Chapter 1

Kayleigh had first fallen in love with the stars when she was eight. It was the annual summer vacation up north, into the soft-focus land of cottages and evergreens, where they all relaxed in the slow summer cool and Kayleigh tried to ignore the impending school year. But this time her mother had been replaced by her father's new girlfriend, a spindly thing that seemed to have walked out of a clothes ad, and her father never left her alone -- since this was his monthly weekend, he wanted to make up for lost time. Everything was indescribably off.

But that night, as she lay on the grass listening to cicadas in the distance, she looked up at the stars and was suddenly filled with an intoxicating mixture of calm and wonder. It was nothing like the city, where only one or two brave lights poked out from behind the cloak of smog and light pollution. There were so many stars, uncountable, all spread out before her but always out of her reach. Unlike her rapidly mutating family, the stars were eternal, and always reliable. There would be more nights at the cottage, and plenty more stargazing, but it was that night more than anything else that brought Kayleigh to where she was today.

Where she was today was in her university's astronomy lab at 1:13 AM, gazing into a telescope with extreme boredom. This was typical grad student minion-work. Twice a week she had to spend her nights watching the skies for signs of anomalies, whatever that meant. So far everything had been peaceful every night, and the same stars that used to produce such wonder for her had become a dull duty of employment. One of the other grad students had claimed to have seen a star go supernova on his watch, but other than that everyone agreed that it was a dull burden.

There was a knock at the door, startling Kayleigh out of her self-pitying reverie. She wondered who it could be at this hour -- security wondering why the lights were on, or perhaps something more ominous.

It turned out to be something significantly less ominous. Tom, her boyfriend, waving at her through the little window inside the door. She let him in. "What are you doing up this late?"

"Horror movie marathon on the TV," said Tom. "And then I figured since I was already up and too scared to sleep, I might as well bring you a little care package." He handed her a mass of tin foil, inside which was wrapped a couple of cookies and a BLT sandwich.

"Aw, my favourite," said Kayleigh, taking a bite of the cold sandwich. "You're such a sweetie." She kissed him on the cheek, leaving a ring of bacon grease in her wake.

He blushed in that cute way he always did and jabbed his fingers together. "Well, it was really nothing you know ... you're the one who's out here doing science and everything."

Kayleigh had met Tom at a campus pub, instantly attracted to him because he was the only one who looked as out of place and uncomfortable as she felt. He had turned out to be a nice guy, although more than a little childish, with his bedroom full of sci-fi books and toys. Nowadays she felt sorry for him more than anything else. After college he had failed to find a job in the toilet-bowl economy and unlike Kayleigh hadn't had the foresight to hide in academia. She had toted him off like a pet to this big research university halfway across the country, where he spent his days watching soap operas and trying to figure out how far her stipend could stretch.

All that, and she wasn't even faithful to him.

It was one time, Kayleigh kept trying to tell herself. Everyone failed to live up to their own morals once in a while. ("Failed to live up to her own morals" sounded a lot better in her head than "fucked her supervisor at a conference".) But every day she mentally repeated her infidelity in her mind. The feel of Richard's curly chest hair against her cheek, his masculine musk, the soft head of his uncut cock ... she couldn't forget a second of it. Her and Richard hadn't spoken about it since returning from that fateful conference, but deep down she knew that if the opportunity came up she would do it again.

"Kay?" said Tom, waving his hand in front of her face. "You listening?"

"What?" She had been distracted by the strain of pity and guilt that had been a constant presence in her mind for the past three months. "Oh, sorry. I just zoned out for a second there. Late night."

"You sure you're okay to work like this?"

She waved away the concern. "If I get too tired I'll just grab a Coke from down the hall. That machine has to have like fifty bucks in quarters from me alone in it."

"I think there's like a 24-hour coffee place around here. If you want I can get you some java from there."

Kayleigh couldn't help but smile. Sometimes she felt like a big sister to Tom, which was sweet but not really conducive to a romantic relationship. "It's okay. For the last time, you don't have to wait on me."

"You're right," he said. Tom glanced at the display monitors, full of anonymous stars and data he couldn't comprehend. "I guess I should be going then."

"Well, I never said you had to go," she said, laying her hand on his. "I wouldn't mind some company on this long dark night."

Ten minutes later they were making out, him straddling her on the leather office chair which somehow managed not to collapse under both their weights. The feeling of Tom's tongue in her mouth and his hands running up and down her sides was nice, Kayleigh thought. The fear of getting caught made it almost nostalgic. It felt like high school. But there, again, was the issue: it seemed like a stupid thing to complain about, but things were too comfortable with Tom, too familiar.

A loud buzz interrupted them. It was the radio, the powerful receiver steered towards the stars. With a guilty look on her face Kayleigh pulled herself away from her boyfriend and flipped the switch to open a radio channel. "Hello?"

There was a lot of static. Kayleigh frowned and moved to hang up, but suddenly a voice broke through. It was bizarre, like an accent neither of them had ever heard before, in an androgynous voice. Even the basic sounds were off, simple vowels tripped over. But for all that, the message was still quite comprehensible.

