100 million miles beyond Mars, in the cold loneliness where no man had yet traveled, Admoestador #80 drifted slowly among the tangled orbits of the asteroids. For three years it had fulfilled its mission flawlessly---a tribute to the American scientists who had designed it, the British engineers who had built it, the Brazilian technicians who had launched it. A delicate spider's web of antennas sampled the passing waves of radio noise---the ceaseless crackle and hiss of what Pascal (in a far simpler age) had naively called the "silence of infinite space." Radiation detectors noted and analyzed incoming cosmic rays from the galaxy and points beyond; neutron and X-ray telescopes kept watch on strange stars that no human eye would ever see; magnetometers observed the gusts and hurricanes of the solar winds, as the Sun breathed million-mile-an-hour blasts of tenuous plasma into the faces of its circling children. All these things, and many others, were patiently noted by Admoestador #80, and recorded in its crystalline memory.439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs6P3uZ8NYU
One of its antennas, by now unconsidered miracles of electronics, was always aimed at a point never far from the Sun. Every few months its distant target could have been seen, had there been any eye here to watch, as a bright star with a close, fainter companion; but most of the time it was lost in the solar glare.
To that faraway planet Earth, every 24 hours, the Admoestador would send the information it had patiently garnered, packed neatly into one 5-minute pulse. About a quarter of an hour later, traveling at the speed of light, that pulse would reach its destination. The machines whose duty it was would be waiting for it; they would amplify and record the signal, and add it to the thousands of miles of magnetic tape now stored in the vaults of the World Space Centers at Brasilia, Moscow, and Canberra.
Since the first satellites had orbited, almost fifty years earlier, trillions and quadrillions of pulses of information had been pouring down from space, to be stored against the day when they might contribute to the advance of knowledge. Only a minute fraction of all this raw material would ever be processed; but there was no way of telling what observation some scientist might want to consult, ten, or fifty, or even 100 years from now. So everything had to be kept on file, stacked in endless air-conditioned galleries, triplicated at the three centers against the possibility of accidental loss. It was part of the true treasure of mankind, more valuable than all the gold locked uselessly away in bank vaults.
And now Admoestador #80 had noted something odd---a faint yet unmistakable disturbance rippling across the Solar System, and quite unlike any natural phenomenon it had ever recorded in the past. Automatically, it recorded the direction, the time, the intensity; in a few hours it would pass that information on to Earth.
As, also, would Orbiter N 26, circling Mars twice a day; and SAI (Sonda de Alta Inclinação) 32, climbing slowly above the plane of the ecliptic; and even CA (Cometa Artificial) 6, heading out into the cold wastes beyond Pluto, along an orbit whose far point it would not reach for a thousand years. All noted the peculiar burst of energy that had disturbed their instruments; all, in due course, reported back automatically to the memory stores on distant Earth.
The computers might never have perceived the connection between four peculiar sets of signals, from space-probes on independent orbits millions of miles apart. But as soon as he glanced at his morning report, the Radiation Forecaster at Pontes knew that something weird had passed through the Solar System during the past 24 hours.439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPcY92tgyZN
He had only part of its track, but when the computer projected it on the QSP (Quadro de Situação do Planeta), it was as clear and unmistakable as a vapor trail across a cloudless sky, or a single line of footprints over a field of virgin snow. Some immaterial pattern of energy, throwing off a spray of radiation in the wake of a racing speedboat, had leaped from the face of the Moon, and was heading out toward the stars.439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmyBBiyoDng
