The antenna was attached to a Zenith console with a tape recorder mounted on top. By then he was tuned in to Alpha Centauri. But there was still only static.
“Finding an artificial radio signal from an extraterrestrial source,” he said, “would constitute the biggest scientific coup since we discovered we’re not the center of the universe.” Sol looked older than he was. He was prematurely gray, wrinkled, with rumpled hair and eyes set too close together. But I could still see the Boy Scout in those features. The kid who took the world seriously, who really did want to find out what was over the next hill. “There’s more to it, of course,” he used to say. “If at some point we detect a signal, we’ll begin to grasp our place in the cosmos. Who are we? What’s going on? The only thing I really care about, Harry, is to live long enough to get some answers.”
“What do you think of your chances?” I asked.
“I’ve no idea. It may not even be possible. Interstellar transmissions might dissipate before they could ever reach Valley Forge.” He smiled and his eyes took on a far-away look. “In a way,” he said, “it’s a kids’ game. Imagine what it would be like to be able to exchange ideas with a sentient being that lives in another place. And has a completely different history. What kind of culture would it have? What would matter most to it? Would it have music? Art? Would it believe in God? What kind of perspective could it provide about us?” He shook his head. I heard him say stuff like that periodically, and I swear there were times I thought he was about to tear up.
So naturally, when Frank Drake began recruiting people in 1960 for Project Ozma, Sol was probably first in line. By then he—and I—were in our seventies.
Ozma got its name, of course, from the fabled princess in L. Frank Baum’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. “Obviously,” Sol told me while he was waiting to hear whether he would be brought on board, “Drake thinks it’s a long shot.”
“It probably is,” I said.
“Maybe.” His eyes closed. “The evidence isn’t in yet.”
I was with him on the night when the phone rang and the invitation came through. It was a Thursday, which was our night to play chess. I watched Sol light up and clench a fist and nod a couple of times. At the end he said, “Thank you, Frank,” eased the phone into the cradle, and came back to the game with a triumphant smile. “I’m in the hunt, baby.”
He appointed me to run White Star, Inc., which by then had blossomed into a multimillion dollar operation. Then he was on his way to the Appalachians.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, during those early years, operated out of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. The observatory had an 85-foot radio telescope, which would be made available for six hours daily. Sol explained that they would be conducting the search at 1420 MHz, which was the natural emission frequency of neutral hydrogen, making it the most likely transmission frequency.
The area had a population of about a hundred. He rented a two-story cabin and I helped him make the move. At the time the project seemed to me a waste of effort. The media had a lot of fun with it, sometimes playing it seriously because the general public was interested, sometimes just playing it for laughs. I got introduced to Drake, who agreed that the odds for success weren’t encouraging. “But,” he said, “we lose nothing by trying.”
SETI divided its telescope time between its two most likely candidates, Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. They were both G-type stars, like the sun, and consequently the most likely nearby stars to be home to a living world. They were between ten and twelve light-years away.
My son-in-law Al was interested in the project, so I took him and Ellen, my daughter, to Green Bank on the second weekend. We toured the observatory, and Sol took us out to look at the radio telescope, which on that night was silhouetted against the Moon. Then we went back inside while he explained how they conducted the search. A loudspeaker produced a steady stream of static. “That’s our output,” he said.
“What do you hope to hear?” asked Ellen.
He showed us the tapes that recorded incoming microwaves. ‘We’re looking for a pattern. Something that would suggest an artificial signal.”
“Have you found anything?” asked Al.
“Not yet. But we’ve just started.”
“Anything even suspicious?”
“Not really.”
We stayed at Sol’s place that night, and that’s how I came to be in town when everything happened.
It was the eleventh day of the search, around midnight. Sol was still at the observatory, while we were at his place watching Jack Paar when the phone rang. “Harry.” It was Sol’s voice, and he sounded excited. “Get down here. Right away.”
“You okay, Sol?”
“Yes,” he said. “I think we have a hit.”
“Great,” I said.
“Don’t tell anyone. Not even your kids.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s probably a false alarm. The numbers are all right. But it has to be a false alarm.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Get down here and I’ll show you, okay?”
I wasn’t so sure I wanted to charge over there to find out why the hit wasn’t valid, but he was too excited so I told him okay, I was on my way.
I got there a little after midnight and parked beside his Hudson. It was a beautiful clear evening, a quarter moon sinking into the western mountains, tree branches swaying gently in a warm breeze. The telescope glittered in the starlight. One of the observatory engineers stood at the far end of the lot looking up at the sky through binoculars.
I went inside. Sol and two other people were sitting near the loudspeaker. But I didn’t hear the static I expected. Instead there was a woman’s voice.
“…You get this message. We are aware the odds are not good but we will continue to transmit off and on for an indefinite period. If you do hear this we would be grateful if you would acknowledge.” She paused. Then: “By the way, I should tell you that we love Jack Benny. Please give Mr. Benny our regards.”
I wondered why they were listening to somebody talking about Jack Benny. Sol was sitting there, apparently unaware I’d come in.
“We’ll hope to hear from you,” the woman continued. “Goodbye for now. Let us hope we will be able to say hello again in the near future. In any case, we wish you well.”
I walked over and had to tap his shoulder before he noticed me.
“What’s going on?” I said.
He shook his head, as if to clear it. “Did you hear that, Harry?”
“The woman? Yes. Who is she?”
“As nearly as we can tell, she lives somewhere out around Tau Ceti.”
“Sol, what are you talking about?”
“He’s not kidding,” said one of the others. I found out later one was an engineer, the other an astronomer from the University of West Virginia. They all looked shaken.
“Tell me that again,” I said.
“That,” said Sol, “seems to be an alien transmission.” He was dead serious.
“Not possible,” I said. “That’s somebody in Chicago or someplace.”
His eyes had a look of desperation. “The signal’s not coming from Chicago.”