“There’s no way it could be Vega, Dr. Arroway. The system’s only a few hundred million years old. Its planets are still in the process of forming. There isn’t time for intelligent life to have developed there. It has to be some background star. Or galaxy.” “But then the transmitter power has to be ridiculously large,” responded a member of the quasar group who had returned to see what was happening. “We need to get going right away on a sensitive proper motion study, so we can see if the radio source moves with Vega.”
