The Signal

But then the light began to flash on and off. That could hardly be natural. It must be a mirror being intermittently covered in order to send a signal of some kind. He alerted Astra to it.

Neither of them was familiar with whatever code was being used. After a few minutes the light vanished.

They naturally wanted to investigate, but how could they do so? "Heading along the bearing that the light came from wouldn't be practical," Fred observed. "It would probably mean a long journey dragging ourselves over land, maybe a matter of miles, and whoever was responsible would no doubt be long gone. We could reduce the land part of the journey by carrying on along the coast the optimum distance, but with only the bearing to go on we would have no way of knowing how far to go before turning inland."

"That signal was obviously being sent to someone," Astra pointed out. "To see it, they would have to be nearly on a direct line between the signaller and the direction of the sun. So that means they would have to be roughly on a line extending from the mirror to us to the sun."

"True. Probably between the mirror and us, since in the opposite direction there is only the lagoon for some distance. So whoever the message was for would be nearer to us than the signaller was, but we still have no way of finding them before they depart."

Astra responded: "Not necessarily. It may be that either the signalling point or the intended destination - or both - are fixed installations of some sort. So time might not be a factor. Do you want to see if we can find anything?"

1. "Yes. We could try going a short distance and see whether we get lucky."
2. "No. The odds are stacked against our finding anything within our very limited range for travelling over land."

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