"It had us that way, too," he said. "And then we figured maybe we were getting pure thought. Thought telepathed across the light years of unimaginable space. Just what the speed of thought would be no one could even guess. It might be instantaneous… it might be no faster than the speed of light… or any speed in between the two. But we do know one thing: that the signals we are receiving are the projection of thought.
Whether they come straight through space or whether they travel through some shortcut, through some manipulation of space-time frames, do not know and I probably will never know.
"It took us months to build that machine you saw in the other room.
Briefly, it picks up the signals, translates them from the pure energy of thought into actual thought, into symbols our mind can read. We also developed a method of sending our own thoughts back, of communicating with whatever or whoever it is that is trying to talk with Pluto. So far we haven't been successful in getting an entire message across. However, apparently we have succeeded in advising whoever is sending out the messages that we are trying to answer, for recently the messages have changed, have a note of desperation, frantic command, almost a pleading quality.”
He brushed his coat sleeve across his brow.
"It's all so confusing," he confessed.
"But," asked Herb, "why would anyone send messages to Pluto? Until men came here, there was no life on the planet. Just a barren planet, without any atmosphere, too cold for anything to live. The tail end of creation.”
Kingsley stared solemnly at Herb.
"Young man," he said, "we must never take anything for granted. How are we to say there never was life or intelligence on Pluto? How do we know that a great civilization might not have risen and flourished here aeons ago? How do we know that an expeditionary force from some far-distant star might not have come here and colonized this outer planet many years ago?”
"It don't sound reasonable," said Herb.