door firmly behind him and to lock it. A bored private, with side-arms,
took post before it. The lieutenant was a very conscientious young man.
But he did not interfere with the parade to Sergeant Bellews' quarters.
The young lieutenant was very military, and the ways of civilians were
not his concern. If eminent scientists chose to go to Sergeant Bellews'
quarters instead of the Officers Club, to which their assimilated rank
entitled them, it was strictly their affair.
* * * * *
They reached the Rehab Shop, and Sergeant Bellews went firmly to a
standby-light-equipped refrigerator in his quarters. He brought out beer
and deftly popped off the tops. The icebox door closed quietly.
"Here's to crime," said Sergeant Bellews amiably.
He drank. Howell sipped gloomily. Graves drank thoughtfully. Lecky
looked anticipative.
"Sergeant," he said, "did I see a gleam in your eye just now?"
Sergeant Bellews reflected, gently shaking his opened beer-can with a
rotary motion, for no reason whatever.
"Uh-uh," he rumbled. "I wouldn't say a gleam. But you mighta seen a
glint. I got some ideas from what I seen during that broadcast. I wanna
get to work on 'em. Here's the place to do the work. We got facilities
here."
Howell said with precise hot anger:
"This is the most idiotic situation I have ever seen even in government
service!"
"You ain't been around much," the sergeant told him kindly. "It happens
everywhere. All the time. It ain't even a exclusive feature of the armed
forces." He put down his beer-can and patted his stomach. "There's guys
who sit up nights workin' out standard operational procedures just to
make things like this happen, everywhere. The colonel hadda do what he
did. He's got orders, too. But he felt bad. So he sent the lieutenant to
tell us. He does the colonel's dirty jobs--and he loves his work."
* * * * *
He moved grandly toward the Rehab Shop proper, which opened off the
quarters he lived in--very much as a doctor's office is apt to open off
his living quarters.
"We follow?" asked Lecky zestfully. "You plan something?"
"Natural!" said Sergeant Bellews largely.
He led the way into the Rehab Shop, which was dark and shadowy, and only
very dimly lighted by flickering, wavering lights of many machines
waiting as if hopefully to be called on for action. There were the
shelves of machines not yet activated. Sergeant Bellews led the way
toward his desk. There was a vacuum cleaner on it, on standby. He put it
down on the floor.
Lecky watched him with some eagerness. The others came in, Howell dourly
and Graves wiping his moustache.
The sergeant considered his domain.
"We'll be happy to help you," said Lecky.
"Thanks," said the sergeant. "I'm under orders to help you, too, y'know.
Just supposing you asked me to whip up something to analyze what Betsy
receives, so it can be checked on that it is a new wave-type."
"Can you do that?" demanded Graves. "We were supposed to work on
that--but so far we've absolutely nothing to go on!"
The sergeant waved his hand negligently.
"You got something now. Betsy's a Mahon-modified device. Every receiver
that picked up one of those crazy broadcasts broke down before it was
through. She takes 'em in her stride--especial with Al and Gus to help
her. Wouldn't it be reasonable to guess that Mahon machines
are--uh--especial adapted to handle intertemporal communication?"
"Very reasonable!" said Howell dourly. "Very! The broadcast said that
the wave-type produced unpredictable surges of current. Ordinary
machines do find it difficult to work with whatever type of radiation
that can be."
"Betsy chokes off those surges," observed the sergeant. "With Gus and Al
to help, she don't have no trouble. We hadn't ought to need to make any
six transmitters if we put Mahon-unit machines together for the job!"
"Quite right," agreed Lecky, mildly. "And it is odd--"
"Yeah," said the sergeant. "It's plenty odd my
great-great-great-grandkids haven't got sense enough to do it
themselves!"
* * * * *
He went to a shelf and brought down a boxed machine,--straight from the
top-secret manufactory of Mahon units. It had never been activated. Its
standby light did not glow. Sergeant Bellews ripped off the carton and
said reflectively:
"You hate to turn off a machine that's got its own ways of working. But
a machine that ain't been activated has not got any personality. So you
don't mind starting it up to turn it off later."
He opened the adjustment-cover and turned something on. The standby
light glowed. Closely observed, it was not a completely steady glow.
