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“I wish I could report the same degree of progress as you,” Ivan ominously says. “There have been various conversations on the web, nothing of any great importance, so far as I can see. But I did get a call from someone who said he worked for GCHQ — the government’s spy unit — and they had recently learned of our work. They are interested and want to be in on the act.”
“What does that mean?” asked Clive.
“It means that they may well want to look over our shoulders, for so-called security problems.”
“You mean like public panic once the news is out fully?”
“Exactly. I don’t like it at all, as I can sense you don’t.” He lowers his voice. “There is even a distinct possibility that our e-mails are being intercepted, phones tapped, I don’t know what. That’s why I came here to see you rather than have you come to my office, which is quite possibly bugged already. In other words, there may be spies or spooks at work; not of the James Bond variety, but we need to be utterly alert. If we’re not careful, our project will just be shut down and they’ll take it over. Full stop! I think we need to take the initiative. And we must do it immediately, otherwise all the credit will go to either them or, more likely, to the French or the Americans. So we’re going underground.”
“What?” they say in unison.
“I realise you’ve once again done a hell of a day’s work, but I’m going to ask you to do some more.
“Louisa and Clive: tonight I want you to download all we’ve got and put it onto two sets of DVDs... images, dictionaries, calculations you’ve made, dates that are significant, anything you can think of that might be relevant or interesting. Tables of Astronomical data — scan it in, and any other documents that might be useful like photos of our star’s part of the sky that we haven’t yet examined. And assume that from now on you’ve got a PC with no, repeat no internet connections. Get me? Nothing from the web, except what you’ve put on the DVDs. Two sets of DVDs with the same information on. Louisa, you take one set, Clive the other. Also print-outs of all the images we’ve got so far, two copies one each. Then go back to your digs or rooms and await further instructions. It won’t be by phone or e-mail. One of us will call on you; if it’s a stranger, just fob them off with some story or other — use your initiative, assume the worst. If you haven’t heard anything by tomorrow morning, don’t come into Uni; stay at home — you don’t feel well or whatever.
“Martin and Anna: you’ve both met Harry and Gert before. I want you to go home tonight, have a meal or whatever you usually do, and then both drive down to Harry’s home in Martin’s car; don’t go directly there, take the minor roads around Tiverton, so you won’t appear on too many speed cameras, or any other type of camera. Head south out of the town and circle round, to go north, not on the by-pass.
“You are to be completely open with Harry, and say that we want to come down to work at his home for some days, maybe a couple of weeks. If he’s agreeable, and I hope he will be — I’ve prepared a letter to him for you to deliver by hand, which you can read if you want to — there will be three of you coming to stay. Ask him if he can put Clive up, and then go and ask Gert if she can accommodate Anna and Louisa. They almost certainly won’t have enough beds, so you’ll have to use sleeping bags, mattresses on the floor, I don’t know what. Don’t phone me, and tell Harry and Gert not to either; that’s most important. Obviously; their phones may soon be bugged once GCHQ get on to who’s in the team and they discover where you all are.
“Anna: if they are agreeable, you help Gert organise things — and Harry if necessary — and stay the night with Gert; you’d better take a change or two of clothing, as I’m not sure how long this charade will last.
“Martin: you return here and meet me in that alley-way beside the Roasted Duck to keep me posted. If Gert and Harry are not agreeable, both of you come back here to the Roasted Duck alley.
“Everyone OK with what they’re to do?”
“I guess so,” confirms Anna. “What are Martin and Assad going to do while we’re with Gert and Harry? Presumably we three will be continuing work on the aliens’ images.”
“Right on. You three continue with the excellent work you’ve done so far; use the DVDs on laptops. I’ll see you’ve got one to use at Harry’s and one at Gert’s. As for Martin, he has had his face on the TV and his name in the paper, so ‘they’ obviously know about him; he will stay here and work with me. So far as the outside world is aware, I’ve just got one student, Martin, working with me on this project. Let’s hope we can spin that little story out a bit further. Assad, I think you should stay here and be as invisible as possible.”
