“Damn!” Thompson threw the coal scuttle down as steam billowed into his face from the mouth of the pot-bellied stove. Throwing his arm across his eyes, he stumbled blindly, tripping on the scuttle. The scuttle had held snowbound coal from the pile outside, but its place beside the stove had left a liquid surprise hidden at its bottom. When Thompson could finally open his burning eyes, the fire was long dead.

He looked ruefully at the little electric heater. Things had been bearable when it had worked. Now, were he to turn it on, the breakers would blow, shutting down the whole project. That, of course, was not allowed. Who cares, he thought, if I freeze to death, as long as the project goes on. And for what?

The coal stove’s grate had cracked. It could hold up a fire, but would never successfully shake ashes again. He poked up through the cracked grate with a piece of discarded copper ground wire. There was enough wood left in the stove to start a fire if it had a bit of help. From the tool cabinet he produced a can of tuner cleaner and defiantly sprayed into the stove. Then opening the clean out door at the bottom, he sprayed a shot there too, then struck a match and threw it in the hole.

The stove jumped as a jet of flame belched from its top, throwing the stove lid to clatter on the floor. Thompson was bowled over with a badly scorched arm. He fumbled with the lid, sliding it into place on the stove.

The wood was blazing.

The second coal scuttle smiled up at him from the floor. One by one Thompson took the chunks of coal and dried them with a towel then placed them around the fire. Soon the stove held a glowing coal fire.

With a screwdriver and hammer, Thompson punched a hole in the bottom of each scuttle. Better to have the floor wet than the fire out. Then donning his coat he grabbed the scuttles and stomped out into the windy Montana night. He turned to look up at the enormous dish antenna looming over the tiny cement block building.

NGC 4038-9, are you out there, he thought, gazing at the snow swirling in the red glow of the potassium argon light on the utility pole. Above the light, the short wave beam antenna rocked in the incessant wind. No stars were visible tonight, only the myriad of swirling snowflakes. Was there any difference? Thompson had been out on this lonely mountaintop for three years listening, and for what, a signal sent millennia ago by someone long dead, from a place we can never go, and in a language we could never understand?

This job was fun in the summer, living alone in the Montana woods, camping, hiking, and cooking out on the grill every night. But in winter, when the blizzards blew in from the Yukon across Alberta… Thompson shivered and turned to dig the scuttles into the snow covered coal pile, then stomped back into the radio shack.

Damn Jenny, anyway. Or maybe damn himself. He couldn't tell anymore. It had been three years, pining away out here under the pines, crying for the love who had left him. At the time, he had felt so lonely. All of his prying friends had wanted to fix him up with others, others who would never be Jenny. He just wanted to get away, get away and think. Volunteering for a five-year stint out in the woods listening for ET signals had sounded like the perfect answer.

Three years later, he wasn’t so sure.

*******

Prmbn Snftn had remained alone, resolved to keep the transmitter alive as long as he could, until death, if it came to that. The vital link with the scout ship had to be maintained.

While others had clambered down into the caves, or splattering their abdomens upon the rocks of Shimkin Bay, Prmbn had remained alone to preserve Zardiacacteur’s last hope. The fate of the planet was certain. For millennia, its galaxy had slowly spiraled through its deathmate with star systems colliding each night in the sky. The population of Zardiacacteur had always known its predestined end. Some day their own star system would move into the gravitational tidal waves at the convergence of the two intersecting galaxies.

That day was fast approaching. The Visiot’s Astral Advisors had predicted that the tides of space would probably shake Zardiacacteur free of its atmosphere. The vast caves had been retrofitted with air bladders in an attempt to postpone the inevitable. Even now, the bladders were being pumped full of air. The food chambers were fully loaded and sealed by order of the Visiot. Housing was filling rapidly, lottery choice had supposedly been the process, but Prmbn had heard that a berth could be purchased.

And to what end, Prmbn thought. When the solar system crashed into the galactic intertexture, no life could survive. All would die.

Yet, Prmbn Snftn remained on duty. His job was that of antenna web mender. The antenna stretched across the volcanic crater of Mount Paropontak caldera. As Prmbn stretched his eight legs out on the web to feel for variant vibrations that would signify a break in the fabric, he cast his eight eyes to the sky. It was night, and the sky glowed red as interstellar space burned with the collision of molecules. The redness soaked insidiously into the black of the universe as though the two colliding galaxies had rent space and it was bleeding.

Would tonight be the night? Would he finally regain contact with the scout ship? Had it ever found the system they had monitored? The distant signal had revealed a civilization of beings on a planet filled with life, and air and water. Generations ago the ship had reported moving much closer to the little world, then silence, and now each night the sky glowed.

