"Gone?" Fran repeated.
"It's no longer out there."
"Maybe just the satellite's dish is damaged and that's why you didn't get a bounce back," Hawkins offered.
"Even without the dish we would have gotten some sort of signal off the body of the satellite itself, a radar image." He pointed at the screen. "There's nothing out there where Voyager should be."
Silence settled over the room as each person contemplated what that meant. After a minute Levy slid her chair back from the keyboard. She didn't even appear to have heard what had happened to Voyager as she turned to the other members of the team.
"I think I have some answers to the questions raised by the second transmission."
"Have you broken the code?" Hawkins asked.
"We don't have the entire message. Actually," she said, "I think there are several messages, one of which was directed to us but the main part of which was directed elsewhere."
"Give us what you do have," Hawkins said.
Levy tapped the screen. "It's very strange. I think the part that slides up and down the microwave scale-from fourteen twenty to sixteen sixty-two megahertz-was actually a lead in and out to the main transmission-sort of like tuning a radio. I think the key message was in the blank parts."
"How can that be?" Lamb asked, confused.
"Well, I think-and it's only a theory-that the message is getting skipped about in time, somehow." Seeing a blank look on the others' faces, Levy continued. "When you transmit a message, you have several options in order to make it difficult for someone else to intercept and decrypt: You can vary the amplitude, the frequency, the message itself. But the best way would be simply to not have the message intercepted in the first place. If I had a way of transmitting where I could bounce the message back or forward a little in time, it would make it impossible for the person listening to pick it up."
"Is that technology possible?" Hawkins asked.
"We don't have it."
"Do the Russians?"
"Possibly, but not likely," Levy said. "Remember, that this is only speculation on my part."
Her eyes took on the unfocused look that Hawkins was getting used to. "The key to it all is that microwave transmissions are made up of atomic matter. This makes the possibility of being able to skip them about in time infinitely likelier than achieving the same end with larger objects. In fact, it is quite well accepted in the scientific community that there are a myriad of tiny wormholes-which are essentially time tunnels, or what you often hear about in science fiction as a warp tunnel-at the subatomic level.
"If you could surround the core of your message with negative energy matter, it would keep it intact through the hole. And since negative energy matter can be generated relatively easily, the real key to the problem is to generate a tiny wormhole-and of course to have a destination. Basically you would have a miniature tunnel through space, which means a small degree of time-shifting, since the message is not following a normal spatial path.
"The significance of such a message, though, is not that we can't intercept it in the first place, but rather that it is essential for an advanced race that is spread over the cosmos to be able to have what we would consider almost instantaneous communication over vast distances. Even at the speed of light a message from the nearest star system-Alpha Centauri-would take over four years to make it to our solar system. But if you could make use of these wormholes, you could get your message to your intended audience almost instantaneously across vast distances."
Levy halted, noting the way everyone was staring at her. "Well, that's what I think might be happening here, and not only can't I prove it but even if I could, there's not much you or I could do about it because we don't have the technology to receive it." She idly tapped her fingers on the desk. "If we did, space travel at a speed greater than light would be the next logical step, and we can barely put a satellite up into space. This technology is light-years ahead of what we have here on Earth now."
"Do you have any idea what such a transmitter would look like?" Hawkins asked.
"No. But, as I said, it would certainly be different from anything we've ever seen. Of course it might be so small that it could be easily concealed or it might be larger than the Great Pyramid. I have no idea. I only know the subatomic theories involved."
"You said that there was a part of the message that you think was directed to us," Fran noted. "Did you get that part at least?"
Levy nodded. "At the very beginning and the very end-beginning at fourteen twenty and sixteen sixty two megahertz, where it would be likely that we would be listening, there were two words in the same digital form as the first transmission. It took me a while to decode it, because even with just the two words expressed digitally, the frequency was shifting. The binary code was spread over ninety megahertz in each case."
Hawkins restrained his impatience with great difficulty. "Could you please tell us what that message is?"
Levy turned and hit one key on the computer and pointed. Hawkins looked at the two words.
WELCOME DEBRA
"Is this someone's idea of a joke?" Batson demanded.
Levy shook her head. "No. That format is the same as the one used on Voyager and the first transmission." She pointed at the computer. "That's the Rock talking." She smiled dreamily.
"It's just saying hi."
Hawkins reached into the desk drawer behind him and drew out several aspirin. With a swig of water he downed three.
THE ROCK
Hawkins watched the dusty terrain float by underneath as the helicopter banked slightly and then leveled. The other members of the team were peering out the side closer to them, looking at the sprawling Australian outback. The low-lying dunes that stretched to the horizon were an off-red color with an occasional sprinkling of rocks. It reminded Hawkins, though on a far larger scale, of west Texas, where water holes and places of civilization were few and far between.
"We'll see the Olgas in a minute or two," the pilot announced in their headsets. "Once we get over them you can see the Rock straight out on the horizon."
The seat bottom pushed up against Hawkins as the pilot increased altitude. A series of strange rock formations appeared ahead, like large isolated stones set on edge in the desert floor. "There's thirty-six of them," the pilot commented as the hodgepodge assortment of rocks drew close.
The domes and pillars of the Olgas passed by quickly and then they had their first glimpse of Ayers Rock looming on the horizon. "It's beautiful," Hawkins heard Debra Levy whisper into her mike.
The sun was bouncing its rays off the eastern face, coloring the rock bright red. It looked like a hunched whale beached upon a flat plain of sand. It appeared totally improbable-a massive monolith rising out of what was otherwise, for miles around, flat terrain. As they drew closer, the color mellowed out to a lighter shade of red. From the distance it had looked deceptively small, but as the miles decreased, the Rock expanded to fill up more and more of the horizon until finally it was the entire horizon. The pilot gained altitude to crest the top.
Hawkins leaned over and looked down as the helicopter came to a hover, a thousand feet directly above. The humped side shape changed to that of a striated, cuddled-up fetus from the top. The surface was streaked with the results of millions of years of erosion by wind and the scant rain that falls in the desert. The streaks ran in parallel lines, looking smoothly cut from this far up, but as they descended, the convoluted dips and ridges that pockmarked the lines could plainly be seen.