50 in 50

There was a central structure, a half-sphere of yellowish metal that clamped tight to the rock, its bottom edge conforming to the irregularities beneath it. From this projected stubby arms of the same material, arranged around the circumference close to the base. On each arm was a shorter length of metal. Each one was shaped differently, but all were pointing skywards like questing fingers. An arm-thick cable emerged from the side of the hemisphere and crawled over to a higher shelf of rock. There it suddenly straightened and stood straight up, rearing into the air above their heads. Gulyas pointed to this.

"I have no idea what the other parts do, but I'll wager that is the antenna that has been sending out the signals we picked up when we entered this system."

"It might be," Hautamaki admitted. "But what about the rest?"

"One of those things that's pointing up towards the sky looks like a little telescope," Tjond said. "I really believe it is."

Hautamaki gave an angry cry and reached for her as she knelt on the ground, but he was too late. She pressed one eye to the bottom of the tube, squinted the other shut and tried to see.

"Why — yes, it is a telescope!" She opened the other eye and examined the sky. "I can see the edge of the clouds up there very clearly."

Gulyas pulled her away, but there was no danger. It was a telescope, as she had said, nothing more. They took turns looking through it. It was Hautamaki who noticed that it was slowly moving.

"In that case — all of the others must be turning too, since they are parallel," Gulyas said, pointing to the metal devices that tipped each arm. One of them had an eyepiece not unlike the telescope's, but when he looked into it there was only darkness. "I can't see a thing through it," he said.

"Perhaps you weren't intended to," Hautamaki said, rubbing his jaw while he stared at the strange machine, then turned away to rummage in his pack. He took a multiradiation tester from its padded carrying case and held it before the eyepiece that Gulyas had been trying to look through. "Infrared radiation only. Everything else is screened out."

Another of the tubelike things appeared to focus ultraviolet rays, while an open latticework of metal plates concentrated radio waves. It was Tjond who voiced the thought they all had.

"If I looked through a telescope — perhaps all these other things are telescopes too! Only made for alien eyes, as if the creatures who built the thing didn't know who, or what, would be coming here and provided all kinds of telescopes working on all kinds of wavelengths. The search is over! We. . Mankind. . we're not alone in the universe after all!"

"We mustn't leap to conclusions," Hautamaki said, but the tone of his voice belied his words.

"Why not?" Gulyas shouted, hugging his wife to him in a spasm of emotion. "Why shouldn't we be the ones to find the aliens? If they exist at all we knew we would come across them sometime! The galaxy is immense — but finite. Look and you shall find. Isn't that what it says over the entrance to the academy?"

"We have no real evidence yet," Hautamaki said, trying not to let his own growing enthusiasm show. He was the leader, he must be the devil's advocate. "This device could have been human-made."

"Point one," Gulyas said, ticking off on his finger. "It resembles nothing that any of us have ever seen before. Secondly, it is made of a tough unknown alloy. And thirdly it is in a section of space that, as far as we know, has never been visited before. We are light-centuries from the nearest inhabited system, and ships that can make this sort of trip and return are only a relatively recent development…"

"And here is real evidence — without any guesswork!" Tjond shouted, and they ran over to her.

She had followed the heavy cable that transformed itself into the aerial. At the base, where it was thickened and fastened to the rock, were a series of incised characters. There must have been hundreds of them, rising from ground level to above their heads, each one clear and distinct.

"Those aren't human," Tjond said triumphantly. "They do not bear the slightest resemblance to any written characters of any language known to man. They are new!"

"How can you be sure?" Hautamaki said, forgetting himself enough to address her directly.

"I know, Shipmaster, because this is my specialty. I trained in comparative philology and specialized in abbicciology — the study of the history of alphabets. We are probably the only science that is in touch with Earth—"

"Impossible!"