Transmission

Kevin shook his head. “Knowing that there’s an alien civilization out there, that there was one, is amazing, but it’s not worth killing people for, and I don’t want anyone else being in danger for me.” He almost stopped as he thought back to the sight of Luna being knocked aside, the sound of Ted’s gun as he fired. “I don’t matter. What matters is that the aliens’ world was dying, and they have sent out… I guess you could call them time capsules. And we know where those are going now.”

He also knew where he was going now, because his mother was pulling Kevin back away from the platform, into the institute.

***

“If my son is going to be attacked, then I don’t want him staying here!” Kevin’s mother said while she and Professor Brewster argued.

Kevin watched them both from the edge of his bed. He winced as one of the institute’s medical staff disinfected a tiny cut he’d gotten from the knife. Beside him, Luna had a bandage wrapped around her head, while Ted was there, looking as though he was half expecting another attack.

“I understand your concern,” Professor Brewster said, and even Kevin knew that was the wrong thing to say to his mother right then.

“You understand what it’s like to see your child attacked because he’s caught up in all something crazy?” Kevin’s mother demanded. “Do you even have children?”

“Well no, but…”

“Who are you?” Kevin asked Ted, ignoring the argument between his mother and the professor for the moment.

“Oh, I’m just a guy who helps out where he can,” Ted said.

“That’s not an answer,” Luna said.

He seemed to think for a moment or two, then shrugged. “I guess it can’t hurt. Sorry, I’m just in the habit of not saying anything. I used to be in the army. Special Forces. Then I got loaned out to the CIA for a while, then… well, then I tried to retire, but I got a call when all of this started, and I couldn’t exactly refuse.”

“You said before that the President called you,” Kevin said. “He wouldn’t do that if you were just some guy.”

“Well, maybe I’ve seen a few things in my time,” Ted said. He looked over to where Professor Brewster and Kevin’s mother were still arguing. “From what I hear, he met you about this though. That must make you more special than I am. You two want to come see how the eggheads are getting on with the numbers you pulled out of the air?”

Kevin nodded, and together, the three of them set off through the facility. Kevin felt a little stronger now, most of the weakness he’d felt obviously down to the combination of receiving the message and the stress of the attack. He also felt strangely empty, and it took him a moment to realize why:

For the first time since this had begun, there was no sense of the aliens.

There was no countdown pulsing in his head. There was no impending signal he was supposed to be waiting for. There were no messages. Everything was silent. It should have felt peaceful, but for the first time since he’d gotten there, Kevin felt… useless, as if he had nothing to do.

He was about the only one who did. The people they passed were busy, and they all seemed to be working on the problem of the coordinates. Labs that were used for other things stood empty, and instead, scientists were gathered in conference rooms, working on strings of numbers in a hundred different ways. Some of the NSA people seemed to be involved too.

Kevin had thought that there might be a problem with security as they got closer to the space that housed the supercomputers, but Ted walked right through it all, soldiers and FBI agents alike nodding to him as he went and letting the three of them through.

“Wow,” Luna said as they reached the supercomputer pit. “Imagine the games you could play on those.”

Kevin doubted that they’d be much use for that, but when it came to dissecting strings of numbers, it seemed that they were very good. SAM was spitting out possibilities using the signals, while half of the other machines there had been fired up too, and scientists ran between them, calling out results.

“It’s another miss,” one yelled. “I think that one hits somewhere out in the Pleiades.”

Kevin heard a groan of frustration from the other scientists there.

“They’re trying to narrow down the search,” Ted explained.

Dr. Levin was there, and to Kevin’s surprise, people seemed to be listening to her. Maybe the fact that there were definitely aliens made it easier to take orders from the head of SETI.

“The problem is too much information,” she said. “You gave us so many possible hits, Kevin, that we can’t work through all of it, even with our computing power.”

“Have you tried the Internet?” Kevin asked.

“I don’t think this is the kind of thing we’d find on the Internet,” Professor Brewster said, coming up to join them. “We have some of the most sophisticated computers in the world here.”