You activated a memory of a passage in one of my favourite books ( Blindsight, Peter Watts. it's amazing and free online):
I await further instructions. They arrive 839 minutes later, and they tell me to stop studying comets immediately.
I am to commence a controlled precessive tumble that sweeps my antennae through consecutive 5°-arc increments along all three axes, with a period of 94 seconds. Upon encountering any transmission resembling the one which confused me, I am to fix upon the bearing of maximal signal strength and derive a series of parameter values. I am also instructed to retransmit the signal to Mission Control.
I do as I'm told. For a long time I hear nothing, but I am infinitely patient and incapable of boredom.
I await further instructions. They arrive 839 minutes later, and they tell me to stop studying comets immediately.
I am to commence a controlled precessive tumble that sweeps my antennae through consecutive 5°-arc increments along all three axes, with a period of 94 seconds. Upon encountering any transmission resembling the one which confused me, I am to fix upon the bearing of maximal signal strength and derive a series of parameter values. I am also instructed to retransmit the signal to Mission Control.
I do as I'm told. For a long time I hear nothing, but I am infinitely patient and incapable of boredom.