“I’ll get Arecibo on the line.”

National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center

Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

“Understood, Jon.” Robert Pasquale, director of operations at Arecibo, hangs up the phone, then blows his nose for the umpteenth time before paging his assistant. “Arthur, come in here, please.”

Astrophysicist Arthur Krawitz enters his director’s office. “Christ, Bob, you look awful.”

“It’s my goddam sinuses. First day of fall, and my head’s already pounding. Have those Russian astronomers finished with the big dish yet?”

“About ten minutes ago. What’s up?”

“I just received an emergency call from NASA. Seems they’ve lost contact with Pluto-Kuiper and want us to help relocate it. They’re downloading the probe’s last-known coordinates to your computer as we speak and are asking that we use the big dish to beam a radio beacon into space. If we get lucky, we’ll bounce a signal that NASA will be able to detect using their big dish in Goldstone.”

“I’m on it. Oh, what about SETI? You know Kenny Wong’s going to want to listen in using SERENDIP’s receivers? Is it a problem if—”

“Christ, Arthur, I don’t care. If the kid wants to waste his life waiting for E.T. to come calling, it’s no skin off my aching nose. If you need me, I’ll be in my room, overdosing on Sudafed.”

When Cornell’s College of Engineering first conceived of the idea of building the world’s most powerful radio telescope, they searched for years for a site that offered a natural geological depression possessing the approximate dimensions of a giant reflector bowl. The site had to be under US jurisdiction, and, since the dish would not move, the location also had be as close as possible to the equator so the moon and planets would appear almost directly overhead. Their search led them to the limestone karst mountain range of northern Puerto Rico, a lush, isolated terrain featuring deep valleys surrounded by towering hills that would shield the telescope from outside radio interference.

Completed in 1963, with upgrades in 1974, 1997, and 2010, the Arecibo telescope appears to first-time visitors as an enormous alien structure of concrete and steel. The 1,000-foot-diameter dish, made of almost 40,000 perforated aluminum panels, hangs concave side up, filling up the entire crater-shaped karst sinkhole like a giant, 167-foot-deep salad bowl. Dangling 426 feet above the center of the dish is the telescope’s azimuth arm, Gregorian dome, and secondary and tertiary dishes. This 600-ton spiderweb of steel is held aloft by twelve cables attached to three immense obelisk-shaped support towers and numerous anchor blocks located around the perimeter of the valley.

Constructed within the mountainous limestone hillside overlooking the telescope stands Arecibo’s lab, a multistoried concrete structure housing the computers and technical equipment used to run the facility. Adjacent to the lab is a four-story dormitory containing a dining room and library, as well as a heated pool and tennis court.