“Good luck, team. Martin and Anna should leave soon, make it five minutes apart, and sort out your own arrangements regarding setting out for Harry’s. Clive and Louisa, you get stuck into preparing the files. All of you: don’t take away anything that you normally wouldn’t if you were the laziest student on campus, except the two DVDs, of course.
“Martin: it should take about an hour to get to Harry’s, say another hour talking to them, and an hour back. So if you’ve eaten by around six, you’ll be back here, or rather, at the Roasted Duck by nine or so. Louisa and Clive: try to be ready for briefing soon after nine; get something to eat first. While you’re all at your tasks, I’ll be preparing the laptops; if all goes well, you two will be travelling tomorrow, so get those hold-alls packed.”
There is a loud knock on Harry’s door. Who could this be? He isn’t expecting anyone.
“Good heavens! It’s Anna and Martin, isn’t it?”
“Yes. We’ve got a great favour to ask of you. Ivan believes we are being watched by GCHQ — you know, the government’s surveillance centre — and he wondered if you and Gert could put three of us up for a few days, maybe up to a couple of weeks. Then we can continue with our investigations out of the eyes of the spies.”
“That’s no problem for me, Anna. I’ll give Gert a ring and see if she’s all right with that.”
“No, Harry. You’re not to use the phone. It’s possibly being tapped by them, just in case you’re already in their sights. That’s why we turned up unannounced,” Martin apologises. “Ivan has written this letter explaining everything.”
Harry reads the letter and gives it back to Martin. “So you two are going over to see Gert now?”
“Yes, I’ll show her the letter and if all’s OK with her, Anna will stay there, I’ll pop in to see you again on my way back to town to report to Ivan, and Clive and Louisa will drive down tomorrow. I won’t be staying here as ‘they’ already know about me, so Ivan will continue with his story that it’s just him and me who are working on this project.”
“Well, good luck to you, lad. I’ll probably see you in a short while. Good luck with Gert! I’m sure she’ll agree to it.”
There is a loud knock on Gert’s door. Who could this be? She isn’t expecting anyone and Harry usually phones if he plans to call round.
“Good heavens! It’s Anna and Martin, isn’t it?”
“Yes. We’ve got a great favour to ask of you,” and their discussion continues along almost the same lines as those with Harry.
Gert is most excited: “It is the most exciting thing I’ve done in my life. Yes, of course, you and Louisa can stay. Will you be at Harry’s?” she asks Martin.
“No, Clive will be there; I’m staying behind with Ivan. Too many people are likely to know me, so it’s best this way.”
Martin departs, leaving Anna with Gert. He calls in at Harry’s to keep him in the picture. Then he returns to Tiverton. It’s a quarter to nine and he casually walks past the entrance to the alley way by the restaurant. A dark figure is standing there.
“Hello, Martin. All’s well then?” Ivan asks.
“Aye, aye, boss!”
“Now you go and give the good news to Clive and Louisa. Best if I don’t. You’re a fellow student of theirs, so it’s more likely to cause no fuss than if their Head of Department turns up on the doorstep.”
“OK.”
“Tell them to leave some time after nine in the morning. Give these laptops to them, one each. You should turn up at Uni at the usual time in the morning, OK. By the way, ask them to try to park their cars where they aren’t obvious from the road.”
“These guys staying with the two old folk are bound to raise suspicion in the village, when they go to buy loads of food, for instance. Are they expected to pay their own way?”
“No, of course not. They will be reimbursed from University funds. Give Louisa and Clive £200 each for the moment. Here.” Ivan hands a bundle of notes to Martin. “If anyone asks, they should make up a plausible story about visiting their uncle or aunt; that would mean they can use the local pub if they want to, and not upset the natives. Can you think of anything else?”
“Yes, what about using credit cards?”
“No, nor cash machines or cheques. We’ll make arrangements for topping up their cash. I’ll work on that; you’re right, £400 won’t go far, especially as they ought to pay their way, and perhaps take their hosts out for a meal or two.”
“OK. I’ll be on my way and pass on the instructions and cash.”
“Good. See you tomorrow. ‘Squad: dismiss!’ as my...’”
“Please, not that corny old one again!”
“Sorry. You’re right, it is pretty awful after the second time. Adiós!”
“Cheers!”
