The observatory was supposed to be empty, but a thin ribbon of light moved beneath the dome as I crossed the courtyard. I told myself it was the caretaker checking a fuse. Then the telescope turned on its own, slow and deliberate, toward a patch of sky no one had scheduled to study.
Inside, the control room smelled of dust and warm circuitry. A sequence of numbers blinked across the oldest monitor: eleven, twenty-three, forty-seven, then the same three numbers again. They were not coordinates, dates, or catalogue entries. When I wrote them down, the printer behind me began feeding out a star map.
I found the same pattern in Dr. Vale's notebook, squeezed between weather readings from 1986. Beside it she had written, not a signal, but an invitation. Vale had disappeared before I was born. My sensible options were to call security or leave. Instead, I opened the dome and let the telescope finish moving.
By dawn, nothing had landed and no voice had spoken. The city glittered below like a circuit board, ordinary and impossible at once. On the monitor, the numbers changed. This time they matched tomorrow's date and the observatory's exact coordinates. I saved the map, locked the control room, and decided I would return before midnight.
