"You're the first optical man I've met." He looked at me a trifle queerly. I shrugged. "Well, we've been around a few millennia longer than you static-scanners." "Yeah, guess so." * * * * * "I didn't realize that Project OZMA was still going on. Have you had any results yet?" It was Rizzo's turn to shrug. "Nothing yet. The project has been shelved for the duration of the emergency, of course. If there's no war, and the dish doesn't get bombed out, we'll try again." "Still listening to the same two stars?" "Yeah ... Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. They're the only two Sun-type stars within reasonable range that might have planets like Earth." "And you expect to pick up radio signals from an intelligent race." "Hope to." I flicked the ash off my cigaret. "You know, it always struck me as rather hopeless ... trying to find radio signals from intelligent creatures." "Whattaya mean, hopeless?" "Why should an intelligent race send radio signals out into interstellar space?" I asked. "Think of the power it requires, and the likelihood that it's all wasted effort, because there's no one within range to talk to." "Well ... it's worth a try, isn't it ... if you think there could be intelligent creatures somewhere else ... on a planet of another star." "Hmph. We're trying to find another intelligent race; are we transmitting radio signals?" "No," he admitted. "Congress wouldn't vote the money for a transmitter that big." "Exactly," I said. "We're listening, but not transmitting." Rizzo wasn't discouraged. "Listen, the chances--just on statistical figuring alone--the chances are that there're millions of other solar systems with intelligent life. We've got to try contacting them! They might have knowledge that we don't have ... answers to questions that we can't solve yet...." "I completely agree," I said. "But listening for radio signals is the wrong way to do it." "Huh?" "Radio broadcasting requires too much power to cover interstellar distances efficiently. We should be _looking_ for signals, not listening for them." "Looking?" "Lasers," I said, pointing to the low-key lights over the consoles. "Optical lasers. Super-lamps shining out in the darkness of the void. Pump in a modest amount of electrical power, excite a few trillion atoms, and out comes a coherent, pencil-thin beam of light that can be seen for millions of miles." "Millions of miles aren't lightyears," Rizzo muttered. "We're rapidly approaching the point where we'll have lasers capable of lightyear ranges. I'm sure that some intelligent race somewhere in this galaxy has achieved the necessary technology to signal from star to star--by light beams." "Then how come we haven't seen any?" Rizzo demanded. "Perhaps we already have." "What?"