The signal took about fifteen minutes to transmit. Focusing on various parts of the artifact, they beamed it in every frequency from microwave to X ray; they tapped it out mechanically on the thing’s surface. Of course there was no way of predicting what its response would be. Maybe it was responding in some way they couldn’t detect—saying “Shut up and give me some peace!” It was reasonable, though, to expect that it would respond in a way similar to the message: light or sound in a similar binary sequence.

Of course it might just be a dumb machine, capable of moving itself out of harm’s way, and nothing else.

After two weeks of no results, Jan was discouraged. She asked Russ and Jack to meet her at the Sails for dinner and strategy.

The two men showed up together just as the sundown storm started. The setting sun was a dull red ball on the horizon while sheets of rain marched sideways across the harbor. No thunder or lightning; just an incessant downpour.

“Another wonderful day in paradise,” she said.

“E.T. hasn’t phoned home?” Jack said as he sat down.

“Got ‘call waiting.’ “ The waiter appeared with the wine list. Jack waved it away and ordered a bottle of Bin 43.

“So what do you think?” Russ said.

“Oh, I don’t know.” She refilled her coffee cup from a silver thermos flask. “I guess it’s time to move on to the planetary environments phase. If it reacts to anything, I can repeat the Drake algorithm then.” She sipped the coffee. “As you say, Russ, maybe it’s asleep or in some dormant mode. Maybe if we reproduce its home planet’s conditions, it will be more inclined to talk.”

Jan winced as a shift of wind sent a fine spray over them. “Waiter,” Jack said, standing and pointing to a table just inside. He carried Jan’s coffee flask in, and while a woman lit candles, the waiter appeared with a bottle and three glasses.

“I’m willing to be patient,” Jack said, going through the tasting ritual.

“It’s not a matter of patience.” She put her hand over her wineglass. “I feel as if we’ve gone as far as we can in this direction.”

“Well, we knew it was going to be all or nothing,” Russ said. “Just one peep out of the thing and we’d be…” He rose an eyebrow and took a sip of wine.

“Yes, we would,” she said. “But we’re not. Let’s move on.”

“Starting at square one?” Jack said. “Mercury?”

“We could start anywhere,” Russ said. “Mercury is going to cost out better. Just hot vacuum.”

“So there’s a decision?”

He looked at Jan. “Acoustic. We want to continue tapping out your message on the thing’s surface. If it responds acoustically, we won’t hear it in a vacuum.”

“We can run a taut wire from it,” Jack said, “like a tin-can telephone.”

“Hard to get it through the wall without damping vibrations.”

Jack shrugged. “So don’t run it through.” He spread out his napkin and clicked a pen open. He drew a square inside a square and attached the inner to the outer with springs. “See? You have your taut wire pulling on the back of this”—he tapped the inner square—”and it acts like an old-fashioned speaker. It’s gonna vibrate in a way that mimics the artifact’s vibrations.”

“But we still can’t hear it,” Jan said.

“Ah, but we can watch it. Draw a grid on the square and put a camera on it.”

“Fourier transforms,” Russ said with approval.

“Duck soup,” Jack said.

“We have no duck,” the waiter said. He was standing behind Jack’s shoulder. “We have clam chowder or chicken with mushrooms.”

Russ looked at him and decided he wasn’t joking. “I’ll have the chowder and grilled masimasi.”

“Me, too,” Jan said.

“The usual,” Jack said.

“Cholesterol with cholesterol sauce,” Jan said.

“You will have a red wine with that?”

“Bin 88,” Jack and Russ said simultaneously. “And I want it really blue this time,” Jack said of his steak. “Cold in the center.”

The waiter nodded and left. Russ imitated his accent: “Sir, we cannot guarantee that you will survive this meal. Samoan cattle have parasites for which there are no Western names.”

Jack smiled and refilled both glasses of white wine. “Mercury, and then go on to Mars? Vacuum with a little carbon dioxide. Then Venus and the gasbags.”

“Good name for a rock band,” Russ said.

“Titan?” Jan said. “Europa?”

“Makes sense,” Russ said. “And just outer space, 2.8 degrees above absolute zero. It probably spent a long time in that environment.”

“Hold on,” Jan said, and took an old computer out of her purse. She unrolled the keyboard and pulled out the antenna and typed a few words. “Let’s be methodical here. Starting with the mercurian environment.” They got halfway through the solar system before dinner came, and finished it over sherry and cheese, mapping out a rough schedule. They would spend five days with each environment, and one to four days in transition.

Hot Mercury, cool Mars, hellish Venus, cold poison Titan, arctic Europa, then the jovian model: high-pressure liquid hydrogen and helium, flowing at about 150 meters per second, flavored with methane and ammonia.

Jan took a sip of sherry and scrolled through the schedule. “Something bothers me.”

Jack nodded. “The pressure chamber’s—”

“No. What if the thing misunderstands? What if it thinks we’re attacking it?”

Russ laughed nervously. “I thought I was the anthropomorphic one.”

“If it does its little jump-off-the-pedestal trick while it’s in the Jupiter simulation…”

“Be worse than a daisy-cutter bomb,” Jack said. “Flatten everything out to here. They’ll hear it in American Samoa.”

“In Fiji,” Russ said. “Honolulu.”

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967

For a few months, the changeling and the chameleon were in the same city, doing more or less the same things.

The chameleon was at MIT, studying marine engineering. It had enjoyed Korea as a naval officer, and wanted to learn more about the design of warships.

It liked anything about killing.

The changeling had gotten its doctorate in anthropology in 1960. Combining its deep knowledge of Earth’s biology with a broad knowledge of the cultures that crawled all over the planet convinced it that it had to be from somewhere else. So it went to Harvard with impeccably faked credentials (again a boy from California) and began the study of astronomy and astrophysics.

If they ever rode together on the Red Line or had a beer at the same time at the Plough and Stars, they were unaware of being in the company of a fellow extraterrestrial. They were both looking for other aliens; they were both too experienced to be found out.

Neither one was drafted for Vietnam. The changeling faked severe stomach ulcers. The chameleon finished its master’s degree and joined Officer Candidate School.

So while the chameleon pointed eight-inch guns at unseen targets in the Vietnamese jungle, the changeling pointed huge telescopes at unseen targets outside the galaxy. It mostly counted photons and put the numbers into a BASIC program, which dispensed something like truth. Sometimes, unlike professional astronomers, the changeling unhooked the telescope from its photon counter and actually looked through it at the night sky.

It was fascinated with globular clusters, and eventually hunted down all of the hundred-some visible from Massachusetts. It saw its home, M22, as a fuzzy blob shot through with sparkles, and returned to it many times without knowing why.

The changeling had a master’s in astronomy by 1974, but felt it had to know more about computers before continuing on, so it moved down to MIT for a couple of years, studying electrical engineering and computer science.

Two of its professors had taught an alien before.