by Ben Bova
“Odd thing for a SETI researcher to say,” said Ralph.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Albert in a world-weary voice. “Maybe cosmic isolation is just an excuse to myself to explain why we haven’t found anything.”
“What’s comic isolation?” came Liam’s treble voice into to the conversation.
“Cosmic isolation. It’s the idea”—Albert, inadvertently, drifted into lecture mode—“that God or nature or the universe, or whatever has arranged that sentient species are placed at sufficiently great distances from each other so that one species can’t contaminate another’s cultures.”
Liam wrinkled his nose in a sign of not understanding.
“And it also explains,” Albert went on, “why there is only one highly sentient species on Earth.”
Liam stood wide-eyed, clearly still in the dark.
“No worries, Liam,” said Ralph. “I think cosmic isolation is nonsense.”
Liam seemed happy to be back in the game. “Well, Rex Snoopy Biscuit doesn’t believe in cosmic isolation, either.”
“Who?”
Albert felt embarrassed for his son. “Rex Snoopy Biscuit is … L iam’s imaginary playmate.” He’s much too old for this.
Ralph laughed. “That boy needs a dog!” He turned to Liam who looked hurt. “I’m sorry. It’s just that … that I like the name.”
Liam pulled a device from his pocket and turned to his mother. “Can I go into the lounge,” he said in a small voice, “and play with my GamesMaster?”
Ralph persisted in making amends. “Do you and Rex have—”
“Rex Snoopy Biscuit!”
“Do you and Rex Snoopy Biscuit have adventures together?”
“It’s lonely for Liam here in the outback,” said Albert, absently. “No kids his age to play with.”
“We have adventures all the time,” Liam insisted. “And today, we saw the min-min lights.”
“Liam’s right,” said Kimberly, “While driving here, we did see the min-min lights.”
Albert canted his head. “Min-min?”
“A purely Australian phenomenon,” said Kimberly. “Two distant blurry white lights. And they seem to follow you.”
“Far-off car headlights, maybe?” said Albert.
“Not likely,” said Ralph. “We’ve had min-min lights long before European colonization.”
“Interesting,” said Albert. “Probably a temperature inversion near the ground. Some kind of Fata Morgana.”
Liam wrinkled his nose.
Ralph laughed. “I’ll tell you, Liam, how my people explain it.” He sat and pulled Liam close. “Long ago in the dreamtime,” he said in a soft, mysterious voice, “there was a great storm like no other. So the women in the clan gathered all the kids together to keep them safe. There was a great noise from the sky.” Ralph clapped his hands together. Liam started and jerked back. Ralph pulled him close again. “And when the women weren’t looking, one little boy, Dhundi, crept away and went to where he thought the noise came from. He stopped there and shouted to the sky, ‘I am not afraid. I am not afraid.’ Then, as he watched, a giant round ball of fire came down.”
“Gosh!” said Liam.
“The ball cracked open and a man came out. He was red and he glowed like burning embers. ‘I am your brother,’ he said.” Ralph sat back in his chair.
“Then what happened?”
Ralph gave an “I don’t know” shrug. “Dhundi was never seen again. My people say that the min-min lights are Dhundi and his brother come back to Earth for a visit.”
“Wow,” said Liam in wide-eyed appreciation. He wrinkled his nose with a sudden thought. “I wonder if Rex Snoopy Biscuit is really my brother?”
“Could be,” said Ralph, laughing.
Thunder pealed again.
“I am not afraid,” said Liam under his breath.
“All right.” Kimberly gently pulled Liam away. “Let’s get you to the lounge so your father and Dr. Kunmanara—”
“Dr. Dingo.”
Kimberly flashed a “kids say cheeky things” smile at Ralph, then took Liam off to the lounge to play with his game machine.
“Liam has an ambiguous nature,” said Albert when boy and mother were out of sight. “He acts way younger than he is when under his mother’s eyes, and much older than his age when he’s around me.” He bit his lower lip. “I think his mother likes him young while I prefer him acting older.”
