Mankind’s exploration of space took several dramatic leaps in the first half of the twenty-first century. The first major contribution being in the year 2037, when the first habitable base on the moon became operational, supporting a permanent crew of twenty people. It was named Lincoln’s Reach.
Three years later, on the lunar surface, the Lincoln Outpost was set up. The outpost consisted of a small array of radio telescopes and had been constructed to provide one of the clearest views of space ever achieved by man. Lincoln’s Reach and the Lincoln Outpost were later connected by a pioneering low-gravity tram system, which transported science officers to and from the telescope array over a distance of seventy kilometres.
Astronomy therefore, also came in leaps and bounds. Ever since the twentieth century, evidence of planets outside our solar system had been pretty conclusive. It was even thought that some of the Saturn sized planets found in the Sagittarius constellation could harbour life. This was considered especially so with the Alpha Centauri system, given that the star was in fact very similar to our sun.
With the aid of the Hubble-NextGenST4 telescope, it became evident to us that our solar system’s closest neighbour Proxima Centauri (also in the Centauri system) possessed a multitude of planets in orbit around the dim red dwarf star at its centre.
The Proxima Centauri system lay just over four light years from Earth.
The first indication that there were planets in Proxima Centauri came about in 2042 when astronomers detected a gravitational wobble in the star. This fluctuation indicated that a large planet was orbiting the star and exerting its gravitational influence upon it. The planet was later estimated to be roughly nine times the size of Jupiter, our solar system’s largest planet.
The Hubble-NextGenST4 was turned to the system for a closer look, and more complicated mathematical assumptions led scientists to believe that there were at least seven planets swinging around the red dwarf.
As the planets were spotted, they were catalogued with the prefix PMC (an abbreviation of Proxima Centauri) followed by a numeric value relevant to the order of discovery. The first planet to be spotted was marked 01. Any satellites of those planets were given a further suffix as they were found. ‘A’ was the first.
16 July 2048 AD
Mike Taylor reached over to the coffee machine and hit the espresso button.
He rubbed his eyes. He was reaching the end of his ten-hour shift and was having trouble keeping his eyes open long enough to complete the final spectroscopy sweep. Soon he would hand over to Phil Johns, who would sit at this desk for a further ten hours, twiddling his thumbs waiting for more grainy images of space to download into the Lincoln Outpost data banks.
It was a boring job, but one which had to be endured. Even with so many budding astronauts applying to the Space Foundation nowadays, it was still necessary to ‘do time’ in a mundane service job. Pushing buttons and logging data on the moon or in Earth Orbit prior to winning a position on one of the more pioneering missions like the second Mars Lander or the Venus Descent Team.
The flight Mike wanted to join was the upcoming Europa seismic project. It looked exciting. To have a chance to do the Nav work on board that mission would be the highlight of his career, even if the mission would take over twelve years to complete. It was a very exciting prospect.
The mission plan was to insert a five-man crew into a low orbit over Europa, and drop a remote seismic probe down to the icy surface. Then they would spend three years driving the thing about, guiding it over as many shot-points as possible, to find out what was really going on under that frozen surface. In the orbiter, they would run a series of inferogram computations and adaptive filtering calculations to gain as much information as possible about the inside of Jupiter’s satellite.
If they were really lucky, they would be able to recover the log data from the ice-drill, which was lost on the moon back in 2015.
All he had to do was survive a couple more months here keeping the array ticking over, and then he would be free to apply for the mission.
And he was in a very good position to get it. His wife Janice was the Space Foundation’s primary PR guru at Lincoln’s Reach. She had a lot of contacts inside and outside the Foundation.
Through her he had met a lot of influential people, especially in the media world. And he hoped that he could use her contacts to get himself a bit of media exposure. If he got his face shown in all the right places, he was sure he could land the Nav position on the Europa crew.
It was Janice who had put him in touch with Brad.
Bradley Robertson was considered to be the most important man in Earth’s colossal multimedia empire. There were very few pies Robertson didn’t have his finger inserted firmly into, up to the elbow. He was a clever and shrewd businessman, whose wealth had snowballed into the trillions a few years earlier when he acquired the rights to all nano-cranial implant broadcasts. Soon his news and information programs were beaming into the cerebral cortex of all those who owned an implant. The man was extremely wealthy for it.
