The equations went on to more complex reactions, formulas that no man on Earth had ever seen before. They were showing us the summation of their knowledge, and they had obviously been dealing with nuclear energies for much longer than we have on Earth.
But interspersed among the new equations, they repeated a set of formulas that always began with the lithium-hydride fusion reaction. The message ended in a way that wrenched my stomach: the fusion bomb reaction and its cohorts were repeated ten straight times.
I'm not sure of what day it was on the calendar, but the clock on the master control console said it was well past eleven.
Rizzo rubbed a weary hand across his eyes. "Well, what do you think?"
"It's pretty obvious," I said. "They have the bombs. They've had them for quite some time. They must have a lot of other weapons, too—more ... advanced. They're trying to tell us their history with the equations. First they depended on natural sources of energy, plants and animals; then they developed artificial energy sources and built up a technology; finally they discovered nuclear energy."
"How long do you think they've had the bombs?"
"Hard to tell. A generation ... a century. What difference does it make? They have them. They probably thought, at first, that they could learn to live with them ... but imagine what it must be like to have those weapons at your fingertips ... for a century. Forever. Now they're so scared of them that they're beaming their whole history out into space, looking for someone to tell them how to live with the bombs, how to avoid using them."
"You could be wrong," Rizzo said. "They could be boasting about their arsenal."
"Why? For what reason? No ... the way they keep repeating those last equations. They're pleading for help."