Domain (12 page)

“I’ll get Arecibo on the line.”

National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center

Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

“Understood, Jon.” Robert Pasquale, director of operations at Arecibo, hangs up the phone, then blows his nose for the umpteenth time before paging his assistant. “Arthur, come in here, please.”

Astrophysicist Arthur Krawitz enters his director’s office. “Christ, Bob, you look awful.”

“It’s my goddam sinuses. First day of fall, and my head’s already pounding. Have those Russian astronomers finished with the big dish yet?”

“About ten minutes ago. What’s up?”

“I just received an emergency call from NASA. Seems they’ve lost contact with Pluto-Kuiper and want us to help relocate it. They’re downloading the probe’s last-known coordinates to your computer as we speak and are asking that we use the big dish to beam a radio beacon into space. If we get lucky, we’ll bounce a signal that NASA will be able to detect using their big dish in Goldstone.”

“I’m on it. Oh, what about SETI? You know Kenny Wong’s going to want to listen in using SERENDIP’s receivers? Is it a problem if—”

“Christ, Arthur, I don’t care. If the kid wants to waste his life waiting for E.T. to come calling, it’s no skin off my aching nose. If you need me, I’ll be in my room, overdosing on Sudafed.”

When Cornell’s College of Engineering first conceived of the idea of building the world’s most powerful radio telescope, they searched for years for a site that offered a natural geological depression possessing the approximate dimensions of a giant reflector bowl. The site had to be under US jurisdiction, and, since the dish would not move, the location also had be as close as possible to the equator so the moon and planets would appear almost directly overhead. Their search led them to the limestone karst mountain range of northern Puerto Rico, a lush, isolated terrain featuring deep valleys surrounded by towering hills that would shield the telescope from outside radio interference.

Completed in 1963, with upgrades in 1974, 1997, and 2010, the Arecibo telescope appears to first-time visitors as an enormous alien structure of concrete and steel. The 1,000-foot-diameter dish, made of almost 40,000 perforated aluminum panels, hangs concave side up, filling up the entire crater-shaped karst sinkhole like a giant, 167-foot-deep salad bowl. Dangling 426 feet above the center of the dish is the telescope’s azimuth arm, Gregorian dome, and secondary and tertiary dishes. This 600-ton spiderweb of steel is held aloft by twelve cables attached to three immense obelisk-shaped support towers and numerous anchor blocks located around the perimeter of the valley.

Constructed within the mountainous limestone hillside overlooking the telescope stands Arecibo’s lab, a multistoried concrete structure housing the computers and technical equipment used to run the facility. Adjacent to the lab is a four-story dormitory containing a dining room and library, as well as a heated pool and tennis court.

Arecibo’s behemoth telescope was designed to be used by scientists in four separate fields. Radio astronomers use the dish to analyze the natural radio energy emitted by galaxies, pulsars, and other celestial bodies as far as ten million light-years away. Radar astronomers come to Arecibo to bounce powerful beams of radio energy off objects within our solar system, then record and study the echoes. Atmospheric scientists and astronomers use the telescope to study the Earth’s ionosphere, analyzing the atmosphere and its dynamic relationship with our planet.

The last field of study involves the SETI program, or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. SETI’s goal of locating intelligent life within the cosmos uses a twofold approach. The first is to send radio transmissions into deep space in the hopes that, someday, an intelligent species will receive our message of peace. SETI’s second approach uses the Gregorian dome and its two smaller dishes to receive incoming radio waves from deep space in an attempt to discern an intelligible pattern, proving that we are not alone in the universe.

Astronomers refer to the task of hunting for radio signals in the vastness of space as searching for a needle in the cosmic haystack. To simplify the search, Professor Frank Drake and his colleagues in Project Ozma, the founders of SETI, concluded that any intelligent life existing within the cosmos would (logically) have to be associated with water. With all of the radio frequencies to choose from, astronomers hypothesized that an extraterrestrial intelligence would broadcast its radio signals at 1.42 gigahertz, the point on the electromagnetic spectrum at which energy is released from hydrogen. Drake dubbed the region the waterhole, and since then, it has been the exclusive hunting ground for all interstellar radio signals.

