“No, sir—at least not according to the techs in the tachyon lab.”

Weston’s eyes narrowed. “Is it trouble with the reactors?”

Trouble with the tachyon reactors would be bad news; the transition drive was all that kept them from having to limp home at slightly under two-thirds light-speed.

“No, sir. Our tachyon-based sensing arrays started picking up a tachyon signal about an hour ago, sir. It took us this long to figure out even part of it.”

“Figure out? We pick up stray signals all the time; tachyons are generated by at least a dozen special events.” Weston wasn’t sure, but he felt like his mind hadn’t fully woken up.

“This isn’t a stray, Captain. It’s modulated.”

Weston was silent for a moment. Modulated tachyon signals were considered impossible back home. It was a classic chicken-and-egg scenario. You couldn’t modulate a superlight signal without a superlight computer, but of course, without modulated superlight signals, no one could build a computer that fast. The best anyone had really come up with was a complicated form of Morse code that sufficed for most in-system communications but required massive directional transmitters.

Transmitters that, unfortunately, didn’t fit on the Odyssey. The best a ship her size could manage was an infinitesimal “ping” that allowed her to perform short- and long-range scans but didn’t allow for any form of communication unless she managed to perfectly hit the intended receiver with the minute burst.

From within a star system, that was just barely possible.

At anything greater, they had a better chance of sailing off the edge of the universe.

More’s the pity. “How the hell did we just happen to walk into this?” Weston frowned at the readout.

Roberts swallowed. “It appears to be omnidirectional, sir.”

“What?”

Roberts just shrugged.

Weston blinked in shock. “My God.”

That was unbelievable. An omnidirectional signal from a tachyon source would require immense power reserves, entire levels of magnitude above and beyond what the Odyssey could possibly hope to pump out. And the Odyssey had one of the most advanced reactors in existence.

“Yes, sir.”

Weston tried to shake off the awe. “I guess science scores another foul ball; someone must have done the impossible again. Where’s it from? Mars? Earth? One of the outposts?”

“No, sir. It’s from a white giant about twenty-eight light-years from here.”

For the third time in as many minutes, Weston was floored. “I don’t suppose anybody we know is out there?”

Roberts just shook his head as Weston tried to wrap his mind around the situation. “No, sir. This is as close to absolute proof as you get. It’s definitely not from Earth, sir.”

Weston quickly recovered from the surprise. “Okay, it’s alien. Any idea what it says?”

“Not exactly, sir. But Decryption thinks it’s an SOS. They seem fairly confident.”

“Yeah, I remember how confident they were thirteen years ago when they swore that the Block was calling for a retreat. I lost twelve planes before we managed to get our ass out of the middle of the Block’s reinforcements,” Weston muttered.