Below the double helix, in faint but unmistakable English characters—as if etched by a human hand a billion miles from Earth—were four words:
“They knew we were coming,” Aris breathed. “They left a message… four million years ago.”
The Aurora . Humanity’s first interstellar probe. It had taken thirty years and the GDP of a mid-sized continent to build. Two weeks ago, it had arrived at Proxima Centauri b and begun transmitting data that would rewrite every textbook from here to the Andromeda Galaxy.