Transmission

He nodded to the scientists on the screen, and they went over to the rock, clamping it in place so that they could work on it. One came back with an electric saw that looked too big for one person to hold. It looked like the kind of thing that could cut through concrete or metal with ease.

Kevin half-expected it to bounce off the surface of the rock in spite of that. He thought that an alien capsule tough enough to make it all the way from the Trappist 1 system should be tough enough to stand up to a saw.

The saw bit into it, though, sparks and dust flying as it chewed through the rock.

“We’re getting some resistance,” one of the researchers said. “We might have to switch to a heavier blade.”

They kept going, first making an incision around the rock as if expecting it to fall open like an Easter egg the moment they did so, then plowing into it with the saw when that didn’t happen. They kept going until dust almost filled the screen, only clearing slowly, showing two halves of the capsule split neatly.

Kevin stared at that image, and he guessed that everyone else there and around the world was staring in that moment, trying to make sense of it. He looked at it until his eyes hurt, trying to pick out the details that would tell him what the aliens had sent to them. What was inside the capsule? What had been so important that they’d sent it light years away, to a completely different world?

He stared at it in hope first, then in disbelief.

What he was seeing simply didn’t make sense.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Around the room, Kevin could hear the murmuring of the scientists and the reporters as they started to realize the same thing Kevin did.

The inside of the “capsule” was just a solid, rocky surface. There was no hollow, no sign of any advanced technology. The rock that the scientists had just cut through was…

…well, it was a rock.

Instantly, there was uproar, as a hundred reporters shouted questions simultaneously. On the screen, the scientists were looking just as shocked, standing there as if they didn’t know what to do next.

“How would you like us to proceed, Professor Brewster?” one asked. “Professor Brewster?”

He didn’t answer. From what Kevin could see, he was too busy standing there red-faced, not knowing how to respond.

“Professor Brewster, what’s going on?” a journalist called out above the others.

“Is this some kind of joke?” another managed to shout.

“Why is this rock empty?” a third yelled.

Kevin could see Professor Brewster looking around as if there were someone who might have all the answers for him. He looked so embarrassed in that moment that Kevin actually felt sorry for him.

“I… I don’t…” Professor Brewster said. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but there has been some kind of mistake…”

***

Kevin had never been as disappointed as he felt on the flight back to San Francisco with the others. They were going to head back to the institute, because they had equipment to take back, and because Professor Brewster had said something about wanting to do a proper debrief there. Right then, though, a part of Kevin just wanted to run home and hide.

 He sat there, hoping for the sensation that would come before a signal, hoping that there would be some kind of answer, an explanation, but there was nothing. There hadn’t been for so long now it was hard to remember that the signals had been real, that they hadn’t just been a figment of his imagination. He huddled in on himself, not sure what to think, or what to do right then.

Perhaps it was the headphones, but no one bothered him there. His mother sat beside him on the plane. Everyone else seemed to keep their distance, even people like Phil, Ted, and Dr. Levin, as if someone had warned them against getting too close, telling them that it would hurt them now by association with Kevin’s failure.

It was his. He’d been the one to decode all the signals. He’d been the one to lead them to South America, and then to the spot where the meteorite lay in the small lake. Something had gone wrong somewhere, and Kevin couldn’t help feeling that he’d been the one to get it wrong.

“Don’t blame yourself,” his mother insisted, obviously guessing what Kevin was thinking about. “You couldn’t know it would turn out like this. Maybe we should all have been more careful about going along with it.”

That sounded as though his mother was blaming herself for ever taking Kevin to SETI in the first place. Maybe she was thinking that she should have been firmer about it.

“I don’t know what went wrong, Mom,” Kevin said. “I mean, I heard the signals. And we found the capsule right where they said it would be.”

“We found something,” his mother corrected him gently. “Maybe we were all so eager to find it that we assumed we knew what it would be. We all got ourselves convinced.”