Free Emprise by Michael P. Kube-McDowell

“Right at this table are four doctorates in astronomy or physics—”
    “Three,” Aikens amended. “Larry never completed his.” He missed the look Eddington shot his way.
    “Ten or a hundred wouldn’t be enough,” said Schmidt. “Our curricula vitae are quite impressive, I’m sure, but the reality is that they are written in a currency that’s no longer honored. Have you closed your eyes so thoroughly to what’s happened? Your own Prime Minister boasted during the elections that he had avoided the taint of science throughout his education. What do you hope to achieve in the face of that?”
    “The infamous Prussian realism,” said Anofi. “Are you saying we shouldn’t try?”
    “I’d like to try for something a bit more modest. A monitoring program, for instance. This may be just one of several messages being sent on a rotating schedule or on several frequencies. Perhaps reopening and restoring Jodrell Bank or Mullard would be feasible,” he suggested.
    “Not that I suspect Laurence of any trickery,” he added quickly. “I’d simply like to know more about what we’re dealing with. See if there are any energies at other wavelengths. Try to ascertain if there’s a visible source. Clean up the coordinates. Map the intensity and get some idea of their broadcast technique. Calculate the angular size and if possible the distance—we’ll need six months or another station for the last, of course. It would be good to know if the source were as close as, say, Jupiter.” He smiled sheepishly. “Ami I’d like to hear it live.”
    “I agree there’s a great deal of work to be done—” Anofi began. “Can we go to your government and convince them to aid us without having done at least some of it?”
    “Can we do any of it without their aid?” she asked pointedly.
    “Perhaps there’s a third alternative,” suggested Aikens. “The college facilities are relatively intact, and the administration there may be more sympathetic to us than anyone else would have cause to be.”
    Eddington sighed. “Shall we take that as your whole contribution, Larry?” asked Anofi.
    “No,” he said, pulling a copy of the translation toward him. “ ‘Prepare for the gathering—we are coming to meet you.’ Seems to me we’ve been overlooking what that really says.”
    “It seems rather plain, on the face of it,” said Aikens. “We can look forward to more than mere messages.”
    “Yes! And that’s the most important thing they say here. You seem to be overlooking that.”
    “Not at all,” said Schmidt. “Our problem is bringing it to the attention of the larger world.”
    “And what will we tell them when they ask us, ‘When are they coming?’ ”
    “The message doesn’t say.”
    “There’s hardly any rush on that,” put in Anofi. “Forty light-years would be a journey of at least one hundred and fifty years. We have time enough.”
    “I don’t share your confidence. And this sequence at the end of the message: addeghn-rorgh . Why should all but one small portion of the message be translatable? I’m very uncomfortable with that little mystery,” Eddington said.
    “It has to be their name for themselves,” said Anofi.
    “Why? Because we sign our names at the end of a letter?”
    “It may just be something they garbled. Or their equivalent of RSVP,” she said. “Or a Scottish curse,” Aikens said lightly. Eddington scowled. “Think a minute. They know a great deal more about us than we do about them. And I can’t help but wonder what sort of picture they’ve constructed out of what we sent them.”
    “They’ll be in for some surprises, I warrant,” Anofi observed.
    Eddington looked at her critically. “Will they?”
    “Forgive me,” interjected Schmidt, “but if there’s a common thread to your last few comments, I’ve failed to catch it. Will you enlighten me? Or are you merely making objections at random?”
    Eddington stood, ignoring the jibe, and walked toward the