There were the faintest possible variations of brightness. But there was
no impression of life.
Graves said:
"Why doesn't it flicker like the others?"
"No habits," said the sergeant. "No experience. It's like a newborn
baby. It'll get to have personality after it's worked a while. But not
now."
He went across the shop again. He moved out a heavy case, and twisted
the release, and eased out a communicator of the same type--Mark IV--as
Betsy back in the Communications room. Howell went to help him. Graves
tried to assist. Lecky moved other things out of the way. They were
highly eminent scientists, and Metech Sergeant Bellews was merely a
non-commissioned officer in the armed forces. But he happened to have
specialized information they had not. Quite without condescension they
accepted his authority in his own field, and therefore his equality. As
civilians they had no rank to maintain, and they disagreed with each
other--and would disagree with the sergeant--only when they knew why.
Which was one of the reasons why they were eminent scientists.
Sergeant Bellews brought out yet another box. He unrolled cables. He
selected machines whose flickering lights seemed to bespeak eagerness to
be of use. He coupled them to the newly unboxed machines, whose lights
were vaguely steady.
"Training cables," he said over his shoulder. "You get one machine
working right, and you hook it with another, and the new machine kinda
learns from the old one. Kinda! But it ain't as good as real experience.
Not at first."
* * * * *
Presently the lights of the newly energized machines began to waver in
somewhat the manner of the ready-for-operation ones. But they did not
give so clear an impression of personality.
"Look!" said Sergeant Bellews abruptly. "I got to check with you. The
more I think, the more worried I get."
"You begin to believe the broadcasts come from the future?" demanded
Graves. "And it worries you? But they do not speak of Mahon units--"
"I don't care where they come from," said the sergeant. "I'm worryin'
about what they are! The guy in the broadcast--not knowing Mahon
units--said we'd have to make half a dozen transmitters so they'd take
over one after another as they blew out. You see what that means?"
Lecky said crisply:
"You pointed it out before. There is something in the wave-type
which--you would say this, Sergeant!--which machines do not like. Is
that the reasoning?"
"Uh-uh!" The sergeant scowled. "Machines work by the golden rule. They
try to do unto you what they want you to do unto them. Likes an'
dislikes don't matter. I mean that there's something about that
wave-type that machines _can't_ take! It busts them. If it sort of
explodes surges of current in 'em--Look! Any running machine is a
dynamic system in a object. A jet-plane operating is that. So's a
water-spout. So's a communicator. But if you explode surges of heavy
current in a dynamic system in a operating machine--things get messed
up. The operating habit is busted to hell. I'm saying that if this
wave-type makes crazy surges of current start up--why--if the surges
are strong enough they'll bust not only a communicator but a jet-plane.
Or a water-spout. Anything! See?"
* * * * *
Lecky blinked and suddenly went pale.
"But," said Howell reasonably, "you said that Betsy handled it.
Especially well when linked with other Mahon machines."
"Yeah," said the sergeant.
"I think," observed Graves jerkily, "that you are preparing new
machines, without developed--personalities, because you think that if
they make this special-type wave they'll be broken."
"Yeah," said the sergeant, again. "The signal Betsy was amplifyin'
coulda been as little as a micro-micro-watt. At its frequency an' type,
she'd choke it down if it was more. But even a micro-micro-watt bothered
Betsy until she got Al and Gus to help. She was fair screamin' for
somebody to come help her hold it. But the three of them done all
right."
Howell conceded the point.
"That seems sound reasoning."
"But you don't broadcast with a micro-micro-watt. You use a hell of a
lot more power than that! The transmitter the guy in the screen said to
make was a twenty-kilowatt job. Not too much for a broadcast of sine
waves, but a hell of a lot to be turned loose, in waves that have Betsy
hollerin' at the power she was handlin'!"
"It might break even the Mahon machines in this installation?" demanded
Howell.
"You're gettin' warm," said the sergeant.
Graves said:
"You mean it might break all operating communicators in a very large
area?"
"You're gettin' hot," said the sergeant grimly.
Lecky wetted his lips.
"I think," he said very carefully, "that you suspect it is a wave-type
which will break any dynamic system, in any sort of object a dynamic
system can exist in."
