Signal from Kepler-9 — Chapter 3

The message resolved fully on the ninth day, and it was not, in the end, a warning or a greeting or anything the mission planners had drafted contingencies for.

It was a question. Simple, structured, patient — the same question, Osei realized with a chill that had nothing to do with the ship’s recycled air, that humanity had been quietly asking the dark for over a century.

Is anyone there.

She sat with that for a long time before she let herself consider what it would mean to answer.