Martin goes first to Clive’s digs and gives him the latest news, plus the laptop and money to use. Then he visits Louisa with the same mission; she is to share a laptop with Anna — getting them one each would have been too time-consuming and not really of very much use.
Just after nine-thirty the next day, Martin looks through Ivan’s door, and says a cheery ‘G’morning’. Ivan looks up; Martin nods and makes big open eyes to indicate that all went well last night.
“Can you work on your own this morning, Martin? Image 3, I think we’ve reached,” he lies for the benefit of anyone listening in. “I’ve got a couple of visitors this morning — someone from a government place near Cheltenham at ten, and a reporter from the Press Association at 11:30. Maybe we can get together after lunch, say 2:30? I’ll give you a call. Meanwhile, good luck with the decoding.”
“OK. See you this afternoon.”
Martin goes to his office and finds image 3, the first of the images of lists of elements. He copies the entire set of images and their translations so far into ‘hidden’ files on his computer, and then goes back to the original and deletes images 5 onwards. If anyone looks at his computer, they would see, that after some careful editing, Martin is struggling with image 3.
However, he looks at image 8, which is the place the team had reached, and finds that it ends with a diagram with our Sun and the aliens’ star marked on it and named. A line connects the two. There are two lines of words below the diagram, each with a number and another word. He looks up the word in the first of the pair of diagrams in the dictionary Louisa has produced and finds it means ‘length units’. He calculates the number in 21 cm units and converts that to kilometres, then light-years, because that is what he is expecting — some small number of light-years. But it’s a tiny number, only 364 light-days, a light-year, just beyond the Oort Cloud!
That can’t be right, so he checks and rechecks the data, but it’s the same each time. He must have made some silly miscalculation. He gets Assad to look at it too, but it seems right. Still, the other three will no doubt be working on it later today. Perhaps they’ll get the numbers right.
Below that is the second sentence; the number is followed by the ‘time units’ word. So he goes to the half-FTU equivalent in seconds, and calculates what the number is. It works out as 364 days! The same as before. Both results seem to indicate that the aliens’ star is only 364 light-days, yes days, from the Sun. And, as he knows, the Earth is around 8 light-minutes from the Sun. This is crazy! If only he could talk to somebody else about it: Ivan, Louisa, Clive, Anna, anyone. It just doesn’t make sense. Even Proxima Centauri — widely believed to be the closest star to the Sun — is four light-years from the Sun.
He decides to go to the refectory for a coffee. But even a second cup doesn’t help.
Promptly at ten, the University Porter phones Ivan to say that a Mr Billingshurst has arrived, asking for him. Ivan tells him he’ll be down in two minutes. Mr Billingshurst turns out to be very young, probably only just out of University somewhere. Ivan probes him on this as they go up to his office. Graduated in Economics at Lancaster last year. Worked for GCHQ ever since. Should be a total walkover — but beware and always expect the unexpected, Ivan tells himself.
Ivan breaks the ice, as they get to his shambolic office by saying: “The name’s Ivan.”
“Oh, I’m Montgomery, Montgomery Billingshurst.”
“Pleased to meet you, Monty,” says Ivan.
“Oh please don’t call me that. It’s Montgomery.”
One up to me, thinks Ivan; got him on the back foot. “Now how can I help you?”
“Well, our scientists tell me that you’re in contact with aliens on a planet in the Plough.”
“That’s going a bit far. We have received some signals that we believe are from an intelligent source which lies in the Plough. Have you seen the film Contact?”
“Err, no. Why?”
“Well, in that film the Earth receives signals from an alien species. They use prime numbers — remember them from school?” Montgomery nods “— and the aliens reveal their presence as an intelligent race by transmitting prime numbers.”
“So you’ve found the same aliens that were depicted in this film, Contact?”
“No, not exactly, but they use the same method of getting our attention.”
“With prime numbers?”
“Exactly.”
Montgomery dismisses Ivan as some crank who wants to make his name by claiming that the film was right. He has one further question, well two: “Have you contacted them? Have you revealed to them who we are, that we are here?”
“No. We don’t have any means of sending signals to them. We are just listening.” He nearly adds ‘just as you lot do’ but thinks better of it.
