But interspersed among the new equations, they repeated a set of formulas that always began with the lithium-hydride fusion reaction. The message ended in a way that wrenched my stomach: the fusion bomb reaction and its cohorts were repeated ten straight times. * * * * * I'm not sure of what day it was on the calendar, but the clock on the master control console said it was well past eleven. Rizzo rubbed a weary hand across his eyes. "Well, what do you think?" "It's pretty obvious," I said. "They have the bombs. They've had them for quite some time. They must have a lot of other weapons, too--more ... advanced. They're trying to tell us their history with the equations. First they depended on natural sources of energy, plants and animals; then they developed artificial energy sources and built up a technology; finally they discovered nuclear energy." "How long do you think they've had the bombs?" "Hard to tell. A generation ... a century. What difference does it make? They have them. They probably thought, at first, that they could learn to live with them ... but imagine what it must be like to have those weapons at your fingertips ... for a century. Forever. Now they're so scared of them that they're beaming their whole history out into space, looking for someone to tell them how to live with the bombs, how to avoid using them." "You could be wrong," Rizzo said. "They could be boasting about their arsenal." "Why? For what reason? No ... the way they keep repeating those last equations. They're pleading for help." Rizzo turned to the oscilloscope. It was flickering again. "Think it's the same thing?" "No doubt. You're taping it anyway, aren't you?" "Yeah, sure. Automatically." Suddenly, in mid-flight, the signal winked off. The pulsations didn't simply smooth out into a steady line, as they had before. The screen simply went dead. "That's funny," Rizzo said, puzzled. He checked the oscilloscope. "Nothing wrong here. Something must've happened to the telescope." Suddenly I knew what had happened. "Take the spectrometer off and turn on the image-amplifier," I told him. I knew what we would see. I knew why the oscilloscope beam had suddenly gone off scale. And the knowledge was making me sick. Rizzo removed the spectrometer set-up and flicked the switch that energized the image-amplifier's viewscreen. "Holy God!" The dome was flooded with light. The star had exploded. "They had the bombs all right," I heard myself saying. "And they couldn't prevent themselves from using them. And they had a lot more, too. Enough to push their star past its natural limits." Rizzo's face was etched in the harsh light. "I've gotta get out of here," he muttered, looking all around the cramped dome. "I've gotta get back to my wife and find someplace where it's safe...." "Someplace?" I asked, staring at the screen. "Where?" THE END