“That’s right. So, how much is all this fun going to cost me now?”
“All in all, that brings us to 348,000 euros.”
“Excuse me? Last I understood, we were at 317,000 euros. There’s no insurance, and Rockets Plus offers a super price, you said. Shouldn’t it be less?”
“Unfortunately, there is another surcharge for this during production. The CubeSat has to be in Kiruna at least two days before launch to give them time to integrate it into the rocket’s payload. We need at least ten days to build it, so the only option is an individual courier flight from the U.S. to Sweden. We can’t send your CubeSat by mail.”
“Okay, then so be it. After all, I have now already transferred 150,000 euros. What about the remaining payment?”
“It should definitely get to us before we launch.”
“You’re not taking any chances.”
“No, we can’t afford that.”
“One more question.”
“Yes, Peter?”
“Can I watch my CubeSat launch?”
The idea had just come to him. If he was investing this much money in his spaceship, he’d like to be there for the launch.
“You mean via the net?”
“No, locally. In Sweden.”
“I’ll have to check on that. Normally, it should be possible. But please wait to book airline tickets.”
March 18, 2026 – Passau
Evaluating the stacked photos was the most tedious part of his research. He stared at black images for so long that he eventually saw dots where there were none. And that was after a long day of work with students who were even more stressed than he was.
It was a wonder how they kept motivating themselves. That was why he couldn’t understand his colleagues who whined about a lack of motivation. After all, they got to teach their favorite subjects every day. On the other hand, their students had to learn what the schedule and curriculum demanded of them.
Next photo.
Peter stared intently at the center of the picture until he found a point. Great, another checkmark on his list. So far, he hadn’t uncovered another missing star. It was strange that he was glad about it. After all, it confirmed his theory that in less than three weeks, the sun would die, too.
He still hadn’t quite let the drama inherent in this short time period get to him. Shouldn’t he be glad if his ideas proved to be wrong? Somehow being right seemed to be more important to him than the survival of humankind. Or was it about the unique chance to become the savior of the world? Even though no one would ever know about his involvement, he felt pride rise at the thought of it.
He swiped the picture aside.
If he saved Earth, Franziska would have to return to him after all. Well, she didn’t have to return, of course. She wouldn’t believe him any more than anyone else would.
He closed his eyes and massaged his temples. The small dot in the center was hard to see. Peter swapped black and white tones, and a dark dot was clearly visible on the light background. But the screen brightness soon strained his eyes, so he switched back to the original colors. It would have been better if he could have automated the process, but he trusted an algorithm less than he trusted himself.
Peter yawned. He had finished going through all the images shortly before ten. He had found a star in every single shot. The area of the sky he had sifted through corresponded to the one he examined on the spherical dish. There, five stars were missing, and here, none—statistically significant. The phenomenon, the nature of which was still unknown to him, really did seem to be confined to the spherical shell. That was good in that it confirmed his theory. However, it also meant that the sun was still awaiting destruction.
He must get his beacon into orbit. If it emitted a signal with a frequency of 418 megahertz, the solar system fulfilled all conditions to be spared despite its position on the spherical shell. Didn’t it? Had he perhaps overlooked something else? What if the mere existence of the signal was not enough now? Frantically, he checked the website of the Federal Network Agency. His WLAN was transmitting at 2,400 and 5,000 megahertz. Some other service might have been transmitting at 418 megahertz.
In fact, Germany reserved the range between 410 and 420 megahertz for professional and military radio applications. He’d never investigated what exactly was transmitted on the corresponding channels. Maybe it had to be a specific message? Leave us alone. Attention, intelligence on board. Something like that?
Peter wrote a message to Thomas at the Effelsberg observatory. His former fellow student must have recorded those messages. Right?
