Life on Another Planet
 An artificial radio signal from Barnard's Star listing prime numbers (although the term "prime" is never used in the story) is received at the Mesa Radio Astronomy Observatory. One of the radio-astronomers is a Russian spy and tries to inform his superiors; however he is uncovered by his fellows and subsequently killed. The CIA hires James Bludd, a prominent astrophysicist, to try to understand what is going on. Several plotlines follow and intertwine, most of them centering around personal greed. News of the extraterrestrial message leaks to the outside world, with different consequences. A bum and a waitress build a cult, calling themselves the Star People, which seeks to find a new home on the Barnard's planet. Multinational, a corporation, decides to invest money into the cult, in order to have an easy to manipulate spaceship crew ready to take possession of the inhabited planet on behalf of the company. A dying biologist, Dr.Crowben, decides to push on the creation of plant-human hybrids biologically suited to the planet environment, which also this plan falls within the scope of the Multinational. Meanwhile, the two surviving astrophysicists have been abducted by the KGB, and Bludd learns that Russians plan to answer to the signal using neutrinos. The international situation further complicates when a small fictional African state, Sidiami, burdened by debts with other countries, decides to "secede from planet Earth" and declares itself a colony of the planet around Barnard. The "Star People" decide to relocate in Sidiami, and the Multinational starts plans to launch a probe towards the Barnard's planet from there. James Bludd finds himself implicated in the ongoing struggle between the USA, the Multinational and the "Star People" to get advantage of the situation. At the end, the space probe is launched towards the Barnard's planet. Bludd, convinced that humankind is not ready for contact with aliens, has sabotaged it and after a while makes it explode with the aid of a remote control. When later, in the observatory, a new possible artificial extraterrestrial signal is received from space, Bludd destroys all evidence of it with a smile.