All had been in readiness. The ark ship had been built and waited to lift off while the population huddled in the caves. How much of the provisions had been pirated from the ark to supply the cowards below the surface of the planet? Was Prmbn the only one left with pride in his race, the Owuri, created in the image of God? Prmbn didn't know. Who was he but a lowly radio tech? Yet, he did feel a sad ironic sense of pride, and a misty cloud of tears rose from his lachrymal glands. Looking up to the red sky, Prmbn relented to his emotions and began to cry, his sobs shaking the web. If anyone heard their signal and sent word, he would signal back and be the savior of his race.

Below, in the hollow caves of the planet, the population ventured ever further. The oxygen pits were a legend. If the people could crawl deep enough to find them and survive the thousand millennia wait foretold on the ancient Crystal Tablets, it was doubtful that the creatures emerging in that latter day would be true Owuri.

Prmbn shivered at his cryptic thoughts, and the resulting reverberation of the web reminded him to get back to work. The transmitter must not fail!

*******

With a crash, the window blew open on its hinges. Instantly awake, Thompson jumped from his cot. The blizzard was blasting through the opening, sending papers flying in the shadowy darkness of the radio shack. Grumbling obscenities, he slammed the window shut and fiddled with the loose lock.

It was 4:45 a.m., too early to get up, and too damned cold to go back to bed. The coal had burned out. If the damned wind would stop, Digby could get through in the helicopter with fresh supplies and dry firewood. But the telephone lines were downed by the blizzard, and in such a storm, radio contact would be ridiculous to try. At least the electric lines were intact.

He looked across at the receiver. The reels on the recorder turned slowly while eight meters stood motionless, showing the constant carrier signal coming down from the dish. He had gathered cases of tapes, and all for what? He was disgusted. There was nobody out there. All this searching for alien life was hogwash. To block out his thoughts, he walked over and turned up the audio on the speakers, flooding the room with white noise that was the signal he monitored.

Going over to the countertop that constituted the kitchen. He prepared a cup of coffee and slid it into the microwave oven. Damn it was early. The clock changed to sixty seconds as he pushed the buttons. The cup spun as he watched the countdown to coffee, thinking of how he was trapped, spinning in this little box of a radio shack, waiting for his stint to end. Two years to go. Beep. Coffee.

As he walked back across the small room toward the obnoxious coal stove, Thompson was stopped in his tracks. The signal began to waver, then to oscillate. He turned and stared at the meters waving along with the sound of the oscillation. It could not be! No! It could not be!

The coffee slipped from his hand, splashing on the floor.

The signal sounded like crying!

*******

Prmbn looked out from the transmitter tunnel across the scorched web antenna. He could feel the irregular vibrations of several breaks in the web’s filaments, but once again, he was too weak to venture into the parched atmosphere. The stench of sulfur had gradually crept into the atmosphere without his detection. Prmbn could feel the acrid air fill his tired lungs and burn in his throat. It was only when his food shipment had arrived that the carriers had choked and told him how foul the air had become that he even noticed a difference.

No signal had arrived from the scout ship.

The sky was now changing nightly from orange to yellow as they neared the fury in space.

Tear clouds escaped his carapace in puffs as he sobbed for the death of his people. Tremors had shaken Zardiacacteur over night and the tunnel to the world below had fallen. If the Owuri had found the legendary oxygen springs… if… if…

Prmbn was very doubtful and he gave his heart over to grief, crying, shaking violently, and causing the web antenna to shake and ripple with his sobbing.

He looked out of the tunnel through burning eyes, across Shimkin Bay, to old Mount Tucorro. It was now a violently erupting volcano. Lava flowed in several glowing rivers down the mountain slopes into the bay to produce pillars of steam. What if… what if the Visiot was leading the Owuri down into a boiling hell? What if Mount Paropontak, that together with fabled sister to Tucorro guarded the mouth of Shimkin Bay, was not extinct, as the Visiot had proclaimed?

Prmbn sobbed then wept. The dry atmosphere absorbed his tear clouds, leaving barbed crystals in his joints. It hurt when he moved and the sulfurous air irritated the crystal scratches in his tender joint skin into oozing wounds. His tear fluid ran until Prmbn was covered in brittle paste.

In his agony, Prmbn Snftn, last of the Owuri on Zardiacacteur cried out his anguish in the ancient sacred tongue, as if he himself could call out to the scout ship. Rising up unsteadily on the web, standing on his rear four legs, he raised his front four legs to the furious heavens above.

“You’re too far away! Too far! Too late! Cry for Zardiacacteur! All of Zardiacacteur cry! Your Owuri have failed to read the Crystal Tablets! The Ten Tokens have been befouled! Cry for Zardiacacteur!

Prmbn lay down on the shredding web antenna , looking up into the flaming heavens above. If the scoutship had found the distant world, they might carry on the Owuri’s destiny. But not here, Zardiacacteur was burning.

*******

Thompson placed the floor, beating his arms. The cold was incessant, drilling to the marrow. Frost was forming on the inside if the cement block wall. The wind would not stop. It buffeted the door and covered the window with snow.