An adjunct of the SETI project is SERENDIP, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations. With telescope time expensive and difficult to come by, SERENDIP simply piggybacks its receivers to the big dish during all observations. The major limitation for these SETI scientists is that they have no say in what they are listening to, their targets being chosen for them by their host.

Kenny Wong stands on the concrete-and-steel overlook situated just outside of the lab’s huge bay windows. The disgruntled Princeton graduate student leans against the protective railing and stares at the tangle of metal and cable suspended over the heart of the big dish.

Fucking NASA. It’s not enough that they cut our funding, now they have to hog telescope time to locate their damn probe
…

“Hey, Kenny—”

Piggybacking is a goddam waste of time if we’re not even tuned into the waterhole. I might as well hit the beach, for all the fucking good I’m doing here
—

“Kenny, get the hell in here, your equipment’s giving me a headache!”

“Huh?”

The grad student rushes into the lab, his pulse racing as he hears a sound he has never heard before.

“That damn computer of yours has been beeping like that for five minutes.” Arthur Krawitz removes his bifocals and shoots him a nasty look. “Disconnect the goddam thing, will you, it’s driving me crazy.”

Kenny pushes past him, hurriedly typing in commands to activate the computer’s search and identification program. The SERENDIP-IV program can simultaneously examine 168 million frequency channels every 1.7 seconds.

Within seconds, a response flashes on his monitor, taking his breath away.

C
ANDIDATE
S
IGNAL:
D
ETECTED

“Oh my fucking God…”

Kenny races for the spectra analyzer, his heart pounding in his ears. He verifies that the analog signal is being recorded and digitally formatted.

C
ANDIDATE
S
IGNAL:
N
ONRANDOM

“Jesus Christ—it’s a real fucking signal! Oh, shit, Arthur, I gotta call someone, I’ve got to verify before we lose it!”

Arthur is laughing hysterically. “Kenny, it’s just the Pluto probe. NASA must have gotten it back on-line.”

“What? Oh, shit.” Kenny collapses in a chair, out of breath. “God, for a second there—”

“For a second there, you looked like Curly from the Three Stooges. Just sit there and calm down while I contact NASA and verify, okay?”

“Okay.”

The physicist strikes a preset key on his video communicator, placing them directly on-line with NASA. Dr. Armentrout’s face appears on his monitor. “Arthur, good to see you. Hey, thanks for helping us out.”

“Thanks for what? I see you’re already back on-line with the PKE.”

“Negative, we’re still dead as a doornail. What made you think that?”

Kenny rushes over. “NASA, this is Kenny Wong with SETI. We’re picking up a deep-space radio transmission. We thought it was the PKE.”

“It’s not coming from us, but keep in mind the Pluto probe uses an uncoded carrier. Plenty of pranksters out there, SETI. What’s the frequency of the signal?”

“Stand by.” Kenny returns to his computer and types in a series of commands. “Oh, geez, we’re at 4,320 MHz. God dammit, Arthur, that microwave band’s way too high for any Earth-based telecommunications or even a geosynchronous satellite. Wait, I’ll feed the signal through a speaker so we can listen.”

“Kenny, wait—”

A piercing high-pitched tone screeches from the speakers, the searing blast of sound shattering Arthur’s bifocals while causing the bay windows to rattle in their frames.

Kenny pulls the plug, rubbing his ringing ears.

Arthur is staring at the fragments of glass in his hands. “Unbelievable. How strong is the signal? Where’s it coming from?”

“Still calculating the source, but the strength is off my puny scale. We’re looking at a radio brilliance about a thousand times stronger than anything we could transmit from Arecibo.” A chill runs down Kenny’s spine. “God dammit, Arthur, this is it—this is the real thing!”

“Just calm down a second. Before we end up looking like the Stooges of the new millennium, get on-line and start confirming the signal. Start with the VLA in New Mexico. I’ll contact Ohio State—”

“Arthur—”

Krawitz turns to face the video com. “Go ahead, Jeremy.”

A half dozen technicians have crowded around a pale-faced Dr. Armentrout. “Arthur, we just confirmed the signal.”

“You confirmed—” Krawitz feels light-headed, like he is living in a dreamworld. “Have you targeted a source?”

