Leonid Bachkosky was not a Russian political prisoner. Neither was he a criminal. In fact, Leonid was considered by many Russians to be one of the brightest young physicists produced by their nation in fifty years. Yet he was inexorably exiled to a far more hostile and isolated place than the Siberia that the old revolutionaries had offered to their adversaries.
Perhaps the word exiled was an exaggeration in Leonid's case; a voluntary decision had brought him to this circumstance. Even so, now that Leonid had been the lone operator of the Russian's Sea of Moscow radio telescope for six months, some 340 miles around the "backside" of the moon, he was beginning to feel like an exile.
Leonid's wistful surroundings did little to suppress his building distress. If cross-examined, he would reluctantly admit that the Sea of Moscow dormitory did provide all the necessities for survival. But having produced no noteworthy discoveries during its two-decade existence, the site's funding for upkeep and human comfort had eroded as surely as had expectations of a breakthrough.
When first assigned, Leonid gained great respect for his only companion at this desolate assignment: the Ultima D2000 computer system. The computer marvelously complemented his own exceptional skills; Leonid possessed considerable creativity and intuition, the D2000 provided dogged tenacity and speed.
But now that months had passed, Leonid desperately needed a companion with different skills. One with the ability to respond to something other than carefully structured commands, the ability to converse with feeling instead of precision, the ability to laugh as Leonid wished he could ... to cry as Leonid often did.
Leonid cursed the pale yellow walls that were his meager sheath of protection from the stark vacuum of space. As he mentally associated his irksome surroundings with the harsh Siberia, Leonid recalled the carefree time when he'd actually spent a summer there as an academy student.
He'd often read about the mysterious explosion over the Tunguska region in 1908, and jumped at the chance when three companions invited him to spend two months on an expedition to the site.
Most of the memories of that summer had slipped to cob- webbed folds of his memory, but Leonid's current distress brought vividly to mind the hostility the site had offered. It wasn't the cold, not at that time of year. It was the engulfing, smelly mud, and the relentless mosquitoes.
Yet his current surroundings were even more alienating. Now that the Sea of Moscow basin was entering Lunar night, Leonid would not even see the sun again for two whole weeks. Such discomfort had been unfamiliar to Leonid. Coming from a reasonably wealthy family, Leonid had experienced a protective childhood, and carried no serious youthful fears into adulthood.
Yet at this painfully bland, eternally silent location on the backside of the moon, Leonid had learned fear -- or at least dread -- of the consummate lunar darkness. He now realized that he had never really experienced such profound darkness on the earth. Even on the darkest nights of his youth, Leonid could always see moonlight, or nearby street and building lights, or at least the lights of a distant sunset or nearby city glowing on the horizon.
But at this bleak violation of the moon's dominion, there was either starkly brilliant sunlight, or pure blackness broken only by a multitude of stars. No earth light could reach here. No cities, or even lunar colonies were within 500 miles. And even if a lunar site was just beyond the horizon, no atmosphere would reveal its presence with a soft glow of diffused light.
So whenever the lunar night made its lengthy assault, Leonid practiced what months of isolation had taught him about willful distraction. He parked his gaunt, door-height frame on the sagging bunk, plugged his earphones into his private Audio Chip Player, turned up the volume, and closed his eyes.
He periodically checked the SETI instruments of course, but the D2000 computer was most capable. During the long lunar night, Leonid directed his concentration on maintaining his sanity, and convinced himself that the collected data could be better studied later at the larger Russian site in the Sea of Crisis.
So on the dusk of that lunar day, as Leonid prepared to be actively distracted during his somber awake hours for the next two weeks, he was not acutely watching the D2000 computer monitor. The computer, its mission meticulously spelled out in endless patterns of ones and zeros, had no sensors to detect the loneliness Leonid was experiencing. It kept no statistics on the change in Leonid's attentiveness as the moon alternately turned its back first to the sun, and then the cosmos. The D2000 was narrowly instructed to sense the signals coming from the only radio telescope on the backside of the moon, and the occasional tapping of the keyboard by its human counterpart.
