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Laughing, Joss and Ellie wrestled the bob to a nearly stationary position and clambered up the sloping tile walls.
"It must be permitted by the 1st Amendment," she said.
"Or the 1st Commandment," he replied....
But they were escorted out of the museum by a tight phalanx of uniformed personnel, who were concerned perhaps that Ellie and Joss might next sidle aboard the steam calliope in pursuit of an elusive God. -p214

It's fun reading & learning Sagan was obsessed w/ "noise", the idea that in any smattering of data, often acoustical, if you listen close enough you hear some story being told. When I learned about dendritic patterns, I got similarly obsessed w/ them & their ubiquity.
A good philosophical problem posed in this ch.: that the "Message" is plans for a Trojan Horse/Doomsday Machine. Plot hasn't resolved this yet.

"After 1945...leaders changed, weapons systems changed, strategy changed, but the # of [nuclear] weapons only increased. The time came when there were more than 25,000...10 for every city... Only so monumental a danger could undo so monumental a foolishness, endorsed by so many leaders in so many nations for so long... But a sentence of death, as Samuel Johnson had noted, concentrates the mind wonderfully." – p. 157