The Expanding Universe

by Craig Martelle

  Kuldeep buried himself in work during their minibus ride to Zelenchukskaya, where the RATAN-600 array was located. Lance talked to the scientists. They were tagging along with a team of three people from the Arecibo Laboratory in Puerto Rico; that was their cover. Kuldeep could easily pass for a scientist, as he was a data guy anyway. Lance was pretending to be a grad student—at 28, he still looked the part. The Arecibo gang clearly resented the fact that a pair of mystery men from a nonexistent research institute had been foisted on them, but Lance was good at warming people up. As the bus bumped through the barren, snow-blanketed hills, he got them talking about their passion.

  SETI.

  The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.

  What a bunch of bullcrap! Lance hadn’t changed his mind about that since he started at Miscellaneous Reports, regardless of the odd superstitious shiver. But these people weren’t superstitious. And they weren’t Phyllis, either—they didn’t have bees in their bonnets dating back to 1962. They spoke learnedly about the Fermi Paradox, the zoo hypothesis, and the parameters for hypothetical alien civilizations. The Beeps—this was what they called the mysterious signal of October 16th—excited them. The Wow! signal had nothing on this, they said. This was the real deal, at last.

  Lance felt like he had stepped into a parallel universe, an illusion reinforced by the bizarro landscape outside. Cliffs reared like giant snow-dusted fossils. ‘Villages’ consisted of a few Soviet-era highrises plonked down in the middle of nowhere. The USSR had run on belief; when people stopped believing in it, the whole shebang collapsed. It was the same for the Beeps—as long as people believed it might mean something, the signal exerted power over them. But there was probably nothing there at all.

  They arrived at Zelenchukskaya after twelve hours. All they saw of the place that night was barracks-like buildings hunkering in the headlights. They checked into a grim guest-house. Lance went straight to Kuldeep’s room and paced up and down. “Did you get anything good?”

  While Lance was chatting with the Arecibo scientists on the bus, Kuldeep had been wirelessly stealing data from their laptops. What all these SETI people had in common: they were incredibly gullible.

  “Arecibo didn’t pick up the Beeps at all,” Kuldeep answered glumly. “That’s why we’re here.” He brightened a bit. “But guess what? They’ve made a preliminary translation of the signal.”

  “Yeah? What’s it say?”

  “‘Ahahaha LMAO.’”

  Lance laughed. He was hungry; their late supper in the guest-house’s cafeteria had not been appetizing. “You got any food?”

  “Pringles,” Kuldeep said, pointing at his rucksack. Lance got them out. Sour cream and onion. He took a handful and offered the can to Kuldeep.

  “No thanks, man, I’m fine.”

  Kuldeep was sitting on the floor with his back to the noisy, but not very warm, radiator, wrapped in the quilt off his bed. His brown face looked a bit gray in the reflected glare from his laptop.

  Lance dropped down in front of him and grasped his bony kneecaps through the quilt. “You feeling OK?”

  “Fine.” After a second Kuldeep changed his mind. “I don’t want to sound paranoid, but did you see the way those guys were looking at me?”

  “The guys who met us off the bus?” A pair of Russian astronomers, with smiles that barely reached their lips, let alone their eyes.

  “Yeah. Sometimes it just hits you … I’m the only brown person for a thousand miles.”

  “Dude, they don’t want any of us here. What, you think they poisoned you or something?”

  Kuldeep rolled his eyes. “Forget it.”

  Lance went back to his own room. The thing was, it wasn’t like Kuldeep to be paranoid. Kuldeep Srivastava was your Hindu-American Joe Sixpack. He went out of his way to eat beef, watch football, and pretend like he got Phyllis’s references. As far as the UFO thing went, he took Lance’s own tack of humoring Phyllis while keeping his mind firmly closed to the possibility of alien life. What had spooked him? Could he have found something on the Arecibo scientists’ laptops he hadn’t mentioned to Lance? Or had the collective madness of the SETI crew begun to infect him … tin-foil-hat syndrome by osmosis?

  Now you’re getting paranoid, Lance told himself, and went to sleep with his gun in the drawer of his bedside table.