“There is one final point I’d like to raise... Does any of this have anything to do with the great Black-Out that occurred this summer?”
“We have no evidence that it has any connection with that. Mr Billingshurst, scientists work on what they know and what they can discover. They do not work on tabloid-press speculations. As I said, we have no evidence that the aliens have any connection with the Black-Out.”
Monty, for that is how Ivan thinks of him, stands up and offers his limp-wristed hand to Ivan. “Well, thank you, sir. Most pleased to meet you. I’ll leave you to prepare for your next appointment.” How did he know about that? It must confirm that his phone or his office is being tapped.
“I’ll take you to the Porter’s entrance,” Ivan tells him, feeling that he’s put GCHQ to sleep, if that’s the best they can manage. Or is Monty a genuine agent, just playing at being a dim upper-class twit?
On the way down, Ivan asks: “Don’t you people at GCHQ listen in on curious things in the sky? After all, you’re supposed to be the country’s communications watch-dogs, aren’t you?”
“I would be in breach of the Official Secrets Act if I answered you, but privately and in confidence, we are really only interested in problems caused by other countries or individuals or groups here in Britain; we don’t star-gaze! We only became aware of your activities after you’d held your press conference.”
When he gets back to his office, Ivan looks at every place where Monty went, and checks, for example, that he hasn’t stuck a voice recorder-transmitter under the desk. He finds nothing, but then, his office is always in a bit of a mess. At least he hadn’t left the man alone in the room.
Clive leaves his student digs just after half-past nine, with his laptop, DVD and cash for Harry. As instructed, he goes south and then circles west and north to take the ‘pretty route’ through country lanes to Harry’s village. No apparent problems, as he goes up the lane and parks at the back of Harry’s cottage.
Harry runs out of the door: “Hello Clive, you’re expected, of course. Ivan really has you organised, doesn’t he? Nice to see you again; how are you?”
“Fine thanks. Yes, he seems to know what he’s doing! I’ve brought a sleeping bag to save on washing sheets and all that.”
“No need, there’s a fresh bed in the spare room. You can use that.”
“I’ll use the spare room, if I may, but I’ll sleep in the bag on top of the mattress, after all it’s not too cold or anything. And it’ll save you the washing. Remember, I’m a student, and we’re used to roughing it! Oh, sorry, no offence meant.”
“Well, if that’s what you want, OK.”
Louisa leaves her student accommodation just before Clive leaves his, but runs into a traffic jam on the roads on the east side of the city, which she has decided to use. As a result she arrives at Gert’s a few minutes after Clive’s arrival at Harry’s. Anna has been briefing Gert on their progress so far. The old lady is amazed at what can be done now with the help of computers; these girls are a lot more savvy than she had been as a teenager — not that ‘teenagers’ existed then. But then Anna and Gert are probably in their twenties now because they are post-graduate students. How the world has changed in her lifetime!
“Hello dear,” Louisa is greeted. “Nice to see you again. I’ve put you in the same room as Anna, if that’s all right.”
“Fine by me. OK with you, Anna?”
“Sure. We’ve been talking about the aliens. Gert seems impressed by what we’ve found out so far.”
“Yes, I suppose it is a bit stunning!”
“Has Clive arrived at Harry’s yet?”
“I’ll phone him to see,” Gert decides.
Louisa reminds her: “No! Remember, no telephones! ‘They’ are possibly listening.”
“Of course. I was forgetting,” Gert apologises. “I won’t do that again, I promise.”
“I’ve got the laptop and the DVD that we prepared,” says Louisa. “We’ll show you what we’ve got if you like, Gert.”
“I’d love to see. I promise I won’t interrupt! And I don’t want to waste any of your time, either.”
Gert is shown a brief résumé of images 1 to 7. She is both awe-inspired and a little scared that these aliens should be able to contact us with such apparent ease.
Anna consoles her by saying: “We haven’t sent any signals to them, so they don’t know we even exist. So they can’t harm us, can they?”
“But they must have caused that awful Black-Out that caused so many deaths, mustn’t they?”
“We’ve no evidence that they were associated with the Black-Out...”
