Still, his dry reply was belied by the look of interest that flared across his face. History was afoot here, and it seemed that the Odyssey was about to plunge right through the center of it. He paused for a moment, his eyes staring at the screens without seeing them, considering his options. The sheer odds of running into something like this were incalculable, though he’d actually seen similar things in his life. Hell, much of Earth’s history rested on pivot points of sheer coincidence.

If someone out here was popping off omnidirectional tachyon bursts, why the hell hadn’t they been detected before this?

Weston supposed that part of it was that human detection systems were both incredibly new (less than a decade old) and, frankly, not particularly good. He knew that the detection threshold for the Odyssey’s arrays were quite high; the power needed to blip her systems with an omnidirectional signal was staggering.

Oh, who was he kidding? He was out here now, and there was no way in hell he wasn’t going to check it out. It struck him then that he was probably the first ship’s captain in a couple centuries at best who didn’t have the option of calling for orders when presented with something new. He’d known it before he took the assignment, of course, but there was something visceral about having that feeling forced on him like this.

“How long until we’re clear of Alpha Centauri?” Weston asked.

“We’ve had to correct to avoid passing though the gravity tides of Beta Centauri, but still, we’ll be clear in about an hour.”

“Good. I’m going back to talk with some of the lab techs. Especially those Decryption boys…” Weston scoffed. “We’ll see how certain they really are. Inform me when we’re cleared for transition. In the meantime, have a course plotted to intercept the signal’s source.”

“Yes, sir.”

Weston took the first-available tube back to the rear habitat, following the smoothly arcing corridors until they led him to the com-lab. When the doors cycled open, noise assaulted Weston from at least half a dozen stations as they analyzed the signal. The combined blaring was almost deafening.

“Is that really necessary?” Weston raised his voice as high as he could, trying to communicate past the ambient sounds to a man in a white lab coat.

The man glanced up at him, almost ignoring him until a glimmer of recognition flickered across his face, and his hand reached out and slapped a bank of switches, mercifully silencing the room. Weston glanced around and realized that only the tech he had talked to was actually listening to the sounds; the rest were wincing beneath heavy ear guards.

Wish I’d known to bring a pair…My ears are going to ring for hours. Weston winced and rubbed the sides of his head.

“I’m terribly sorry, Captain. I was just seeing if I could decipher the meaning,” the man said apologetically. Almost immediately, the man seemed to forget he was there.