It has been two months since Assanzi left Arecivo, and letters have begun to come saying that there is no longer fighting in Vietnam, and that the main task is to monitor the movements of the North Vietnamese army and provide warning for the withdrawal of American troops.

The Kerry couple calmed down, and every day the short-wave news was the news of the withdrawal of the entire division from Vietnam, and it seemed that Assanzi would soon return home.

After a while, Assanzi's letter was suddenly interrupted, and Emily's reply was not answered, Emily nervously stayed at home for fear that someone from the recruiting office would knock on the door and deliver the news of her death, she became more and more anxious, "Kerry, can you think of a way to inquire about Assanzi's situation." ”

Kerry was also at a loss, lying in bed every night and thinking about it, unable to find a way to contact Assange, and in the blink of an eye, Christmas was coming again, and Kerry drove alone to the Roosevelt Road Naval Base.

Anderson was in the office packing his things and preparing to go home for vacation, when he saw Kerry come in, he was a little surprised, "You don't enjoy the peaceful days in Arecivo, what are you doing here?" ”

"I'm going back to the Navy communications station, and I'm applying to join the Bat Project again." Kerry said word for word.

The progress of the naval communications station has been slow for ten years, Anderson is extremely anxious, the backbone of the project inside is all seventy or eighty years old, and the young people who have been replenished in China are young and will not do anything, and there are very few backbones like Kerry.

Anderson was overjoyed to see Kerry make such a request, but the old fox's face was unmoved, "Look at it, the Admiralty places veterans every day, and I'm about to become a nursing home here, you can give me a reason why I can accept you." ”

"Aren't you looking for brain waves? Do you remember the pulse wave of August 3, 1965? I'm sure it's brainwaves. Kerry was a little weak when he lied, and he knew that Anderson was shrewd and cunning, and he tried to control his expression.

Anderson was also controlling himself, trying to stay calm, he didn't realize Kerry's abnormality, "How did you know?" ”

"Don't ask me where I know, let me come back and join the bats to unlock the secret of this pulse wave."

"What conditions do you have, speak." Anderson knew that Kerry would not send good things to the door for no reason, and Kerry made his offer, "I need to know where Assanzi is. ”

"Hahaha, I see, what a good father." Anderson spread his hands, "I don't know where Assanzi is, the mission of their group of soldiers is top secret, and I have no right to know." But since you made this request. I can support you, I appoint you to be in charge of the bat project, now that you have found the brainwaves, then try harder to find Assanzi, do you think I am a very fair person? ”

Kerry called Emily and told her of her decision, "That's all there is to it, and hopefully we can have good luck." Emily doesn't have any hope for Kerry's ideas, she has always been in charge of Kerry, and now all she can do is listen to the news every day.

On November 16, 1974, Clifford and Lipper arrived early at the Areciwo Telescope Observation Room.

The telescope has been transformed, the 500-ton receiver and transmitter are integrated into a squirrel cage, quietly suspended under the steel cables, and the computer has already adjusted its position to the telescope's firing focus to wait for human launch commands.

Clifford checked each link again according to the manual, and after confirming that it was correct, Clifford sat down and waited for the launch window to arrive.

For the first time, NASA also brought in media reporters, who live in the town of Arecivo and are closely guarded, and today they were also invited to the launch site, ready to be the first to report this momentous moment to the world.

According to NASA's plan, the object chosen for this launch is the M13 globular cluster in the constellation Hercules in the Northern Hemisphere. Shortly after the invention of the astronomical telescope in 1774, the French missionary Messier used the astronomical telescope to discover more than 100 deep-sky objects, which did not appear to be a single star, but a large nebula.

Later, finding these Messier objects with a telescope in 24 hours became a marathon in the astronomical world, and now as the telescope gets bigger and bigger, the images of these nebulae are also broken down in more detail, many of which look blurry in small telescopes, but are made up of countless bright stars in large telescopes.

M13 is one of them, it is barely visible to the naked eye in the summer sky, it is a round spot with a small telescope, and it contains about 300,000 stars with a very large telescope, about 24,000 light-years from Earth, NASA believes that there is a very good chance that there are so many stars in such a dense area that there is a very good chance of extraterrestrial civilizations hidden in it.

Puerto Rico is located on the equator, and to see M13 in November, you have to wait until the second half of the night, and the Arecibo telescope is built on the mountain, and there is no way to adjust the direction of the launch, so you can only rely on the rotation of the earth until M13 turns to the top of the telescope in the second half of the night, leaving Clifford with a launch time window of only 5 minutes.

In the second half of the night, the naked eye could vaguely see the M13 gradually moving overhead, and Clifford became more and more nervous, "Young man, don't be nervous, isn't it just sending an electromagnetic wave?" We were many times more dangerous than you when we were working on the atomic bomb at Oak Ridge. ”

Seeing that Clifford was too nervous, Lipper began to comfort him, "Have you ever seen a lump of uranium in an atomic bomb?" It's that big. ”

Lipper compared it to the size of a basketball, "There are two pieces, and you have to turn them into semicircles on a machine tool, and then put them together, and pop, and they explode, and Hiroshima is gone." Think about it, how do you feel when you turn it? ”

"So you participated in the Manhattan Project?" Clifford looked taken aback, and he underestimated the black man in front of him.

