"Murray Leinster - The Wailing Asteroid (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

The Wailing Asteroid, by Murray Leinster



The Naked Word electronic edition of....



THE WAILING ASTEROID
Copyright, ┬й 1960, by Murray Leinster.
Copyright expired, not renewed.




Chapter 1

THE SIGNALS from space began a little after midnight, local time, an a Friday. They were first picked
up in the South Pacific, just westward of the International Date Line. A satellite-watching station on an
island named Kalua was the first to receive them, though nobody heard the first four or five minutes. But
it is certain that the very first message was picked up and recorded by the monitor instruments.

The satellite-tracking unit on Kalua was practically a duplicate of all its fellows. There was the station
itself with a vertical antenna outside pointing at the stars. There were various lateral antennae held two
feet aboveground by concrete posts. In the instrument room in the building a light burned over a desk,
three or four monitor lights glowed dimly to indicate that the self-recording instruments were properly
operating, and there was a multiple-channel tape recorder built into the wall. Its twin tape reels turned
sedately, winding a brown plastic ribbon from one to the other at a moderate pace.

The staff man on duty had gone to the installation's kitchen for a cup of coffee. No sound originated in
the room, unless one counted the fluttering of a piece of weighted-down paper on the desk. Outside,
palm trees whispered and rustled their long fronds in the southeast trade wind under a sky full of
glittering stars. Beyond, there was the dull booming of surf upon the barrier reef of the island. But the
instruments made no sound. Only the tape reels moved.

The signals began abruptly. They came out of a speaker and were instantly recorded. They were elfin
and brutelike and musical. They were crisp and distinct. They did not form a melody, but nearly all the
components of melody were there. Pure musical notes, each with its own pitch, all of different lengths,
like quarter-notes and eighth-notes in music. The sounds needed only rhythm and arrangement to form a
plaintive tune.

Nothing happened. The sounds continued for something over a minute. They stopped long enough to
seem to have ended. Then they began again.

When the staff man came back into the room with a coffee cup in his hand, he heard the flutings

file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/...urray%20Leinster%20-%20The%20wailing%20asteroid.html (1 of 120)3/12/2004 11:33:12 PM
 The Wailing Asteroid, by Murray Leinster