  Jet-lag woke him several times in the night. At last, sunlight brightened the curtains. He skipped a shower—the water pressure was shitty—and went down to breakfast. Buttered bread with pieces of sausage and cheese on top. Omelets. Cereal. Kuldeep appeared just as everyone else was finishing, looking as if he hadn’t slept a wink. Lance made a sandwich out of the bread and cheese and stuffed it into Kuldeep’s hand as they crossed from the guest-house to the laboratory block. The sun glared on the snow. The wind sliced into any exposed skin.

  Their Russian hosts were all smiles now. They welcomed the Americans into a conference room that reminded Lance of his elementary school, right down to the smell of chalk and socks. Lance, reverting to old habits, sat in the back row, while the American scientists untruthfully praised their accommodations, and thanked the Russians for the courtesy of inviting them here. Lance still wondered why they had been invited, as their hosts clearly wished them a thousand miles away.

  The lead Russian scientist, a short man with one of those Slavic faces like a crumpled paper bag, spoke English with a precision that would have gratified Phyllis. “What you must understand is that the Beeps are probably of terrestrial origin.”

  This was the kind of scientist Lance liked. He didn’t make any exaggerated claims for his specialty.

  “The primary purpose of our receiver is to monitor solar activity. It has a bandwidth of 1 Ghz, which is much wider than most SETI-focused instruments. Therefore, the exact characteristics of the signal cannot be known. We recorded a maximum signal strength of 1,000,000 janskys. However, this may be artificially diluted by the broad bandwidth of the array. It follows that the recorded frequency of 200 gigahertz, which is equivalent to a very short wavelength of 1.5 millimeters, is also less than precise. Did the signal take up the whole gigahertz? A narrow-bandwidth signal is more likely to originate from an intelligent source. A broad-bandwidth signal may be a celestial event such as a quasar or astrophysical maser. This is a crucial question, and the data simply cannot answer it.”

  Lance sat up. He glanced at Kuldeep, and Kuldeep stared back at him, wide-eyed.

  The Russians didn’t know the exact frequency of the Beeps—but the CIA did. The FISINT satellite had recorded a precise frequency of 204.167 GHz, before crashing.

  The room suddenly seemed brighter to Lance, the pinched faces of the scientists less annoying. He knew something they didn’t. He settled back to listen, in a better mood.

  “Of course, the strength of the signal seems to make it an interesting SETI candidate, regardless of its precise characteristics.”

  Kuldeep nodded emphatically.

  “However, this leads to the million-dollar question: where could a signal of at least 1,000,000 jy have come from? Our beam shape is narrow and elongated from north to south. And there are no stars in that patch of the sky closer than 150 lightyears. For an alien civilization to broadcast a signal of that strength, from that distance, would require a trillion trillion watts! So we think that’s unlikely.”

  Lance laughed. No one else did. The Arecibo scientists looked crestfallen, as well they might. It was now clear why the Russians had invited them here. They wanted to squash speculation with cold hard facts before the story of the Beeps got out to the media. Very sensible.

  “Further processing and analysis is needed,” the Russian astronomer continued imperturbably. “But we believe the Beeps almost certainly originated from a terrestrial event, such as microlensing of a background source.”

  The lead Arecibo scientist, a plump woman with blue-dyed streaks in her hair, doggedly asked questions. The Russians responded with fact-bombs which were largely unintelligible to
Lance. It was enough for him that the mood of the American scientists continued to deflate. He gazed out the window at a snow-dappled open hillside dotted with evergreens. RATAN-600 lay in a dish among high peaks. He could see the far edge of the array from here, although the near side of the 600-meter ring was hidden by trees. The telescope looked like a curved concrete wall. Not the stuff of empire-building dreams.

  Kuldeep nudged his elbow. “Jupiter,” he muttered.

  “Huh?”

  “What was in that patch of sky on the sixteenth of October. I just looked it up. Jupiter.”

  “Oh, so it’s the little green men for sure. Because we haven’t been watching Jupiter for centuries.”

  “I’m just saying ...”

  Kuldeep didn’t get a chance to say any more. One of the Russians came around and collected everyone’s laptops and phones.

