Extraordinary Claims
Her supervisor answers wonder with the coldest of rules
By morning Aya had rehearsed her report far more carefully than any lecture she had given.
Dr. Halden, the observatory's director, listened in silence, his expression impossible to read.
He was a man far more than the young scientists who worked beneath him.
"A repeating signal," he said slowly, "is far less than you seem to think."
Aya insisted that the structure inside the pulses was far more complex than any natural source.
Halden leaned back and quoted the oldest rule of their profession without a hint of warmth.
" claims," he reminded her, "demand that the be as well."
Science, he explained, required that every explanation be ruled out before belief began.
He demanded that she keep the discovery secret until it had survived the harshest tests.
Aya felt the excitement of the night draining into something far colder and heavier.
She had expected wonder, yet she received only the weary caution of an older man.
"I am not doubting you," Halden said, "I am doubting the universe, which lies constantly."
He proposed that a second telescope observe the same region without knowing what to expect.
If the signal were real, he argued, it would appear far more than once by chance.
Aya understood the logic, though the felt far crueller than any outright refusal.
Every hour of caution was an hour the signal might fade and never return.
Yet she also knew that a single mistake could end her career far more quickly.
History was full of scientists whose careless had made them permanent warnings.
Halden insisted that she document each step, however small, in written detail.
"The data must be far stronger than our hope," he said, "or hope will us."
Aya nodded, swallowing the argument that had risen so eagerly to her lips.
She recognised that his coldness was not cruelty but a kind of fierce protection.
, not enthusiasm, was what separated a discovery from an embarrassing dream.
That evening she returned to the dish, far more determined and far less certain than before.
The sky waited above her, patient and vast and utterly silent once again.
If the signal wished to be believed, she thought, it would simply have to speak twice.