‘M51? The Whirlpool galaxy?’ Gibson’s tone was awed.
‘The Whirlpool. A bright open-arm spiral, part of a little group of galaxies. It’s over thirty million light years away. Specifically, the signal came from this region here.’ Freya used a pencil to circle a small area at the edge of the nucleus, where one of the spiral arms was just breaking away. ‘It’s rich in Population II stars, with lots of red and yellow dwarfs about ten billion years old. Twice the age of the Sun.’
‘But that’s—’
‘If the signal came from here, Charlie, it set out thirty million years ago, long before Homo sapiens existed. Before there were even primates.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Gibson said. ‘How could they signal us if we didn’t even exist when they fired off their message? Anyway, no life forms could survive next to the nucleus of a galaxy. What’s your second candidate?’
Freya spread out a second celestial image. The scientists gazed in bewilderment at a near-blank patch of sky. ‘This is in a small constellation called Phoenix, in the southern sky. With the huge number of particles that flowed in I can place the source to sub-arcsecond accuracy. If the particles came up from below, they came from here.’ She pencilled a small circle of black emptiness. A faint star sat just outside the circle.
‘Empty space?’
‘This chart goes down to magnitude thirteen. But we’re looking at a very quiet bit of sky, well away from the Milky Way. In fact, almost in the direction of the south galactic pole.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means there are probably no more than a handful of stars within the sight cone. At a guess they’ll be red and white dwarfs with very low luminosities, maybe a halo star or two. But basically we’re looking at an empty region of sky.’
‘What about this star?’ Gibson pointed to the little dot near the edge of Freya’s pencilled circle.
‘Nu Phoenicis. A late F dwarf, F8 V to be exact, fifty light years from us.’
‘That’s close. Can you rule it out?’
‘Not absolutely. But it’s unlikely.’
‘Excuse me,’ Hanning interrupted, ‘but what’s a late F dwarf?’
‘A Sun-like star,’ said Freya. ‘Just slightly hotter. It’s likely to have planets around it. But as I say, it’s just outside the error circle.’
Gibson sighed and leaned back. ‘So what do I tell the world’s press? And the Prime Minister and the Secretary General of the United Nations? That the signal came from empty space?’
‘No,’ Freya said, ‘you tell them that it came from the Whirlpool galaxy.’
Hanning said, ‘Forgive me, but I thought Lord Sangster had made it clear. You don’t tell anyone about this without his clearance.’
Gibson didn’t bother to conceal his hostility. ‘You’re here to observe, not lay down the law.’
Hanning bristled, but said nothing.
Shtyrkov said, ‘It has to be the Whirlpool.’
Gibson shook his head. ‘No. It’s clearly the F star. I take your point about the error circle, Freya, but it’s not that far beyond the edge. The star’s a dwarf, Sun-like. It’s practically our next-door neighbour. And another thing: it’s at the right distance. Think about it. The first radio signals were leaked from the Earth a hundred years ago. As soon as the first radio waves from us reached them, fifty years ago, they knew we were here, knew we were technological. They immediately fired off their signal and it has just reached us now. It fits like a glove.’
Shtyrkov said, ‘Two intelligence-bearing systems that we know of, us and them, a mere fifty light years apart? The Galaxy would have to be crawling with life.’
Gibson’s thin lips crimped in annoyance. ‘If that’s what it takes.’
Hanning cleared his throat. ‘I have a little experience in these matters and I must say I agree with Dr Gibson. In politics, you can’t approach a minister with ifs and buts. An air of certainty counts. You need to present a united front.’
‘Why?’ Petrie asked. ‘Why not properly reflect the scientific uncertainties?’
‘It looks bad. It conveys an air of dithering, even incompetence. Given the bizarre nature of your claim, it might suggest to some that you are — forgive me — the victims of delusion or, worse, perpetrators of fraud.’
‘That is outrageous.’
Hanning gave a cold smile. ‘Welcome to the big bad world, Dr Petrie.’
Gibson said, ‘That’s what I’ve been saying all along. We’d lose the drama, and we could even lose credibility. We must agree on the source of the signal.’
‘And if we can’t?’
‘Hell, Tom, we can at least look as if we do. We’re about to enter a political arena and sniping at the margins will just cause damage. We need a united front for the announcement, even if you have to put on an act for the occasion, okay? As team leader I expect you all to back me up.’
‘What, on the F star?’ Dismay and scorn mingled in Shtyrkov’s voice.
‘It seems to me the evidence is crystal clear on this. The signallers are on a small, Earth-like planet orbiting the star. It’s either that, or the signal was sent to us thirty million years before we existed.’
‘We can’t go public with the F star, Charlee. It’s outside the error circle. You’ll wreck our credibility.’
‘What else is there? The Whirlpool? Do you expect me to face the press and tell them it’s the Whirlpool galaxy thirty million light years away?’
Svetlana, who had been sitting quietly throughout the discussion, finally broke her silence. Hesitantly, she said, ‘I’m sorry if this is a dumb question, but how could an alien civilisation possibly know about our underground lake?’
17
We Have a Problem
‘I can explain that.’ Gibson’s voice had a triumphant edge to it. ‘Vashislav said it himself. Two civilisations so close together can’t be a coincidence. Well, let’s follow the logic. If he’s right — if I’m right about the F star — there must be a Galactic club out there. Millions, maybe billions, of civilisations talking to each other. That means a gigantic telephone network to go with it, particle flows crisscrossing everywhere. We just happened to drift across one of their lines of communication. The signal was just a lucky intercept.’
Shtyrkov put his hands on top of his head and frowned in concentration for some seconds. Then, ‘Charlee, here are two experiments for you. Number one: let a fly loose in a cathedral, blindfold yourself, and fire a pistol in any direction, preferably not at your head. Number two: put Lake Tatras out there somewhere in the Galaxy, even just halfway to the nearest star, and fire a signal in a random direction. Let me tell you this: you’d stand a better chance of hitting the fly in the cathedral than the lake in the Galaxy.’
Petrie was scribbling on paper. He looked up and said, ‘Vashislav is right. The chances of a random interception, even with a big galactic club, everyone chattering to everyone else, are too slim for words.’
Gibson said, ‘Use your common sense. How can aliens know about an experiment in an underground lake?’
Freya said, ‘I can prove that they do.’
The physicist gave Freya the floor with an ironic flourish.
She unconsciously flicked hair back over a shoulder and then itemised the points with her fingers. ‘First. At the latitude of Lake Tatras we’re spinning at fourteen hundred kilometres an hour round the Earth’s axis. Second. The Earth’s orbiting the Sun at thirty kilometres a second. Three. The Sun’s drifting at thirteen kilometres a second through our neighbouring stars, us along with it. And Four. Our neighbourhood, millions of stars in it, is orbiting the centre of our Galaxy at two hundred kilometres a second.’
Shtyrkov said, ‘Of course, Freya. Seen from even a light year away, the lake isn’t just a tiny target, it’s a fast-moving one.’