Lipper didn't answer him directly, "As President Nixon thought, you press lightly, and what is launched is peace, you should be happy, don't be so nervous." ”

Before he knew it, the M13 moved to the zenith position, Clifford was less nervous, and the order from the NASA commander came over the loudspeaker: "It can be launched." ”

Clifford's hand was already on the launch button, and he pressed it hard, strangely, the buzz during the day's exercise did not come in, and Clifford pressed it harder, but there was still no response.

The reporters in the observation room were in a commotion, and Clifford panicked, and he immediately reported it to NASA in accordance with the operating procedures. "Immediately enter the rat cage and launch manually!" NASA has developed a detailed launch plan for this project, and they have long prepared a contingency plan for automatic launch failure.

Clifford hurried out of the observation room, to a column next to the telescope, and climbed into the elevator, Lipper saw Clifford enter the elevator through the observation room window, and immediately activated the ascent button.

After a few minutes, Clifford rose to the top of the column and got into a crag suspended from a steel cable, and he couldn't wait for Lipper to start the winch, and with his hands he desperately turned the rocker in the hoist, and the hoist slid along the wire to the central launch squirrel.

Reporters stared nervously at the gondola on the steel cables through the windows of the observation room, and the photographers carried their equipment out of the observation room to shoot at Clifford.

Even though it was the middle of the night, Clifford was still covered with beads of sweat on his head under the light of the white woven lamp in the hanging barn. By the time we got to the focal point, four and a half minutes had passed.

Clifford didn't care about wiping his sweat and jumped into the rat cage, Lipper had already helped him turn on the lights in the rat cage, Clifford pulled the manual launch lever, a buzzing sound of roosting seabirds flew up, the reporters below cheered, the flashing lights flashed, the frightened seabirds in the sky fluttered their wings wildly, the quiet night was broken, several windows in the small town of Arecivo lit up, and people stretched out their heads to see what was going on.

Clifford suddenly sat down in the rat cage, and the voice of the NASA commander came from the loudspeaker in the observation room, "Arecivo, report the launch." ”

"The launch was successful, and the report was complete." Lipper turned his head to the microphone and just finished speaking, the person froze, and in Clifford's seat, a heavy radiation suit was placed on the chair, Liver's face changed color all of a sudden, and he shouted into the other microphone, "Clifford, come down, come down now!" ”

He shouted as he slammed the stop button on the console, and after a few clicks, the buzzing stopped, and the seabird circled and flew back.

Clifford didn't react at all, Lipper activated the craloin winch, ran out of the observation room, got up the column elevator, got into the bunker and soon came to the rat cage and dragged the limp Clifford out.

Early the next morning, Nixon's image came from the television sets of every house, "I want to announce to the world that just now, the Cornell University radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, launched information about human civilization into space for the first time in history, and we will wait for the echo of space civilization." To that end, I will ask Congress to continue to increase its appropriation for the Arecibo Observatory to collect and analyze space waves. Also, to thank Puerto Rico for its support of the Arecibo Observatory, I announce the **** Oscars? Mr. Colazzo. ”

"The murderer of Truman can also be pardoned?" A nurse asked, staring at a TV screen in the hospital room.

"Politicians can exchange anything." Lipper replied dismissively, Clifford in his hospital bed motionless, he couldn't hear anything.

Clifford forgot to wear a radiation suit, and under the strong electromagnetic waves, his body was greatly damaged, and he was treated in the hospital at Roosevelt Road Naval Base for half a year, and he was saved a life, but he fell deaf.

The young man was disheartened and tried to commit suicide several times, but Kerry always came to comfort him and tell him that the future was long, and the kind Emily came to take care of Assanzi, despite her worries.

After leaving the hospital, Clifford had no choice but to resign from NASA, which readily approved his resignation.

After sending electromagnetic waves to M13, a wave of aliens was set off around the world. "Why don't you write a book about aliens", Kerry proposes to Clifford when he sees that he is depressed.

"I'm deaf and deaf, where else can I write a book." Clifford replied lazily.

"The deaf do not affect you with a typewriter, cheer up, young man. Are you ready to spend the rest of your life like this? Clifford became angry, "Do you know why I went back to the Navy communications station?" Assanzi lost contact not long after he went to Vietnam, his fate is unknown, Anderson said that Arecivo's telescope could find his brain waves, do you believe it? I believe that as long as there is a glimmer of hope, I am willing to try. ”

Emily heard Kerry's voice outside the door and couldn't help but sob. Clifford stopped talking, and just like that, he settled next door to Kerry and began to conceive of its alien novel.