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  "What's going on, Raoul?" Joan demanded.

  "Something activated the E-frequency," her husband told her. "Jerry's not sure what. First time I ever heard the thing go off--gave me a hell of a start."

  "Do you scan any ships in the area?"

  "It wasn't an E-beacon," Jerry told her, his eyes bright with excitement. "An SOS is impossible to mistake. This was just a wave on the same frequency."

  "How long did we receive this . . . whatever it was?" Joan asked, raking an impatient hand through her cropped auburn curls.

  "For about ninety seconds," Jerry told her, "but it was pretty weak. Then it began breaking up. Interstellar scintillation, maybe. Or our receiver isn't big enough. Or whatever was making those waves stopped making them."

  "Well, which do you think it was?" Raoul demanded.

  "No way to tell."

  "Let's see it," Joan said. "And turn on the audio."

  Jerry's short, squarish fingers skipped capably over the controls, and the central holo-tank display filled with a rainbow

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  profusion of colored peaks and valleys, even as hissing, chattering bursts of static-ridden sound erupted from the audio speakers. "See it there?" he pointed. "The pale orange-colored wavelength."

  "And what about how it sounds?" Raoul demanded.

  "It's so faint, it's hard to make out."

  Raoul gestured at the board. "Isn't there any way to eliminate all this other stuff and boost the signal so we can hear it better?"

  "Yeah, I can fiddle with it, and probably do a little better. It's still going to be weak. Maybe if I can pick it up again, get a stronger reception, I can isolate it better ... but to do that we'll have to stay sublight and search this area."

  Mahree turned at a light touch on her arm to find Rob Gable standing beside her, Sekhmet draped over his shoulder. "You're not supposed to be here,"

  she whispered, putting a finger to her lips.

  He grinned recklessly at her. "Neither are you," he returned, his mouth only inches from her ear. "What have we picked up?"

  "Electromagnetic radiation," Mahree told him, still in an undertone. "Long waves. Radio."

  "Radio?" He looked startled. "You mean from Earth! But we're too far--"

  Mahree was already shaking her head. "Shhhhh!" she reminded him. "No, it doesn't have to be from Earth. All kinds of things produce radio waves . . .

  anytime electrons move, you get them. Quasars, pulsars, Seyfert galaxies . . . even ordinary stars produce some, though they're not strong sources."

  He gave her a look of surprised respect. "I took a semester of astronomy at U-prep, and I can't remember a damned thing about any of it."

  "I just had it last year, two terms' worth," she explained, flushing with pleasure.

  "So why did the E-beacon go off?" he asked.

  "We picked up a wave that was on the same frequency," Mahree replied, then she waved him to silence in order to hear what her uncle was saying.

  "You're telling me it definitely wasn't an E-beacon, Jerry." Raoul Lamont's voice was slow, heavy. "Then what was it?"

  "Don't know, boss." Jerry had regained his usual equanimity. "I'd like to listen to it all by itself, and I'd also like to run

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  both the visual and the audio through the computer for analysis-- have it tell me whether those waves were totally random, or whether they contain any repetition of patterns or sounds."

  "What would that indicate?" Raoul asked.

  "Maybe something other than a natural radio source."

  Mahree's eyes widened. Rob jabbed her with his elbow. "Does what he just said imply what I think it implies?"

  "Shhhhh!"

  Raoul Lamont stared at his Communications Chief for nearly a minute in silence. "Jerry . . . we're still more than two hundred light-years from Earth.

  What are the chances we could be picking up old radio waves that originated there? Television, for example?"

  "Slim. The frequencies don't fit. And that sure didn't sound like any human language or code I ever heard. I'll have the computer search its auxiliary files to make sure." Greendeer's broad, OldNorthAm Native features were still impassive, but his voice betrayed an undercurrent of excitement.

  "Any other possible sources? Natural ones?"

  "Maybe ... if we've stumbled across something totally unknown."

  "Couldn't it be a pulsar?"

