Liz was silent for a moment. When she spoke again it was from the other edge of the window. She too was looking out at the spring morning, and at the armed convoy in the sky.

“Yes,” she said softly. “It would be nice. But to be serious, Sam, do you really think you could get any more funding than you’ve already got, to do your spare-time search for radio messages from space? And even if you were successful, do you think the Big Blow would wait long enough for us to decipher a message, then send one of our own, and eventually ask complex questions on sociology?”

She shook her head. “Would they be similar enough to us to understand what we’d be asking? Do you really think we’re missing something so fundamentally simple that just a hint over the light-years would make that much difference?”

Federman shrugged. His gaze remained fixed on the skeleton in the yard.

The scientist with no nose looked out over his city. For a long time he had fretted and fumed beneath the great dish antenna; then he had gone for a walk around the edge of the research center compound.

Years ago these hills had been suburbs. Now factories belched smoke into the air on all sides. The sight cheered him slightly. He could never look at such an obvious sign of progress and prosperity for long and stay in a black mood.

There were so many other things to be proud of, too.

After the invention of atomic weapons, before he was born, his parents’ generation had finally found the motivation to do the obvious and abolish war. The method had been there all along, but no one had been sufficiently motivated before. Now the fruits of peace were multiplying throughout the world.

Two automobiles for everyone! Fast, efficient stratospheric transport! Quick-foods easily dispensed from fluorocarbon-driven aerosol cans! The licentious luxury of lead-lined dinnerware!