Outward Borne by R. J. Weinkam Read Free Book Online

impression. For forty years, the old radio
telescope had panned across the galaxy measuring the intensity of
radio transmissions from the vicinity of main line stars. For the
past twelve of those years, NorHan NorBa was the chief
communications technician in the Space Exploration Institute’s. She
was there to monitor the incoming interstellar communications from
distant civilizations whenever they occurred. They had not yet
occurred, however, so her job consisted of running system
performance checks.
    This was quite all right with
NorHan as she lived her life at home. Home being one of twelve
buildings within a city block in Tometsur, the third largest city
on ObLa. All of these buildings faced inward toward one another in
the center of the block forming the home for an almost communal
group of thirty-eight people. The children were raised in common,
but for NorHan, this meant her own two children plus four to six
others were usually trouping through her little place succumbing to
her natural attraction and the sense of comfort that surrounded
her. The children loved her and she was happy with that. She was
not given much else to do. She liked her job well enough, but
mostly she liked it because it did not disrupt the rest of her
life.
    That suddenly changed. Late one
night a faint but stronger than expected signal was detected from
the vicinity of XK-47, a star located on the edge of the galactic
core, about one hundred and twenty light years distant. This was no
beacon into space announcing the presence of a living planet, but a
more-or-less continuous signal that had greater amplitude and was
less dispersed than background static. It was not much, but it met
many of the pre-established event requirements defined by the
Institute and thus it detection triggered a flag on the signal
monitoring computer system, no alarms or get-out-of-bed-quick
message, only a note stating that an unusual finding had been
detected. The message was added to a file that no one was there to
notice. The telescope moved on to the next designated
star.
    Four hours later, NorHan arrived
at work, fresh from a three-day vacation. She was a bit late that
day, but when she arrived, NorHan squatted before her computer to
check the night's activity. The notice for a Suspect Intercept was
highlighted and flashing when she opened her data record file. She
assumed it was a malfunction, of course, that always were. She
double-checked all her control data and it all looked good, that is
to say normal. Reference stars were where they were supposed to be,
the antenna pointed in the right direction, everything worked and
so the data seemed to be real.
    NorHan spent some time replaying
the signal from XK-47. It was not particularly interesting; however
there were some minor modulations, no obvious pattern, but it was
contained within a particularly narrow range of wavelengths that
had a somewhat unusual energy distribution. At least it was
different from radio-emitting galaxies. She had seen plenty of
those. NorHan refocused the telescope on XK-47. The signal was
still present. She saw hints of a pattern and some interesting low
frequency variations when she focused on a narrow wavelength band.
It was something, so she set off to alert her supervisor. It was a
twist of fate that her supervisor and the next two levels of
management were not in that day, and NorHan ended by taking her
discovery directly to the Institute’s director, Kel UnFel, much to
her personal discomfort and future fame.
    The entire staff gathered around
NorHan’s station to examine the signal. The continuous record was
copied and parceled out and most of Institute spent the day double
checking the event and applying their best signal analysis tools to
the continuous beam to see if there was any hidden pattern, or
nonrandom elements, within the apparent noise. No one could be
sure, but variations over the next four days gradually convinced
them that the radio transmissions were the unintended