"But it's a code that can be cracked easily," Rizzo muttered.
"Yes," I agreed. "Now what the hell kind of a code can they assume will be known to another race that they've never seen?"
Rizzo leaned back on his bunk and his face was lost in shadows.
"An interstellar code," I rambled on. "Some form of presenting information that would be known to almost any race intelligent enough to understand lasers...."
"Binary!" Rizzo snapped, sitting up on the bunk.
"What?"
"Binary code. To send a signal like this, they've gotta be able to write a message in units that're only a billionth of a second long. That takes computers. Right? Well, if they have computers, they must figure that we have computers. Digital computers run on binary code. Off or on ... go or no-go. It's simple. I'll bet we can slap that signal on a tape and run it through our computer here."
"To assume that they use computers exactly like ours...."
"Maybe the computers are completely different," Rizzo said excitedly, "but the binary code is basic to them all. I'll bet on that! And this computer we've got here—this transistorized baby—she can handle more information than the whole Army could feed into her. I'll bet nothing has been developed anywhere that's better for handling simple one-plus-one types of operations."
I shrugged. "All right. It's worth a trial."