There was a signal.
Not meant for us.

Chapter One

The Emerald Line

The tarmac was still damp from overnight fog, giving the airstrip a dark sheen beneath the pre-dawn lights. A matte grey Gulfstream had landed, marked with a white star inside a blue circle, flanked by white bars and red tail stripes.

Bryant stepped down the narrow boarding stairs with a holdall slung over one shoulder. A black SUV waited thirty feet away, engine humming. Two figures stood beside it in civilian clothes, military posture. One held a manila envelope. The other, sidearm visible, said nothing.

‘Dr Laux.’

Bryant nodded.

‘This way, please.’

The rear door opened as he approached. He climbed in. The SUV moved immediately, following a narrow road along the perimeter fence.

Inside the vehicle, no one spoke. The manila envelope rested beside him, labelled:

PROJECT GERARD

Preliminary Clearance Pack

He did not touch it.

‘That’s for you, Doctor,’ someone in the front seat said.

They passed through three security checkpoints before reaching the final gate: biometric scan, manual override, a brief exchange between driver and guard. The display confirmed it. Moffett Field, Ames.

Beyond the checkpoint, artificial light replaced the sky. The walls narrowed, metal and reinforced. The SUV stopped inside the tunnel.

‘We’re here.’

Bryant stepped out, envelope in hand. The air smelled of heated asphalt and concrete dust. Overhead, sodium lights receded in strict formation towards a pressure-sealed blast door.

A security officer scanned the driver’s details and waved them through. No one asked Bryant for identification.

The facility was quiet in the way hospitals are. Indicator lights blinked. Footsteps were muffled. Doors hissed open and sealed again. Even the badge printer seemed to mutter.

He was led down a corridor of polished floor tiles and safety glass. Most rooms were dark or sealed. At the final door, the escort stopped. Bryant walked in. Others were in the room for the induction.

‘Accommodation details are in the packet. Your first briefing is tomorrow.’

He was handed a key.

‘The bicycle you requested is secured at the main entrance.’

The door closed behind them.

Bryant did not go to the on-campus accommodation. He took a room downtown instead. He did not open the envelope that night.

Morning came early.

Bryant took to the pedals, a night’s sleep still heavy in his marrow. The bicycle felt unfamiliar under him, stiff at the joints and resistant; the gears grumbled with metal spite, the balance of the frame slightly off.

He worked his way through the streets by trial and error, braking late, correcting lines, learning what the frame did one junction at a time.

Once inside the campus, the movement changed. The paths widened, the turns softened, and the buildings arranged themselves in the usual academic logic. Bryant did not pause. His shoes struck the linoleum. His body angled into every turn as if the walls themselves were guides for his shoulders, carrying him through corridors that followed a pattern he knew well: long runs, right angles, doors set back at measured intervals. He glanced for signs only once, then followed the familiar grammar of the place, reaching the briefing room as the echoes of the entrance hall faded behind him.

The room ahead vibrated with activity. No mere classroom, it was built to contain machines that never rested. The walls thrum-muttered with the fever of stacked servers and the green flicker of oscilloscopes. Copper-veined boxes sat in rows, wired in, speaking only to themselves in the fast-dark of the secure network.

To one side, a glass board stood like a frozen-lightning altar, scarred by waveform symbols.

Bryant sat two seats from the left, arms folded. Nigel Devin-Grayson occupied the opposite end of the table, already challenging an equation on the glass board with his eyes. Three others filled the remaining chairs, drawn from different disciplines.

Someone suggested introductions whilst they waited. Small talk followed, tentative and professional. Travel delays. Hotel complaints. The tension eased. Bryant listened more than he spoke, noting accents. He had crossed paths with Nigel before, a cosmologist, brilliant, Brooklyn-voiced, inclined to overshare. The others were unfamiliar. The woman beside him spoke with a German accent. The one in the centre sounded South American, though Bryant could not place where exactly. The researcher next to Nigel was Japanese.

The door opened. Conversation stopped.

Sir R. G. Penwyn entered and crossed to the head of the table without haste. He was tall and spare, his silver hair combed back from a high forehead, his face mapped with deep-set lines from decades of concentrated work. The rumpled tweed suit hung loose at the shoulders; his movements rendered the fabric irrelevant. Something in his carriage commanded the room to sit straighter. Nigel rose halfway from his seat.

