Reed Fagan’s Reviews > Contact > Status Update

"She glanced over to Eda... figuring something on a small computer... She could feel as well as hear a low-pitched roaring every time the dodec scraped the wall...
"Do you understand what's going on?"
"Not at all," he shouted back. "I can almost prove this can't be happening. Do you know the Boyer-Lindquist coordinates?"
"No, sorry."
"I'll explain it to you later."
She was glad he thought there would be a "later"."

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.