A good man to have on your side, Mike thought.
But when the signal arrived, it triggered a sequence of events that would change Mike’s life forever, and ultimately end it.
The coffee was ready, and Mike took a sip of it through a mini-straw. It was still a little hot, so he set it down on the desk. As he did so, the narrow beam radar unit started beeping at him.
He rolled his chair over to the unit and peered at the screen. At first he though it was a malfunction. But his second glance convinced him otherwise.
The array had been programmed to ignore the background noise given out by local stars, radio and television signals, and communication bands used by Earth’s orbiting satellites. So whenever it picked up an unnatural audio signal, it sounded an alarm.
Mike looked closely at the monitor.
The letters PMC-04-A were flashing next to a cluster of stars in the Proxima Centauri part of the sky, which had just ascended over the moon’s horizon.
‘What the hell?’ he tapped a command into the unit, which isolated the signal and increased the gain on the array.
Then he switched on the speaker, and set the unit onto record/analyse mode.
He heard a ‘beep’. The computer registered it as one point two seconds long.
Silence. Then, fourteen-point-seven seconds later there was another beep, distorted by the distance it had travelled. The beep lasted one-point-two seconds. Then another fourteen-point-seven second gap, followed by another beep.
Lonely sounds in the expanse of space.
Mike typed a manual override command into the unit, confirmed his password and took control of the array. He tweaked the telescope one-degree off the beam, and then waited.
Twenty seconds passed. The signal had vanished.
He re-aligned back to point five of a degree. Still no signal.
My God, thought Mike, This isn’t background shit. This is tight.
He moved back to point two of a degree.
Still nothing.
It was no use. The radar had to be pointing directly at the signal; otherwise it was impossible to detect. And it was an incredibly weak signal.
Mike reached over to the comms unit and patched through to the Very Large Array on Earth.
‘Yeah go ahead Mike,’ came the response, four seconds later.
‘Hi guys I’m picking up an audio signal on my Azimuth Elevation scope. I’m transmitting the co-ordinates down to you now. It’s in Proxima. Can you confirm it for me?’
‘That's a negative Mike it’s below our horizon. We won’t get Proxima for another two hours. I suggest you try Jodrell Bank. Do you want me to patch you across?’
‘Yes please.’
A few seconds later, Jodrell Bank in England came crackling across the line.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, this is array controller Mike Taylor at Lincoln.’
‘Hello Mike how’s it going up there?’
‘Fine, sir. Though I think we’ve got some rain coming in soon!’
It was somewhat frustrating, working with the time delay. At times they would speak over each other.
‘Ha ha, nice one Mike, what can I do for you?’
‘Do you have Proxima Centauri above your horizon?’
‘Yes we do.’
‘Okay, I need to get your IP. I have a signal I want you to confirm.’
‘A signal? Right, okay, my v-eight number is…’
Mike jotted down the list of v-eight numbers, and then attempted a connection to transmit the co-ordinates.
‘Okay co-ordinates received, hold on a minute while we reposition.’
Mike stood up from his chair. His palms were clammy and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. He took a sip of coffee, he found it had gone cold. If he could get confirmation of the signal from Earth then he knew that he was onto something big.
Jodrell Bank came back on the radio, ‘Hello Mike?’
Mike leapt back into his chair, ‘Yes?’
He waited a few seconds for the response, hoping desperately that they were getting it down on Earth as well.
‘Mike we have a negative on your signal. It’s dead up there.’
‘No. Surely you must be looking in the wrong place. I’m re-sending the co-ordinates. Can you try it again?’
‘Okay, but the co-ordinates are correct. We have Proxima, but there’s no signal.’
Mike was frantic, ‘It’s on a tight band, and it’s weak. Maybe you’ve got some atmospheric occultation.’
‘Maybe so Mike. But like I say, we’re getting nothing down here.’
The line was silent for a moment. Mike considered his next move. Maybe he should notify his superior. But what if the array had malfunctioned? What if his interpretation was wrong?
‘Jodrell, can I get back to you?’
