Domain by Steve Alten

Intelligent Populations. With telescope time expensive and difficult to come by, SERENDIP simply piggybacks its receivers to the big dish during all observations. The major limitation for these SETI scientists is that they have no say in what they are listening to, their targets being chosen for them by their host.
     
    Kenny Wong stands on the concrete-and-steel overlook situated just outside of the lab’s huge bay windows. The disgruntled Princeton graduate student leans against the protective railing and stares at the tangle of metal and cable suspended over the heart of the big dish.
    Fucking NASA. It’s not enough that they cut our funding, now they have to hog telescope time to locate their damn probe …
    “Hey, Kenny—”
    Piggybacking is a goddam waste of time if we’re not even tuned into the waterhole. I might as well hit the beach, for all the fucking good I’m doing here —
    “Kenny, get the hell in here, your equipment’s giving me a headache!”
    “Huh?”
    The grad student rushes into the lab, his pulse racing as he hears a sound he has never heard before.
    “That damn computer of yours has been beeping like that for five minutes.” Arthur Krawitz removes his bifocals and shoots him a nasty look. “Disconnect the goddam thing, will you, it’s driving me crazy.”
    Kenny pushes past him, hurriedly typing in commands to activate the computer’s search and identification program. The SERENDIP-IV program can simultaneously examine 168 million frequency channels every 1.7 seconds.
    Within seconds, a response flashes on his monitor, taking his breath away.
    C ANDIDATE S IGNAL: D ETECTED
    “Oh my fucking God…”
    Kenny races for the spectra analyzer, his heart pounding in his ears. He verifies that the analog signal is being recorded and digitally formatted.
    C ANDIDATE S IGNAL: N ONRANDOM
    “Jesus Christ—it’s a real fucking signal! Oh, shit, Arthur, I gotta call someone, I’ve got to verify before we lose it!”
    Arthur is laughing hysterically. “Kenny, it’s just the Pluto probe. NASA must have gotten it back on-line.”
    “What? Oh, shit.” Kenny collapses in a chair, out of breath. “God, for a second there—”
    “For a second there, you looked like Curly from the Three Stooges. Just sit there and calm down while I contact NASA and verify, okay?”
    “Okay.”
    The physicist strikes a preset key on his video communicator, placing them directly on-line with NASA. Dr. Armentrout’s face appears on his monitor. “Arthur, good to see you. Hey, thanks for helping us out.”
    “Thanks for what? I see you’re already back on-line with the PKE.”
    “Negative, we’re still dead as a doornail. What made you think that?”
    Kenny rushes over. “NASA, this is Kenny Wong with SETI. We’re picking up a deep-space radio transmission. We thought it was the PKE.”
    “It’s not coming from us, but keep in mind the Pluto probe uses an uncoded carrier. Plenty of pranksters out there, SETI. What’s the frequency of the signal?”
    “Stand by.” Kenny returns to his computer and types in a series of commands. “Oh, geez, we’re at 4,320 MHz. God dammit, Arthur, that microwave band’s way too high for any Earth-based telecommunications or even a geosynchronous satellite. Wait, I’ll feed the signal through a speaker so we can listen.”
    “Kenny, wait—”
    A piercing high-pitched tone screeches from the speakers, the searing blast of sound shattering Arthur’s bifocals while causing the bay windows to rattle in their frames.
    Kenny pulls the plug, rubbing his ringing ears.
    Arthur is staring at the fragments of glass in his hands. “Unbelievable. How strong is the signal? Where’s it coming from?”
    “Still calculating the source, but the strength is off my puny scale. We’re looking at a radio brilliance about a thousand times stronger than anything we could transmit from Arecibo.” A chill runs down Kenny’s spine. “God dammit, Arthur, this is it—this is the real