Looking for signs of intelligent life on other planets by trying to detect radio signals was a waste of time; it would take too much power to broadcast any significant distance. Light, however, was easier to project over the distances required to traverse interstellar space. And perhaps, signals from another intelligence have been detected, mistakenly interpreted as a star pulsating, its brightness changing due to some natural phenomenon.

Well, it's something to do when you're stuck monitoring the weather at the South Pole...

"Answer, Please Answer" was published in "Amazing Stories," October, 1962.

Benjamin William Bova (November 8, 1932 – November 29, 2020) was an American writer and editor. During a writing career of 60 years, he was the author of more than 120 works of science fact and fiction, an editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, for which he won a Hugo Award six times, and an editorial director of Omni; he was also president of both the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America.

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"Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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