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speck. “It might have only been a natural satellite…a small captive asteroid, perhaps…but the primary’s mass was too small and the second object’s orbit around it was too narrow. So Raziel gave it a closer look, and as you can see…”
    He magnified the holo to twice its previous size, this time adding wire-frame lines of latitude and longitude. Ramirez then tapped in a sequence of time-lapse images; although the primary object didn’t gain any additional detail, it became apparent that its companion was moving in orbit around its equator. “Again, it could have been a natural phenomenon,” he continued, “but then Raziel captured this one particular image…”
    He waited until the speck had almost completed its transit of the object, then froze the image and magnified it to its highest resolution. Only the western limb of the primary could be seen, but that wasn’t what drew everyone’s attention. For the speck was no longer a speck but instead a tiny ellipse, with Proxima sunlight gleaming through the cavity at its center.
    â€œClearly, this is an artificial construct.” Even though Ramirez had studied this particular frame dozens of times in the past few days, he still felt a shiver run down his back. “Not only that, but subsequent examination of the primary confirmed it was a little more than two-point-oh-five light-years away. In other words, the primary, along with its companion, wasn’t in orbit around Proxima, but instead passing in transit between the Centauri system and our own.”
    Murmurs from around the table as conference members studied the image. While some were awestruck, others were plainly skeptical. Ignoring them, Ramirez went on. “Although Raziel spotted it only for a moment—one-ten-thousandth of a second, to be exact—it was sufficient to trigger its recognition mode. Even as it relayed a priority message to Muscoviense Centre, it proceeded to the next stage.”
    He touched his screen again, relaying a graphic image to everyone else’s screens. “In the event of something like this, Raziel was programmed to transmit a sequence of short-burst microwave signals representing prime numbers…two, three, five, seven, eleven, and so forth…on a frequency of fourteen hundred twenty megahertz, or twenty-one centimeters wavelength. This has been long considered the frequency most likely to be noticed by an intelligent observer…or, at least, one possessing the proper equipment…that wouldn’t be mistaken for cosmic background radiation.”
    Ramirez waited a moment, letting his words sink in. “That was about four and a half years ago. On April 1, Mare Muscoviense’s long-baseline array intercepted a signal, this one transmitted at the exact same frequency. At first we…I mean, our people…thought it might only be an echo of some sort, because the signal commenced with an identical string of prime numbers. But then the sequence became much more complex, lasting thirty-four seconds until it began to repeat itself.”
    He touched another key, and a new image appeared on the attendees’ screens: rows of digits, beginning with two, three, five, and seven, and continuing into five-place prime numbers, before breaking pattern and becoming a complicated string of numbers that had no obvious pattern. “We have no idea what this means, of course,” Ramirez went on, “but there’s no doubt that’s the product of extraterrestrial intelligence. Nor is there any doubt that it came from the…um, object.”
    â€œSpindrift,” Cole murmured.
    Ramirez looked at him. “Pardon me?”
    â€œSpindrift. The code name ESA and the Union Astronautica have agreed upon for this phenomenon.” Cole sat up a little straighter, touched his mike to activate it. “Thank you very much for the background on this discovery, Dr. Ramirez. I think I speak