“That radio stuff?”
“Right. Did you read the report?”
Connors looked into his glass. “Charlie, you know I don’t have time to-”
“Somebody read it, though.”
“Oh, righty-o. Good astronomy boy on my staff: he gave me a boil-down. Mighty interesting, that.”
“There’s an intelligent civilization eleven light-years away — that’s `mighty interesting’?”
“Sure. Real breakthrough.” Uncomfortable silence. “Uh, what are you going to do about it?”
“Two things. First, we’re trying to figure out what they’re saying. That’s hard. Second, we want to send a message back. That’s easy. And that’s where you come in.”
The Senator nodded and looked somewhat wary.
“Let me explain. We’ve sent messages to this star, 61 Cygni, before. It’s a double star, actually, with a dark companion.”
“Like us.”
“Sort of. Anyhow, they never answered. They aren’t listening, evidently: they aren’t sending.”
“But we got-”
“What we’re picking up is about what you’d pick up eleven light-years from Earth. A confused jumble of broadcasts, eleven years old. Very faint. But obviously not generated by any sort of natural source.”
“Then we’re already sending a message back. The same kind they’re sending us.”
“That’s right, but-”
“So what does all this have to do with me?”
“Bo, we don’t want to whisper at them – we want to shout! Get their attention.” Leventhal sipped his wine and leaned back. “For that, we’ll need one hell of a lot of power.”
“Uh, righty-o. Charlie, power’s money. How much are you talking about?”
“The whole show. I want to shut down Death Valley for twelve hours.”
The Senator’s mouth made a silent O. “Charlie, you’ve been working too hard. Another Blackout? On purpose?”
“There won’t be any Blackout. Death Valley has emergency storage for fourteen hours.”
“At half capacity.” He drained his glass and walked back to the bar, shaking his head. “First you say you want power. Then you say you want to turn off the power.” He came back with the burlap-covered bottle. “You aren’t making sense, boy.”
“Not turn it off, really. Turn it around.”
“Is that a riddle?”
“No, look. You know the power doesn’t really come from the Death Valley grid; it’s just a way station and accumulator. Power comes from the orbital-”
“I know all that, Charlie. I’ve got a Science Certificate.”.
“Sure. So what we’ve got is a big microwave laser in orbit, that shoots down a tight beam of power. Enough to keep North America running. Enough-”
“That’s what I mean. You can’t just-”
“So we turn it around and shoot it at a power grid on the Moon. Relay the power around to the big radio dish at Farside. Turn it into radio waves and point it at 61 Cygni. Give ’em a blast that’ll fry their fillings.”
“Doesn’t sound neighborly.”
“It wouldn’t actually be that powerful – but it would be a hell of a lot more powerful than any natural 21 centimeter source.”
“I don’t know, boy.” He rubbed his eyes and grimaced. “I could maybe do it on the sly, only tell a few people what’s on. But that’d only work for a few minutes . . . what do you need twelve hours for, anyway?”
“Well, the thing won’t aim itself at the Moon automatically, the way it does at Death Valley. Figure as much as an hour to get the thing turned around and aimed.
“Then, we don’t want to just send a blast of radio waves at them. We’ve got a five-hour program, that first builds up a mutual language, then tells them about us, and finally asks them some questions. We want to send it twice.”
Connors refilled both glasses. “How old were you in ’47, Charlie?”
“I was born in ’45.”
“You don’t remember the Blackout. Ten thousand people died . . . and you want me to suggest-”
“Come on, Bo, it’s not the same thing. We know the accumulators work now -besides, the ones who died, most of them had faulty faiL-5afes on their cars. If we warn them the power’s going to drop, they’ll check their faiL-5afes or damn well stay out of the air.”
“And the media? They’d have to take turns broadcasting. Are you going to tell the People what they can watch?”