"My name's Bill. Bill Kinsella."

"Well, thank you, Mr. Kinsella. If we can't raise a response with our current approach, maybe we'll try yours."

"When?" Kinsella insisted.

"Well, we'll try our response tonight. And then it will take about twenty-seven hours to see if there's a response."

"Twenty-seven hours?"

"She's one hundred astronomical units out from Earth, Mr. Kinsella. That's a long-"

"I know how far it is. I read."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"That's all right. But if you do try my . . . my idea, you let me know what happens. I left my number with your secretary. If I don't hear in a week, I'll call back."

Of course you will, Kurt thought wryly, and rang off.

"Four-twenty-nineteen-twelve? Isn't that one of those low cost call gimmick numbers?" Gita leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on the conference table.

"Did he say why he thought that would work?" asked Santiago.

"Nope. He was pretty tight-lipped."

"You're not really thinking of sending that, are you?"

Kurt shook his head. "We want to keep Pioneer chatting with us. I think our best chance of that is to follow the geometric progression as Gita suggested."

It made perfect sense to do that, Kurt thought twenty-seven hours later when they received Pioneer's response. As usual, she paused to receive the data and process it, before sending a return message. This time the pause was longer, as if their response puzzled her, then she continued sending her thirty sets of data as if they'd sent nothing at all. She seemed only to take a very deep breath before taking it, once again, from the top.

Like a teacher dealing with a particularly slow student, Kurt thought, staring across the lab where a screen saver wove multi-colored twists.

"Apparently, that wasn't what Pioneer was expecting," said Gita.

"Expecting?" Peter Grace took a sip of his coffee, made a face and added more sugar. "Dr. Mukerjee, Pioneer wasn't expecting anything. She's just firing back broken bits of data."

"What was it you said about us thinking outside the box?" Kurt asked mildly.

"Oh, all right. But be honest, Kurt-isn't it just as likely that Pioneer changing her message earlier was just coincidence?"

"No."

"True believer."

"Jade. Maybe you should get out of s.p.a.ce science and into something that requires less imagination-accounting maybe."

"I hate to interrupt this mutual admiration society," said Gita, "but what's our next move? Are we going to send that guy's message?"

Grace frowned through the steam that lingered above his coffee cup. "What guy? What message?"

"A gentleman from Chilliwack, B.C. saw a news broadcast of our last press conference and called to say he knew what we should send next."

"Oh really. And that would be?"

" '4, 20, 19, 12,' " Kurt said.

"Why?"

"Didn't give a reason why. Just testing a theory, he said."

Grace's brow puckered again. "Is that a date?"

"A date?" Santiago returned blankly.

"I don't know," said Kurt. "I hadn't thought of it that way, but I suppose it could be. He asked about the order the numbers came in. Wanted to know if the sequences were always in the same order. Maybe this date-if it is a date-has something to do with the order the data is delivered in. Though I can't imagine what."

"Hm. And maybe it's the date his mommy and daddy were abducted by aliens."

Santiago looked over at Kurt from the Signal Detection console. "You did tell him you'd use his sequence if ours failed. And I'm fresh out of ideas. We might as well send it while we're trying to come up with something else."

Grace snorted. "You're kidding. You're not going to authorize-"

Kurt smiled, tapped his forehead, and said, "Outside the box, Peter."

"Do you have any reason to think this might work?"

"None. But Sandy's right-we might as well send something."

They sent: 18.9, 27.44, 27.44, 27.44, 27.44, 103.6, 121.9, 99.1, 4, 20, 19, 12.

Just over twenty-seven hours later, Pioneer's return message began with the characteristic pause. Then she started into a sequence: 18.9, 27.44, 27.44, 27.44, 27.44, 108.2, 121.9, 107.6, she said. The second sequence. And she added: 4, 20, 19, 12.

"Whoa," said Santiago, taking in the complete sequence. He glanced up over his shoulder at Kurt Costigyan, colors from the MCSA display patterning the side of his face. "Now what do we do?"

"Now, we give Mr. Kinsella a call back."

"Well, this is a surprise. I didn't expect to hear from you. I kind of figured I'd have to nag." Bill Kinsella raised eyebrows at his wife and mouthed, "It's them," across the kitchen table.

"No, Mr. Kinsella," said the caller, "we tried your sequence of numbers right after . . . well, right after our sequence failed to get Pioneer's attention."

When the man from SETI-Dr. Kurt Costigyan, he called himself-hesitated, Bill prompted, "Well, don't keep me in suspense, Kurt. Did it work?"

After a moment more of hesitation, Costigyan said, "Pioneer returned a second set of numbers, and added the same sequence you gave us to the end of it."

"d.a.m.n. Which set was it?"

"The second set."

Bill looked at the list of names and numbers he'd scribbled in his steno pad. "d.a.m.n," he said again.

The scientist cleared his throat. "Does that number mean something to you, Mr. Kinsella?"

"Yes sir, it does."

"May I ask what it means? Some of us thought it might be a date."

