Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction Of Jack McDevitt (2015) - Plot & Excerpts
I nearly tossed it into the trash with the stacks of other documents, tapes, and assorted flotsam left over from the Project. Had it been cataloged, indexed in some way, I’m sure I would have. But the envelope was blank, save for an eighteen-year-old date scrawled in the lower right hand corner, and beneath it, the notation “40 gh.” Out on the desert, lights were moving. That would be Brackett fine-tuning the Array for Orrin Hopkins, who was then beginning the observations that would lead, several years later, to new departures in pulsar theory. I envied Hopkins. He was short, round, bald, a man unsure of himself, whose explanations were invariably interspersed with giggles. He was a ridiculous figure, yet he bore the stamp of genius. And people would remember his ideas long after the residence hall named for me at Carrollton had crumbled. If I had not recognized my own limits and conceded any hope of immortality (at least of this sort), I certainly did so when I accepted the director’s position at Sandage.
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