"Yeah," said the sergeant. He waited, looking at Lecky.
"And," said Lecky, "not only operating machines are dynamic systems.
Living plants and animals are, too. So are men."
"That's what I'm drivin' at," said Sergeant Bellews.
"So you believe," said Lecky, very pale indeed, "that we have been given
the circuit-diagram of a transmitter which will broadcast a wave-type
which destroys dynamic systems--life as well as the operation of
machines. Persons--in the future or an alien creature in a space-ship,
or perhaps even the Compubs--are furnishing us with designs for
transmitters of death, to be linked together so that if one fails the
others will carry on. And they lure us to destroy ourselves by lying
about who they are and what they propose."
"They're lyin'," said the sergeant. "They say they're in the future and
they don't know a thing about Mahon units. Else they'd use 'em."
Lecky wetted his lips again.
"And--if they are not in the future, they are trying to get us to
destroy ourselves because that would be safer and surer than trying to
destroy us by--say--transmitters of death dropped upon us by parachute.
Yet if we do not destroy ourselves, they will surely do that."
"If we don't bump ourselves off, it'll be because we got wise,"
acknowledged the sergeant. "If we get wise, we could bump them off by
parachute-transmitter. So they'll beat us to it. They'll have to!"
"Yes," said Lecky. "They'll have to. It has always been said that a
death-ray was impossible. This would be a death-broadcast. If we do not
broadcast, they will--whoever they are. It is--" He smiled mirthlessly
at the magnitude of his understatement. "It is urgent that we do
something. What shall we do, Sergeant?"
* * * * *
A squadron of light tanks arrived at Research Installation 83 that
afternoon, with a shipment of courier motorcycles. They had been
equipped with Mahon units and went to the post to be trained.
The Pentagon was debating the development of a Mahon-modified guided
missile, and a drone plane was under construction. But non-military
items also arrived for activation and test. Automatic telephone
switching systems, it appeared, could be made much simpler if they could
be trained to do their work instead of built so they couldn't help it.
Passenger-cars other than jeeps showed promise. It had long been known
that most accidents occurred with new cars, and that ancient jalopies
were relatively safe even in the hands of juvenile delinquents. It was
credible that part of the difference was in the operating habits of the
cars.
It appeared that humanity was upon the threshold of a new era, in which
the value of personality would reappear among the things taken for
granted. Strictly speaking, of course, Mahon machines were not persons.
But they reflected the personalities of their owners. It might again
seem desirable to be a decent human being if only because machines
worked better for them.
But it would be tragic if Mahon machines were used to destroy humankind
with themselves! Sergeant Bellews would have raged at the thought of
training a Mahon unit to guide an atom bomb. It would have to be--in a
fashion--deceived. He even disliked the necessity he faced that
afternoon while a courier winged his way to the Pentagon with the
top-secret tapes Betsy and Al and Gus had made.
The Rehab Shop was equipped not only to recondition machines but to test
them. One item of equipment was a generator of substitute broadcast
waves. It could deliver a carrier-wave down to half a micro-micro-watt
of any form desired, and up to the power of a nearby transmitter. It was
very useful for calibrating communicators. But Sergeant Bellews modified
it to allow of variations in type as well as frequency and amplitude.
"I'm betting," he grunted, "that there's different sorts of the
wave-type those guys want us to broadcast. Like there's a spectrum of
visible light. If we were color-blind and yellow'd bust things, they'd
transmit in red that we could see, and they'd tell us to broadcast
something in yellow that'd wipe us out. And we wouldn't have sense
enough not to broadcast the yellow, because we wouldn't know the
difference between it and red until we did broadcast. Then it'd be too
late."
Howell watched with tight-clamped jaws. He had committed himself to the
authenticity of the broadcasts claiming to be from a future time. Now he
was shaken, but only enough to admit the need for tests. Graves sat
unnaturally still. Lecky looked at Sergeant Bellews with a peculiarly
tranquil expression on his face.
"Only," grunted the sergeant, "it ain't frequency we got to figure, but
type. Nobody hardly uses anything but sine waves for communication, but
I got to make this gadget turn out a freak wave-type by guess and golly.
