It took Rizzo a few hours to get everything properly set up. I did some arithmetic while he worked. If the message was in binary code, that meant that every cycle of the signal—every flick of the dancing line on our screen—carried a bit of information. The signal's wavelength was 5000 Angstroms; there are a hundred million Angstrom units to the centimeter; figuring the speed of light ... the signal could carry, in theory at least, something like 600 trillion bits of information per second.
I told Rizzo.
"Yeah, I know. I've been going over the same numbers in my head." He set a few switches on the computer control board. "Now let's see how many of the 600 trillion we can pick up." He sat down before the board and pressed a series of buttons.
We watched, hardly breathing, as the computer's spools began spinning and the indicator lights flashed across the control board. Within a few minutes, the printer chugged to life.
Rizzo swivelled his chair over to the printer and held up the unrolling sheet in a trembling hand.
Numbers. Six-digit numbers. Completely meaningless.
"Gibberish," Rizzo snapped.
It was peculiar. I felt relieved and disappointed at the same time.
"Something's screwy," Rizzo said. "Maybe I fouled up the circuits...."