Whether lunar day or night, the D2000 steadily monitored all received electromagnetic radiation in the millions of frequency bands within its grasp, and piped the signals through a series of comparison algorithms in search of anything that looked "unnatural." At 1:45 GMT in the still observed twenty-four hour earth cycle, the D2000 found the first signal in history satisfying all stringent criteria.
In nanoseconds, the D2000 scanned the status flags to determine the proper formulation of its response. As specified in the response table, the D2000 sounded an audible alarm for precisely sixty seconds, unaware that it was competing with the latest audio chip from the musical group The Scavengers. It then displayed a multicolored warning on the control console, heedless of the fact that Leonid had his eyes closed in symphonic concentration. Finally, as indicated in the response table, the D2000 recorded the data on mass storage module M1275 and continued meticulously following the prescribed search pattern.
* * *
The flag ship Kochna unceremoniously plowed through the cosmos as she had for the last thousand years. As always, when the eternal voyager neared another stellar system, it slowed its velocity from ninety percent of light speed to a crawling point-three percent to allow months of detailed study, as the biological computers added to their immense store of knowledge.
The view afforded the tireless traveler of this rather common system, though all too familiar to the data gathering organisms of the Kochna, was unlikely to have ever been seen by any inhabitants of the numerous worlds circling the bright yellow star. It seemed a system with potential, consisting of nine identifiable planets, several of reasonable size and position to have produced living creatures.
The Kochna proceeded along its usual path high above the planetary plane, a feature so common of the ordered systems evolved from the cosmological clumps of raw material. Unless any creatures living in this unspectacular system were quite advanced, they no doubt had only seen their system from within the constraints of their disc-like arrangement.
The Kochna had studied over a hundred such systems, and only one greatly deviated from the standard flat distribution of circling bodies. That unusual system had no doubt suffered the uninvited visit of a massive body, one that had dragged the surviving planets into an unstable distribution of elliptical orbits, surely doomed to an early cosmic death.
It was no surprise to the collective minds that had scanned the system that no life forms were found. In such a chaotic breeding place, no life form could get the chance it needed to develop and grow.
In fact, the Kochna had only discovered evidence of life in ten of the systems it had so far studied, though each had been carefully chosen. Once every day, the Kochna dutifully transmitted the latest results of its information quest to its long distant home. When the learned ones of Kochna's home planet finally received the data, they would no doubt further harden their long held conclusion that the Braknen were indeed one of the most advanced, perhaps the only advanced, species in the galaxy.
It wasn't really arrogance that fostered such a determined attitude. It was instead a conclusion logically deduced by a species that had dissected the fabric of matter, invented the interstellar ion drive, and created the virtually unlimited capacity biological computer. The Braknen had applied all of these exquisite tools to the study of the galaxy for thousands of years without finding another worthy species -- in fact, hardly any other species at all.
During its long journey, though the Kochna had discovered no intelligence to rival its Braknen creators, it had discovered and studied many fascinating phenomenon -- fascinating even to the learned ones. Each system, no matter how common its initial appearance, yielded surprises. It fascinated even the rigidly judicious Braknen, that no matter their vast technical accomplishment, they lacked the infinite imagination displayed by the creators of the universe.
No surprise, however, was to keep the Kochna from completing its projected five-thousand-year journey. It still had many solar systems to engage, its mission to observe, analyze, and report. So it was with little furor that the Kochna organisms noticed the emanation of coherent radio signals from the double planet in the third position, and the fourth planet. Data was collected and fed to the genetically tailored analysis organisms, to await their uncontested conclusions.
* * *
Leonid strolled -- lunar style, with long slow strides -- toward the St. Petersburg cafeteria. The traditional Russian name was comforting, but a glimpse out any available porthole quickly reminded him that though no longer alone, he was still separated from eternity only by thin bunker walls and a few feet of lunar dust scrapped from the Sea of Crisis.
