The Far Side of Quiet

About this book

The far side of the Moon is the quietest radio environment in the solar system, which is why humanity built Meridian Station there: a crater full of listening dishes, shielded by two thousand kilometres of rock from the endless shout of Earth. Dr Priya Sharma came for the silence and stayed for the work, mapping the faint breathing of the early universe with a small wintering over crew. Then, in the hour between calibrations, in a band nobody uses anymore, the silence produces a whisper. Coherent. Engineered. Arriving from the outer dark on a trajectory no catalogue can match, repeating with the patience of clockwork built by hands. It is not a pulsar. It is not a glitch. And the only person alive who can answer it is an eighty four year old engineer who has been waiting her whole life for the call.