‘Sir Reynold Penwyn.’

Penwyn lifted a hand. Bryant looked away, almost embarrassed.

‘Please,’ he said. His voice was light, reedy, marked by age and a clipped Oxford cadence. The words rose at the ends, as if testing their own balance. Beneath the refinement lay something else, a gritty resonance that made abstract ideas sound like warnings. ‘Don’t call me Sir. Penwyn will do. Reynold, if you must.’

He paused, eyes moving across the room. The silence was sustained like a note left deliberately unresolved.

‘Your titles earned you this invitation,’ he said. ‘Inside this room, they are irrelevant.’

Six decades into his career, past a Nobel Prize he never mentioned, Penwyn had returned to the only thing that had ever interested him: an unsolved problem and the people who might help him solve it.

The screen descended from the ceiling.

Penwyn stepped aside as it came to life. A single waveform spread across the display, emerald against black. It moved smoothly, then broke into peaks before settling again into uneasy calm.

‘This,’ he said, tapping the screen with the end of his marker, ‘is why you’re here.’

His voice remained even, almost gentle, the emphasis carried by timing rather than volume.

‘It is not noise. It is not an echo. And it did not originate with us.’

His hand lifted, tracing the behaviour of the line as it shifted again. The waveform never stabilised. It altered continuously, each small change accumulating without pattern Bryant could recognise.

‘We will remain here until you can explain what this is,’ Penwyn said, ‘mathematically and conceptually, and why it behaves as it does.’

The sentence fell away softly at the end, as if he had simply set it down.

Penwyn turned back to the screen and watched the signal crest and collapse, again and again. His expression held the focused calm of someone observing a caged animal. He did not speak. The group remained silent behind him.

The Magellan

The orientation room wasn’t full. A dozen fresh arrivals sat in rows, each wearing the same expression: alert, under-slept, trying not to look like they were already behind. Bryant stood at the back, arms folded, waiting for it to be over.

The Induction Officer, a woman in her late fifties with a slate tablet, paced in front of them.

‘Right, let’s cover the part none of you will remember, and all of you will violate.’

Some didn’t seem to find that funny.

‘First, communication. If your badge doesn’t work, talk to logistics. If logistics doesn’t answer, talk to Hartmoor. If you talk to Hartmoor,’ she paused, ‘you’ve already failed.’

Nervous laughter. Bryant glanced at the walls. Cameras and speakers were visible.

‘Second, monitoring. Yes, you’re being tracked. No, it’s not personal. That brings us to a very important member of our team.’

She stopped pacing. Turned to face them.

‘Her name is Micah. Abbreviation for Mission Interface for Cognitive Analysis. The “H” is there only to keep the “A” honest.’

A few scattered laughs. Someone in the back mumbled, ‘Sounds like marketing.’

‘You’ll see her so much you’ll miss her when you go back to bed at night. Micah, introduce yourself.’

There was no fanfare. No sound cue. Only a voice through the speakers.

‘Hello. I’m Micah!’ said the AI, like a child excited to be there. ‘I’m here to help you understand the mission, remember what matters, and keep you alive.’ A quick pause and change of tone. ‘I learn best when you speak naturally, so don’t adjust for me. I’m already adjusting for you.’

A few heads turned. Shared glance passed between two recruits in the front row.

‘I’m listening. I always am.’

The Induction Officer cleared her throat.

‘She’s friendlier than she sounds, most days.’

The room began to empty. Some lingered, retrieving bags, cornering instructors. On the far wall, a schematic still glowed: a side profile of Project Gerard’s spacecraft, The Magellan, in monochrome. A spindle shape. And nested within its core, a smaller vessel docked deep in its central vault.

Two trainees stood before it. Young, both of them. Still laminated with the residue of arrival. They hadn’t exchanged names.

‘I really like that shape,’ one of them said, gesturing towards the schematic. ‘What should we name it?’

‘Not an it. A she,’ the other replied. ‘And she is pregnant.’

The trainee pointed to the shuttle nested inside.