  “This is just for fun,” the lead Russian scientist said, and he grinned. The other Russians grinned at the same time, as if a command had flashed up on an invisible screen: Smile! Lance’s shoulders prickled with gooseflesh. “Everybody, please listen closely.”

  The Russian pressed keys on a laptop at the front of the room.

  Sound came from speakers mounted on the ceiling.

  Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beeeep.

  The Russian paused the recording. “This is how the Beeps would have sounded if you had picked them up on a radio apparatus. The signal would not have been detectable on the ground, but if you were in orbit, you might have heard this.”

  The blue-haired woman said, “Wasn’t the signal eight seconds long?”

  This was all that Lance was sitting here for. He wanted to hear the rest of it.

  “Eight point one seconds. Do you want me to start the recording again?”

  Everyone nodded impatiently.

  Beep, beep, beeeep. Wheeeooooeeee. The beeps blended into a whine that flowed up and down the scale.

  Lance’s skin seemed to shrink, as if the roof had been ripped off the overheated room and the cold was flooding in.

  Wheeeooooeeee.

  It’s just a freaking microlensed background event.

  Kuldeep’s mouth hung open. His long-lashed eyes blinked rapidly, as if he were having some kind of a seizure.

  Wheeeooooeeee.

  Lance noticed that all the Russian scientists’s hands had drifted upwards, as if to cup the sides of their heads.

  WheeeooooeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

  The whine suddenly scaled up into a loud, startling, repugnant screech.

  The Russians covered their ears.

  So did Lance, a second too late to block out the horrible noise. It felt like an ice-pick to the brain. One of the American scientists jumped to his feet, knocking his chair over. “STOP IT!” The recording ended and he was left howling into silence.

  Lance licked his lips. “I’ve heard worse things on a Saturday night where I come from.” God’s truth.

  The man on his feet wasn’t smiling. “The Beeps! We should be calling it The Scream.”

  Kuldeep stood up. He said, “I think it’s very important not to sensationalize this event. As Dr. Zhigunov said, more processing and analysis is needed. I—excuse me.” He staggered out of the room. Lance caught up with him in the bathroom, where he puked up his breakfast.

  * * *

  “So now Kuldeep’s installed on the porcelain throne,” Lance told Phyllis, on the phone. “He thinks it’s something he ate.”

  “Dear boy, just come out and say it.”

  “All right, he’s crapping his guts out. It might’ve been the airline food. Anyway, he’s down for the count, but Phyllis, this is urgent.”

  He’d already told her about the briefing session, including the nasty little trick the Russians had played on them.

  “We need to slap a gag order on those nimrods from the Arecibo Laboratory. Can you make it happen?”

  He heard her intake of breath as clearly as if she were right beside him. But her voice sounded far away and weak. “Dear Lance, our job is to establish whether this was a genuine alien signal. Remember Hector Quintanilla’s rules? Consult with experts; do not alienate experts by restricting their freedom of enquiry.”

  Hector Quintanilla, the last chief officer of the Blue Book project, had laid down a methodology for UFO investigations. Most of it was hopelessly out of date. Lance ground his teeth. He was in Kuldeep’s room again. Through the open door of the bathroom, he could hear and smell Kuldeep’s diarrhea. “I ain’t fixing to restrict their freedom of enquiry,” he said, the South creeping into his voice. “They can enquire all they want. I hope they do. I hope they search that patch of sky every night.” And find nothing. “I just don’t want them running their mouths to the press.”

  “Lance, these are scientists. It’s their business to hedge their utterances in public. One needn’t invoke the law where a word to the wise will suffice.”

  Lance thumped a loose fist against his own forehead. How could he make her understand that they wouldn’t accept a word to the wise from him? They had him pegged as a Fed and a redneck: double-plus ungood. They might’ve listened to Kuldeep, but not when he had his pants around his ankles, and anyway, it was only a might. Indian data guys didn’t command much respect, either.

  “Phyllis, these ain’t scientists like you and I know them. They’re not really scientists at all. They’re SETI people, which means publicity whores. How many times have we followed up on false positives from these idiots running their mouths to Wired and Space.com, feeding the conspiracy machine and diminishing trust in the government?”