  Jerry shrugged. "Pulsars--neutron stars--are the strongest radio signals we should be receiving out here--but they all have well-documented frequencies. They're so regular that people used to speculate about setting clocks by them. And they've got a broad distribution of frequencies." He pushed his hair behind his ears. "This thing here falls roughly into the 200 to 400 megahertz range. That's narrow. Then it drops off abruptly on either side. Pulsars and quasars don't do that."

  "So what are you saying? What do you think it is?"

  The Communications Officer drummed his fingers thoughtfully. "I'm guessing we'll discover that this signal didn't originate on Earth, that it's not from one of our ships, and that it didn't come from any known natural source."

  Greendeer paused, running his fingers through his long hair again, then fished a scrap of cloth out of his jumpsuit pocket and tied it back. Mahree saw that Jerry's hands trembled, belying his studied calmness.

  "And?" Raoul prompted.

  "And, since we're sixteen parsecs from nowhere, that leaves 19

  only two other possibilities. One, that it's some kind of previously unknown stellar phenomenon--which I doubt, because nothing natural has such a narrow frequency--or, two, that it was generated by an artificial, nonhuman transmitter."

  For the first time Paul Monteleon, Desiree's Chief Engineer, spoke. "Jerry ...

  you do know what you're saying, don't you?" His soft, tentative voice was in keeping with his gangly, spare body, his graying brown beard and wispy hair. "We've never discovered any evidence of sentient life-forms other than ourselves out here."

  The communications tech shrugged. "There's a first time for everything, Paul. I'll want to check it out further, of course, but I think we may have hit the jackpot this time."

  Silence enclosed the control cabin like a giant, invisible fist. Nobody moved.

  Mahree's heart was pounding so hard that she could hear the blood throbbing in her ears. A strange mixture of fear and joy filled her, and she realized she was shaking, too.

  Rob put a steadying hand on her shoulder. She glanced up, seeing that he was flushed with exhilaration. "I can't believe we're this lucky--talk about challenges--this is great!"

  "An alien transmission," Mahree whispered, putting the idea into words, trying it on for size. Her mouth was dry and her lips felt stiff. "Oh, my God."

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  CHAPTER 2

  The Phantom Frequency

  Dear Diary:

  I'm so excited! Jerry and Joan have searched every auxiliary file on board, and the -strange signal we received still hasn't matched up! Whatever it is, it is not from Earth.

  Joan refuses to believe that we've actually stumbled onto a transmission from an alien race, and keeps maintaining that it must be electromagnetic radiation from some kind of weird solar flare or black hole or something.

  She's being unreasonable, which is unlike her. Usually she's pragmatic to a fault. I have no idea why she finds the idea of a world occupied by people who aren't Terran so unsettling, but it's obvious that she does.

  The reaction among the crew seems about seventy percent positive, thirty percent negative on hoping that we can pin down the signal as definitely artificial. Simon Viorst, for example, turned pale when he heard--I mean, the man was scared. But other people were breaking out hoarded bottles of the finest Jolian champagne and toasting one another.

  To think that we are probably making history]

  Uncle Raoul has a real dilemma: should he use our precious fuel reserves and search this area, hoping to pick up the signal again?--or just log our position, then
continue on our original course and turn the coordinates over to officials Earthside?

  I'm glad I don't have to make that decision.

  Uncle Raoul has called an "all hands" meeting tonight in the galley.

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  I can't wait!

  The galley, which had never been designed to host the full ship's complement at one time, was crowded past capacity. Raoul Lamont stood in the doorway, clapping his hands for attention over the buzz of conversation.

  "Okay! Pipe down!"

  The galley quieted slowly. "Everyone knows why we're here," he began,

  "but to make sure we're all on the same wavelength" --everyone chuckled at the pun--"let me tell it the way I see it. Then we'll discuss the pros and cons."

  He waited for dissension, but none came. "Yesterday we picked up a brief transmission, on a narrow frequency. It doesn't match anything we've seen before. We have no proof that it isn't some kind of natural--though unknown--

  phenomenon, but, on the other hand, it might mean we've stumbled onto a transmission in an alien language or code."