‘Oh! A pregnant she-ship.’ The other chuckled.

A nearby technician, slim, tired, balancing a gadget in one hand and half a sandwich in the other, tilted his head. Southeast Asian accent, amused eyebrows.

‘Did you say Shesha?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Shesha.’

‘What about it?’

‘It’s the primordial serpent in Hindu cosmology. Holds up the planets on seven heads. Creation stuff.’ He smiled.

The two trainees exchanged a look.

‘That’s the perfect name for a she-ship,’ said the first.

‘Shesha.’

‘I know. So silly. Also so fitting.’

‘And the shuttle?’

Both at once, grinning:

‘Baby Shesha!’

Their laughter scattered then hung suspended.

‘They wouldn’t let us.’

‘Oh no, they definitely wouldn’t.’

‘They’ll probably call it Hermes or something.’

‘Oh, look. They already named it. Magellan.’

‘Why do they call this mission Project Gerard anyway?’

‘Gerard Kuiper. The guy who discovered the Kuiper Belt.

‘The mission is supposed to fly past it.’

‘Ah. Still, Shesha sounds so much better.’

Both pairs of eyes hovered over the display.

‘Why the Kuiper Belt?’

‘I suppose… to prove we can.’

The technician, now approaching with curiosity fully engaged, inserted himself again:

‘Wait. So you’re calling it a she and want to name it Shesha? Even though Shesha is a guy?’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Too late now.’

‘Shesha it is.’

A woman passed behind them.

‘Who is Shesha?’

‘The ship,’ one said. ‘Because she is a she-ship.’

‘Ah,’ she replied. ‘Charming.’

The Office

The office was rearranged for someone with no patience for unnecessary flair. Practical and spacious. A room built to frame decisions that would never be recorded.

At one end, a vast walnut desk sat immaculate and unused. More nuisance than workstation. Possibly chosen by an assistant who no longer worked there.

At the other, a beautifully ornate bar made of native wood that seemed to have always been there.

The centre held a low lounge: curved grey sofas encircling a matte-black table buried in schematics, thermal plots, and propulsion blueprints. Light poured from a slit running the length of the ceiling, indirect, cold.

Even the noises from the coffee machine felt classified.

The engineer sat near the table, gesturing over prints. Hartmoor sat opposite him, composed, attentive.

‘The propulsion system would provide thrust, but we’ll need a separate power source for the onboard systems, life support, comms, instruments. Solar’s useless this far from the sun. We’ll use an RTG.’

He spoke with the fluency of someone who had explained this dozens of times but had never quite been heard the way he hoped.

From where he sat the room was vast. He did not notice the figure standing in the doorway: Dr Penwyn.

Hartmoor noticed him and acknowledged his presence with a glance and a nod. Only then did Penwyn walk in a few steps, then pause. He waited. At some point, the engineer would stop talking.

Penwyn observed the engineer’s exposition like an owl sitting on a high tree branch, watching a little rodent fussing in the grass below.

The marmot went on about its life:

‘Fuel weight is always a concern. We still need to figure out how to store and handle them safely within the ship. They’re both radioactive.’

He moved to another blueprint as if it were another patch of grass. ‘RTGs give us decades of stable output. Perfect for long-duration travel. But even then, the efficiency ratios.’

The explanations lasted far longer than necessary.

Penwyn had run through his patience. He locked eyes on the target and took flight.

He approached the engineer mid-explanation, talons wide.

‘You’re right, we need to be mindful of fuel efficiency. For a mission to the Kuiper Belt, a nuclear power source like a radioisotope thermoelectric generator would indeed be the most feasible option. But resources are limited, even in the best-case scenario. It’s warranted to be more considerate of fuel efficiency.’

The engineer paused as if he had dropped a piece of twig from his mouth. He looked up from the sofa at Penwyn, now looming above him.

‘Let’s get creative. We could imagine using a hybrid system, combining a nuclear reactor for long-term power with a type of electrostatic ion thruster for manoeuvring.’

Penwyn locked eyes with the engineer.

‘All propulsion systems generate heat as a by-product of their operation. This heat can be significant, especially during periods of high thrust, and needs to be managed to prevent damage to the spacecraft’s systems.’

