Baoufstq-nlfnabz-cqfclk-40-9-7-ciwaz -

Elias realized with a jolt of ice in his chest that the string wasn't a message to Earth. It was a message from Earth.

"CIWAZ," he muttered, typing the final suffix into the search engine of the clandestine DSRI database. The screen flickered. A single, redacted file from 1974 appeared. It was a project titled Project CIWAZ: The Echo Response . baoufstq-nlfnabz-cqfclk-40-9-7-ciwaz

He looked at the astronomical charts. Coincidentally, or perhaps by design, the coordinates for the center of the void were roughly forty degrees off the galactic plane. The ninth sector. The seventh quadrant. Elias realized with a jolt of ice in