“But they must have been! Millions of people killed! Millions more put to great inconvenience — and I don’t just mean me not being able to do anything much after dark. It’s terrible! Why did they do it?” A tear comes to her eye.
Both hosts of the students are very reluctant to accept their monetary advances. They both say that they don’t need the money, it’s a great pleasure having the students to stay with them, as ‘long-lost nephews and nieces’, and they are both excited to be a part, albeit small, of such a tremendous scientific project.
At just before 11:30, Ivan’s second visitor of the day arrives and is met by Ivan at the main gate. On the way towards his office, Ivan says quietly that he suspects he is being bugged by the Security Services. So they go to a conference room that Ivan hasn’t used recently.
“Anything more for me,” Ewan asks.
“As regards the Black-Out, no. However we have found from them quite a lot of basically elementary stuff that we already know about. For example, they’ve described the structure of atoms, the whole lot from hydrogen, atomic number 1, to germanium, number 32. They have also described various atomic reactions, like the carbon-nitrogen cycle for producing helium from hydrogen — it’s the way the Sun produces energy. So their scientific knowledge is definitely there; no doubt about that. They also know that the speed of light is constant, as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity states. I can show you the images we’ve decoded so far,” though he deliberately omits to show Ewan the diagram of our own solar system, which would probably send him into a state of apoplexy.
From the bottom of the previous column
After they’ve reached the section on the constancy of the speed of light, Ivan suggests that they take lunch at his usual haunt, the Roasted Duck, though he usually has a sandwich or a ploughman’s there with a pint of real ale.
They eat in the restaurant. Ewan insists on paying the bill. “I’m on expenses!” He says that he’s on the point of signing a contract for the story with one of the quality Sunday papers, but he needs just a little more to beef it up.
Ivan is reluctant to disclose any more at present, though the urgency is clear, especially as the Security services are getting interested. “There’s no way I can phone or fax you anything. If I have any more that may be valuable I shall have to send a courier to you, who will arrive without warning with a package, a DVD or something. Is your office bugged?”
“Oh I should think so,” he casually replies, as if it was of no consequence. “We often handle sensitive material.”
“How can we find you then and get our material to you?”
“Have your courier ask at the Reception desk for Dr Peter Smythe, got it, it must be Dr Peter Smythe. I’ll handle it from there.”
“Dr Peter Smythe. OK. Fine, and thanks to the PA for my lunch. Hope to see you again soon. Bye.”
It is just after 2:20 when Ivan calls Martin. “I’ll be round in five minutes,” he says and promptly hangs up in case Martin says anything he shouldn’t.
He goes into Martin’s room, places a finger over his own mouth to indicate ‘say nothing’, and beckons the student to accompany him. They go to an empty room and sit down, calling by Assad’s office on the way; he joins them.
“Sorry for all the melodrama, but I think there’s a very good chance that both our offices are being bugged. The man from GCHQ was obviously a stooge, almost a simpleton, I’d say, but he dropped the fact that he knew I had another appointment after his. Very few people knew about that, so let’s hope I’m just suffering from advanced paranoia! He may be genuine, however, just acting the bumbling posh idiot; whichever it is, we must be careful. Your boss,” he looks towards Assad, “from the Press Association is almost ready to publish, but he needs just a little more meat than I gave him.”
“What does he know? How much have you told him?”
“Everything we’ve discovered except the last bit about the aliens describing our Solar System. I kept that back, because it means the Black-Out was definitely something they directed at us. We must assume at this stage that the connection between the Black-Out and the alien message is all but confirmed.”
“I agree, and I’ve found another piece of evidence to support it. This morning I looked at the rest of image 8. It shows a very simple diagram with their star and our Sun both named and a line joining them. Beneath is some wording, one about time and the other about distance. If I’m not very much mistaken, they both indicate that we are just 364 light-days apart!”
“What?” Ivan screams.
“364 light-days apart!”
“Have you checked this figure? That’s not even one light-year!”
“I’ve checked, rechecked, turned it upside-down, inside-out, and then re-rechecked. It’s the same each time.”
“That can’t be right! It’s not that I don’t trust you. Sorry, I’m not saying you’re incompetent or anything, but... well...”