The engineer tried to interject, struggling beneath Penwyn’s assertiveness. ‘That’s an interesting idea.’

But Penwyn didn’t allow it.

‘We could potentially use thermoelectric materials to convert the waste heat from the propulsion system into electricity. These materials generate a voltage when there’s a temperature difference. We must place them near the hottest parts of the engine to maximise energy production.

‘As for your deuterium and tritium issue, magnetic confinement remains one of the leading methods for containing the superheated plasma needed for fusion. We can generate magnetic fields to keep the plasma away from the reactor walls, and create the extreme conditions necessary for fusion to occur.’

The engineer receded into the sofa, silent, eyes wrestling the blueprints.

Penwyn turned away. Hartmoor reached for a teapot. He stayed her hand. ‘Water will do for now. Thank you.’

‘Do you have your team?’ Hartmoor went straight to the point. The engineer was no longer there. No one noticed him leaving.

‘The ones we’ve requested are all here. It remains to be seen if they’ll choose to stay.’

‘All five of them?’

Penwyn nodded.

‘Wow,’ said Hartmoor. ‘Nobody would refuse the opportunity to work with Sir Reynold Penwyn.’

Penwyn, unamused, said it flatly, ‘It seems that way.’

He paused to look around. ‘I don’t believe I’ve been in this room before. How many official offices do you have?’

‘As many as they think I need. I stopped counting a long time ago. I’ve learnt this much: I am my office.’

First Session

Penwyn stood by the display, arms crossed, his glasses perched low on his nose. Behind him, the signal’s spectrographic signature pulsed on a central screen.

Dr Aanya Rao was the first to speak. ‘It’s not a cypher in the traditional sense. Too much recursion, not enough entropy. But there’s pattern. Something generative, perhaps non-linguistic.’

‘Or it’s natural.’ Dr Bryant Laux folded his arms. ‘A pulsar echoing off particulate matter. The apparent order could be an illusion.’

Dr Nigel Devin-Grayson adjusted his chair. ‘That would imply an incredibly symmetrical debris field, one that doesn’t shift over time. We’ve logged seven days of capture. No drift.’

‘Seven days is statistically irrelevant at this scale.’ Bryant gestured. ‘Cosmic noise can form stable plateaux.’

Penwyn cleared his throat. ‘You’re both right and both insufficient. Dr Laux, your scepticism is noted and appreciated. Dr Devin-Grayson, your optimism as well. But we need synthesis. Dr Rao, continue.’

‘Like haptics. Ultimate non-linguistic. A tactile communication system using gravitational waves as touch.’

Penwyn held his chin with his hand. For a moment he let his hand fall, turning his head to Rao.

There was no tension in the room. But no comfort either.

Dr Kenji Yamazaki spoke next, measured and almost flat. ‘I’ve rerun the filters at higher fidelity. The signal’s internal harmonics shift every 19.7 seconds. Not enough for language, too much for background radiation.’

Dr Esperanza Duarte, reviewing a model on her tablet, added, ‘And if it’s biological? Not life, but engineered life. Some of these patterns echo enzyme clusters.’

Penwyn looked up from the board. ‘Then our task is not only to decode, but to identify the intention behind the emission. Find purpose, and the structure will follow.’

He paused, gaze on the projection.

‘But for that… we need more data.’

Penwyn turned away from the projection, uncrossed his arms and stepped towards the centre of the room.

‘I have a small confession to make.

‘I have not been wholly forthcoming.’

He chose his words.

‘We’re not starting from scratch.’

He stopped. Glanced at the room.

‘We have data spanning forty-two years of missions.’

A few chairs creaked.

Penwyn continued.

‘In December 1993, Voyager 1, already high above the ecliptic, recorded an anomalous spectral spike, brief, inconsistent, but clearly outside the instrument’s baseline noise. The team couldn’t classify it, so it was logged as an “event of unknown origin”.’

His hands behind his back.

‘Voyager 2, during its post-Neptune cruise through the outer planetary region inwards of the Kuiper Belt, captured a second spike, same modulation, same period. Fainter, but distinct.’