Finished with his remote stint at the SETI observatory for over a week, Leonid was still recovering from its fathomless solitude. Leonid spoke to each person he passed, ignoring the strange glances he often received for his effort. To Leonid, each person provided the long absent opportunity to speak to another human being, and he wasn't about to miss any potential conversation.
Leonid took a seat at a table in the center of the lunch room. He glanced around the small, dimly lit cafeteria. He'd been told that most colonists joked about the poorly furnished Russian cafeteria, lacking any pretense of decoration, badly in need of paint, and short of help. But to Leonid's deprived eyes, the cafeteria looked just fine. He reveled in the complex smells, left over from the busier hours. Even though a synthetic aura permeated the wafting oders, to him it was delicious.
The only other occupants were an entwined young couple in a corner booth, and Leonid was wise enough not to try engaging them in conversation. A glance at his wristwatch informed him the hour was nearly two A.M. of the current work cycle. It was no wonder only he and a pair of cooing lovebirds sought refuge in the cafeteria.
Leonid waited patiently for a waiter. It appeared that no one cared if he was serviced or not. He didn't mind. Being ignored among a few clanging pans and broom pushers wasn't isolation to him -- not any more.
He leaned back in the armless chair, tracing his finger with deliberation along each menu entry. Even though he'd not yet been served, he was already thinking about his next meal, when he heard a husky voice announce his name over the intercom. Damn, it's Colonel Kreger. Doesn't he ever sleep?
Leonid rose slowly and obediently headed toward Kreger's office. His fervent hope was that he'd get sent back earthside, at least for a few month assignment. Unfortunately, he was well aware Kreger was a product of the old school.
* * *
Leonid stood at stiff attention before the surly, seated Kreger. "Lieutenant Leonid Bachkosky reporting, sir." Leonid took in the office cubical with flitting glances, keeping his eyes mostly on Kreger. The room was not what he expected, given Kreger's important position. It was little larger than his own modest quarters -- the furniture was sparse, made of unadorned, cheap looking plastic, and didn't match.
Kreger gave a wave that poorly approximated a salute. "Please sit down Leonid, we're on the moon, not a parade ground."
Leonid stiffly sat in the wobbly chair facing Kreger's desk. "I assume you asked me here to discuss my next assignment, sir?"
"In good time. First I want to discuss your last assignment -- in the Sea of Moscow." Kreger placed a pair of wire-rimmed glasses on his nose and seemed to forget about Leonid as he browsed a handful of papers. His pale blue eyes showed tiredly between the lowly placed spectacles and bushy, grey eyebrows.
"Is something wrong?" Leonid shifted uneasily, the chair wobbled.
"It appears you didn't reduce much of the SETI data during your assignment. Why?" Kreger viewed Leonid over the top of his spectacles.
Leonid fought the urge to squirm in his seat. "I, uh, didn't generally reduce the data collected during lunar nights."
"No?" Kreger's serious look became even more solemn. "I'm not sure I can imagine what else you had to do."
Leonid tried to swallow, but the dryness in his mouth made him cough. "I, uh, had trouble concentrating during lunar nights. I decided it would be better to reduce the data when I could better keep my mind on my task."
Kreger scowled, but Leonid felt is wasn't directed at him.
"You too?" Kreger said. His eyebrows visibly relaxed, if just a little. "We've historically had trouble with the SETI assignees, starting about the third month of their tour."
Leonid's shoulders slumped slightly. Did he detect the smallest hint of understanding in Kreger's tone? "Sir, you know that the Americans don't allow solitary lunar assignments. I believe poor performance is as much on their mind as safety."
"Yes, I know, and they're probably right. If we weren't shifting so much of our effort to our Mars colony, perhaps we too would use such a policy."
Leonid was surprised at Kreger's apparent compassion. He decided to ask a question that had been festering. "Sir, there was no replacement for me when I left the SETI site. Surely we're not going to drop the experiment altogether. There's no other radio telescope in existence so well isolated from Earth generated radio noise."
