Bernard Bajolet was twiddling a phone in his hands, sitting at the conference table at the headquarters of the European Space Agency. He could not understand, since when did the ESA become involved in national security issues. But he received a personal call from the minister asking him to come to an urgent meeting. Around him sat several heads of various organizations whom he knew well. All of them were also looking at each other incomprehensibly.
“Well, gentlemen,” he thought, “what’s the news in orbit?”
Jean-Jacques Dordain, head of ESA, entered the room. Everyone turned to him mechanically.
“Madame and Monsieur, sorry to keep you waiting,” he began with undisguised excitement. “Well, about seven hours ago in Kathmandu during the installation of the anomaly detection system in outer space, a signal was detected.”
The light in the room dimmed and the desktop of the computer of one of Mr. Dordain’s assistants appeared on the big monitor. The assistant opened a map file so that everyone could understand exactly where the detection had occurred. At this time, Jean-Jacques Dordain continued:
“The signal was picked up at the Kathmandu Observatory. Roscosmos was the first to confirm it. They checked and found exactly the same anomaly. The head of Roscosmos asked us for confirmation. We did that about four hours ago. The signal is believed to be coming from the foothills in northeastern Nepal, Mount Kan-chen-junga,” he said slowly, reading from the sheet. “The signal contains information from the so-called golden recording of Voyager made in the seventies.”
“Is that a threat to national security?” someone next to Bernard Bajolet said with indignation.
The head of ESA hesitated a bit and added:
“Um. The signal itself is on a space transmission frequency, that’s not the biggest problem. Although we can’t explain that either. The biggest problem is the active magnetic anomaly.”
There is a silent pause in the room. It was interrupted by the French Minister of Security.
“Gentlemen, we are not talking about contact with aliens, but we need to understand what is going on. What resources do we have to check this quadrant?”
“We can take detailed pictures of the area,” suggested one of the generals, “we can analyze the recording to determine the type of transmitting device.”