
“What is it, for God’s sake?” Alan asked.
“I wrote to him the velocity of sound. I guess he’ll easily understand.”
A new line of figures appeared on the screen: 299 792 458
“Ha! An ideal answer! And does not surprise me a bit.” Hans was content.
“What is this number?”
“It is the exact speed of light in vacuum”, Sergey answered.
“Can’t you ask anything more practical? For example, where does he come from. Enough with this Mathematics.” Norman demanded information and quickly.
At this moment the next message arrived. The screen froze in the dusk of the room with its bluish light.
- 1986
And then it went blank. The messages stopped.
Hans typed a few more figures.
The screen was silent.
“Why did it stop, Professor Rosenstein?”, Norman raised his voice sternly.
“I have no idea, Sir”, Norman mumbled almost guiltily.
“What is this, for God’s sake?!” Marcela exclaimed. “If it is the same letter code, 1=А, 9=I, 8=H, а 6=F. AIHF? Doesn’t it mean anything?”
“No, these are not letters. It rather seems to me to be a year”, Alan suggested.
“It really is a year, Alan. This time you are right, which is a miracle.” Hans had embraced the screen with both hands, his nose almost touching the glass. “We have to check what happened on Earth in 1986… Michael?”
“The first that comes to mind is the explosion of the ‘Challenger’ shuttle. It was in January, I think on the 28th… Seven NASA astronauts died.”
“This might be a threat”, Ivanov interfered in his usual military-suspicious tone. “A kind of challenge: ‘If you make trouble,
that’s what you’ll get – Boom!’”
“Enough, Colonel, it is rather too elementary to be true.” Marcela could not believe how stuffed and washed up the brains of the military were. “If we go along this line, in April 1986 the fourth nuclear reactor in Chernobyl exploded, bringing about the greatest eco catastrophe in human history, and millions perished as a consequence…”
“As far as I can remember, in ’86 Mike Tyson became the youngest heavy weight boxing champion in history at the age of twenty”, Alan interrupted her.
“Maybe, for an alien the more interesting fact would be that in the same year the Soviet Union launched into exploitation the International Space Station ‘Mir’”, Sergey took part in the bidding. “Yes, and then on it a contact with them was made.” Michael could not think of anything more logical.
“I doubt that any of those events are relevant”, Hans pursed his lips.
“What is it then, Hans? Tell us, since you are so smart.” Alan cast him a challenging glance.
“This is a year, for sure. 1986. But I have absolutely no idea what it means.”
The Lieutenant burst in the control room breathless and sweaty, his cheeks were flushed and underlined the paleness of his gentle face. His voice sounded anxious.
“We have a casualty, you’ve got to see this! It is the first time I’ve seen anything of the sort!”
Without any more words Norman and Babyface rushed out of the door. The rest slumped down in their chairs as if after a command ‘As you were’. They needed some rest for their brain and senses. They kept quiet, everybody locked in their own head. Hans was the only one, remaining in feverish tension, with a fixed gaze at the screen, as if decided not to let the answer to the riddle escape him.
Suddenly he stood up from the computer, threw his arms in the air and shouted:
“Done!”
PART FOUR: THE EVIL
“What is completely under control is never completely real. What is real is never completely under control.”
“People should generally be considered ungrateful, cheating, cowardly, covetous, so it is wiser for the master rather to inflict fear than to be willing to receive love.”
It looked like a butcher’s bacchanalia. The picture was as revolting as rotting flesh in the middle of a stinking swamp. The body resembled a bloody ball of bones, flesh and excrements. Under the roughly lacerated muscles the bones were white and crashed and had acquired some freaky unnatural shape.
The carcass was like that of an animal that was thrashed in all directions, its spinal column being broken in hundreds of places. Now it was rather like a mollusk or a jelly-fish, cast lifeless on the beach by the powerful waves.
Sergeant Greg Thompson was 23. He was found dead with the assistance of dogs less than a mile away from the base. It had happened while he was on his regular night checking trip.
“I found the weapon, Sir.” The Lieutenant pointed to the grinding device, lying half-buried in the sand about two feet away from the body.
“Put your gloves on, I want you to make a thorough search of the place. And collect prints. I need an analysis as soon as possible.”
“We would hardly match the prints to any in the system, Sir… if there are any prints left at all.”
“Move, Lieutenant, action! Don’t you bother about taking decisions.”
Norman was not himself. He climbed alone in the SUV, pressed the start button and barely waiting to hear the roaring engine, stepped abruptly on the right pedal. The powerful machine obeyed and started with ugly uproar, leaving behind a cloud of sand and smoke.
Ten minutes later he was in front of his dome.
He had no wish to see anybody at that moment. He was a tough man, having experienced many cataclysms, but some things were just too much for him. He needed to be alone if only for five minutes. He went to his room and sprawled on the bed on his back. He gazed at the ceiling, then closed his eyes. This method of solitude and self-control had helped him more than once. He had learned it back in the 90-ies from a friend, a military doctor in a base in Nevada. He was lying on the bed without moving, with his arms crossed over the chest, inhaling and exhaling deeply and slowly.