Kreger waved a hand in the air, sign enough for Leonid to be quiet. "I regret we must. As you and others have shown, a solitary investigator provides poor results, and we surely can't afford to assign more than one person." Kreger shrugged his stout shoulders. "I'm afraid the SETI instrument will have to wait in silence."
Leonid rocked awkwardly in the uneven chair. He had desperately wanted an earthside assignment, but a knot formed in his stomach when he realized his months of tedious work may be all in vain.
"But, what about all the valuable data already gathered? I brought back all the data modules collected during this last year."
"I don't know ... my instructions are to reassign you Earthside. I assume the data will wait for some student to sift through ... someday."
Leonid bounced to his feet. "Sir, surely we won't just let all that data simply turn to dust. Can't you arrange for me to stay and work on it, at least for a few weeks?"
Kreger took off his glasses and looked at his young protege, his sagging eyes revealing a determination Leonid hadn't noticed before. "I thought you were anxious to go earthside?"
Leonid felt a warm flush. "Yes Sir, I was. But I never realized that my year at SETI would just be wasted. At least let me work on the data, let me salvage my assignment."
Kreger eyed Leonid, rubbing his square chin with pudgy, pale fingers. "I'll see what I can do. Frankly, I doubt anything will come of the data. But, when I was your age I too hated to leave a job undone. Dismissed." Kreger glanced down at his work, giving Leonid the unmistakable message that the meeting was over.
* * *
Leonid flipped his hand in a "hurry up" gesture as he anxiously waited for the printer to regurgitate his request. It seemed to Leonid that the computer was purposely teasing him by dragging its conceptual feet.
"Hurry up damn you, I've only got another half hour before my time slot is over."
Undaunted, the D5000 multi-cpu computing masterpiece printed out the remaining pages at precisely the rate it had printed out the previous ones. Leonid waited humbly, but hardly patiently, for his listings. The last page had barely fluttered into the output hopper before Leonid snatched the entire pile.
He swiftly examined the pages for flagged output, grumbling at the minimal computer support he was getting. The D5000 system could parse a problem to as many as seventy-five processors simultaneously, allowing anything but a full cosmic simulation to be computed virtually instantaneously.
Leonid, however, was restricted to timesharing a single cpu of the powerful complex, and even that for only two hours a day. It was painfully obvious that his project was considered low priority.
Leonid whispered curses -- fuming about the treatment. He knew it was because the far side radio telescope had been single-mindedly performing the same service for nearly twenty years, without detecting a single promising radio signal. The bureaucratic apathy disappointed Leonid, but he realized that if he were in charge, he'd probably minimize the time allocated to the SETI data also.
Still, the instrument's bandwidth had been increased only a couple of years ago, and the entire sky survey had been redone. Even so, Leonid didn't actually expect to find a source of intelligent signals, but he did wish to evaluate the data for numerous other scientific purposes. He had, as an example, found three new pulsars buried among the terabit data modules being investigated. The latest pulsar must be very small given its rapid period. Leonid felt that at least it should be further studied.
He sighed as he reached the last page of the stack without finding any flagged information. He was undecided whether he should start examining another module -- probably without success -- or go back to the more interesting pulsar and extract whatever the data had to offer. He was sure he could generate at least one paper on the subject. It had been, after all, his work on collapsing stars and black holes that earned him the right to come to the moon in the first place.
Leonid shook his head and cursed himself for having not monitored the data real time. He had work to do, and little time left on this shift. My duty is to examine the rest of the data modules, he reminded himself. He still felt badly about his lack of performance during his SETI assignment, and felt obligated to make up for it. If he could get copies of some of the data modules, perhaps he could study the pulsars after returning earthside.
With renewed determination, Leonid grabbed the next module, number M1275, and plugged it into the compatible slot. He typed a few instructions, rocked side to side for a few minutes while the more extensive analysis capabilities of the D5000 examined the data, and nearly drooled on the pages as the printer spit them into the hopper.