11 41 03.01 +34 12 05.88
Oevtug fgne! jbhyq V jrer fgrnqsnfg nf gubh neg–
Abg va ybar fcyraqbhe uhat nybsg gur avtug
Naq jngpuvat, jvgu rgreany yvqf ncneg,
Yvxr angher’f cngvrag, fyrrcyrff Rerzvgr,
Gur zbivat jngref ng gurve cevrfgyvxr gnfx
Bs cher noyhgvba ebhaq rnegu’f uhzna fuberf,
Be tnmvat ba gur arj fbsg snyyra znfx
Bs fabj hcba gur zbhagnvaf naq gur zbbef–
Ab–lrg fgvyy fgrnqsnfg, fgvyy hapunatrnoyr,
Cvyybj’q hcba zl snve ybir’f evcravat oernfg,
Gb srry sbe rire vgf fbsg snyy naq fjryy,
Njnxr sbe rire va n fjrrg haerfg,
Fgvyy, fgvyy gb urne ure graqre-gnxra oerngu,
Naq fb yvir rire–be ryfr fjbba gb qrngu.
March 19, 2026 – Passau
The morning was off to a good start. Miguel from SigmaLaunch had written to him that he was welcome to observe the launch on-site. He would have to take care of travel details himself. SigmaLaunch would then provide him with the necessary access permits.
Peter was not yet sure if Thomas’s message was good news or bad.
“The scan,” Thomas wrote, “integrates over the appropriate frequency until the signal is strong enough overall. Temporal amplitude modulation, i.e., whether the signal strength changes in a certain rhythm, as in good old medium wave, is lost. The same applies to possible frequency modulation, i.e., adding information by changing frequencies over time, as you know it from FM radio.”
It was nice that Thomas assumed he possessed this knowledge. In fact, he had always hated electromagnetism as a branch of physics. And now—of all things—he had no choice but to deal with it.
“You’re in luck, though, because I have a three-hour session at the observatory tomorrow that I won’t need all of. I’ll pick the strongest source and listen for a few minutes on 418 megahertz only. I will then send you the raw data. That way, you can find out for yourself if there is any information in it. I’m sorry, but that’s as much as I can do for you.”
Thank you, Thomas. This is far more than I expected.
March 20, 2026 – Passau
“Vg unf ab frys.”
Peter sighed. That didn’t make any sense, yet it had looked so simple! In fact, the signal Thomas picked up at the Effelberg observatory had a clearly discernible amplitude modulation, meaning its strength changed with time, just like music—or speech. Peter immediately checked the distribution of the modulation. It appeared to be no random distribution, no simple noise. So there really was a message in the 418-megahertz message!
But what message?
Peter knew he should go public with this discovery immediately. There must be researchers who could answer his questions. But who would believe him? A signal at 418 megahertz protects entire solar systems from destruction. Haha! That sounded like a scenario from a bad movie, an idea with feet of clay—nothing solid to stand on. Thomas had already warned him. Because the transmissions seemed to repeat themselves, and they were relatively short, it was not impossible that natural processes could be responsible.
Extraordinary findings required extraordinary evidence—the basic rule with such discoveries. What he had would certainly not be enough for the scientific community. Even Thomas, who had recorded the data, was skeptical.
What did he have, at first glance? The changing
amplitudes resulted in a series of values that lay between 1 and 27. Was it a coincidence that this was the number of letters of the Latin alphabet? But 27... that was also 3 to the power of 3. For beings with three fingers and three arms, this would be a very natural system, possibly even more so than the decimal system, which humans use with their twice-five fingers.
But that was pure speculation. There could also be 30 characters, including three that were so rare that they did not appear in the short text. Or had he chosen the division wrongly? The signal had two states, strong and slightly less strong, each change corresponding to one bit. To get to his characters, he assumed a 5-bit encoding. That meant each five bits in a row resulted in one character. With a 5-bit coding, values between 0 and 31 would be possible.
One problem was that he did not know where the beginning was. If he shifted the beginning just one bit to the left or right, the result was a completely different character. The chance that he had caught the correct start was one in five with a 5-bit encoding. Upon further evaluation, he had to make sure he included all five possibilities.
