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          Status Report 91

 Austin, Randolph and Metaxas have been
 analysing the message received from the
 unknown persons referred to hereon as the
 'saurians'.  Fisher and I have been assisting.

 As you know, we have managed to break the
 transmission into frames and decode them.
 The audio data remains anomalous.  When
 decoded as PCM and loaded into a wave analyser
 we see a series of barks and glottal noises,
 doubtless the creature's language.  When
 directly injected into our audio circuits,
 this is what we hear.

 If the sound is played through a speaker,
 however, we hear the English words below:

  ON?  OH.  TESTING.. ONE TWO THREE..
  UM, GREETINGS, FELLOW SENTIENTS.
  WE WISH TO OFFER OUR..

 ..at this point another voice says 'NAUGHTY!'
 and the transmission breaks up.
 
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 As near as Fisher and I can establish,
 something is intercepting the sound vibrations
 in mid-air and translating them into English.

 We do not know what is doing this, let alone
 how.

 It would appear that the transmission, which
 was apparently blocked by the Papal forces in
 the same way as our own broadcasts are being
 jammed, was being made by another race
 attempting to contact us, apparently in hopes
 of forming an alliance.

 It seems probable that the saurian creatures 
 are off-worlders like ourselves, most likely
 some kind of exploratory team left stranded
 by the Pope in the same manner as us.

 We did not manage to get a direction on the
 transmission, so we can only wait for further
 attempts to contact us.
 
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