Another alert buzz came from the monitor. Ralph froze for an instant, his eyes focusing past Albert and onto the observations monitor. “Another candidate signal!”
Albert swiveled to look. This time, the monitor displayed:
. .. .. .. . . .. .. . . .. .. . . .. .. . . . .. . . . . . .
. .. .. .. . . .. .. . . .. .. . . .. .. . . . .. . . . . . .
. .. .. .. . . .. .. . . .. .. . . .. .. . . . .. . . . . . .
. .. .. .. . . .. .. . . .. .. . . .. .. . . . .. . . . . . .
After every quarter minute or so, another duplicate row of dots appeared.
“These aren’t prime numbers, either.” Albert peered close. “But what kind of natural phenomenon could produce these, I wonder.” He slowly echoed the numbers on the monitor. “One, two, two, two, four, two, four, two, four, five, two, and six.”
The two stared at the display.
“Hey, wait,” said Ralph after a silent minute or so. “Add the numbers. One. One plus two is three. Three plus two is five, plus two is seven, and now plus four is eleven. Primes!”
“Two is missing,” said Albert, scarcely daring to hope.
“Maybe they don’t consider two prime.”
Mentally, Albert continued the addition. Plus two is thirteen, plus four is seventeen. His excitement grew with each prime. “You’re right. They are primes.” He went on with the sequence. Plus two is nineteen. Yes! Plus four is twenty-three. Plus five is twenty-eight. Albert clenched a fist. “Damn! Twenty-eight. One of the results is twenty-eight.”
“Here. Let me check.” Ralph ran through the calculations. “You’re right,” he said, softly and sadly.
Albert doggedly continued the additions. “All right. Twenty-eight … thirty, and … thirty six.” He let out a sad sigh. “Off by one.”
“Wait,” said Ralph. “What if one of the signal blips got lost in transit? Then it would be twenty-nine, thirty-one, and thirty-seven. Primes!”
“But every row has the same error,” said Albert.
“Then it must be a problem at the transmitter, or a counting convention, or something.”
“You think?” said Albert.
“Yeah. All these primes can’t happen by accident. It makes sense.”
“It does, but I … I almost can’t believe it.” Albert sensed his heart pounding, wildly. “But … but I do think we may have done it.”
Ralph looked hard at the monitor. “Yes! We have done it.” He punched the air, then laughed. “It is hard to believe, though.”
“It is,” said Albert, doubts setting in. “Why would anyone transmit differences?”
“I don’t know,” said Ralph with a happy shrug. “An intelligence test, maybe.” He paused. “No, wait! This way, there are fewer blips. Thirty-seven, or six, blips would be hard to count. Maybe it’s a bandwidth problem.”
“Wish we could be sure.” Albert glared at his monitor. “I mean that we’re not reading too much into the data, that we’re seeing what we want to see. Maybe there is some natural process that’s generating the numbers.”
“Ambiguity’s the name of the game, mate.” Ralph seemed giddy. “I declare this the first ever SETI positive.”
Albert, his enthusiasm rekindled from Ralph’s, slapped a hand to the console. “Yes. I agree.” He looked over at Ralph’s console. “Quick. Lock the array on the source.”
Ralph flipped a switch. “Done!”
“But why now, I wonder,” said Albert, doubts still nibbling at the edges of his mind. “I mean, it’s a very strong signal. We probably should have d
etected it before.”
“I think the storm might have something to do with it.” Ralph checked the signal strength. “Electrical properties of different cloud layers. Some kind of Fabry-Perot natural etalon—like a laser resonator, maybe.”
“We’re logging this, of course,” said Albert.
“Of course, at maximum bandwidth.” Ralph turned at the sound of Kimberly coming back from the lounge.
“What’s going on?” she said, joining Ralph and Albert at the astronomy monitor.
“A signal!” said Albert, not looking away from the screen, and suppressing his enthusiasm so as not to tempt fate. “We think.”
“SETI?” said Kimberly.
