One of the Egyptian technicians drove to the Mena House and brought back sandwiches and cokes. The scientists departed, to have a quick dinner and then resume work at a different location where a computer was available to do the complicated mathematics required for analysis of the data.
Rick and Scotty started work right away. The police driver sat in a chair and watched them. He spoke English, but wasn't much of a conversationalist. After a while the boys forgot he was there.
Listening to the space signal was strange. As the tape ran through, Rick was certain his ear detected a kind of pattern in the sounds. There was a continuous hiss; that was normal hydrogen on the 21-centimeter wave length. Then there were sharper hisses, as though some strange creature was trying to send a coded message through the noisy hydrogen background.
"It's a message of some kind," Rick stated. "I'll bet on it."
"Who sends messages from space?" Scotty asked with a grin. "Ghouls, ghosties, or long-legged beasties?"
"Don't laugh," Rick said impatiently. "Didn't you ever hear of Project Ozma?"
Scotty hadn't. "The wizard of Ozma?"
"The name comes from Princess Ozma of Oz, I guess, but it was the first project to use the Green Bank telescope to try to locate intelligent signals from space. Stuff exactly like this."
"You're kidding!"
"Nope. On the level."