Instead, he walked around the small hill in the center of the clearing, muttering now down to the grass, shouting now up to the sky. Half words, half sentences, anything to vent the pressure he felt building inside him, but there was nothing to be done.
When the response finally came, he realized he’d only made it halfway around that hill. Less than a minute must have passed. Time seemed to have stretched itself out long. The response was a mumbled, sleepy-sounding address.
Tycho left before his next footfall hit the ground.
-Low clouds hung above the low house on the shortgrass prairie. He forced himself to walk, not run, up to the house, where he could already see a light turning on, vague shapes moving behind the glass. The soft chime that announced his arrival led those two shapes, one human, one not, to look up up, and before he even made it to the house’s door, Codrin was already there, much as he remembered, though much more tired.
+Low clouds hung above the low house on the shortgrass prairie. He forced himself to walk, not run, up to the house, where he could already see a light turning on, vague shapes moving behind the glass. The soft chime that announced his arrival led those two shapes, one human, one not, to look up, and before he even made it to the house’s door, Codrin was already there, much as he remembered, though much more tired.
“Tycho Brahe, yes?” ey asked. “Is everything okay?”
He tore his eyes away from the figure beside the historian, what looked to be some large-eared vulpine standing on two legs, looking just as tired as Codrin.
-“Uh, yes.” He stammered. “No? I don’t think so, at least. I’m sorry for waking you. I don’t think things are okay, though.”
+“Uh, yes,” he stammered. “No? I don’t think so, at least. I’m sorry for waking you. I don’t think things are okay, though.”
Codrin nodded and stepped aside, gesturing to welcome the astronomer in and guiding him to a seat at the table.
“I will make tea,” the fox said. “Though I think perhaps one without caffeine.”
“Who…?”
@@ -52,7 +52,7 @@“You understand why I’m concerned, then, right?”
The historian set eir mug back down on the table without taking a sip, saying, “Tell me all that you can.”
So he recounted the events of the previous hour. The sudden interruption of an impersonal message, a simple note from the perisystem architecture informing him, the astronomer on duty, of the signal received.
-“What signal was it? Were the primes echoed back to us?” Dear, asked.
+“What signal was it? Were the primes echoed back to us?” Dear asked.
He shook his head and recited from memory, “We hear you. We see you. We are 3 light-hours, 4 light-minutes, 2.043 light-seconds out at time of message send. Closing at 0.003c relative velocity. Closest intercept 5 light-minutes, 3.002 light-seconds in 972 hours, 8 minutes, 0.333 seconds. We understand the mechanism by which we may meet. We have similar. Instructions to follow.”
There was a long moment of silence around the table as the words sank in.
“The mechanism,” Codrin said, finally breaking the silence. Ey sounded hoarse, unprepared. “The Ansible? The instructions for creating a signal that it’ll recognize?”
@@ -79,7 +79,7 @@Ey sighed, leaned over and patted him on the shoulder. “Well, since I’m sure as hell not sleeping anymore, I guess coffee’s next. Coffee, and figuring out what to do with our wayward astronomer and upcoming guests.”