‘Sure Mike, but remember, if you need us, we’re going to lose Proxima over the horizon in about…’ there was a pause. ‘…Fifty three minutes. Then you’ll have to go back to Mexico.’
Mike’s superior was Ivan Brinkman, the Space Foundation’s chief science officer at the Lincoln Outpost. Mike had called him in to listen to the signal, though Ivan seemed somewhat nonplussed by Mike enthusiasm.
After a few moments consideration, Brinkman spoke, ‘How do you know the signal is occupying a narrow band?’
‘Well, If I move the telescope out even point two of a degree then we lose it.’
‘But all that means is that it’s coming from a well defined point. The signal could be as wide as you like.’
‘True, but they’re not picking it up at Jodrell Bank.’
‘Well if that’s case then it’s not atmospheric occultation that’s stopping them from hearing it. Occultation would just distort the signal, not eradicate it completely. I’d say the reason they can’t hear it is because the beam is pointed directly at the moon.’
They looked at each other as the implications of what Ivan had just said sunk in, Mike said, ‘But we’re moving. Orbiting the Earth.’
‘I know,’ said Ivan, ‘And that means it’s tracking us!’
The hair on the back of Mike’s neck stood on end.
‘My God,’
Brinkman was back in his office, patching calls through to the Space Foundation headquarters in Nevada. For the moment, Mike was alone with his signal, probably for the last time before it was taken away from him. No doubt someone else would receive the credit for the discovery. Probably Brinkman. It would certainly no longer be Mike’s.
Unless, of course, Mike made it his.
He moved back to the comms unit and patched through to Sydney Australia.
After about a minute, the call was answered. ‘Mike, what are you doing, it’s four-thirty in the morning, can’t you call me later.’
‘Hi Brad. I’m sorry. You see, it’s always night-time on the moon.’
‘This had better be good.’
‘I don’t often call you from another planet, do I? This is the best. This one’s gonna wake everyone up.’
‘What is?’
‘I am about to give you the biggest piece of news that that the Earth has ever seen. And you’re going to be the first to transmit it.’
‘Stop playing games with me Mike, what the hell happened up there?’
‘We’re picking up a transmission. It's artificial. It’s being sent directly to the moon, directly to the Lincoln Outpost. Unknown
Origin.’
‘Do you have a recording?’
‘You bet.’
‘How soon can you get it to me?’
*
‘We interrupt this transmission to bring you a special report.
‘At approximately 20:30 Universal Time this evening an audio signal of unknown origin was picked up by the Lincoln Outpost Radio Array on the moon’s surface. A leaked copy of the signal was sent from an unknown source to several press offices around the globe this evening. The Space Foundation has refused to comment on the signal, saying that it was ‘too early to speculate’, but that it would be releasing an official statement in the morning after more extensive monitoring and analysis. The White House has also refused to make a statement at this time…’
Mike’s door buzzer sounded.
He stood up from his bed, switched off his implant and walked over to see who it was.
He had only opened the door slightly when Brinkman forced it open the rest of the way, knocking Mike to the floor. He marched into the room.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he shouted.
‘Sir, I don’t know what you mean?’ Mike replied calmly.
‘Don’t play the innocent with me, I’ve got a nano-cranial implant and I just saw the news update. It’s been all over the news. It’s on the standard waves now. And we’ve tracked the data transfer through the IPV8-Link satellite to your comms unit! Are you completely stupid? You didn’t even try to encrypt it! You surely realise that you have breached the clause in your Foundation contract that states that all scientific discoveries made on Foundation time are solely owned by the Foundation and can only be released to the press by the Foundation!’
‘Sir, with all due respect this is not a Foundation issue. Mankind has a right to know.’
‘Don’t be so naïve, Mike. You obviously haven’t seen the rest of the bulletin. They’re calling it the Second Coming of Jesus down there. They’re calling it Armageddon too. In New York, London, Tripoli and countless other cities, there’s mass rioting. The implications of an extraterrestrial signal are more far-reaching than you or I could ever know.’
‘But Ivan I…’
Brinkman waved his hand. ‘I’m sorry Mike. I have no other option but to recommend your immediate dismissal from the program, and the Foundation. I’m ordering you a seat on the next supply ship’s return journey to Earth.’
