He looked at the jumble of equipment speculatively.
"I still don't know how a time machine might work," he said finally.
"Do you have any sort of handbook, operating manual, anything like
that? Or do they have such things in your time?"
"Operating manual? I don't think so. There are some pictures--" Brown
stepped over to the machine and touched a large flattened sphere
which grew out of the base. "This is the power unit. If you press
these studs, various pictures--'schematics', I believe you would call
them--are projected on the surface. Is that what you want?"
"That sounds like it," Dolan said. "But I did press those studs.
Nothing happened."
"That is because the power unit is not operating. It does not come
on, as it should, when we press this button." He indicated a stud on
the cubicle control unit. "That, I suppose, is one of the major things
wrong with the machine."
"Ummm, yeah, I see," Dolan said. He squatted and examined the power
unit more closely. "One of these pairs now--" he traced them with his
finger up to the control unit, "must be the control pair." He took a
piece of chalk and began numbering the terminals rapidly.
"Now," he said, "if the control pair is shorted, the power should be
on, but there must be overload protection of some kind, that's probably
kicked out, so let's just cut all this junk loose and then short the
possible control pairs one at a time, see what happens then."
He reached for a pair of side-cutters. The three gun runners looked
at each other. Brown nodded slightly. They moved quickly back out of
Dolan's way.
* * * * *
"OK," Dolan said half an hour later. "We've got the power unit
perking, and we've got the pictures. Now what do they mean? This block
interwiring diagram now, it seems to be what I'm looking for, but I
can't read the tags they've got on it. You know which block in the
diagram corresponds to which piece of equipment?"
Brown studied the luminous white lines against the black polished
background. He put a well-manicured finger on one square. "According to
the lettering," he said, "this is the control unity, the small cube at
the top with the buttons. This other, I do not know, it says: 'temporal
re-integrator.' I do not know what that might be."
Dolan frowned doubtfully. "'Temporal re-integrator'," he repeated.
"Could be anything. What do the others say?" Among the litter the
first electrician had left, there was a short length of lead-shielded
two-conductor number 14 wire. He picked it up and began to run it
absently through his fingers, straightening it. Someone had apparently
amused themselves by clipping idly at it with a pair of side-cutters,
it was irregularly nicked along its length.
"This," Brown continued, "is something called a 'selective resonator',
and this, well, the term does not translate, it is a--" he pronounced
carefully, as if unfamiliar with the word, "'bractor-quatic'--"
There was something peculiar about the indentations in the wire,
Dolan realized, a pattern--He pulled it unobtrusively through his
fingers again, letting his thumbnail run over the nicks. It was
Morse: K-I-T-T-E ... _kitten?_ ... no, it must be American Morse ...
K-I-L-L-E-R ... _killers hs end rvr rd_
Killers in the house at the end of River Road.
This was the house at the end of River Road.
Brown had stopped speaking and was looking at him questioningly.
"Uh, yeah," Dolan said hastily. "Well, that still doesn't tell me
too much." He carefully rolled the length of wire and hung it on
a projecting piece of the time translator. His hands were damp,
and he was sure he was moving awkwardly and unnaturally. Dolan was
not an easily flustered person, but things were coming a little
fast--mysterious aliens, time machines, and now--murder, or hint of it.
He needed time to think.
"It's getting pretty late," he said, hoping his voice sounded natural.
"Let's just knock off for now, I'll study it over, maybe I'll have
something figured by tomorrow."