Chapter 35 Chapter 33 Contact

"Hi Frank, I'm David and I have something very important to tell you. I'm assuming you're in your own suite on the African Tower at this time; if you're there, please identify yourself - name our Orbital Mechanics class Instructor's name. I'll wait 60 seconds, and if there's no response, I'll try again in an hour." That minute was hardly enough for Poole to recover from the shock.He was surprised and delighted, but was soon replaced by another emotion.Nice to hear from Bowman again, but that "very important thing" was clearly not a good sign.

At least he was lucky, Poole told himself.Bowman asked the few names he could remember.It took them a whole week to get used to the Glasgow accent of the Scotchman, who could forget him?But once you understand what he's saying, he's a really good teacher. "Dr. Gregory McVitie." "Correct, please turn on the receiver of the brain cap now. It will take three minutes to download this message. Don't try to monitor it. I use 10:1 compression. It will start in two minutes." How did he do it?Poole wondered.Ju/Taikai is now 50 light minutes away, so this message must have been sent an hour ago.It must be wrapped in an addressed packet together with an intelligent agent program, and sent out along with the radio waves from Europa to the earth.But this must be a trivial matter for Harman, there are obviously many resources in the slate at his disposal.The light on the brain cap flashed, and the message came.

It would have taken Poole half an hour to decipher the message at the compression ratio Harman had used.But it only took him ten minutes to know that his peaceful life had come to an abrupt end.