Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

Soter digested this for a moment. “What do you want from me?”


“It is critically important that we determine whether or not this signal is a broadcast from an alien intelligence. If it is, we need to figure out what it’s saying. I don’t need to tell you that mathematics is a universal language. If anyone can decode this transmission, it’s you.”

Soter reached out for the paper, looked at it again, then shook it in the air. “This isn’t a transmission. There’s nothing to decode here.”

“Dr. Soter, in thirty seconds, you saw a pattern that no one else did.”

“That isn’t a pattern,” Soter protested. “It’s a fluke. A coincidence.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Soter tapped the circled values. “You said it yourself. These numbers weren’t part of the transmission. They were generated by the computer program that monitors the intensity of the signal.”

“If the intelligence behind this transmission understood our capabilities, what better way to send a message?”

“In order to do that…in order to produce that exact sequence of values, it would require precise synchronization—to the nanosecond—as well as knowledge of the precise calibration of our equipment, and all that across light years of space. This signal might have originated years ago, centuries even. It would require extraordinary computing power, advanced intelligence, to say nothing of the ability to see into the future.”

“That’s exactly what concerns me, Dr. Soter.” The man stubbed out his cigarette. “Take this apart. Assume that there’s a message here. Find it. Can you do that?”

Soter frowned and looked at the paper again. What if the man was right? What if there were other patterns hidden in the signal?



6, 14, 26, 30, 19, 5



Don’t think of them as numbers. They are symbols. What do they represent? Spatial coordinates? Dates? Times? Elements on the periodic table?

“I can’t do it alone. I’m going to need experts—astronomers, cryptologists, xenobiologists.”

“We’ll put together a team…wait, xenobiologists? What’re those?”

“It’s a new field. Theoretical biology, predicting how life might evolve on other worlds.”

The man grunted. “You’ll have whatever you need.”

“It could take a while. And I have other obligations.”

“Not any more. This is your number one priority now, Dr. Soter.”

To his complete surprise, Soter was not the least bit bothered by the prospect.





43



November 28, 1977

8:05 a.m. (local time)



“We have made contact!” Jerry Zavada shouted, waving a newspaper as he swept into the room where Soter had set up his office.

Soter felt his pulse quicken. He had resigned himself to the failure of this latest attempt to interpret the Wow! Signal, but now it seemed that Zavada, the computer engineer, had discovered some new insight.

In the newspaper? That didn’t make any sense.

“Here!” Zavada laid the tabloid on the desk and tapped a headline. It read: “Message From the Stars.”

Soter had seem similar headlines when news of the Wow! Signal had gotten out, but this seemed to be referring to something that had happened just two days earlier. He began reading aloud.

“Residents of Southampton received a shock Saturday evening when their local news broadcast was interrupted by a mysterious transmission, purporting to be a message from an intergalactic visitor. Over the next few minutes, viewers heard the ‘voice of Asteron’—” He stopped abruptly.

“The voice of Asteron? Seriously, Jerry?”

Zavada chuckled. “Just trying to lighten the mood.”

Soter threw the paper down in disgust. The tabloid lay atop the thick printout he had been reviewing. The story of a hoaxster hijacking a television broadcast to spout hippie propaganda, and the data from their survey had one thing in common: neither contained an actual message from an extraterrestrial intelligence.

He had known, from the moment he had accepted this crazy assignment, it would probably amount to nothing. The odds against the Wow! Signal actually being a transmission from an alien life form were…well, astronomical. And the likelihood that there was an actual message contained in the data was an order of magnitude less probable. Yet, as he and the team had worked the angles, the emerging patterns had made a believer out of him. It really did seem as if someone had placed an intergalactic, long-distance call to the planet Earth. He was sure of it, just as he was sure that the Wow! Signal also contained the key to answering that call.