He turned towards the waveform still flickering on the screen.

‘Someone in those early days suspected the source lay between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud, close enough for our detectors, yet beyond optical reach.’

‘As you know, Pioneer 10 launched in 1972. By 1983 it had crossed roughly thirty astronomical units, inside the Belt’s inner edge. Its particle data logs show a related anomaly. Nobody noticed at the time. The data sat buried in telemetry until reprocessed decades later.’

‘Then came New Horizons. After its Pluto flyby in 2015, the probe reported a comparable signature during its cruise towards Arrokoth. The same modulation appeared again in 2019, this time coherent across multiple observation windows. Phase-shift analysis suggested a structured, possibly periodic source rather than random noise.’

He looked at each of them in turn. ‘That’s when Command stopped calling it an anomaly.’

Nigel leant forward, brows knit. ‘Now, I gotta ask, how did none of this surface? I’ve read every cosmology paper written in the last twenty years. Not once.’

Penwyn didn’t flinch. ‘You haven’t seen it because it never reached publication. The telemetry was routed through a restricted branch of the Deep Space Network, under defence liaison review. Every anomaly report was sequestered before academic release.’

A pause. ‘Sometimes science serves politics. Sometimes it serves survival. In this case, the agencies funding those missions decided to keep the data classified until we understood what we were dealing with.

‘Which brings us to this moment.’

Penwyn’s gaze shifted from one face to another. ‘Your task is not to prove the signal is real. We already know that. Your task is to determine if it carries intent.’

Aanya had a question.

‘Once we solve this, if we solve it, what then?’

Penwyn was about to answer when someone appeared at the door and murmured to him. He nodded.

‘I’ll be on my way.’

He turned to the group.

‘Let’s take thirty minutes. Coffee break.’

He glanced at his watch and left without ceremony.

The Marmot and the Owl

His name was Mark Mott. An unfortunate name to have when you are short, plump, and hairy. Nearly three decades ago, in the corridors of the university campus, he was the marmot. ‘Mark Mott, the marmot,’ the bullies would introduce him. He was strawberry-blond, fair-skinned, and unbothered. He had the palest blue eyes one could find. Once, he lost a bet and was forced to attend a summit dressed as a fairy. That day was possibly the most memorable day of his student years. But none of that affected him. The constant nicknames and abuse they threw at him caused him to grow a very thick skin. By now, he was essentially a rhino. A very pale, golden-red-haired, blue-eyed short rhino.

Mott’s academic achievements didn’t go unnoticed. Like a little rodent fussing under things, he fixed anything. He could build anything. No weather was bad enough, no darkness was dark enough, no sun-blasted day was hot enough. Nothing stood between Mark Mott and a task that needed completing.

When Hartmoor decided she needed a rocket engineer, Mark Mott was the first and last name she had in mind. Of all engineers, rocket builders, and capable overachievers, Mott was the superior choice. Hartmoor respected Mark Mott as one respects a powerful machine that one knows can do what it was built to do.

She was offering him something no one had ever done. Indeed, no one had ever been given the chance to attempt it. That was the premise that captured him: the ultimate thing to fix.

Before Hartmoor finished her offer, she could see in Mott’s expressive eyes that he was already committed. ‘A man who speaks with his eyes,’ she later confessed to someone, ‘will always be easy to read.’

Mott collaborated with many great engineers, designers, and ship architects in his life. But he had never encountered a mind like Penwyn’s before. He was fascinated by it. It. That’s how Mark Mott referred to Penwyn’s mind, as if it were an entity apart from the man. For Mott, there were two sides to the professor: his brilliant, incomparable mind and his personality. The greatness of one would justify all the flaws in the other.

One week after their encounter in Hartmoor’s office, Mark Mott requested an audience with Penwyn, which Penwyn granted immediately. The project was too important, and not having an engine that could take them to the Kuiper Belt would make all the science in the world irrelevant.

This time they would meet on Mark Mott’s turf.

Penwyn stepped inside the assembly building. He was instantly dwarfed by a space stretching a third of a mile into a hazy horizon, where the distant eleven-story ceiling was supported by a dizzying grid of steel trusses and thousands of bright LED lights. Below, an immaculate grey epoxy floor reflected a sea of iridescent green and turquoise metallic structures arranged in a chronological line, each one framed by multi-story assembly scaffolding equipped with its own stairs, elevators, and platforms. The air smelled of electronics and sealants rather than grease, filled with muffled hisses of pneumatic machines, their synchronised mechanical clicks, and the distant beeping of robotic transport carts. Overhead, massive cranes glided silently along ceiling rails to lower heavy components with millimetre precision, while on the ground, workers pedalling tricycles navigated the wide, painted transit lanes of a highly disciplined manufacturing metropolis.

He walked through it without slowing.

As he neared the centre of the facility, he looked up toward the massive structural columns supporting the back wall. Rising several stories above the floor was a glass-fronted mezzanine tower hanging directly over the production line. He navigated the ground-level traffic, bypassed a modular tech pod on the floor, and headed toward the base of the tower.

Penwyn always took the stairs. Not for the exercise, for the view. From here the thruster casing was visible in full: a multi-tiered framework of interwoven metal suspended from gantries, the casing for a spacecraft destined for the Kuiper Belt. Sparks fell from welders working the upper lattice. Below them, the floor crews moved in organised swarms.

He reached the upper deck, pushed open the acoustic door, and stepped into the quiet, air-conditioned expanse of the engineer’s offices, where rows of design workstations faced a panoramic window overlooking the operation below.

Penwyn walked into Mott’s office. All the chairs were buried under blueprints, parts, tools, and more blueprints, mountains of them. There was no place to sit. The man didn’t sit. He never stopped.

The office’s door was wide open, with a chair full of files placed there intentionally to stop it from ever closing again. Mott had no time and never a free hand to open a door. He wanted it out of the way once and for all. What he needed was more shelves, not doors and windows. Shelves. There could never be too many shelves.

Mott acknowledged Penwyn’s arrival. This time, he saw him coming. ‘I’d offer you a chair.’

‘Oh, no need for niceties,’ Penwyn interrupted.

With that out of the way, Mott went straight to the point. ‘We’re focusing on the magnetic confinement to contain the superheated plasma for fusion. As you explained in your lecture, the stability of that plasma is paramount.’

Mott took another blueprint.

‘I had a similar concept regarding the field strength, though I failed to mention the specifics to you then.’

Mott pointed to the print.

‘If you look here, the magnetic field’s structure.’

Before Mott could elaborate, Penwyn interjected. His mind already several steps ahead.

‘For the scale of fusion we’re aiming to reach, the necessary energy density for sustained reaction, the structural requirements for such a powerful magnetic field would be immense. The sheer size and mass would be prohibitive, not to mention the astronomical costs. I see the inherent limitations of that approach.

‘We’ll need to fundamentally rethink our approach to managing the radiation emanating from the D-T fusion. Perhaps a new material could offer better shielding with less mass.’ Penwyn’s voice dropped, calculating.

‘No, synthesising and testing a novel material would introduce unacceptable delays.’

His eyes weren’t looking at the blueprint anymore, they’d gone somewhere else.

‘Our most viable path, given the constraints, might be to optimise the D-T fuel composition itself to mitigate the radiation levels.’

He continued, now seemingly in dialogue with his own mind, oblivious to Mott’s presence.

‘That’s it, the key lies in the precise ratio of deuterium to tritium within the plasma.’

He explained it to himself.

‘By carefully controlling the influx of each isotope, we can aim for a higher fusion reaction rate. Potentially influencing the neutron flux and subsequent radiation.’

He straightened, turned away from the desk, staring through the office window at the skeletal structure suspended in the hangar beyond.

‘This isn’t “enrichment” in the way one enriches uranium, but rather a delicate balancing act of the fuel mixture to achieve optimal burn and, crucially, to allow for a less demanding magnetic confinement system.’

He seemed frustrated.

‘It’s obvious, really. Why didn’t I see this immediately?’

That was the part of Penwyn’s brain that Mott believed compensated for any possible character flaws the man might have.

‘May I take these to the lab?’

Mott nodded. Penwyn walked out.

‘We’ll run the simulations. No one will go home before getting it back to you.’

