That night, at the bend in the hill-top country road - Crescendo Summit - Neary, with his Kodak Instamatic, joins a large group of sight-seers who have been spurred on by newspaper reports of the sightings and are waiting for another encounter. Disturbed yet fascinated by the UFO objects like he was, Jillian is there and introduces herself to Roy. Each of them were burned by the vision, and Roy jokes about his uneven facial burn.

Roy: It's better on you. You got it all over. I've got to tan the other side tonight.

When Roy looks at Jill's son Barry playing with a pile of mud shaped like a mound, the boy pats the wet dirt into place to form it. Kneeling down beside the boy and the mound, Roy realizes that the boy shares the same imprint of the shape. In a reverie, he talks of the significance of the visions.

Roy: I know this sounds crazy, but ever since yesterday on the road, I've been seeing this shape. Shaving cream, pillows...Dammit! I know this. I know what this is! This means something. This is important.

Suddenly, a shout erupts from the crowd

Sightseer: Here they come! Out of the northwest!

Lights are spotted in the hazy sky above the horizon.

Jillian: It's like Halloween for grownups.

Roy: Trick or treat!

As the powerful lights grow in intensity and approach closer, a staccato, vibrating roar becomes deafening. The brilliant lights of the UFO's are haloed by the haze in the atmosphere. The head of the family from the previous night's sighting holds up a sign: "Stop and Be Friendly."

Expectantly, everyone in the crowd cranes their eyes toward the skies. Roy senses that the lights are not UFO's when the air is suddenly churned up into clouds of dust and debris and a loud chopping noise breaks the silence.

Roy: Wait a minute!

They are helicopters sent to disperse the people on the hillside.

Dharmsala, Northern India: Lacombe and a team of foreign visitors arrive in the heat, buffeted by a multitude of worshippers (wearing white, saffron, and ecru robes) gathering to rhythmically chant five notes over and over again:

Lacombe [in French]: It's the pentatonic war. That old musical controversy between the five and seven note scales. I want to know...where are the sounds coming from?

A group of five leaders (including Lacombe) climb to a nearby hillside, an older Hindu man turns to the crowd below and repeats the question.

In unison, the thousands respond with one gesture and voice, pointing skyward.

Before an assembled group in the U.S. about one week later, Lacombe speaks in broken English about a breakthrough.

Lacombe: I want to share with you now the breakthrough that happened in India. We think it means something. We think it is important.

Lacombe: To help you learn, I am using the hand signs created by Zoltan Kodaly.

Lacombe: Kodaly developed these signs to teach music to deaf children.

One by one, at Lacombe's signal, each of the five notes in the Indian chant are played over the auditorium's sound system for the audience. And then, all five tones or notes in the riff are played - in sequence. Lacombe gestures with the hand signals for each tone. There is evidence that a certain musical pattern can be linked with the aliens' efforts to communicate.

At the Goldstone Radio Telescope (Station 14), a top-security missile tracking complex, one of the specialists excitedly shares with a colleague the newest deep space transmissions that have been received.

Specialist: We just received two fifteen minute broadcasts...104 rapid pulses. After a five second interval, 44 pulses. Another five second break and 30 pulses. Sixty seconds of silence and then an entirely new set of numbers. 40, break five. 36, break five. 10. A hundred and four rapid pulses...Wait sixty seconds and the whole doggone thing repeats.

Another specialist: Where are these signals coming from?

Specialist: Right in the neighborhood. Light travel time, roughly seven seconds. It's well within the plane of the ecliptic.

Another specialist: Are these non-random?...40...36...10...In response to that?

Specialist: No. They should be. We've been sending out this musical combination for weeks. But all we're getting back are numbers.

Another specialist: This could mean the Indian sounds reached a dead end. They don't mean a thing.

Lacombe and Laughlin have already arrived at the complex and are trying to decipher the readouts of the two repeating number patterns, in addition to following up on alien encounters. Suddenly, Laughlin's training as a cartographer proves useful.

Laughlin: Laughlin:...Excuse me. Before I got paid to, uh, speak French, I, uh, I used to read maps. This first number is a longitude...Two sets of three numbers. Degrees, minutes, and seconds. The first number has three digits and the last two are below sixty. Obviously, it's not in the right ascension and declination on the sky. These have to be earth coordinates.

Other Specialists: Surely, somebody has a map...There's a globe in the county supervisor's office.

Clumsily, the $2,500 globe is rolled up into the mobile glass cubicle crammed with telemetry tracking hardware, command consoles, and an ARP synthesizer. A finger traces the longitude and latitude lines of the coordinates, one from the south to the north, one from the east to the west.

The two fingers (and lines) meet in the U.S. western state of Wyoming. They realize they need a Geodetic Survey map of Wyoming, down to the square yard. Lacombe listens at the receiving console, shouting above all the other voices for everyone to listen. Lacombe sits down at the synthesizer and plays the five-note sequence in response.

Back in Indiana at the Guiler farmhouse, Barry repeatedly taps out the same five notes on his rainbow-colored, toy xylophone.

An intent, serious look of concentration comes over his face.

And Jillian sketches a charcoal drawing of a mountain, similar in shape to the one which Barry formed of mud.

Jillian's boy stares out through the porch screen to listen to ominous rumbles of thunder, and looks entranced at the turbulence developing in the cloudy sky.

A magnificently-beautiful, yet disturbing light grows in the rolling sky.

Jillian becomes fearful of being besieged by an impending attack of moving lights approaching the farmhouse. She grabs Barry, props a chair against the porch door, and locks the windows and pulls down the shades in the living room.

As Jillian runs into the kitchen to lock another door, Barry is irresistibly drawn to the front door, where the alien power intrudes through the keyhole with a reddish beam of radiant light. The young boy is beckoned to open the door.