The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction by Brandon Morris (red white and royal blue hardcover TXT) 📕

the eyepiece, but that comparison doesn’t quite fit, either.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Changing receivers like that takes a couple of minutes, and targeting another object takes time, too. You’ll have to decide by tomorrow whether you’d rather have a more compact spectrum from three objects or a wider spectrum from two.”

“Okay, I’ll think about that.”

“Fine. I’ll send you a login for my computer, and you can look over my shoulder while I work on the telescope.”

“Thanks, Thomas.”

“Thank you. I was feeling a little bored anyway.”

March 11, 2026 – Passau

Today was the day Franziska was coming home, and the day when Thomas would record the radio spectrum of three yellow dwarfs with him. Peter had been feeling rushed since morning. He’d made Ava happy by taking over the 9th grade class again. That meant he didn’t have time for lunch, because it was already quarter to one, and he just made it home. But he couldn’t keep Thomas waiting.

He pushed the button and started up the computer in his study. Yesterday, he’d picked out three yellow dwarfs and emailed Thomas the coordinates. Two of them were on the spherical shell, and one was not. Of course, it would be better to measure 20 stars, but he had to take what he could get.

He grabbed a package of cookies from the kitchen. His tension was rising. He knew his login and password for the Max Planck Institute’s computer system by heart, even though it consisted of four groups of three random characters each. He powered up the terminal and entered the address. An input field appeared, and he entered the login that Thomas had given him, then opened a chat session.

It was five minutes to one.

“Hello, Peter.”

“Hi, Thomas. Glad to hear it’s working out.”

“Let’s hope for the best. You just have to sit back.”

“I can do that.”

“Then let’s begin our journey into the depths of space.”

As if by magic, letters appeared on his screen. Peter adjusted the window to the full screen size. Now he would see everything that Thomas saw.

A program window opened which read, ‘MPIfR Effelsberg 100m Telescope Control.’ Four buttons were visible at the top. The first one was red and labeled ‘Stop.’ The other three were green and labeled ‘Continue,’ ‘Repeat,’ and ‘Start.’ To the left was a long list. None of their entries meant anything to him. If he didn’t have Thomas’s help, he would have been lost before he’d even started.

The mouse pointer moved to ‘Pointing.’

“I point the antenna at a bright source to test,” Thomas explained.

It opened a second window in which a data chart appeared.

“Works.”

The mouse pointer changed to ‘Focus.’ Again, data came in. Then it went back to ‘Pointing.’

“It looks good,” Thomas said. “I just measured the H65-alpha transition from hydrogen at 23.4 gigahertz. The system is dazzling.”

“You don’t have to explain the individual steps to me in such detail,” said Peter. “I only understand half of it anyway, if that much.”

“You’ll have to suffer through it. I do this so often for the students that I can’t help it. I just checked the calibration of the whole system. If you want a spectrogram, it’s important to know exactly where the individual lines are. Anyway, the system mapped the 23.4-gigahertz line beautifully.”

“Good for you.”

“Now comes the real work.”

The doorbell rang. Peter saw that it was a quarter past one. That could be the mailman, who always arrived between one and two. He can leave his package at the front door, he thought.

On the screen, the mouse pointer moved to the ‘FSwitch’ entry. Thomas entered some numbers. He recognized the galactic coordinates, but not the rest.

“I’ll add it to the to-do list,” Thomas said, clicking the big green button at the bottom.

The doorbell rang again. Did the letter carrier need a signature? Now of all times!

“Go ahead and answer the door,” Thomas said. “It takes a little while for the first readings to come in. Outside, the dish is now moving until it’s right in your yellow dwarf’s face. I always find that very impressive. Have you ever seen our 100-meter giant live? The dish is aiming at a tiny dot, you might think. But in reality, it was the other way around. Your yellow dwarf is a million times bigger than my antenna. The antenna is the dwarf. The star is the giant.”

The doorbell rang yet again. The letter carrier would not rest. Peter got up and ran downstairs through the cold house and opened the front door.

Franziska was standing in front of him, her arms at her sides. She didn’t seem to have brought a bag with her. “I was just about to leave again.”

Peter took a step toward her, but she dodged backward, forgetting she was standing on a small landing. She stumbled and started to topple backward, but Peter caught her hand and was able to keep hold of it, and prevent her from landing on the ground.

“Thank you,” she said, stepping back again. “Were you asleep? Amalie said you were at school again today.”

“I have... I’m on the phone with Thomas right now.”

“With Thomas? Your fellow student?”

“You remember him?”

“Of course. He visited us in the summer once, about ten years ago. What does he do?”

“He works at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.”

“Ah, I see,” Franziska said as she squinted her eyes.

“What do you see?”

“It’s about your theories. You need his help. Haven’t you had enough yet?”

“He’s helping me record radio spectra from three stars. It’s great and will really help me move forward.”

Franziska didn’t seem happy for him. Did she really think he would just give up on the subject without having achieved anything?

“That’s good,” she said.

“Come on in. I have to go back up to Thomas, but in about an hour and a half...” he looked at the clock on his phone, “I’ll be done in about a hundred and five minutes.”

“That’s just as well. I wanted to tidy up the shelves in the living room anyway. That will