Two days ago he had been able to start a fire, but as the room warmed up, a hole in the roof had allowed melted snow to dribble water onto the woodpile. The wet wood was now frozen. He shook the can of tuner cleaner and pressed the button valve. Nothing. It was truly empty, as empty as his heart. He thought back to the day he and Jenny had run naked down the deserted Caribbean beach. He involuntarily shivered. So much for Global Warming!

The cold stung his ears. He feared their being frostbitten, then spied the headphones on the console. At least they would help to protect his ears against the cold. Grabbing every blanket in the building, Thompson wrapped himself into a great lump and plopped down in the chair.

The radio dirge continued. The tape reels turned slowly. The eight meters swayed with the lamenting signal.

Thompson’s joints soon stiffened in the cold. His muscles began to set, though what could he do? It hurt to move. Chilblains had set in. Next would come gangrene to the cuts on his hands, if he stayed alive that long. If… If…

The wind suddenly blasted the window open showering snow on his bare bed. Rigidly Thompson struggled to get up and close the window, his frozen fingers fumbling with the loose lock. The cold cut his joints like steeled knives as he returned to his chair, attempting to wrap himself in the blankets and put the headphones over his ears.

And in the night, Thompson began to cry. He couldn’t remember when he had cried last, and he hadn’t wanted to cry. But slowly, then faster, his breath left him in gasps. Tears formed trails of ice down his pallid cheeks. Sadly, he looked up at the eight meters. At least the machine was still running. He was doing his job. The receiver must not fail. The project would go on.

The meters again began to wave, then jump as the signal again began its oscillation. It sounded so much like crying.

*******

“Digby to base… Digby to base… Come in base.”

“Go ahead Digby.”

“Hey Collins, we got a problem.”

“What problem?”

“Thompson is dead.”

“Dead? What happened?”

“Froze solid, right there in his chair. Died on the job, I guess.”

“How long?”

“Couple of days, I guess. The window’s blown open, The whole place is full of snow, about a foot deep.”

“Roger, Digby. Will advise the professor. Standby. Clear.”

Digby switched the radio to the public address horn and climbed down from the chopper to make his way back to the hole in the snowdrift that covered the radio shack. Poor old Thompson, he said to himself as he prepared the dry kindling in the pot-bellied stove. Soon a steady coal fire would heat the frosted room. Clever of Thompson to poke holes in the scuttles to let out melted snow.

He looked around at Thompson’s sedentary corpse and noticed the piece of paper crumpled in the dead man’s icy blue fingers. If this were Thompson’s dying wish, he owed it to the man to have it known. Warily, Digby rolled the office chair through the snow toward the stove, the frozen Thompson leaning forward, too frozen to fall. He watched as the body steamed lightly near the stove, slowly thawing.

As the dead man’s fingers finally relinquished the message, Digby heard the radio crackle to life outside.

“Base to Digby. Base to Digby.”

The flyer stuffed the paper in a pocket in his flight jacket and scrambled back out through the hole in the snowdrift to his chopper.

“Go ahead, Collins. Digby here.”

“Region Command says to transport the body back here to base and they’ll take care of him. You okay with that?”

“Yeah. I’ll have him back by mid-day.”

“They want you to pack up the last couple tape reels, and the one on the recorder. There’s something they want to check out on them.”

“Roger that.”

“Make it as quick as possible. Reever is already on his way up there in a big bird with a team of engineers to remove the radio gear. The project has been canceled. It seems the signal stopped last night.”

“Roger on the speed.” Digby thought how strange for Thompson to die only to have the whole project cancelled. He fished the paper from his pocket and read it.

“Hey, Collins.”

“Go.”

“There was a note in Thompson’s hand. You might want to put this in the log, for what it’s worth. Doesn’t make much sense, though.”

“Okay, Digby. Got a pencil, go.”

“It says, as best I can make out. The writing is real bad. He must have been close to the end. Okay, here we go. ‘Too far away. Too far. Too late. Cry for Zar-dia-cac-too-rrr! All of Zar-dia-cac-too-rrr cry! Your Ow-oo-ree have failed to read the Crystal Tablets! The Ten Tokens have been befouled! Cry for Zar-dia-cac-too-rrr!’ That’s it, Collins. What do you think?”

“Zar-dia-cac-too-rrr. Sounds a little like French. He was probably on the ham bands. I got it down here. Wonder what it means?”

“Who knows? Too bad about Thompson. He died for nothing.”

“Yeah. The scientists are saying here that they don’t even think it was a real transmission, just colliding molecules giving out radio emissions.”

“Molecules, eh? Too bad about Thompson. Hey I have to get going if Reever’s on his way. Digby out and clear.”

“Roger. Base out and clear.”

Digby folded the paper and put it in his breast pocket, zipping the pocket shut. “Space aliens anyway,” he said in disgust, untying the sled from the chopper’s side wrack. Pulling Thompson out to the chopper would be quite a task. “You’d think we could find enough trouble here on earth without searching for it out in space…”