“Just calm down a second. Before we end up looking like the Stooges of the new millennium, get on-line and start confirming the signal. Start with the VLA in New Mexico. I’ll contact Ohio State—”

“Arthur—”

Krawitz turns to face the video com. “Go ahead, Jeremy.”

A half dozen technicians have crowded around a pale-faced Dr. Armentrout. “Arthur, we just confirmed the signal.”

“You confirmed—” Krawitz feels light-headed, like he is living in a dreamworld. “Have you targeted a source?”

“Still working on that. We’re running into a lot of interference because of the—”

“Arthur, I’ve got a preliminary trajectory!” Kenny is on his feet, very excited. “The signal’s originating from the constellation of Orion, somewhere in the vicinity of Orion’s belt.”

Chichén Itza Yucatan Peninsula

4:00 P.M.

The ancient Mayan city of Chichén Itza, located in the lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula, is one of the great archaeological wonders of the world. Several hundred buildings occupy this twelve-hundred-year-old jungle-enclosed site, including some of the most intricately carved temples and shrines in all of Mesoamerica.

The actual origins of the city known as Chichén date back to A.D. 435. After a period of abandonment, the city was rediscovered by the Itzaes, a Maya-speaking tribe who occupied the region until the late eighth century, when the Toltecs migrated east from Teotihuacan. Under the tutelage and leadership of the great teacher, Kukulcan, the two cultures merged, the city flourishing to dominate the region as a religious, ceremonial, and cultural center. Kukulcan’s departure in the eleventh century would lead to the city’s fall, its people lost, their depravity leading them to diabolical forms of human sacrifice. By the sixteenth century, what little remained of the culture had quickly fallen under Spanish rule.

Dominating Chichén Itza is arguably the most magnificent structure in all of Mesoamerica, the Kukulcan pyramid. Nicknamed El Castillo by the Spanish, this towering, nine-terraced ziggurat rises nearly a hundred feet above an open expanse of short-cropped lawn.

The Kukulcan is far more than just a pyramid—it is a calendar in stone. Each of its four sides possesses ninety-one steps. With the platform, the total equals 365—as in the days of the year.