“I didn’t mean literally.”
“Harry, we’ve tied in the auxiliary scope. The signal is also not coming from a plane. Winston’s outside now looking for a dirigible.”
“A dirigible?”
“That’s all we’ve got left. It’s either a blimp or an alien.”
“Who speaks English.”
“What do you want me to say, Harry?”
“Where’s Frank? Does he know what’s going on?”
“No. He’s on the road somewhere tonight. Headed for D.C., I think. He’s hoping to get some more funding.”
“Well,” I said, “maybe he should ask Mr. Benny.”
Sol rolled his eyes. “Funny,” he said.
“Look, what’s the reality here? Is there any chance at all it could actually be Tau Whatever?”
“Tau Ceti. I don’t see how. But I can’t see how it’s not, either.”
“All right. If it’s legitimate, they’ve been listening to radio broadcasts and that’s how they picked up the language, right? Is that possible?”
“No,” said one of the engineers. “AM signals barely make it out of the atmosphere. They aren’t going all the way out to a star.”
“That’s not necessarily so,” said Sol. “A fragment might go a long way. An alien civilization might have technology we don’t know about. We might be looking where radios have been around for a thousand years. Maybe a million.”
“How far is Tau Ceti?”
“Twelve light-years.”
“So they’d have been listening to a Benny program that aired in 1936?”
“That’s correct,” said Sol. “Was he on that early?”
“I’m pretty sure he was,” I said. “I remember listening to him through most of the Depression.”
We stared at one another. “I’m beginning to think this is actually happening,” said Sol.
The door opened and the guy I’d seen out looking at the stars came in. He was carrying the binoculars. “Nothing up there,” he said.
The phone rang. One of the engineers picked up, listened, nodded, and put it down. “Kitt Peak confirms, Sol. They’re getting it too. And it does seem to be coming from Tau Ceti.”
I went over to the coffee machine and poured a cup. They were not happy. Sol looked thoroughly depressed. He’d found what he had pursued his entire life, and it was a heartbreaker.
They played it again. From the start: “Greetings, people of Earth,” the woman said. She could easily have been from California or New York. “Welcome to the community. We’ve been enjoying the various shows you send our way. We would like to have a conversation with you, if that can be arranged. We hope you get this message.”
The transmission was about two and a half minutes long. We listened to it a couple more times. Then Sol and I retired to the office assigned to SETI. “What do you think?” he said.
“I guess you have to believe the evidence.”
“This is incredible. Harry, I always wanted to find out who might be out there. With this, I don’t know a damned thing. I feel as if all I did was look into a mirror and see myself looking back.”
“Pity we can’t talk to the lady.” We could, of course, but it would take twenty-four years to get a response.
Sol collapsed into a chair. “What drives me up the wall is that we don’t know a damned thing about them.”
“Sure we do. They have a sense of humor, Sol. Maybe we can forget the philosophical discussions. If they really do like Benny, I think that takes us to the heart of who they are.”
Sol shook his head. “Maybe there are no aliens.”
Frank was ecstatic. He pointed out something in that first message the rest of us had missed. “She says, ‘Welcome to the community.’ Who’s the community, guys?”
Benny played the news for all it was worth, pretending to gloat over it on his TV program. But the surprises weren’t over, of course. SETI became overnight a project inordinately popular with politicians. Funding soared. Radio telescopes around the world turned toward Tau Ceti and every other star within fourteen light-years. That covered the radio era. And it was only a few weeks later that another message was received. From Groombridge 34 in German. It too translated into a greeting.
The Tau Ceti jokes continued front and center on Benny’s show until a male voice from Sirius expressed admiration for Ozzie and Harriet. Benny immediately launched a fake feud with the Nelsons.
That’s all history now. As everyone knows, we’re surrounded by thriving civilizations. We’ve seen a few of our neighbors. And Soclass="underline" He’s talking with people who look like felines near Alpha Centauri. They’re on first name terms.
He appears to have been right: They may look different. But in all the ways that matter, there are no aliens.
Thanks to Seth Shostak
THE LAW OF GRAVITY ISN’T WORKING ON RAINBOW BRIDGE
“I’m sorry to cut you short, Mr. Secretary, but we have breaking news at Niagara Falls, where the river seems to be spilling over its banks. Mark Espy, from WKBW-TV, Channel Seven, our affiliate in Buffalo, is on the scene. Mark, what’s happening?”
“Hello, Paula. I’m standing just off the Robert Moses Parkway, along the Niagara River, above the Falls. As you can see, the river is up on the highway and rising fast. Nobody seems to know why it’s flooding. But if it continues at this pace, those homes back there are going to get seriously wet.”
“I understand there was a helicopter rescue a few minutes ago?”
“Yes, Paula. A couple of motorists ran off the road. The police got them out okay. The river usually moves pretty quickly through this area, but as you can see it doesn’t seem to have any flow at all today. It’s almost as if it’s backing up.
“We’ve spoken with Buffalo Weather Central and they’re just starting to get some high water. That’s strange because if there’s going to be flooding at Niagara Falls, they should get it first.”
“Any idea how high it’s likely to get, Mark?”
“Nobody knows. They can’t make an estimate until they can figure out what’s causing it.”
“Your shoes must be getting wet. Maybe you’d better get out of there yourself.”
“Exactly what I was thinking. This is Mark Espy, on the north bank of the Niagara.”
“Whit Morrison reporting from downtown. Paula, we’re less than a block from City Hall, looking west along Pine Avenue toward the river. Something absolutely terrifying is happening here. Those are not manikins across the street. They’re real people. I saw two of them go over to try to help the driver in the pickup. As soon as they got beyond the curb over there they froze. Just like you see them. Same thing happened to the dog. You ever see a dog look like that before? And the driver’s just sitting there. You’ll notice a few more people down the block, but nothing moving anywhere along Pine Avenue all the way to the Niagara. Wait. Look at that.”
“What is that, Whit?”
“Believe it or not, it’s a newspaper.”
“It looks as if it’s just hanging in the air.”
“I think it is. A tall guy to my right, he was off-camera, rolled it up and threw it. And it seems to have locked in place. I mean, you can see it hanging there, right, Paula? Nine feet up?”
“I can see it. This must be a hoax.”
“If it is it’s a good one. Look at that woman. How can she stand like that with one foot in the air? She’s in mid-stride. Been like that for at least a couple minutes. Let’s talk to the guy who threw the paper. Sir, what’s your name, please?”