  He nodded over at Jerry Greendeer. "Jerry and Joan have managed to amplify the audio portion, and screen out a lot of the background interference. I'd like all of you to listen to it."

  Jerry flicked a switch and sounds emerged. They were still laden with static, but much clearer than Mahree had heard on the bridge. Sharp chattering sounds merged into guttural rumbles, then higher-pitched yips and squeals.

  They were not continuous-- there were five or six short pauses, one of them lasting nearly three seconds before the sounds resumed.

  The transmission faded into bursts of static.

  Voices jumbled at Raoul Lamont in a cacophony of sound. Everyone had an opinion: "That sounded like a damn language to me!" "... just like a terrier I had when I was a kid." "Those pauses surely indicate speech!" "Pulsars have pauses, too." "With so much static, who can tell anything?" And, loudly,

  "But we've had interstellar travel for over a hundred years! If there was anybody out here, we'd have found them by now!"

  "Everyone hold on," Raoul broke in hastily. "It's a big universe, remember!

  Anything could be out here. What we have to decide is how far to pursue this. As Captain, the ultimate decision is mine, but each of you has a stake in getting our cargo home, so I want to hear what you have to say."

  "I say we keep going," a gray-haired woman from the engineering crew demanded loudly. "If we try and follow some

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  now-you-hear-it-now-you-don't signal, we'll use up our fuel and be stranded out here until our food runs out. Then we'd be shit outta luck. We can't take the risk."

  Simon raised his hand. "I agree, we should head for Earth to report this, Captain. Even if there are nonhumans out there, how do we know they'll be friendly? They might attack us!"

  Jerry waved for attention. "I say we keep going so we don't endanger them.

  We might be carrying diseases they could catch.''

  Rob Gable broke in. "We could take precautions against that . . .' everyone could stay suited. The computer will have to analyze their air anyway--

  maybe we don't even breathe the same kind. Anyway, we wouldn't unsuit or advise them to do so until we'd completed extensive testing."

  "We have no proof"--Joan Atwood's voice was hard--"that we're not just talking ourselves into something here. Without additional transmissions, we wouldn't have a prayer of homing in on anything."

  "So we stay in this area and cast around for a couple of million klicks!" yelled someone impatiently. "If we find anything, we'll be able to home in by cross-vectoring! We've got enough fuel for that!"

  "But what if they're inhuman--" Simon broke in. Mahree saw that his forehead was beaded with sweat.

  "Do you realize how rich we'd be when we got back to Earth after confirming a First Contact? Media contracts, advertising, interviews ... we'd never have to work again!" The speaker was a portly, balding black man Mahree had never seen before. Raoul must have ordered the sleeping crew members awakened. "We can't ignore this! We'd be throwing away a bottomless credit balance!"

  Mahree leaned over to Yuriko Masuto, the Cargo Chief, who was sitting next to her on top of one of the galley tables. "Who's that, Yoki?"

  "Ray Drummond," the short, plump, almond-eyed woman with the waist-length ebony hair whispered back. "Paul Monteleon's assistant. This is his first trip with us."

  "But we're just a freighter crew," Paul was protesting in his quiet voice.

  "We're not diplomats, or ambassadors. We're not qualified to handle this."

  "If you leave it to the bureaucrats back on Earth, they'll really screw it up,"

  Rob called out, his baritone carrying easily over

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  the babble. "Besides, what if they don't believe us? Even if we decide not to pursue a contact"--he was fighting to sound calm--"we need more proof that we've actual y found something."

  "Who's the new kid, Raoul?" yelled the older woman.

  For a moment Mahree thought the speaker was talking about her, but then she saw Rob's face reddening as he stiffened resentfully.

  "With all the confusion, I forgot," Raoul said. "This is our new ship's physician, Dr. Robert Gable."

  Gable nodded, formally, from his perch atop another table.

  "That guy's a doctor?" Yoki whispered to Mahree.

  "Yeah," Mahree returned. "He's only twenty-four, but my dad said he's really good."

