The spacecraft passed by Mars, swung beyond it to Jupiter and then slipped past the giant planet into the dark void. It was the first man-made object to leave the solar system, so scientists mounted a plaque on the craft in case aliens corralled the tiny ship as it hurtled past them. The plaque showed a line etching of a naked man and woman standing in front of a silhouette of the spacecraft. The man’s right hand was raised in greeting. A diagram of a hydrogen atom, its wavelength meant to establish scale, and a series of converging lines were designed to help the aliens figure out where our sun is located. A schematic drawing of the solar system’s planets, with a binary code showing their relative distances, pinpointed the origin of the space probe. The idea had been to find a way to communicate basic information to an alien life form. Paneb had taken the same approach. Brian and Diane, drawn in profile, were holding hands. He had a baseball cap on his head and a short spear in his free hand. A small cat was at her feet. Tim puzzled over that for a minute until he remembered the Sylvester the Cat shirt she had been wearing.
