Free King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian McDonald Page B

was observed.
After nightfall on the following day, September 3, it again being clear and calm, the floating stellagraph was again activated, transmitting the pi ratio for an hour, then changing to the natural exponent e expressed as the approximate fraction of nineteen over seven. As before, this cycle was repeated every two hours for two hours. As before, the spatial object was closely observed through telescopes—both those of the experimenter, and of the invited witnesses in Sligo town.
    No response was observed from the transtellar vessel on these dates.
    On the third night, September 4, communication was once again attempted.

Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: September 4, 1913
    I ANTICIPATED LAST NIGHT with the thrill of a child at Christmas. I could hardly wait for darkness to descend and my attempts to communicate with the Altairii to commence. My to-that-date lack of success had in no way discouraged me; as a gentleman of science, I know that triumph is not always immediate. I was confident, however, that this night I would succeed in breaking through their alien silence.
    At the prearranged hour, Mr. Michael Barry down in the Harbour Commissioners office operated the floating stellagraph and transmitted my recognition signal. From the observatory dome I could see the floating cross of pontoons filling all of Sligo Bay, flashing our proud message of will and intellect to the star travellers.
    Then the first of the night’s calamities occurred. At 10:23 P.M. the observatory was plunged into the most profound darkness. By now accustomed to these failures of the electrical supply, I lit the oil lamps I had installed with just such a contingency in mind. Then Mrs. O’Carolan came rushing in from the main house in a terrible to-do, flustered and flapping and gabbling about having heard on the telephone that the current had failed in Rosses Point, too. Alarmed, I abandoned my telescope and reached the window just in time to see the lights of my fine floating stellagraph plunged into extinction. Just as abruptly, the glow from Sligo town vanished, as if some vast hand had snuffed it out. As I was later to learn from the pages of the Irish Times, the electrical supply was blacked out from Donegal Town to Enniskillen to Ballina for a period of four hours. At the time, ignorant as I was, I was greatly fearful, imagining that my signal attempt had brought some dreadful star doom down upon our Earth.
    Then the second peculiarity occurred. The star vehicle, which I had kept under observation in my telescope, suddenly emitted a pulse of light bright enough to be visible with the naked eye. It continued to emit these bursts of brilliant light at the rate of one per minute until 12:16 A.M. , at which time the object flared so dazzlingly that I was momentarily blinded, though I have learned from witnesses that the entire sky seemed to turn white. When I regained my customary clarity of vision, I was unable to find the vehicle in my telescope eyepiece. It had vanished as utterly as if it had never been. No conjurer vanishing a lady into thin air upon the Dublin stage could have matched such a feat of prestidigitation, and the vacuum of space is thinner by far than the most rarefied of airs.
    I searched the heavens frantically for some trace of the great star vehicle—some nebula, some nimbus one might expect in the aftermath of an explosion. Nothing. It might never have existed. As I was pondering upon what fate might have befallen the valiant star travellers (and rueing bitterly that it had befallen them before I had made contact with them), Caroline burst in upon me to inform me of the most dreadful news of that calamitous evening: that Emily had been found wandering in a state of great distress upon the Sligo Road by a police constable.

From the Report of Constable Michael O’Hare, Drumcliffe R.I.C Station
    U PON THE NIGHT IN question I was proceeding upon my bicycle along the Sligo Road toward Rosses Point, where