“Take a look at it yourself. Don’t rely on anything I’ve done. Take an independent look.”
“Good idea. This really does take a bit of swallowing.”
“Meanwhile I’ll phone your office to find out why you haven’t called me yet; that should confuse the spooks for a while.”
“Nice one!”
Martin goes back to his office and calls Ivan’s number. He leaves a message on the answer-machine asking when they are going to meet. He sounds a little angry and impatient.
Half an hour later, Ivan was back in the borrowed office. “You’re right.”
“The only reasons I can see for this distance are first, that it’s true, or second that our interpretation of their value for the speed of light is wrong.”
“There’s another consideration. Our original estimate of the star gave its distance as at least three light-years; that’s actually quite close. But it can’t account for a value of 364 light-days,” Ivan notes.
“Could it be that they’re the ones who’ve got the figures wrong?”
“Possibly. Look, I think the other three at Bossington will soon come to this conclusion, if they haven’t already. So change of plan. If the spooks come round, you are slowly plodding through the early images. Your real work is to look at all the material we’ve got on the star before the Black-Out. From when it first appeared until it disappeared. Look for anything like a message or an image. They’ll probably have been using the same coding system on 21 centimetres. See if you can find anything.”
“OK. Sounds like a good idea. I hope we’ve got some 21 cm data but I doubt it. Is it OK to ask on the web? I can’t really think of any other way of contacting anyone.”
“Tricky that. Make it seem like an afterthought to some other material, looking for background information.”
“OK, will do.” Suddenly he has an idea: “How about Assad doing the web search?”
“No. Remember there’s supposed to be only you working on this stuff. Pity, though.”
The other three do, indeed, come to the conclusion that the star is only 364 light-days away, and are as puzzled as Martin. Anna leaves Gert’s house and walks quickly along the lane towards Harry’s. It’s not long before she meets Clive coming the other way, and, yes, they have all come to the same conclusion.
Clive asks Anna: “What do you think we should do now? This is so incredible.”
“Louisa and I discussed the possibilities just now, and we came to the view that we should accept the information as is, and carry on with the next image. There’s not a lot we can do except go back over the same data, and we’ve nobody we can contact to get any other advice.”
“I agree. Shall I come over to Gert’s, do you think? Three minds may be better than two.”
“Possibly, but not yet. Gert is getting quite excited about all we’ve told her and she keeps looking over our shoulders, and she even pointed out a ‘word’ in the dictionary that we were looking for. She’s no ignorant old biddy. There’s a keen mind inside that old body.”
“Harry’s interested too, so I think we should keep him involved. It’s probably best if I stay with him then. If the three of us meet later today, we can compare notes. Perhaps we shouldn’t all work on exactly the same stuff, though we ought to keep in tandem if we can. I separated out all the individual images; perhaps I should work on examining them in a bit more detail, maybe to get the gist of each image, which you two could examine in real detail, to get a complete translation. What do you think?”
“Sounds good. If Louisa has any different thoughts we’ll meet again before this evening.”
“Fine. Good luck! Love to Gert.”
They return their separate ways.
Clive checks image 9, which is indeed the same as 1 and 5.
Clive and the two women independently take a look at image 10. It shows a series of diagrams, the first of which seems to show that the aliens’ star is a close binary with another star. Eventually, with the help of Gert’s copy of Norton’s Star Atlas, (in Clive’s case a photocopy of their department’s library one) they see that the Southern Cross is on the left of diagram 1, the dashed line is the Galactic Equator, and one of the binary stars is Proxima Centauri, whose symbol is like the lowercase letter ‘t’ but with two cross-bars. It has taken them some considerable time identifying which part of the sky is represented because they have started looking in the region of Ursa Major, where the star originally appeared. The next diagram (2) is a magnification of part of the first as is diagram 3 of diagram 2, with the aliens’ planet shown in diagram 3 and the symbol for energy repeated alongside Proxima Centauri.
