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ago. Unlike its optical cousin, the only significant work left demanded the newest technology—fully steerable dishes, powerful computers, atomic clocks. As early as the 1960’s once-great instruments had begun to be retired, the jobs for which they had been built completed and the new tasks beyond their capabilities. At times Chandliss identified with those instruments—his time past, his purpose gone.
    There was only one task that, due to official opprobium and skepticism, had never been satisfactorily completed—scanning the sky for evidence of intelligent life. Observatory time was too precious to squander on what most considered either fruitless or irrelevant. There were exceptions, of course—Frank Drake’s imaginative “Ozma,” Bowyer’s “Serendip,” Paul Horowitz’s hopeful “Suitcase SETI,” and any number of others during that same crazy-wishful time. Chandliss could have taken up that gauntlet, but he was a doubter; he let it lie.
    Instead, he had spent the years duplicating work that had been done before, correcting the position of a source here, noting a small change in the output of one there, toying with theoretical models he could not hope to confirm, but accomplishing nothing of substance.
    It was that realization, more than the seventeen years of loneliness, which had begun to disassemble the great man Chandliss had once been.
    His oft-recalcitrant instruments cooperating, Chandliss was ready the next day. He marked the passage of the calibration source, an angry buzz in his earphones. Precious chart paper flashed under the pen at the highest possible speed; the disk drive whirred as Monitor stored blocks of data. Chandliss, shifting his weight impatiently from one foot to the other, at last heard what he had doubted he would hear. The tone was clear and nearly noise-free, modulating rapidly between two frequencies in an arrhythmic warble. All too quickly it faded, replaced by the familiar all-frequency static that Chandliss usually found soothing.
    Stunned, Chandliss slowly removed the headset and shakily made his way to a chair. His fingers prowled absently through his beard as he tried to remember, tried to understand.
    Once before had he heard such a sound. When the newly refurbished thousand-foot telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, was dedicated in 1974, Drake and Sagan had taken that opportunity to send one of the few deliberate messages ever intended for non-human listeners—a 169-second cosmic declaration, a coded signal thrown with the power of a half million watts toward the great star cluster Messier 13 in the constellation Hercules.
    Despite his skepticism on the question of life elsewhere, like many others in the crowd of two hundred Chandliss had had tears in his eyes as the message ended, overawed at the thought that in twenty-five thousand years, when all humankind’s works might be dust, the message would still be speeding through space, declaring more than anything that beings who thought and dreamed and loved life once walked the surface of the third stone from the sun.
    But this emission—no! an inner voice insisted, call it a message!—had come from the stars.

Chapter 2
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Radioman
    Being alone without being lonely was an art Chandliss knew well. His location had permitted it, his personality had encouraged it, and his occupation had demanded it. But never had he felt more powerfully alone than in the minutes that followed the end of the Message.
    All at once, Chandliss came to his feet, scooping up a handful of chestnuts from a container in the food chest as he headed for the door. Outside, he turned south, toward the Chairman’s conference room.
    The clearing was a ten-minute walk from his cabin, and Chandliss was panting when he settled on a fallen log to wait. Before long there was a rustling in the branches of the trees, a black flash on the trunk of one, and then the northern squirrel Chandliss called the Chairman joined him in the clearing. Chandliss tossed a