“Sure looks like it.” Ralph pointed to some squiggles on the monitor. “Prime numbers and all that.”
“Where’s it coming from?” said Kimberly.
“Where?” Ralph and Albert exchanged a sheepish glance.
Albert pulled up an online database onto a third monitor. “Nothing obvious,” he said after a few seconds of heavy study. “And nearby, absolutely nothing at all.”
“We should phone the Murchison Array,” said Ralph, “for confirmation.”
“Right!” Albert grabbed for the phone. “Signal’s probably strong enough for Murchison.”
A further peal of thunder shook the room, this time accompanied by the roar of a sudden wild wind.
“Our radio dishes won’t take much of this,” Ralph called out over the howl of the gusts. “I’ll check the alignment stability.” Just as he turned to his monitor, the power went out, plunging the control room into darkness, save for the hint of dark gray twilight at the window. The ever-present hum of the air conditioner became noticeable by its absence.
“Not now! Please not now,” Albert implored, slamming down the phone and casting a quick glance upward to where the sky would be.
“No worries,” said Ralph. “We have a generator and lots of kero.” He rummaged for a flashlight and hurried outside.
Kimberly uttered a sharp yelp. “Liam’ll be frightened out of his mind.” She darted back toward the lounge, leaving Albert alone, staring at a dead monitor and pounding a fist onto the console.
Precious time slipped away while the now functionless electronics released pent-up heat into the air.
Albert wiped a hand across his now sweaty brow.
Finally, he heard the thrum of the generator, and the lights came on along with the air conditioner. Quickly, he examined the astronomy monitor.
“Hey!” Albert called out in exultant surprise. The signal was still there.
Albert narrowed his eyes. But, why? He’d imagined the object, whatever it was, would have drifted out of the field while the power was down. Maybe the dishes themselves have batteries to take care of power glitches. He stared expectantly at the monitor, hoping that the signal might start to exhibit more than just repetition of the first twelve prime numbers. I wonder why twelve. Maybe they have twelve fingers.
He was still staring when Ralph came through the door.
Albert pointed to the monitor. “We still have signal!”
“Really?” Ralph darted to the monitor. “Great!”
Albert turned as Kimberly came back from the lounge—without Liam.
“Liam?” said Albert.
“He wanted to stay there, playing games,” said Kimberly with a smile. “He said he didn’t want you to think he was a scaredy-cat. And I—”
“Damn!” said Ralph, staring at the engineering console. “Bloody hell! The dishes are out of lock.”
“What?” said Albert. “Can’t be.” He cast a glance at his monitor. “But … But we still have signal.”
“Look for yourself.” Ralph pointed to the status display. “The storm really did a job on them. They’re pointing all over the place.”
“That means…” Albert slumped back in his chair. “That means the signals can’t be astronomical in origin.” He bit his lower lip. “But it looked so right. I mean the prime numbers and all.” He slapped his hand down on the console. “Damn! Damn it to hell!”
Kimberly placed a comforting hand over his.
“Yeah, mate, I know.” Ralph blew out a breath. “Damned rotten luck.” He glanced at the astronomy monitor which indeed still showed signal. “But what the devil is going on?”
“We’ll have to find out,” said Albert in a flat voice. “Otherwise we’ll never have confidence in our equipment again.”
A half-hour later, after they’d turned off every source of electromagnetic radiation in the place and were therefore conducting their investigations by flashlight, confidence had not returned. Whenever they switched the monitor back on, the signal was there as strong as ever.
“It’s got to be something,” said Ralph.
“Wait a sec,” said Albert. “We haven’t tried Liam’s game machine.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Unlikely, but what else is there?” Albert spread his hands. “I mean, we’re at the dish signals’ integration point. Any extraneous EM field at the right frequency might be amplified a lot.”
Ralph shrugged. “I’m skeptical. But it couldn’t hurt to check.”
“Kim,” said Albert, turning to her, “could you go and confiscate Liam’s game machine?” He forced a smile. “Or barring that, bring back the batteries.”
