Dr Capri stood up and stretched, dispersing tiredness and sleepiness. He realized that if they had received a signal, even though it was wrong, then the technique was working and now they just needed to adjust it. He wanted to suggest that Yulia go downstairs for half an hour for some tea and then take care of the technical issues afterwards.
“Yulia,” he turned to her, but met her concerned look. “What’s wrong?” with a sharp change in tone, the doctor asked.
“It’s a cosmic signal and strong electromagnetic radiation,” Yulia looked into the space in front of her, “I’m a hundred percent sure of it. But the signal is too distinct. There’s sound and everything else,” she turned to the computer again and started typing something.
“Wait a minute, Yulia,” Dr Capri said, hoping she was just tired, “how can we tell what kind of signal we’re picking up?”
“Now I’m going to try to get that signal and convert it to audio. Damn it!” she yelled.
“What?” the doctor tensed up.
“The program is looking for the signal over and over again, trying to point the telescope there. It’s recording in half-second bursts. I could…” she hesitated, biting her lower lip, “tell the program that the telescope is pointed at the object. Please, disconnect the telescope wire from the control box,” she tossed to the doctor.
Dr Capri, justifying the meaning of his name, which can be translated as ‘mighty man’, immediately ripped one of the wire from the box. Yulia began typing the coordinates into the command line. She copied the data from another window and let the program know that the telescope was already manually pointed to the correct coordinates. The error message stopped appearing on the display. Everything looked calm. Yulia began to receive a steady and clear signal. All devices showed bursts of energy. The electromagnetic spectra were off the charts. She tried to extract the audio signal from the pile of data the system was showing and picking up.
“It seems to be working. The signal is strong, it’s at 8450 MHz. It’s the frequency used to transmit data from spacecraft to Earth. But if the signal is from…” Yulia shook her head to get the interfering thought out of her head. “The telescope can’t aim at the object because the object is on Earth.”
“Can we locate the source of the signal?” Dr Capri asked.