The Neko's Tail - 42. Voices From the Stars

Classical music played through his headphones as the neko stared at a screen. Tiny lines fluctuated with distorted signals, the cosmic radiation of the universe translated into visible signals that were recorded constantly. Watching them was tedious work, and there was little to no reward. Occasionally the radio would pick up a protoplanet in a nebulae, or rarely a pulsar, but Alex had long ago abandoned the thought of anything truly monumental happening during his watch.

A sudden blip in the screen caught his attention, dipping just barely above the background noise. The neko leaned forward in his seat as a second, near identical, blip followed, and then nothing. He shut off his music and replaced it with the crackling sound of radio waves from the universe, opening a copy of the day’s file. It took a moment to find the blips again, but looking at them filled the neko with a burst of excitement. Sure, watching the universe was dull most of the time, but finding a new pulsar in a previously unexplored section of the galaxy cut through the monotony. And this pulsar seemed rather quick to respond. Though the fact that it held only two pulses in the matter of a minute was suspicious.

Fingers worked over a keyboard, slowly filtering out the usual suspects of dirt or solar flares. It still left a lot of possibilities.

One by one, the background was eliminated, leaving the signal behind. A finger press deleted any vocal ranges, they wouldn’t be necessary.

And the blips vanished.

Alex felt his heart leap into his throat. He returned the signal back to its original state, before filtering out everything but known vocal radio frequencies. They were far too low to be reasonably picked up, but the emission seemed incredibly strong somehow, as though the source had been sent specifically to Astara.

And they were just the right frequency for a neko’s voice.

“Elroy, I think I found something…”

Alex’s voice broke the silence in the room. His partner frowned, pulling his own pair of headphones off.

“What did you say?”

“I found something.”

His heart pounded frantically as the elf stepped behind him. Alex played the audio of the signal, and the sound of a high pitched near-mewl filled the room.

“What was that?!”

The two stared at each other, eyes wide in shock. Elroy suddenly pushed Alex aside, taking the neko’s place as he tried to lengthen the signal while keeping it audible.

A deep voice suddenly spoke through the room, each sound enunciated clearly. There was no question that they were listening to someone speak.

“Geia sou Astara. Aftós eínai o kapetán Ártemis me to IEFL. O sýntrofós mou kai egó théloume na sas kalosorísoume sto sýmpan.”

Five seconds later, the second blip ran through, a slightly higher voice scratching through the speaker.

“Hello Astara. This is Captain Elias of the IEFL. My partner and I want to welcome my home world to the universe.”