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at least I will until we get something out of the spacecraft that contradicts it. But I was thinking, perhaps if we delayed the start of the X-ray telescope scan, and first stepped through the various digitalization rates on the low frequency radio, we might pick up some additional information on the exact spectrum of the scruff.”
    As Jacqueline shifted from being a companion for the evening to a colleague at work, Donald realized that the drifting mood of the picnic had disappeared, and they could talk shop standing in line just as easily.
    “Maybe,” he said as he started to pack the basket. “Let’s put this in the car and then get in the line for the show. We can talk about it more there.”
TIME: TUESDAY 5 MAY 2020
    The Deep Space Network spent five minutes (and many rubles) to launch the command into space. The five light-minute long string of radio pulses traveled for over a day before it reached the OE probe 200 AU away in its high arc over the Sun. The command was stored, and the spacecraft computer rapidly computed the check sum. It found no obvious errors, but the string of bits was treated like a potentially dangerous cancer virus. It was not allowed to get into the command mechanism just yet, for if there were something wrong in that string of bits, it could kill the spacecraft just as surely as a meteor strike. A copy of the bit stream stored in the holding memory was sent back to Earth. There the copy of the copy was checked with the original. Finally, another copy of the original command string, followed by a separate execute command, was sent out to reassure the OE probe that it could now change its operational state.
    Jacqueline was waiting when the next data dump came into the computer. It was nearly midnight—atypical working hour for a graduate student—only now she was not as lonely as she had been in previous months when she had sat at this console in the early morning hours.
    “Looks like a good dump,” said Donald as he watched the Deep Space Network report build up on his screen.
    Jacqueline turned to smile at him, but was interrupted by another, less kindly voice.
    “Clean up the low frequency radio data and do a quick plot on the screen,” Professor Sawlinski commanded.
    Jacqueline’s practiced fingers flew over the keyboard, and soon the computer was rearranging the data from spacecraft format to plotting format. There was a lot of data now that the digitalization rate had been increased, and it took some time.
    “Here it comes,” said Donald, as he watched the plot start to build up on Jacqueline’s screen. The complex, humped pattern of the low frequency radio variations snaked their way across the display, crowding all their variations into a few inches of screen. Jacqueline peered closely at the display and slowly the greenish white line changed texture, as if it were going out of focus.
    “The scruff is starting,” she said.
    They all looked as the slow variations became almost submerged in a flurry of noise.
    Jacqueline noted the time of onset of the scruff and stopped the slowly moving plot with a few strokes of the
delete
key. A few more commands, and soon a new plot came on the screen. This time the sinusoidal variations were well spaced, and the scruff was now a distinct pulsation.
    “It is definitely periodic!” Sawlinski said. “Expand it further!”
    In the next plot, the slow variations that were the basis of Jacqueline’s thesis had been reduced to agradually increasing trend line. And on that line there marched a series of noisy spikes, as equally separated as soldiers in a parade, but varying greatly in their size.
    “It certainly looks just like a pulsar,” exclaimed Sawlinski. “What is the period?”
    “I’ll run a spectral analysis of this section,” Jacqueline said.
    Soon the spectral analysis was on the screen. There was a lot of noise and some sideband spikes, but there was no doubt that the data centered predominantly at a frequency of 5.02 Hertz