“Still working on that. We’re running into a lot of interference because of the—”

“Arthur, I’ve got a preliminary trajectory!” Kenny is on his feet, very excited. “The signal’s originating from the constellation of Orion, somewhere in the vicinity of Orion’s belt.”

Chichén Itza Yucatan Peninsula

4:00 P.M.

The ancient Mayan city of Chichén Itza, located in the lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula, is one of the great archaeological wonders of the world. Several hundred buildings occupy this twelve-hundred-year-old jungle-enclosed site, including some of the most intricately carved temples and shrines in all of Mesoamerica.

The actual origins of the city known as Chichén date back to A.D. 435. After a period of abandonment, the city was rediscovered by the Itzaes, a Maya-speaking tribe who occupied the region until the late eighth century, when the Toltecs migrated east from Teotihuacan. Under the tutelage and leadership of the great teacher, Kukulcan, the two cultures merged, the city flourishing to dominate the region as a religious, ceremonial, and cultural center. Kukulcan’s departure in the eleventh century would lead to the city’s fall, its people lost, their depravity leading them to diabolical forms of human sacrifice. By the sixteenth century, what little remained of the culture had quickly fallen under Spanish rule.

Dominating Chichén Itza is arguably the most magnificent structure in all of Mesoamerica, the Kukulcan pyramid. Nicknamed
El Castillo
by the Spanish, this towering, nine-terraced ziggurat rises nearly a hundred feet above an open expanse of short-cropped lawn.

The Kukulcan is far more than just a pyramid—it is a calendar in stone. Each of its four sides possesses ninety-one steps. With the platform, the total equals 365—as in the days of the year.

To archaeologists and scientists, the blood-red pyramid remains an enigma, for its design exhibits a knowledge of astronomy and mathematics rivaling that of modern man. The structure has been geologically aligned in such a manner so that twice each year, on the spring and fall equinoxes, strange shadows begin undulating along its northern balustrade. As the late afternoon sun sinks, the enormous shadow of a serpent’s body begins slithering down the steps until it meets up with its sculpted head, which rests at the base of the structure. (In the spring, the serpent descends the balustrade, in the fall, the illusion is reversed.) Sitting atop the pyramid is a four-sided temple, originally used for worship, and only later, upon Kukulcan’s departure, for human sacrifices. Believed to have been erected in A.D. 830, the Kukulcan was originally constructed on top of a much-older structure, the remains of which can only be accessed by way of a gated entry located along the northern base. A claustrophobic passage leads to a narrow stairwell, the limestone steps of which are slick from the humidity. Ascending the staircase, one finds two cramped inner chambers. The first contains the reclining figure of a Chac Mool, a Mayan statue supporting a ceremonial plate designed to hold the hearts of its sacrificial victims. Behind the security fencing of the second chamber sits the throne of a red jaguar, its jade eyes blazing green.

Brent Nakamura hits the steady-cam switch, then pans across the sea of sweltering bodies with his SONY video recorder.
Christ, there must be a hundred, thousand people here. I’ll be stuck in traffic for hours
.

The San Francisco native aims the camera back toward the northern balustrade, zooming in on the shadow of the serpent’s tail as it continues its 202-minute journey up the limestone facing of the twelve-hundred-year-old pyramid.

The pungent scent of human sweat hangs heavy in the humid afternoon air. Nakamura records a Canadian couple arguing with two park officials, then shuts the camcorder off as a German tourist and his family jostle their way past him.

Glancing at his watch, Nakamura decides it best to take some footage of the sacred cenote before he loses the light. After stepping over a myriad of picnickers, he makes his way north down the ancient
sacbe
, an elevated dirt path lying in close proximity to the northern face of the Kukulcan. The
sacbe
is the only means of cutting through the dense jungle to reach the second-most-sacred site in Chichén Itza—a freshwater sinkhole known as the cenote, or Mayan well of sacrifice.

A five-minute walk brings him to the mouth of the 190-foot-wide pit, a spot where thousands of maidens were once sacrificed to death. He looks down. Sixty feet below, the dark, algae-infested waters reek of stagnation.

The distant sound of thunder draws his attention skyward.