"It is a date. At least, to me, it's a date. I don't know what it is to your little robot friend."

"If you were to . . . What would you send next?"

"Well, the logical thing would be to send the third sequence again and add 4, 23, 19, 14 to the end of it."

There was a pause before Costigyan asked, "May I ask why that would be logical?"

Bill sighed. This man was going to think he was a lunatic. "Trust me: that date goes with the third sequence of numbers."

"Mr. Kinsella-"

"I know I'm being cantankerous and mysterious, but if I tell you what I'm thinking, you'll hang up on me."

"I won't, I promise, Mr. Kinsella. I won't hang up."

"Call me 'Bill.' "

"I promise I won't hang up, Bill."

"Look, try this-send this batch of numbers, and if it comes back with . . . well, with the next logical sequence, I'll tell you what I think it's all about."

"Wait, you're telling me . . . you can predict what Pioneer is going to say next?"

"In a nutsh.e.l.l, yeah. If I'm right, Pioneer's response to this message will be to add 4, 18, 19, 23 to the fourth set of numbers."

"But you won't tell me why," said Costigyan, frustration creeping into his voice. "Will you at least tell me what you think the numbers are-generally speaking?"

"Well, sir, I think they're dimensions. But not geometrical shapes, exactly."

"Dimensions." There was another pause, then the scientist asked, "Are you a mathematician, Mr. Kinsella-Bill?"

"No sir. I'm a writer. Of fiction. Not science fiction, though, in case you were wondering."

"He's a writer?" repeated Peter Grace. "A fiction writer is driving your game plan?"

"He's getting results," argued Gita. "Which is more than our well-considered responses are doing."

"Let me guess-he writes science fiction, right?"

"He says not," said Kurt. "Besides, as Gita said, he's getting results. You can't argue with that. I think we're pushing the envelope of coincidence. So here's our test case-he's given me a new sequence and told me what response he expects. We might as well send it and see what happens."

Grace muttered something under his breath about looking silly, then said, "I'll tell you what you're going to get. She's going to repeat what you send, just like she did this last time."

"But she added it to a different sequence of numbers."

"Of course she did, Kurt. She's locked into that program of thirty data sets. She ran what's now her normal sequence and tacked exactly what you sent to the end of it. No mystery, there."

Kurt shrugged. "Maybe you're right. But we've got nothing to lose, right?"

"h.e.l.l, no," said Grace. "Just our professional dignity."

They sent the data. They waited. Within ten minutes of Pioneer's answer, Kurt Costigyan called Chilliwack, B.C.

"Well, Bill," he said, "she gave the answer you were expecting. I think we need to talk face to face. Are you willing to meet with me?"

"In Puerto Rico?"

Kurt chuckled. "I was thinking of someplace in between. There's an observatory in Santa Cruz, California . . . "

"William Patrick Kinsella," the man said, holding out his hand.

Kurt Costigyan took it, thinking that he surely must have meant to say "Mark Twain." Tall, lanky, and spare, he had a wavy fringe of collar-length hair that was going from gray to white. Mustache and beard to match. Hazel eyes sparkled behind wire-rim gla.s.ses. There, the resemblance to the Twain archetype ended; he wore a cowboy hat and a blue chambray shirt. Kurt guessed him to be in his seventies.

"Dr. Kurt Costigyan," Kurt said. "This is my colleague, Dr. Peter Grace, from NASA."

"Kinsella," repeated Grace, shaking the older man's hand. "Didn't you write that movie-"

"I wrote a book that got made into a movie," Kinsella said, warily, Kurt thought.

"A fantasy movie," said Grace, pa.s.sing him a look.

"Fantasy," said the writer, "is in the mind of the reader. You're talking across millions of miles of s.p.a.ce to a glorified Tinkertoy. How fantastic is that?"

Grace raised his eyebrows but didn't offer a comeback.

"Can you send messages to Pioneer from here?" Kinsella gestured around the observatory's main lab.

"No, but we can have Arecibo send them."

"And what messages will we be sending?" asked Grace, his voice patronizing.

In answer, Kinsella pulled a steno pad out from under his arm, flipped it open and handed to him. On the exposed page was a table. Looking over Grace's shoulder, Kurt saw the sequences of numbers he'd come to know so well, each sequence in a neat row that ended with a date and a name.

"What . . . what are these?" Grace asked brushing the names with a fingertip.

Kinsella cleared his throat and gave Kurt an almost apologetic glance. "They're . . . um . . . ballparks."

Kurt could feel Grace's eyes on him. "Ballparks?"

Kinsella scratched around in his longish white hair. "Your numbers there are the internal dimensions of a baseball diamond, in meters. The first number is the distance from home plate to the mound-18.9 meters, or 60 feet, 6 inches. The second, third, fourth and fifth numbers are the distance between the bases-27.44 meters or 90 feet. Those numbers are constant for every major league ballpark ever built. The last three numbers are outfield dimensions, which are different in every park."