The Wailing Asteroid | Page 5

went whirring along the roadway. Soon twinkling lights
appeared among the trees. The small and larger buildings of Burke
Development, Inc., came gradually into view. They were dark objects
in a large empty space on the very edge of Burke's home town.
"And why," he went on, "why send a complex message if they only
wanted to say that they were space travelers on the way to Earth?"
The exit from the highway to Burke Development appeared. Burke
swung off the surfaced road and into the four-acre space his small and
unusual business did not begin to fill up.
"If it were an offer of communication, it should be short and simple.
Maybe an arithmetic sequence of dots, to say that they were intelligent
beings and would like the sequence carried on if we had brains, too.
Then we'd know somebody friendly was coming and wanted to
exchange ideas before, if necessary, swapping bombs."
The car's headlights swept over the building in which the experimental
work of Burke Development was done and on to the small house in
which Sandy kept the books and records of the firm, Burke put on the
brakes before the office door.
"Just to see if my head is working right," he said, "I raise a question
about those signals. One doesn't send a long message to emptiness,
repeated, in the hope that someone may be around to catch it. One calls,
and sends a long message only when the call is answered. The call says
who's wanted and who's calling, but nothing more. This isn't that sort of
thing,"
He got out of the car and opened the door on her side, then unlocked
the office door and went in. He switched on the lights inside. For a
moment, Sandy did not move. Then she slowly got out of the car and
entered the once which was so completely familiar. Burke bent over the
office safe, turning the tumbler-wheel to open it. He said over his
shoulder, "That special bulletin will be repeated on all the news
broadcasts. You've got a little radio here. Turn it on, will you?"

Again slowly, Sandy crossed the office and turned on the miniature
radio on her desk. It warmed up and began to make noises. She
dimmed it until it was barely audible. Burke stood up with a reel of
brown tape. He put it on the office recorder, usually used for the
dictation of the day's lab log.
"I have a dream sometimes," said Burke, "A recurrent dream. I've had it
every so often since I was eleven. I've tried to believe it was simply a
freak, but sometimes I've suspected I was a telepath, getting some
garbled message from somewhere unguessable. That has to be wrong.
And again I've suspected that-- well-- that I might not be completely
human. That I was planted here on Earth, somehow, not knowing it, to
be of use to-- something not of Earth. And that's crazy. So I've been
pretty leery of being romantic about anybody. Tonight I'd managed to
persuade myself all those wild imaginings were absurd. And then the
signals came." He paused and said unsteadily, "I made this tape a year
ago. I was trying to convince myself that it was nonsense. Listen.
Remember, I made this a year ago!"
The reels began to spin on the recorder's face. Burke's voice came out
of the speaker, "These are the sounds of the dream," it said, and
stopped.
There was a moment of silence, while the twin reels spun silently. Then
sounds came from the recorder. They were musical notes, reproduced
from the tape. Sandy stared blankly. Disconnected, arbitrary flutelike
sounds came out into the office of Burke Development, Inc. It was
quite correct to call them elfin. They could be described as plaintive.
They were not a melody, but a melody could have been made from
them by rearrangement. They were very remarkably like the sounds
from space. It was impossible to doubt that they were the same code,
the same language, the same vocabulary of tones and durations.
Burke listened with a peculiarly tense expression on his face. When the
recording ended, he looked at Sandy.
Sandy was disturbed. "They're alike. But Joe, how did it happen?"

"I'll tell you later," he said grimly. "The important thing is, am I crazy
or not?"
The desk radio muttered. It was an hourly news broadcast. Burke
turned it up and a voice boomed:
"...one o'clock news. Messages have been received from space in the
century's most stupendous news event! Full details will follow a word
from our sponsor."
There followed an ardent description of the social advantage, personal
satisfaction and business advancement that must instantly follow the
use of a particular intestinal regulator. The commercial ended.
"From deepest space,"