Joe was talking a mile a minute now. It was as though a dam of depression had been broken by a manic need to make Ford understand. The words spilled out of Joe at a rapid-fire pace, while Ford struggled to keep up.

“… by that point, I had fifteen, twenty days of this signal pattern no one could explain. Pulses, getting stronger, faster, ‘til right before the last one—”

The dome light on the ceiling of the van dimmed suddenly. It sputtered erratically, like the lights back in town. The sudden flickering cut Joe off in mid-sentence. Falling silent, he looked up at the light anxiously.

Ford didn’t understand. “Dad?”

“It’s the same,” Joe said ominously, his worried gaze fixed on the flickering light.

Something about his father’s tone sent a chill down Ford’s spine. He tried to keep his dad focused and on track.

“Dad, you said ‘right before the last one.’” Ford prompted. “Right before the last one, what?”

Joe finally looked away from the sputtering light. He turned his haggard face toward Ford.

“Something responded.”

Responded? Ford still wasn’t sure what exactly his dad was getting at. Was he actually talking about some kind of animal? All he could tell for sure was that Joe was acting like this was a matter of life and death, and not just from fifteen years ago.

But before Ford could get his dad to elaborate, the van door slid open with a bang. Two armed guards, their granite faces reflecting how hardcore they were, invaded the back of the van. Without a word, they unhooked Joe from the security rail and muscled him none too gently away from the bench. They dragged him toward the open door.

“Hey!” Joe protested in Japanese. Ford could barely make out the gist of it. “Slow down! Where are we going?”

“Whoa!” Ford added, alarmed by the soldiers’ rough treatment of his father. He lunged forward as far as his cuffs would allow. “You’re gonna hurt him!”

Snarling, one of the soldiers shoved Ford back against the wall. Ford tugged uselessly at his restraints. Still handcuffed to the rail, he could only watch in dismay as the men hustled Joe away from the van. And away from Ford.

“Hey! Hey wait!” he shouted. “Where are you taking him? HEY!”

The soldiers ignored his frantic cries. They slammed the door shut behind them.

* * *

With full power restored by the generators, the equipment within the crow’s nest monitored the pulse. Glowing screens, tracking emanations all along the electromagnetic spectrum, registered a continuous spike that only gradually diminished in intensity before subsiding altogether.

“That was twelve-point-two seconds,” Jainway reported. “We’re trending exponentially and—” He rapidly worked his keyboard, collating and translating the latest data from the pulse. “—that’s our new curve.”