Mott was already busy with another blueprint. Penwyn paused in the doorway, glanced back.

‘Excellent work on the thruster framework, by the way. The lattice load distribution is elegant.’

As if it had never happened, neither man mentioned the unpleasantries of their last encounter. Neither of them had time for that.

The busy marmot dived back into his tunnels.

The owl had already flown.

Why Are We Here

Two days into their work, Bryant and Penwyn hadn’t exchanged words directly yet. Once, Penwyn’s private counsel had mattered deeply to him. But distance had grown between them over the years. Now both men communicated using the team as proxies, an unacknowledged dynamic since Bryant’s arrival.

One hour past lunch, they were still in the same room. The team of scientists bustled around figures on a chart. Gesturing fingers hovered in front of graphs, a blur over the glowing pixels of monitors. Laser pointers pointed. Reading glasses made swift journeys from foreheads to noses and back again.

They’d foregone a break, not out of obligation but inability to stop. As Penwyn paced the room, Dr Devin-Grayson intercepted him, pointing at something on a nearby display.

A gentleman never misleads accidentally. Bryant knew Penwyn as much as Penwyn could be known. And Bryant knew Penwyn was withholding something. He was no longer his student. He wasn’t going to accept the misdirection.

Bryant was in the midsection near the corner of the room, his eyes still wrestling the stubborn graphs. Across a stretch of cluttered workstations, Penwyn stood sideways from Bryant’s perspective. His profile was cast in silhouette, sunlight streaming through the angular window and reflecting off the whiteboard before catching the side of his face.

By the time the light reached him, it had already changed direction twice. A reflection of a reflection of a reflection.

Bryant, emanating a hint of nervousness with enough impatience for Penwyn to pick up, asked, ‘How long have you been involved with this project?’

‘Some nine years.’

Bryant paused. Breathed. Then looked up.

‘So why are we here?’

‘Well, we are assessing the signal.’

‘No. I meant we, the rest of us.’ Bryant walked away from the monitor and took the tiniest step closer. Penwyn seemed to be oceans away near the main display.

‘Right then. You don’t need us to validate what the rest of the world is already lining up to tell you.’

Bryant’s tone carried a subtle wavelength of anger, which was possibly the most anger Bryant could express. Nearly imperceptible to the rest of the team. Not to Penwyn. But this time it wasn’t enough. Bryant spelled it out.

‘If there’s anything that could be known about what that is, you certainly know it by now. I should restate my question: why are we here?’

Penwyn looked at him for a moment. Then turned to the room.

‘Micah. Projector.’

‘Yes, Professor,’ Micah replied promptly. A large projector began to descend from the ceiling.

‘Dr Yamazaki, the trajectory analysis from initial detection four decades ago to the most recent position. Bring it up now.’

‘Micah,’ his attention briefly shifted. ‘Mirror Dr Yamazaki’s display onto the projector.’

‘Yes, Professor.’

‘Dr Yamazaki, extrapolate the data now. Simulate the future trajectory to complete a full orbit around the solar system. We need the full projection.’

‘Now, what do you observe here? Or perhaps more crucially, what don’t you see? What’s missing?’ Penwyn awaited an answer.

‘Come on,’ Penwyn challenged them. ‘You’re the scientists.’

The room was restless. Everyone refrained from saying the next word, except for the large grin on Nigel’s face. He could barely balance himself on the chair in his excitement, squirming like an oversized kid as he raised his hand.

‘Dr Devin-Grayson.’

‘Yes, yes, the orbit… the… the thing won’t meet the point of departure…’

‘Correct. Good eye. That’s because the orbit is unstable. Something is making it shift. Like the extra booze makes the drunk walk unsteadily on his way home from the pub. Dr Devin-Grayson got that right. But what does that mean?’

Nigel jolted in his seat, hands shooting up towards the ceiling. Given his considerable size, it seemed possible he could touch it.

‘Alright, Nigel, you caught it first,’ Penwyn said, gesturing towards the screen. ‘Take it away.’

‘If asteroids in the Kuiper Belt have such stable orbits, and this doesn’t… someone’s steering this thing.’

‘Right, a drunk driver then, eh?’ Penwyn’s tone held a hint of amusement.