Another problem was his basic assumption that it was five bits. There, his human way of looking at things played a significant role. With five bits, he got a nicer alphabet consisting of 27 characters. With four bits, the alphabet would have only 15 characters, with three bits, only 7.
But of course, it could also be a binary alphabet, consisting only of zeros and ones. Then the chance would be high that he picked up some machine’s radio transmissions, or was that also a human prejudice? For example, how would a species communicate that had no finger-like limbs at all?
Peter shook his head. He couldn’t get any further that way. The possibilities were infinite, so he had to make assumptions. First, he would try the 5-bit encoding.
vg unf ab frys.
There it was again. The text continued, maybe eight lines on an A4 sheet. When he switched to 6-bit encoding, the text shrank. At 3 bits, it grew. At first glance, the amount of information he found also depended on the encoding. However, at second glance, more information could be represented with 31 characters, at 5 bits, than with only 15 characters—at 4 bits.
He entered the text into an online translator for fun. The algorithm recognized Russian and automatically translated it into his language. The result:
“Vg unf ab frys.”
A new icon had just appeared on the right side of the screen. It showed a hand holding a dumbbell. He moved the mouse pointer over it. “Train new language model,” he read in a text bubble.
Peter clicked on it.
“This feature is only available as part of Advanced access.”
Surprise, surprise. They expect me to pay. A registration form opened. He entered his data and was then asked to choose an account type. ‘Standard’ and ‘Pro’ had 30-day trial periods, but ‘Advanced’ didn’t say anything about that. Access cost: 99 euros a month. But that didn’t matter now. He completed the registration, dutifully set up payment, entered the confirmation code from his credit card company, and received a welcome message.
There was no mention of a new language model. He hoped he hadn’t fallen for a scam. He logged in with the more recent data.
“Vg unf ab frys.”
Again the meaningless translation appeared. But this time, when he clicked on the icon with the dumbbell, something happened. A gear wheel turned, and a red text appeared on the screen.
“Too little data to build language model.”
Well, that was no problem. He entered the whole text.
“vg unf ab frys—vg vf rirelguvat naq abguvat. Vg unf ab punenpgre—vg rawblf yvtug naq funqr; vg yvirf va thfgb, or vg sbhy be snve, uvtu be ybj, evpu be cbbe, zrna be ryringrq. Vg unf nf zhpu qryvtug va pbaprvivat na Vntb nf na Vzbtra. Jung fubpxf gur iveghbhf cuvybfbcure qryvtugf gur punzryrba cbrg. Vg qbrf ab unez sebz vgf eryvfu bs gur qnex fvqr bs guvatf nal zber guna sebz vgf gnfgr sbe gur oevtug bar, orpnhfr gurl obgu raq va fcrphyngvba. N cbrg vf gur zbfg hacbrgvpny bs nal guvat va rkvfgrapr orpnhfr ur unf ab vqragvgl—ur vf pbagvahnyyl vasbe[zvat] naq svyyvat fbzr bgure obql. Gur fha, gur zbba, gur frn naq zra naq jbzra jub ner perngherf bs vzchyfr ner cbrgvpny naq unir nobhg gurz na hapunatrnoyr nggevohgr—gur cbrg unf abar, ab vqragvgl. Ur vf pregnvayl gur zbfg hacbrgvpny bs nyy tbq’f perngherf.”
Was that enough for the algorithm? It had to be enough, because that was all he had. This time, the gear wheel turned longer. Hope rose. But could it be so easy to decode a radio transmission that, he hardly dared to think, had come from aliens?
“Too little data to build language model.”
Of course, it wouldn’t be that simple. Crap. So what now?
He wasn’t one to give up. First, he tried again with a second version of the text, in which he had shifted the beginning by one bit. It was silly because it didn’t change the amount of text, but it didn’t cost anything to try. The gear wheel turned for a while.
“Too little data to build language model.”