“He’s not going to like it.” Kimberly turned and headed for the lounge.
Albert watched her go. Deep in his mind, he didn’t actually want to find the radiation source, so that he could cling to the vanishing low probability that the signal was actually SETI positive. By checking every possible source, he was making something of a bargain with fate.
A few minutes later, Kimberly returned, with batteries but without Liam.
“Is he still worried I’ll call him a scaredy-cat?” said Albert.
“No, now he’s in sitting there in a huff because I took his batteries while he was in the middle of a game.”
“We’ve still got signal,” Ralph called out from his console.
“All right, Kim. Better return Liam’s batteries before he loses it.”
Kimberly sighed and headed once more back to the lounge. “I think I’ll stay with him a while. Easier on the feet.”
“What now?” said Ralph when Kimberly had gone.
They looked at each other in silence for a half minute or so. Then Albert said, “For the sake of argument, let’s assume the signal is coming from space.”
“With the dishes pointing all over the sky?”
“Yeah.”
“How is that possible?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“OK,” said Ralph. “Just for the sake of argument. So now what?”
“Let’s try to find everything we can about the signals, dish by dish. The propagation characteristics, spatial signal drop-off if any, temporal characteristics. That sort of stuff.” Albert brightened with an inspiration. “Or … or maybe the signal is exceptionally strong and is coming from only a few dishes.”
“I’m doubtful,” said Ralph, “but we may as well. The storm seems to have kept away the real astronomy team as you call them. So we’ll probably have the time.”
Much later, when twilight had turned to dark night, and after Kimberly had reported that Liam was sound asleep in the lounge, Albert and Ralph made their discovery. By correlating high-time resolution data from the radio dishes, they’d found that the signal always came from a specific direction in space, but that direction drastically changed over a variable but extremely short time interval.
“Highly interesting,” said Ralph. “But I haven’t a clue what’s going on.”
“Let me think.” A minute later Albert smiled. He’d ridden the elevator of elation and despair and had now taken it from the depths up again to elation. Now though, the elation was from a new physics idea—as well as the idea that the idea of cosmic isolation might be stunningly wrong. “Do you know what this means?” he asked, lightly.
“N
o, what?” said Ralph.
“I asked you first.”
“Come on, Albert. Stop playing games.”
“It means,” said Albert, putting heavy weight on each word, “that we can’t possibly know from where the signals come.”
“Brilliant, Sherlock.”
“No. Listen. I’m talking faster than light here.”
“Excuse me?” said Ralph.
“If we can’t tell from where the signals come, then they could be traveling FTL, faster than light, much faster—and without violating relativity.”
“You don’t mean quantum entanglement, do you?” Ralph narrowed his eyes. “That is a very different kind of information than your garden variety ‘meet me at midnight’ kind of message.”
“I mean faster than light message transport in relativity.” Albert slapped a fist onto an open palm. “Pure and simple Einstein.”
“You Alberts sure stick together, don’t you?”
“I’m serious.”
“FTL in relativity?” Ralph shook his head. “Not bloody likely.” He smiled, softening his assertion. “And here I thought you were a relativity theorist.”
“Listen,” Albert pleaded, “and keep an open mind.”
“OK, shoot.”
“In relativity, it’s not so much the problem of going backward in time that forbids FTL, but the synchronization of clocks throughout space-time.”
“No argument, there,” said Ralph. “It’s pretty standard relativity theory.”
“Fine,” said Albert. “Now, if one were to travel from point A to point B where the distance and direction between the two points was unknowable.”
“Example, please,” said Ralph.
“Oh, I don’t know. Between two points in different landscape universes, or maybe across a black hole event horizon.” Albert raised a finger. “Then one could not possibly synchronize clocks—making FLT not in violation of relativity.”
“This is beginning to sound too much like physics,” said Kimberly. “I’d hang out with Liam if he weren’t asleep.”
Neither Albert nor Ralph seemed to hear her.
“Not in violation,” said Ralph, “doesn’t mean it can actually happen. I mean it might be theoretically possible, but—”