The Hadar 7 orbital station had been drifting in orbit around an unnamed gas planet in the Gliese 581 system for a week. Dominica peeked through the porthole, observing how far away from Earth she and Sasha and Maks were. Although their families had worked here for years, nothing had prepared them for what was about to happen that night. It was Wednesday when Sasha accidentally picked up a strange string of sounds while testing a new radio wave scanner. The signal was unlike anything they had analysed so far. It had a rhythm, a structure - as if someone was trying to send a message. Maks, the most sceptical of the three, shrugged his shoulders. - 'It could be an echo of our own signals,' he muttered, leaning over the console. But Dominika knew her way around the coding. She read out a piece of binarised data and blinked in disbelief. - 'See, it's a repeating pattern. It can't be a coincidence,' she said, showing them the record on the monitor. The tension was growing. The signal was getting stronger by the hour, and their curiosity was intertwined with anxiety. Sasha connected the scanner to the station's main antenna. Through the window, they watched as the planet's lights against the stars seemed to pulsate according to the signal they were receiving. Maks, although initially unfazed, could no longer hide his excitement. - If it's not someone else's probe or an unwanted response, he thought. it means that something - or someone - is really trying to contact us. Suddenly, a map of the planetary system appeared on the screen, with a node marked on it that they had never seen before. Just beyond it, a red dot pulsed, slowly moving towards them. They all looked at each other, The silence was broken by Dominica: - Do we really want to find out what this signal is? Then a new string of sounds came from the loudspeaker - clearer, firmer, as if something was trying to break the barrier separating them from the unknown sender. The lights throughout the station dimmed and a message lit up in the centre of the screen: "CONNECTION ESTABLISHED". Everyone held their breath, unsure of what they were about to see.