The fourth diagram in the set is similar to the third, except that it shows what is presumably a passing star, pulling the aliens’ star out of its orbit, so if it is close to the solar system it could be anywhere in the sky. It shows the alien star as originally a binary companion to Proxima Centauri. The star appears to end up in the constellation of Ursa Major visually from Earth between Dubhe and Merak, near Struve 1495, in diagram 5. There is no text on images 10 or 11 except image and diagram numbers, star names and ‘Galactic Equator’; it was clearly expected by the aliens that the sequence was self-explanatory. However the students spent a lot of time understanding the diagrams; one of the problems was in knowing whether a two-by-two square represented a star, a planet, or crossing lines of orbits.
There is a number below the diagrams, which suggests that all this happened some 50 million years ago, assuming the number represents time units, which Louisa confirms it does. This seems to be a reasonable assumption to Clive.
“So their star has been sitting in the Plough for 50 million years without being seen,” Louisa notes. “And shrouded in dust all that time. That’s incredible.”
Image 11 continues the explanation. Diagram 6 is a repeat of part of 5, confirming that the aliens’ mini-stellar system lies in the direction of Ursa Major; diagram 7 goes right back to the beginning, image 1, but emphasises the lack of energy around this dying star; the words at the bottom left indicate no photons are reaching the planet, which they take to mean that it receives no usable energy.
Image 12 is quite different. It depicts our Sun and their planet with a line from the Sun to the planet. On this line is the symbol for photon, repeated many times. There is more wording below the diagram, but Clive can’t make anything of it.
Then there’s the Sun again, with two sets of converging lines coming from each limb and pointing at their planet. An arrow with the photon symbols — ∆ — by it points from the Sun — ₪ ∕ ∕ — to their planet. Again there are more words below the picture. It seems to be suggesting that photons are transferring from the Sun to their planet. ‘Well, yes,’ Clive thinks to himself: ‘So they can see our Sun. Nothing surprising there.’
He carries on, finding the expected double set of primes, and then image 13 which is like image 1, etc.
Image 14 is some text which includes an enormous number followed by the ‘time units’ word. The number is almost eleven thousand years. Clive, and also Louisa and Anna who are running more or less parallel in their studies, see that the cone of light streaming from the Sun to the alien planet, is repeated.
Image 15 has a series of diagrams, labelled 1 through 6. Though superficially similar, they seem to show an evolutionary pattern. Each has a large irregular dark area — shown by checker-board shading — and most show a blob, labelled with their star symbol. The caption to the set, underneath them, has some words that refer to their planet. Clive makes a note that they are possibly saying something about the dark cloud, and that it has obliterated their star.
Image 16, labelled 7 to 12, reminds him of image 15, with the dark cloud, and the star which seems to be evaporating away eventually to nothing.
“What’s that?” Harry suddenly asks from out of the blue, though in fact he has been looking over Clive’s shoulder for several minutes. He points at the print-out of image 16.
“Oh, I didn’t realise you were there. Sorry.”
“You were very engrossed in your work.” Then he starts to reminisce. “You know, I always wanted to play the piano, professionally, not just tinkling. The way you were working your computer — the keyboard and that thing there, a ‘mouse’? — reminded me of my old dream, playing some Chopin or Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata at a Promenade Concert at the Royal Albert Hall.”
“I’m sorry you never fulfilled your dream. You are such a kind man. And what you told me earlier about your poor wife brought tears to my eyes. I know a man shouldn’t cry, but...”
“It’s no shame to be emotional, and to show it, you know. Come on, cheer up, lad, and tell me what our bug-eyed monsters are up to now.”
Clive smiled, though he could sense the sorrow in Harry’s heart. “They seem to be telling us that the cloud surrounds most of their star, which is very weak anyway — it’s a brown dwarf which is hardly a star at all. It seems that they want energy from our Sun, otherwise they will simply die out. That symbol’s our Sun, that’s their planet, and those are symbols for photons, by which I assume they mean ‘energy’; the fact that they’ve repeated it several times probably means a lot of energy.”
“What are those symbols in the top left corner?”
“Those mean that this is image 16, and I hadn’t noticed it before, that’s a ‘7’; it’s a continuation of pictures 1 to 6 on an earlier image.”
Harry thinks this over for a minute. “Could it be that our great Black-Out was them drawing off energy from our solar system to keep them alive?”
“That indeed is a thought!”