potentially most promising scientific instrument ever devised. Though it could serve many purposes, one was paramount — the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
One of the oldest dreams of mankind, this remained no more than a dream until the rise of radio
astronomy, in the second half of the twentieth century. Then, within the short span of two decades, the combined skills of the engineers and the scientists gave humanity the power to span the interstellar gulf
— if it was willing to pay the price.
The first puny radio telescopes, a few tens of meters in diameter, had listened hopefully for signals
from the stars. No one had really expected success from these pioneering efforts, nor was it achieved.
Making certain plausible assumptions about the distribution of intelligence in the Galaxy, it was easy to calculate that the detection of a radio-emitting civilization would require telescopes not decameters, but kilometers, in aperture.
There was only one practical method of achieving this result — at least, with structures confined to
the surface of the Earth. To build a single giant bowl was out of the question, but the same result could be obtained from an array of hundreds of smaller ones. CYCLOPS was visualized as an antenna "farm" of hundred-meter dishes, uniformly spaced over a circle perhaps five kilometers across. The faint signals from each element in that army of antennas would be added together, and then cunningly processed by
computers programmed to look for the unique signatures of intelligence against the background of cosmic noise.
The whole system would cost as much as the original Apollo Project. But unlike Apollo, it could
proceed in installments, over a period of years or even decades. As soon as a relatively few antennas had been built, CYCLOPS could start operating. From the very beginning, it would be a tool of immense value to the radio astronomers. Over the years, more and more antennas could be installed, until eventually the whole array was filled in; and all the while, CYCLOPS would steadily increase in power and capability, able to probe deeper and deeper into the universe.
It was a noble vision, though there were some who feared its success as much as its possible failure.
However, during the Time of Troubles that brought the twentieth century to its unlamented close, there was little hope of funding such a project. It could be considered only during a period of political and financial stability; and therefore CYCLOPS did not get under way until a hundred years after the initial design studies.
A child of the brief but brilliant Muslim Renaissance, it helped to absorb some of the immense wealth
accumulated by the Arab countries during the Oil Age. The millions of tons of metal required came from the virtually limitless resources of the Red Sea brines, oozing up along the Great Rift Valley. Here, where the crust of the Earth was literally coming apart at the seams as the continental plates slowly separated, were metals and minerals to banish all fear of shortages for centuries to come.
Ideally, CYCLOPS should have been situated on the Equator, so that its questing radio mirrors could
sweep the heavens from pole to pole. Other requirements were a good climate, freedom from earthquakes
or other natural disasters — and, if possible, a ring of mountains to act as a shield against radio
interference. Of course, no perfect site existed, and political, geographical, and engineering compromises had to be made. After decades of often acrimonious discussion, the desolate ‘Empty Quarter’ of Saudi
Arabia was chosen; it was the first time that anyone had ever found a use for it.
Wide tracks were roughly graded through the wilderness so that ten-thousand ton hover-freighters
could carry in components from the factories on the shore of the Red Sea. Later, these were
supplemented by cargo airships. In the first phase of the project, sixty parabolic antennas were arranged in the form of a cross, its five-kilometer arms extending north-south, east-west. Some of the faithful objected to this symbol of an alien religion, but it was explained to them that this was only a temporary state of affairs. When the "Eye of Allah" was completed, the offending sign would be utterly lost in the total array of seven hundred huge dishes, spaced uniformly over a circle eighty square kilometers in
extent.
By the end of the twenty-first century, however, only half of the planned seven hundred elements had
been installed. Two hundred of them had filled in most of the central core of the array, and the rest
formed a kind of picket fence, outlining the circumference of the giant instrument. This reduction in
scale, while saving billions of solars, had degraded performance only slightly. CYCLOPS had fulfilled
virtually all its design objectives, and during the course of the twenty-second century had wrought almost as great a revolution in astronomy as had the reflectors on Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar, two