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It all began with a bleep

'Booooooooooooooooring!' thought Kestral as he kept staring at the screen in front of him, monitoring the frequencies as he was asked to. He thought if this would keep going for the next half year, he would probably go insane.

Yet he also knew he had to get through this, if he wanted to get his degree as a radiowave-technician. And this small institute was the only one where there had been a free place, every Tele-screen station or radio-station had no free place for a budding radio-technician. But to get finally his degree he needed to work at one place at least for half a year. Otherwise he would have never been that desperate to apply for this place.

It was several hundred miles away from any cities, far away from radio-interferences of nearby cities, which was necessary if you would want to look for radio-waves from other planets.

Kestral rubbed over the blue fur on top of his head, before grabbing one of his small horns, trying to calm down. He would have never thought that this would be such a boring job. He had expected that it would be boring, after all the institute already existed now for twenty years and never had received a single bleep from outer space.

But to be I-wanna-jump-around-in-the-room-and-scream-of-the-top-of-my-lungs-boring, was simply too much. He already had thought briefly about causing some sort of minor malfunction in one of the systems, just so the boring routine of monitoring the screens and frequencies would be interrupted, but it was pretty clear with him being just one week here, that he would be the first suspect.

He leaned back into his chair and covered his face briefly, muffling a deep sigh, hoping the other guys here would not notice it. They were much more enthusiastic about their hunt for alien intelligent lifeforms, even with barely anything happening day after day.

Sometimes they had a brief signal, only fractions of a second long, and every single time it turned out to be either a reflection of a signal coming from their own planet or just a brief radio-shriek from a far-distant star.

Kestral finally got up, hoping that his work-buddies left him some Utra-juice, as this was one of the things that kept him from falling asleep right at his desk, when the screen in front of him turned alive.

'' Radio-signal detected '' stood there in bright green letters.

Kestral sighed, turning around for the screen, typing in some commands to open the charts, of how strong the signal was and how long they had received it.

As the numbers appeared, his eyes grew wider...and wider....could he already have gone insane, after not even a week here? These numbers could not be true...he checked them, then double-checked them, then tripple-checked them.

But they always stayed the same.

After several minutes of just watching the screen, showing off a simply sinus-wave, he jumped up, sending the chair to the ground as he dashed through the corridors to the bureaus of the leading staff of the institute.

'By all gods, please let this be true...' were his thoughts as he opened the door of professor Lotral, not bothering to even knock.

The older male was just in a conversation with somebody who was wearing some pretty expensive looking clothes, obviously having an argument with him, interrupting them.

"Young man..." his whiskers shivered as he looked at the shorter man, a quite angry, yet also disappointed look on his face "...how often, did I tell you to knock! You should watch you manners, especially with such an important guest here." He looked at the other male in front of him. He was somewhere between Lotral and Kestral age-wise, and by the fast move of his long rudder-tail he seemed quite in a hurry.

"Good manners won't bring you your funds back, professor. As I just told you, the commission's decision is set, within the next five months this institute will be closed and and the remaining instruments handed over tot he military. I told you now several times that the government is simply not willing to pour any more money into an institute that has been a drain of important resources for the past decades, without showing any clear results."

The professor's round ear's seemed to wrinkle away as the other male said this. He had been working at this institute from the very start and now it should have been all for nothing?

Kestral was shocked to hear that the institute would be closed before he would have a chance to finish his six-month period of work. If that happens he would have to start all over again.

"Professor, you clearly have to see this. We just detected an extremely strong radio-signal." pretty much ignoring what the other man just said, trying to get the professor's attention.

"Kestral, that is not the best time now." he hissed. "Go and get Tontar or Millu, they must be somewhere, let them help you with the records, I have to convince this messenger from the government that this institute cannot be closed right now, not when we just got these new 10-Meter radio telescopes."

Before the man from the government was able to respond to this, Kestral interrupted him.

"No professor, you don't understand. There are no records, the signal is still there, right now, it is super-strong and it is definitely not coming from this planet!" He yelled the last two words, hoping to get the effect he wished for.

The two older males stared at him for several seconds, the professor's eyes wide from excitement, after he processed what he just heard, the ones of the government official in surprise at the sudden turn of events.

"Are you definitely sure?" was the Lotral's sole question.

Kestral nodded.

"Yes, I am, the signal has the exact same specifications you showed me what you would expect from a species trying to get in contact with us."

Now the older male was even more excited. As he quickly ran out of his bureau, he grabbed Kestral's arm and pulled him behind himself, quickly dragging him to the main computer-room, where they processed and recorded all the signals.

The printer there had already began to print out a long piece of paper, the analysis of the signal. The professor grabbed it, holding to the endless-sheet, as the printer kept printing.

The governmental official followed them into, not saying anything yet, as he watched the professor reading the printed charts.

"Kestral, look at this, what do you think this is?"

Kestral walked over as he was asked and looked at the piece of ever longer-growing paper.

At the beginning there was one spot, then two, then three, then five, then seven, then eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twentry-three...he was confused. At the beginning it was just a simple radio-signal, not modified in any way, but not it seemed to have been replaced by a simple collection of binary signals.

"I...I don't know what this could mean, professor." he lowered his tail, ashamed as he could not give any answer to this question.

The professor waived with the paper in front of his snout.

"You don't know, you don't know...didn't they teach you anything at school anymore? One, two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen...don't you know what these numbers are? These are prime-numbers, young man. PRIME NUMBERS! This proofs it, that these things are not some random signals from some star or anything. PRIME NUMBERS, thank all the gods!"

The old man looked like he was suddenly ten years older as he looked at the sheet of ever growing paper again, it was still growing, now printing the next group of dots onto the paper.

Then he walked over to the governmental official.

"And you just wanted to close the institute. Now go back to the commission and tell them we just made the greatest discovery in the history of our planet, tell them that we are not alone. I doubt that they will be able to close the institute if this gets out to the press."

In that second a woman came into the room, carrying more papers with them. She kept looking between the papers and the professor, her face showing confusion.

"Lot...I got the info of this signal in my bureau the second we received it. I was able to pinpoint it from which direction it is coming from by calling our partner station on the Golang-islands. They receive it all too clearly there too....but...it does not make any sense to me...if my calculations are correct, and I checked them now for the past half hour...then the source of the signal is just...380 000 miles away from us....Lot, that signal...it is coming from the moon." Her last sentence was barely a whisper, her tail curled up behind her in fear as the implications of what this meant sank into the minds of the males in the room.

Somebody was out there, right in reach of their planet...and whoever it was wanted to say hello.