But Ian’s expression softened then. “Look,” he said, “people are just upset is all. I’m sorry I got mad. Nobody thinks it’s your fault.”

But it was, Peter thought. It was.

The answer had come to Michael just after dawn: 1,432 megahertz—of course.

The bandwidth was officially unassigned, because it really had been assigned—to the military. A short-range digital signal, cycling every ninety minutes, looking for its mainframe.

And all night long, the signal had been growing stronger. It was practically on their doorstep.

The encryption would be the easy part. The trick would be finding the handshake, broadcasting the one reply that would cause the signal’s transmitter, wherever and whatever it was, to link up with the mainframe. Once he did this, the rest would be just a question of uploading the data.

So what was the signal looking for? What was the digital answer to the question it was posing, every ninety minutes?

Something Elton had said, just before he’d gone to bed: Someone’s calling us.

That was when he’d figured it out.

He knew just what he needed. The Lighthouse was full of all kinds of crap, stored in bins on the shelves; there was at least one Army handheld that he knew of. They had some old lithium cells that could still hold a charge—not more than a few minutes’ worth, but that was all he’d need. He worked quickly, keeping an eye on the clock, waiting for the next ninety-minute interval to pass so he could grab the signal. Dimly he sensed some kind of commotion going on outside, but who knew what that was. He could jack the handheld into the computer, snatch the signal as it came in, capture its embedded ID, and program the handheld from the panel.

Elton was asleep, snoring on his cratered cot in the back of the Lighthouse. Flyers, if the old man didn’t take a bath soon, Michael didn’t know what he’d do. The whole place stank like socks.

By the time he was through it was almost half-day. How long had he been working, barely rising from his chair? After that whole thing with Mausami, he’d been too restless to sleep and returned to the hut; that might have been ten hours ago. His ass felt like he’d been sitting that long at least. He really had to pee.

He stepped from the hut, too quickly, unprepared for the blast of daylight that filled his eyes.

“Michael!”