"Then he's awfully patient, sending out the same 'CQ' for two solid years," Dorsey said. "It's hardly practical to communicate between stars, John. Broadcasting from here to Alpha C. and back, it would take more than nine years just to ask how's the wife and kids. "The way it looks to me, our friend out there got the duty of cutting an educational recording to be broadcast automatically to the rest of the galaxy. Kind of a lighthouse, to help his race get in touch with any relatives it might have. That same recording has been played over and over again ever since, sending To Whom It Might Concern its dual message. Simple math--and the most persistent rhythmical cliche known to man." "What's being done about it?" I asked. "We've answered," Dorsey said. "A big radio noise on the moon is broadcasting the same message, minus the syncopation, and adding the next two terms; all this beamed toward Alpha Centauri. And two years ago, the Defense Department cut other programs to the bone to start construction of _Orion Zeta_, the sixth of the big nuclear-pulse ships. She's up in von Weizsäcker Crater on the back of the moon now, John, nearly finished. She's not meant to call at solar-system ports." "The government thinks, and you think, that our operator four and a half light-years from here was human," I said. "I can't speak for the government. But that's what I think. Isn't it human to toss notes out to sea in bottles? What's more human than dropping a joke into an arithmetical table?" "All we've got to do to prove your splendid guess is to highjack a germ-free spaceship," I said. "You and me and any of the other Lapins who feel as we do. We'll go shake the hand--or other prehensile member, if he's not human after all--of our Centaurian thread-jockey. What's to keep our feet in the mud, when our heads are 'way the hell out in a southern constellation?" "I gather, Herr Doktor, that you jest," Dorsey said. "If you were serious, I'd point out one minor flaw in your blueprint for adventure. It would take our little band of pirates one hundred twenty-five years to get to Alpha Centauri, after we'd stolen the ship. That's with the gas-pedal to the floor." "I was joking," I said. "I was pretending to be the hero of one of those TV space-operas we used to watch.... But if I were serious, I don't think a mere century and a quarter would faze me. We couldn't reach our goal in person, Bud; but we could send our children's children. All we'd need to make the trip, if I were serious about my suggestion, would be a few more volunteers. A proper proportion of those volunteers had best be philoprogenitive females." * * * * *