  "I'll bet," Yoki murmured, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. "I can hardly wait for my next physical."

  "I say we keep our noses out of what doesn't concern us!" It was Evelyn Maitland, the older woman from engineering again. "Let the proper authorities deal with this!"

  "Hey!" yelled another woman from the back. "Where's your sense of adventure? Dammit, aren't you people curious?"

  A chorus of "I am!"s and "Let's go!"s followed her words.

  Raoul had to pound the bulkhead for order.

  "Okay, I've heard some very good points both for and against. Does anyone have anything further to say before I make my decision?"

  Mahree's hand shot up before she was aware that she'd made a decision to speak. Her uncle pointed at her. "This is my niece, Mahree Burroughs. Yes, Mahree?"

  The girl wet her lips as she stood up on top of the table, clutching the two computer flimsies she'd brought. "Uh," she began, only to have it emerge as a squeak. She cleared her throat, trying to look only at her uncle, not at all those eyes. "I just wanted to say that I think we have a ... responsibility, I guess, to investigate this. We can't just sail on by. Does anyone recognize these? I looked them up in my history files this afternoon."

  She let the flimsies unroll and held them up, one in each hand. From the murmurs and head shakings, it was clear that nobody did. "Well, this one here, the golden plate with the picture of the naked man and woman on it, that's a picture of the plaque

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  that was attached to the Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes. They were launched in 1970. This thing here"--she pointed--"that looks like a starburst is really a map showing the location of Earth in relation to a bunch of local pulsars."

  She dropped that flimsy and pointed to the other. "This one, the golden circle, is a container. Inside is a disk they called a 'phonograph record' with music, pictures, sounds, and greetings from Earth recorded on it. It was attached to Voyager 1 and 2, which were launched in 1977. Yoki is going to read you one of the messages, which was recorded in Mandarin Chinese."

  The Asian woman's voice was distinct in the silence as she haltingly spoke in liquid syllables. "That means," she translated, her voice not quite steady, "

  'Hope everyone's well. We are thinking about you all. Please come here to visit us when you have time.' "

  "Right now," Mahree said, as Yoki sat down, "we have a chance nobody's ever had before. Something our ancestors hoped would happen to them, but it never did. Can we turn our backs on it? Wouldn't tha
t be letting them down, the people whose dreams and efforts made spaceflight possible in the beginning? If it hadn't been for them, none of us would be where we are now, that's for sure."

  She cleared her throat again. "This is our chance to be explorers, not 'just a freighter crew.' If we don't check this signal out, I know I'll spend the rest of my life wondering what we missed."

  There was silence for a moment when she finished, then Yoki and Rob began clapping furiously. Slowly, many of the other crew members joined in, until the room was filled with applause. When the noise finally died away, Raoul nodded agreement. "All right, folks. We'll stay sublight and search this area, trying to pick up any other transmissions"--an excited babble broke out and he raised a hand for quiet before he continued--"but only for thirty-six hours. That'll keep us well within our fuel reserve limits. If at the end of that time, we find nothing, we get back on course and report the incident when we reach Earth."

  The Captain gave them all a searching look. "Jerry, please organize a roster of volunteers to staff a constant communications watch. Joan, I'll need you in navigation."

  He turned and left, and the uproar broke out again as Joan Atwood high-stepped her way over feet and legs to follow him.

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  "Wow!" Rob Gable turned to grin at Mahree from his tabletop. "You were positively eloquent! That little speech of yours turned the tide!"

  Mahree blushed.

  "Now, if we can just pick up some traces of that transmission within the next thirty-six hours!" Rob leaped down from the table, so excited that Mahree laughed.

  "Take it easy, Rob, or you'll float right off the deck plates even with the gravity on!"

  "I feel as though I could," he admitted, grinning and bouncing on his toes.

  Then his gaze fell on Yoki and he gave the younger woman a significant glance. "Mahree, I haven't been formally introduced to your friend yet."

  "Oh, I keep forgetting that you came aboard after some of us were hibernating! Cargo Chief Yuriko Masuto, Dr. Robert Gable."