She becomes director of "Project Argus," a New Mexico radio telescope array searching for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

[a][b] Further analysis reveals a retransmission of Adolf Hitler’s 1936 Olympic speech, the first TV signal to escape Earth’s ionosphere.

At the President’s insistence, Ellie meets religious leaders Billy Jo Rankin and Palmer Joss.

The final message piece is found when billionaire S. R. Hadden suggests checking for phase modulation, revealing the primer.

Extremists plant a bomb in the Wyoming facility, which detonates during testing, killing Drumlin and delaying the project indefinitely.

Ellie, Vaygay, and Devi secure seats, joined by Nigerian physicist Abonnema Eda and Chinese archaeologist Xi Qiaomu.

The activated Machine transports the group through wormholes to a station near the Milky Way’s center, where each meets an extraterrestrial in the form of a loved one.

Ellie’s visitor, appearing as Ted, explains their species’ motives and a project to alter the universe’s properties using mass in Cygnus A.

The novel later reveals Hadden faked his death, secretly launching himself into space using cryogenics, but this remains unknown to the characters.

As an adult, he preferred realistic stories that helped readers understand real science and history, like Robert Heinlein's "—And He Built a Crooked House—" and L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall.

In 1978, Sagan predicted that because of science fiction, "I know many young people who would, of course, be interested, but in no way astounded, were we to receive a message tomorrow from an extraterrestrial civilization".