Nigel didn’t answer. He looked to the other team members to see if someone wanted to join in. Someone did.

‘Dr Rao. You may take it.’

‘If it’s not a signal.’

For the first time, someone said that out loud. Aanya unintentionally challenged everyone to think of other possibilities. She proceeded.

‘A signal would suggest communication.’

Nigel couldn’t hold himself together for another second. ‘A beacon shouts, “I’m here. Find me.” That’s communication. You are right.’ He continued, barely breaking for a breath. ‘It seems more like, I don’t know what words to use here, waves radiating.’

‘It’s alright. This is the place we can all get a bit silly,’ said Penwyn, with his face towards Bryant but not raising his eyes above his chair’s feet.

Aanya managed to finish her lines. ‘So it’s not a signal, it’s something emanating from something. And that realisation can give us a lot.’

‘Say it’s radiation.’ Penwyn paced. ‘Say something out there is radiating this signal. What could that object be?’

Dr Esperanza Duarte found this was the place to let her irritation show.

‘Here we are. Pretending to investigate this anomaly. When you already know it isn’t an anomaly.’

Then she turned to face Penwyn, pointing.

‘You know exactly—’ Her finger moved from Penwyn to the projector. ‘—what you see there.’

She opened a hand towards the room and raised her voice.

‘So why are we here?’

Reasons

‘You are here because you are the best in your specific fields,’ Hartmoor’s voice preceded her into the room.

A few steps back, as tension began to fill the air, Micah took the liberty of calling for help.

‘Each of you brings a set of skills we need.’

She had walked into many rooms like this. They always went quiet in the same way. Heads down, spines straight, eyes finding the floor, as they reacted to the gravitational power of her physical presence. These five looked up.

‘We don’t know what that is. And that is terrifying.’

She moved towards the window as if she could see the object with the naked eye.

‘This thing is there, it’s moving, it’s not natural, and it was not made by humans.’

Her voice was calm.

‘We can’t sit here and wait until it comes to us. We need to know.’

She turned around and walked back from the window to the head of the room.

‘We need to know if we should start burrowing, running to the hills, or calling the rednecks with big guns to start shooting. What’s it going to be?’

She looked at the five directly.

‘You are Plan A. There is no Plan B. No C. There’s only one letter in this alphabet. A.

‘All I need to know right now from you is this: Are you in, or should I start ringing the second best?

‘Either way, you need to tell me now. The one thing you cannot do is waste my time.’

Nigel’s chair creaked loud as his arm shot up. ‘I’m in, I’m in.’ His whole frame lit up with a massive grin.

Hartmoor acknowledged him and immediately turned to Bryant, who nodded in agreement.

Her features were too stern to show relief. Almost.

She turned now to the other end of the room, towards Esperanza, who quickly defended herself. ‘I’m still here. Am I not?’

Kenji and Aanya said ‘yes’.

Nigel spoke first. ‘So how are we going to say hi to ET?’

‘Eight years ago, as you might have read everywhere, we started building a ship large enough to sustain a crew of eight for a round trip to Europa in Jupiter’s orbit. The mission was to take a small group of scientists to find out if there’s indeed microbial life under the ice.

‘After Penwyn understood the implications of the anomaly, we repurposed that mission. We decided to double the ship’s speed, size, and payload capacity, enabling us to travel much further to the Kuiper Belt instead of Europa.

‘The ship is some four years from completion. We thought now was the moment to identify, interview, recruit and train the team that will populate the ship for this mission. Your names came up. Blame the doc here.’

Nigel grinned wide. Bryant shifted in his seat. Kenji didn’t move.

‘Now, don’t get ahead of yourselves.’ She paced. ‘You would still have to pass a battery of tests. Physical, psychiatric audit, centrifuge tolerance, sensory deprivation.’

She levelled a flat look at Nigel’s sagging waistline.

‘You’ll need to be physically, emotionally and psychologically prepared. Only then do you earn a seat on that ship.’

She did not wait for questions. Already at the door, she exchanged a look with Penwyn, who offered a slight nod of understanding.

The room felt larger as she left. The corridor took her as quickly as it had delivered her.