This time, instead of waiting for the entire two- hundred pages to accumulate, Leonid grabbed pages when about twenty piled up. He then sifted through each smaller collection while the next few pages were ejected.
Leonid was scanning so fast in order to keep up with the printer that he nearly missed a flagged data section. His first assumption was that another pulsar had been located. Suddenly he recognized the true importance of the find and jumped from his chair, violently banging his gangly knee on the printer cabinet.
Leonid's shaking fingers ran down the page as he compared the D5000's more detailed analysis with the adjacent D2000's report.
THEY AGREED. Leonid returned to his seat, his wobbly legs unable to hold him even in one-sixth gee.
"How did I miss it?"
Leonid nervously read the time log, his hands shaking so badly he could barely decipher the listing. The signal had been detected by the D2000 early one lunar evening, nearly six months ago. A signal -- not from some dim star thousands of light years away, but literally on the edge of the solar system.
Leonid wiped perspiration from his brow. I must report this, but how will I explain why I missed the D2000's signal? Before Leonid could decide what to do, the D5000's alarm sounded.
"Your time slot is up," a monotone, brassy sounding voice announced. "The next available slot is twenty-one hundred hours".
"No, I have to continue examining this module's data! This is it -- what we've been searching for!" Leonid slammed his hand down on the top of his terminal. He grabbed the pile of printouts and held them closely to his chest. A moments indecision, then Leonid scampered out of the computer facility, heading with trepidation straight for the Kreger's Office.
* * *
The analysis organisms of the Kochna completed their report of the third position double planet and the fourth planet. The data archival organisms dutifully logged the prepared results, and placed the data in the communications queue, to be transmitted to the learned ones at the next transmission cycle.
The analysis indicated that the greatest amount of coherent radio signals emanated from the largest of the double planets in the third position. It consisted of a wide range of signals using numerous modulation techniques, all relatively primitive. The analysis organisms concluded that most of the signals were directed simply at other locations on the planet, and only the incredibly inefficient mode of transmission allowed the Kochna to intercept the signals at all.
The signals emanating from the smaller of the double planets and the fourth planet were strikingly similar to one another in nature. These emanations covered a much smaller subset of frequencies and modulation techniques. The likely conclusion was that the same species was responsible for originating all detected signals.
The powerful link transmitter was fired up, and the conclusions were blasted homeward. A species of limited intelligence had been discovered, existing on at least three planets of the system. The analysis organisms dutifully reported the existence of the limited life on the three worlds, but concluded the species was too primitive to warrant extensive study.
The data broadcast emphasized that only the crude electromagnetic forms of communications had been observed during the long months of study. Therefore the control organisms edict was that the link transmitter could still be used safely for communications, and thus the periodic data dumps would be continued.
The analysis organisms insisted that another message be included. For reasons they could not determine, the two most likely places for life to begin, at least by Braknen standards, provided no visible signs of harboring intelligence. The large satellite of the magnificently ringed planet in the sixth position and a similar sized satellite of the eighth planet seemed eminently suited for Braknen life, but yielded no positive indications such life existed. Though still undecided, the analysis organisms postulated that life may have originated on one of these more likely locations, and for reasons not yet obvious migrated to the much less hospitable environments presented by the third and forth planets.
It took precisely thirteen minutes for the data block to be transmitted, then re-transmitted for error detection and correction. There was no disappointment at the conclusion, nor was there euphoria at the initial discovery. That wasn't the Braknen way. There was only the conclusion, and the subsequent response.
With the message traversing the immense distance back to the home planet, the planning organisms issued their mandate: this common assemblage of planets, though populated with primitive living creatures, fell significantly below the requirement for further Braknen attention. If no more advanced species was discovered by the end of the 5000 year journey, perhaps this planet would be reinvestigated.
The Kochna's path through the solar system was altered, and the next candidate, at about four light-years distance, was targeted for investigation.