Rizzo turned to the oscilloscope. It was flickering again.
"Think it's the same thing?"
"No doubt. You're taping it anyway, aren't you?"
"Yeah, sure. Automatically."
Suddenly, in mid-flight, the signal winked off. The pulsations didn't simply smooth out into a steady line, as they had before. The screen simply went dead.
"That's funny," Rizzo said, puzzled. He checked the oscilloscope. "Nothing wrong here. Something must've happened to the telescope."
Suddenly I knew what had happened. "Take the spectrometer off and turn on the image-amplifier," I told him.
I knew what we would see. I knew why the oscilloscope beam had suddenly gone off scale. And the knowledge was making me sick.
Rizzo removed the spectrometer set-up and flicked the switch that energized the image-amplifier's viewscreen.
"Holy God!"