A warm wind scattered sand across the road, and jackrabbits leapt through the car’s high beams and bounded into the night, as Efrain pulled up to the back entrance of Meteor Crater. It was a few minutes after midnight. He stepped out of the car and stood facing a locked gate, the only visible break in a chain-link fence that stretched in a big circle around the formation. A metal plate reading Staff Only rattled insistently in the wind, which whined as it swept along the high desert floor. It was eerie here, and Efrain prayed for protection against any malevolent spirits that might be roaming the perimeter.

Beyond the chain link, the Crater’s uplifted rim was visible but its gaping maw was out of sight. The breeze abruptly died down and all grew still, save for the soft chirping of insects in the brush. Above, thick swirls of stars were sharp in the dry clear sky. Efrain stared at them, unmoved, and pulled out his keys to unlock the gate. Everyone else was already here, in place. Guttman ran his experiments like clockwork and Efrain knew tonight’s proceedings would start precisely at the appointed hour. He took his time strolling up the long asphalt walkway that ran over barren soil to the edge of the Crater, and kept an eye out for snakes, scorpions and other nocturnal creatures that might surprise him. These worried him far more than the cultists and their charismatic leader down below.

Then it opened out before him, the huge bowl carved out of the Arizona desert by a flaming rock, or so they said. The chasm was more than a kilometer across and deep enough to hold the Eiffel Tower. Their scientists claimed that fifty thousand years ago a meteor the size of a large house had struck here, blasting this impressive cavity out of the earth and strewing untold tons of rock over the surrounding land. Of course, they also believed that an even larger stone had done away with the dinosaurs millions of years ago (such nonsense!). Still more absurd, the Offworlders were convinced that such rocks had brought life, or the seeds of it, to our planet from the far reaches of the universe. Efrain didn’t buy any of that. Secular swill, it was. No, the True Father had fashioned all of this six thousand years ago. He had shaped the Earth and placed life upon it. Life had not arrived on a comet, or as a cosmic spore, or in the cargo bay of some alien shuttle. That was pure pagan superstition.

Still, this strange sect had its uses, and he was here to keep an eye on them. Once again, his work enabled him to serve God and he counted that as a blessing. Far below, amidst the rock and scrub at Crater’s bottom, was a spiral formed of two hundred men and women in saffron robes. They were a considerable distance from him, but well lit by a rising moon and innumerable candles in geodes arranged in concentric rings about them. These were the priests and priestesses of Offworld, space worshippers led by their so-called messiah Ed Sanders, aka Baba Ed. They had leased the Crater from the Dinee nation of the Navajo people, who had received the land in the Accommodation. A sad time that was and such a disappointment, thought Efrain, but soon we will make it right.

Offworld’s facilities had been built underground, hidden beneath the Crater floor. They were invisible from the air, as well as from the visitor’s center and overlook on the far side. Efrain approached a guard who stood by a sand-colored steel door nestled into a gap in the rim. The man nodded and punched in a code to open the door for him. Efrain smiled as he thought about the utter lack of serious security. He got into the elevator and descended two hundred meters to the labs and workrooms for the project, and then followed the long corridor that brought him outside once again. The experiment was taking place at the bottom, enshrouded in the pagan ritual that he so despised. He checked his cell phone’s charge and hoped he would have something positive to tell his contact one hour hence.

The big bearded man in the ceremonial white robe made his way through the assembled acolytes. They greeted Baba Ed with clasped palms and a slight bowing of the head. Within their spiral was an oval slab of pale sandstone, which had tumbled down from the rim after the formation of the Crater. It rose slightly above the surrounding gravel, smooth and flat, and was called Star Rock, it being a favorite place to lie back and gaze at the heavens. The volunteers had chosen this site for today’s work, as it seemed more auspicious than the inside of a lab. Dressed in white jumpsuits, they lay with heads toward the center of Star Rock and feet on the outside. Their legs were like the spokes of a great wheel, and a rim of white coyote skulls and black obsidian boulders surrounded them.

Baba Ed spoke to each of the three participants: Pamela Yuan, the Hawaiian astrobiologist; Manuel Reis, the shaman from the Brazilian Amazon who consulted with Offworld researchers; and Tenzo Rinpoche, the Tibetan monk with a huge grin who had traveled from Boulder, Colorado to participate. They wore Skuld headsets, which resembled bicycle-racing helmets erupting with tiny white hexagonal electrodes. The three were connected to thick black cords that ran over the ground to an opening for the underground work stations.

Lightning flashed above the rim, and Baba Ed could smell sagebrush in the rising wind. Thunder rumbled far away. Not now, damn it. Ah hell, I think the Skulds are waterproof. They’d better be, with all the money I’ve spent.

“Well, let’s get to it,” he said. “Skies are still clear.”

“The weather here is fast, but we’ll be faster,” rasped a voice behind him. He turned to see Guttman, old and wiry and straight out of Arizona with his bolo tie and beat-up cowboy boots.

“Here are your gogs, Ed,” he smiled and handed him a slender pair, new ZeissMotos.

Baba Ed pulled them over his eyes. “I should be on the rock with them.”

“Not on my test run, chief,” said Guttman, nodding towards two technicians standing twenty meters away. He gave them the thumbs up and a go-ahead signal, then pulled on his own headwear.

“Here we go,” he said.

A green light in Baba Ed’s gogs indicated that the system was online. He took note of it, then let his attention drift to a shooting star crossing Orion’s belt. He glanced back down at Pamela, Manuel and Tenzo. Was he putting them in harm’s way? A heavy feeling took hold of him, as if he could sense the array of radio-telescope dishes lumbering into position a few miles away, turning in unison towards the stellar paths of highest probability.

He wondered what or who resided on the habitable planets that circled the nearest stars. Are they as perpetually restless as we humans? Are they content to stay in their own star systems? Or perhaps I am wrong about it all. Maybe there are no mysterious travelers. Just the silence of lifeless rock spinning around one hundred billion distant suns in our galaxy. He didn’t want to consider that possibility, but he had to find out. Tonight they would know a little more, if the stars would have it.

Live radio-wave feeds carried sweet frequencies between 1 and 3 gigahertz, in the prime bands. These traveled through space with minimal absorption or interference from interstellar molecules and dust clouds, and would enter the Channel tonight. The participants would interact with them, as well as with archived anomalies cataloged over the decades. These were the best of the weirdest captured by radio astronomers. None of the SETI candidate signals had proven to be continuous, but more than a few were downright odd.

Baba Ed was hopeful. It is possible they carry something extra we will be able to decipher thanks to Norm’s ingenuity. Might the dishes receive the living light tonight? Could it finally be revealed to us? Will this be the fulfillment of my quest?

The tension was eating him alive.

He stared through his gogs at the three noble volunteers. “Is this big modem of yours going to work, Norm?”

“We’ll see now,” said Guttman.