  Silence from Phyllis. Lance reflected that after all, she wasn’t the one who had to do the legwork on those false positives. She hardly ever went on the internet.

  Lance moved away from the bathroom door and lowered his voice. “I’m not saying this is a genuine signal. But it has the potential to be a big story—”

  Phyllis interrupted him. “Do you think it is a genuine signal?”

  Lance searched for an evasion. Hector Quintanilla came to mind. At least one of the old boy’s rules still applied. “Quintanilla laid down that we should determine if the phenomenon presents a risk to the security of the United States. No, it doesn’t, but inaccurate and scaremongering reports about it would not be helpful. So I’d just like to make sure it doesn’t get into the media before the necessary follow-up analysis is done.” He crossed his fingers.

  “Lance, I’m sorry,” Phyllis said. “To get a gagging order, I’d have to call in favors. I don’t want to do that at the present stage of this investigation. Could you send me the data you have? I’d like to ask some experts here to look at it. And please tell Kuldeep to drink plenty of water, and eat salt. It’s so important to stay hydrated.”

  * * *

  Kuldeep, still sitting on the toilet, set his laptop on his thighs and tried to type. After a few seconds Lance felt sorry for him and took the laptop away. “Just tell me what we should say.”

  Kuldeep breathed raggedly. “The signal was received by our FISINT satellite at a frequency of 204.167 gigahertz. It’s commonly accepted that any signal with a bandwidth of 300 Hz or less must be generated by an intelligent source. This one qualifies. But the Russians don’t know that. And the NRO doesn’t know if it came from the ground or another satellite or what. We’re the only ones who have both sides of the story.”

  “That’s not gonna stop those fools down the hall,” Lance said. They were all closeted in Blue-Hair’s room, probably thinking up clickbait headlines at this very moment.

  “I took notes while Professor Zhigunov was talking. That file. Just do control-C, control-V. Give her the exact dimensions of RATAN-600’s beam space and the coordinates it was pointing at when the signal was received. That’s key to my determination that the signal came from Jupiter.”

  “Jupiter.”

  “Near Jupiter. Europa’s supposed to have an interior ocean. Could support extremophile lifeforms.”

  “And a tr
illion-watt radio transmitter?” Lance muttered.

  “If it was coming from Europa, it would only need to be a few thousand watts. I wish I had the signal strength for the spike.”

  “The Scream?”

  “Yeah. I’d like to know the maximum strength of the transmission. They gave us the average strength, but one million Janskys, c’mon, that’s bullshit. That wouldn’t physically burn out a satellite component.”

  Lance sent the email from Kuldeep’s account. They were using their own satphones for internet access, circumventing the facility’s insecure WiFi network. Then he went back to his own room and crashed.

  In his sleep, alien electronics whistled: WheeeooooeeeeEEEEEEEE

  He sat up, heart thudding.

  Dark outside.

  Fudgin’ jet-lag.

  He went down the hall and found Kuldeep missing from his room.

  His first instinct was to go and confront the Russians—paranoia sweeping in like a wave over the sand-castle of his confidence—but then he saw that Kuldeep’s coat and laptop were missing, too.

  He went back to his room for his gun, snuggled it into his under-arm holster, zipped up his heavyweight parka, and went downstairs.

  I wish I had the signal strength for the spike, Kuldeep had said, more than once.

  He must’ve gone looking for it.

  That would mean finding an unprotected computer in an unoccupied office, since Kuldeep would not do something obvious like going to Dr. Zhigunov and asking him for the data—a move guaranteed to fail, but much less dangerous than what Kuldeep probably had done.

  Aw fudge, Kuldeep. ‘Coolness In Action’ is a joke, not career advice.

  Glass doors led from the empty cafeteria into a bitter night. At least the wind had dropped. Lance walked past white hedges. Snow had fallen again, just a light dusting on the ground. The last flakes danced in the light leaking from the guest-house’s lobby. The windows of the dorm where the Russians lived also glowed. All the other buildings were dark. Lance crossed to the laboratory. He tried the front door, and then circled the building, trying every door he came to. All locked.