"Greetings to the denizens of Ira-3 ... the planet you call Earth ... my name is Gaog, and I am not supposed to be contacting you."

Kayleigh flipped on the transmitter. "Who is this? Is this a prank?"

"But I must tell you ... there are worlds and species out there beyond compare. Species just as intelligent, if not more, than you. They do not want to deal with you. They think you are too primitive, too destructive. But I believe differently."

"I'm asking you again ... who is this?"

The speaker didn't respond to their words, just continued on. "Do not destroy yourselves. We are watching, and if you just hold on for a little longer, manage to pull back from the brink ... all will be yours, and you shall be introduced into the society of the universe."

Kayleigh and Tom exchanged looks of bafflement. She ran her hands over the controls at lightning speed. There was a long patch of static, and then the voice continued.

"If you heed nothing else I say, heed this ... you are not alone."

The transmission cut off as abruptly as it had begun. "Hello? Are you still there?" Kayleigh frantically tried to trace the transmission, trying every method she knew to determine its origin. And then, eventually, one worked.

She took in a deep breath. "It wasn't a prank."

"What do you mean?"

"That transmission came from the orbit of Mars."

Tom still looked perplexed. "So, was it like astronauts dicking around or something?"

"There are no astronauts around fucking Mars Tom." Kayleigh's voice was not angry but excited, almost giddy. Scratch that, absolutely giddy. "This is the real deal. A genuine, bonafide, real-life alien transmission. Holy shit."

"You sure?" Tom asked. By this time his girlfriend was bounding around the lab, manic glee filling every pore of her body. She punched the air vigorously and then skipped around the huge telescope in the centre of the room.

"Pretty damn sure." She bounded back into her seat, though her excitement would not be denied, and the energy transferred itself to twitching fingers and a stomping foot. "We need to send a reply. I need to notify people ... God, can you wrap your head around it? An actual alien is talking to us."

Tom still had a look of disbelief on his face. Kayleigh guessed he was right to be skeptical -- this was pretty fantastical after all, and it could still be just a well-executed prank. But it didn't feel like it. She had a hunch that this was real, that this transmission was the big one.

The alien had used English, so that was what she decided to reply in. Kayleigh grabbed the old dusty radio set and promptly began transmitting. "We have received your message. My name is Kayleigh Griffin, and I am ... a scientist. We want to learn about these worlds that you speak of. Who are you? What are you? Please reply."

Silence reigned in the observatory. Kayleigh was half out of her seat, leaning forward on her haunches, waiting tensely for the next transmission. Tom still seemed dumbfounded. "Of all the nights for me to bring food..." he said under his breath, then shook his head and went back to quiet.

They waited. And waited. But the deafening radio silence persisted.

Kayleigh cast a glance towards the clock. An hour had passed. It had certainly seemed like a long time, but it still struck her. Had something happened to their contact? Had he (or she or it or some pronoun humans couldn't even comprehend) only intended to send the one short message, and would leave them in the dark, trying to decipher those few lines? Had her message failed in whatever way? Would she be known as the incompetent grad student that ruined the first contact?

"I need to call Richard ... I mean, Professor Bell." She got up from her seat and paced around the room, anxiously jabbing numbers into her cell phone. It was 3 AM, but she knew that Richard would want to here the news as soon as possible. Honestly, she should have called him an hour ago.

The phone rang three times before she heard that ragged, sexy voice. How could she think about sex, especially infidelity, at a time like this, she chided herself. "Kay, you'd better have a damn good reason for waking me up in the middle of the night."

"I do." And then the whole story came out in excited childish ramblings. Kayleigh wished she could see Richard's face and take in his reaction. Over the phone he was silent, giving her nothing but the occasional heavy breath, and she had no idea whether he believed her or not.

Finally, after she had exhausted herself, he spoke. "Are you sure about this? Have you triple-checked the co-ordinates?"

"Quadruple checked them. This is too exciting to fuck up."

He was chuckling in that parental way he did. "Well, it might be a problem with the machine. Let's wait until tomorrow and I'll check to make sure it's working properly. If it is ... then we have quite the discovery on our hands."

"Great." She was beaming. "I'll see you tomorrow then."

"Don't get too wound up -- like I said, it's probably just a glitch. Still ... don't tell anyone else, okay? Department secret, for now."

"Uh huh." After a few more pleasantries she hung up. The manic energy of discovery, of having a childhood fancy appear before her practically wrapped in a bow, was still filling Kayleigh. She wanted to go dancing, or run a marathon, or get in a big fight. But she couldn't abandon her post.

She bounded up to Tom, who was watching the screen, waiting for something to happen again. It seemed like he might be waiting a long time. She threw her arms around him and gave him a big sloppy kiss. "Let's fuck!"

"Wait, are you serious?"

"I'm always serious about fucking." She was nibbling his neck and unbuttoning his shirt. "We're probably the only two people on campus. We can make as much noise as we want."