"Murray Leinster - The Wailing Asteroid" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

East tracking stations made the same report. European listening posts and radar
telescopes were on the alert when the sky area from which the signals come rose
above the horizon. American stations have again verified the report within the
last few minutes. Artificial signals, plainly not made by men, are now reaching
Earth every seventy-nine minutes from remotest space. There is as yet no hint of
what the messages may mean, but that they are an attempt at communication is
certain. The signals have been recorded on tape, and the sounds which follow are
those which have been sent to Earth by alien, non-human, intelligent beings no
one knows how far away."
A pause. Then the car radio, with night sounds and the calls of nightbirds for
background, gave out crisp, distinct fluting noises, like someone playing an
arbitrary selection of musical notes on a strange wind instrument.
The effect was plaintive, but Burke stiffened in every muscle at the first of
them. The fluting noises were higher and lower in turn. At intervals, they
paused as if between groups of signals constituting a word. The enigmatic sounds
went on for a full minute. Then they stopped. The voice returned:
"These are the signals from space. What you have heard is apparently a complete
message. It is repeated five times and then ceases. An hour and nineteen minutes
later it is again repeated five times..."
The voice continued, while Burke remained frozen and motionless in the parked
car. Sandy watched him, at first hopefully, and then bewilderedly. The voice
said that the signal strength was very great. But the power for
artificial-satellite broadcasts is only a fraction of a watt. These signals,
considering the minimum distance from which they could come, had at least
thousands of kilowatts behind them.
Somewhere out in space, farther than man's robot rockets had ever gone, huge
amounts of electric energy were controlled to send these signals to Earth.
Scientists were in disagreement about the possible distance the signals had
traveled, whether they were meant solely for Earth or not, and whether they were
an attempt to open communication with humanity. But nobody doubted that the
signals were artificial. They had been sent by technical means. They could not
conceivably be natural phenomena. Directional fixes said absolutely that they
did not come from Mars or Jupiter or Saturn. Neptune and Uranus and Pluto were
not nearly in the line of the signals' travel. Of course Venus and Mercury were
to sunward of Earth, which ruled them out, since the signals arrived only on the
night side of mankind's world. Nobody could guess, as yet, where they did
originate.
Burke sat utterly still, every muscle tense. He was so pale that even in the
moonlight Sandy saw it. She was alarmed.
"Joe! What's the matter?"
"Did you--hear that?" he asked thinly. "The signals?"
"Of course. But what..."
"I recognized them," said Burke, in a tone that was somehow despairing. "I've
heard signals like that every so often since I was a kid." He swallowed. "It was
sounds like that, and what went with them, that has been the--trouble with me. I
was going to tell you about it--and ask you if you'd marry me anyway."
He began to tremble a little, which was not at all like the Joe Burke that Sandy
knew.
"I don't quite under--"
"I'm afraid I've gone out of my head," he said unsteadily. "Look, Sandy! I was