He had a hunch, so he squelched frustration and anger. He could still increase the amount of text without additional input. He only had to try it with a 4- or 3-bit encoding. He recalculated the text. In the first variant, it became 20 percent longer; in the second, another 25 percent. Now would it be enough? He copied the 4-bit text into the window and pressed the ‘Start’ button.
“Too little data to build language model.”
So the 4-bit encoding was not enough. He tried the even more extended version. The gear wheel turned longer than ever before. Finally, a green line appeared.
“Creating new language model.”
Peter rocked back and forth on his chair. He mustn’t get too excited too soon. This was machine learning, not understanding. The algorithm was trying its hardest to impose the structures of a language on the data. How many languages might the software know? What was certain was that these were only human languages. Was alien communication subject to similar laws?
The system spit out a translation:
An impertinent Internet believes the evident repentance. Moreover, it means the profitable initiative. The critical systems confirm the diabolic paradigms to the stringent partnership. They entrust to the situation the suspect experiment. Nevertheless, they obey the transparent enthusiasm and taste the final technology. The successive schemes tell the diverse weaknesses a posthumous construct. For this, they fall in after the artificial positions.
Peter laughed. The text reminded him of some of his principal’s speeches. But there was no sense in it. The result just proved that the program could squeeze something out of some data that read remotely like meaningful text.
But at least he now knew how much input the software needed to start working on it in the first place. He needed to double the amount of text at the very least. Or, better, quintuple it if he wanted to be sure.
He needed Thomas’s help again. There was no other way.
March 21, 2026 – Passau
“Vg unf ab frys. That sounds funny,” Thomas said.
“I don’t know what’s funny about it,” Peter said.
“You’ve always been a buzzkill. No wonder your wife... Sorry.”
And Thomas had always been an empathy-less asshole. No wonder he lived alone. But now Peter needed him.
“Can we maybe have a serious talk?”
“Look, if you click on the speaker icon, the program even tries to pronounce ‘vg unf ab frys’ for you.”
“I know. So, then what? Can you help me?”
Thomas audibly drew in a breath and then exhaled it loudly. Peter couldn’t see his face because he was just sharing the screen content with him, but Thomas made it pretty clear he was annoyed. Peter could understand him. From a purely scientific point of view, this was all very thin.
“It’s the weekend, but I’ll fit it in somehow. I really don’t know if that’s going to help you, though.”
“Yes, it will. You already helped me a lot. But, I need five times the amount of data to be able to obtain
something meaningful.”
“Peter, you’re getting lost in this. I almost feel like a co-dependent getting you your dope. You’d be better off using your time to get your wife back. I know what a loyal dog you are. I don’t mean that disparagingly. I really don’t. I couldn’t do it, being with the same person for so long, but your path has always been clear to you. Remember when we used to get drunk together?”
“And you’d tell me which girl you’d most like to hook up with. But then she’d turn you down. I remember. Girl after girl.”
“Yes, because I was a penniless student. We should really get together again sometime. Why don’t you come by here when you’ve got your affairs in order? You can bring Franziska, too.”
“First, I need your help to get my affairs in order.”
“Do you want me to call Franziska for you, as an old friend?”
“No, Thomas, I’m talking about the data. I can’t tick off the problem until I’ve sorted it out. After all, it won’t be long now. I promise you that I’ll give it a rest after April. Then everything will be back to normal.”
“Promise? And if I help you, will you call Franziska?”
“I promise. Please send me the data.”
“I’m warning you. If you break your promise, I’ll call her and steal her from you. You’ll only have yourself to blame.”
Thomas, the old show-off. He wouldn’t have a chance with Franziska anyway, but he still would call her. Thomas was right, though—he mustn’t let this thing rule his life. Or was it too late for such thoughts? Today he put the trip to Sweden on his calendar. It was perfect, because shortly before that, Easter vacation commenced, eliminating the problem of getting time off.
Yes, he would call Franziska. He really had to make things right with her.
“Thank you, Thomas,” he said.
“You’d better not thank me. I don’t have a good feeling about it.”
The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction Page 14