I got a sort of test for it, though."
* * * * *
He straightened up and connected a cable from the generator to the Mark
IV communicator which was a factory twin of Betsy.
"I'm gonna feed this communicator half a micro-micro-watt of stuff like
the broadcast--I think," he announced grimly. "I saw the diagrams of the
transmitters they want us to make. I'm guessing the broadcast-wave they
use is close to it but not exact. Close, because it's bad for machines.
Not exact, because they're alive while they use it. I hope I don't hit
anything on the nose. Okay?"
Lecky said gently:
"I have never been more frightened. Go ahead!"
Sergeant Bellews depressed a stud. The communicator's screen lighted up
instantly. It was receiving the generator's minute output and accepted
it as a broadcast. But the signal was unmodulated, so there was no image
nor any sound.
* * * * *
The communicator's standby light flickered steadily.
Sergeant Bellews adjusted a knob on the generator. The communicator's
standby flicker changed in amplitude. Bellews turned the knob back. He
adjusted another control. The standby light wavered crazily.
Graves said nervously:
"I think I see. You are trying to make this communicator react as Betsy
did. When it does, you will consider that your generator is creating a
wave like the broadcasts from nowhere."
"Yeah," said Bellews. "It ain't scientific, but it's the best I can do."
He worked the generator-controls with infinite care. Once the
communicator's standby light approached sine-wave modulation. He hastily
shifted away from the settings which caused it. He muttered:
"Close!"
Then, suddenly, the communicator's lamp began to waver in an
extraordinary, hysterical fashion. Sergeant Bellews turned down the
volume swiftly. He wiped sweat off his forehead.
"I--I think I got the trick," he said heavily. "It's a hell of a
wave-type! Are you guys game to feed it into this communicator's output
amplifier?"
"I have six sets of cold chills running up and down my spine," said
Lecky. "I think you should proceed."
Howell said angrily:
"It's got to be tried, hasn't it?"
"It's got to be tried," acknowledged Sergeant Bellews.
He shifted the generator's cable from the communicator's input to the
feed-in for preamplified signal. The communicator's screen went dark.
It no longer received a simulated broadcast signal. It was now
signalling--calling. But the instant the new signal started out, the
standby light flickered horribly. Sergeant Bellews grimly plugged in
other machines--to the three scientists they looked like duplicates of
Gus and Al--to closed-circuit relationship with Betsy's twin. The
standby light calmed.
"Now we test," he said grimly. "Got a watch?"
Lecky extended his wrist.
"Watch it," said Sergeant Bellews.
He stepped up the output.
"My watch has stopped," said Lecky, through white lips.
Graves looked at his own watch. He shook it and held it to his ear. He
looked sick. Howell growled and looked at his own.
"That wave stops watches," he admitted unwillingly.
"But not Mahon machines easy," said Sergeant Bellews heavily, "and not
us. There was almost three micro-micro-watts goin' out then. That's
three-millionths of a millionth of a ampere-second at one volt. We--"
* * * * *
His voice stopped, as if with a click. The screen of Betsy's
factory-twin communicator lighted up. A man's face peered out of it. He
was bearded and they could not see his costume, but he was frightened.
"_What--what is this?_" cried his voice shrilly from the speakers.
Sergeant Bellews said very sharply:
"Hey! You ain't the guy we've been talking to!"
The screen went dark. Sergeant Bellews put his hand over the microphone
opening. He turned fiercely upon the rest.
"Look!" he snapped. "We were broadcastin' their trick wave--the wave
they used to talk to us! And they picked it up! But they weren't
expectin' it! They were set to pick up the wave they told us to
transmit! See? That guy'll come back. He's got to! So we got to play
along! He'll want to find out if we got wise and won't broadcast
ourselves to death! If he finds out we know what we're doin', they'll
parachute a transmitter down on us before we can do it to them! Back me
up! Get set!"
He removed his hand from the microphone.
"Callin' 2180!" he chattered urgently. "Calling the guy that just
contacted us! Come in, 2180! You're not the guy we've been talking to,
but come in! Come in, 2180!"
Howell said stridently:
"But if that's 2180, how'd we parachute--".
Lecky clapped a hand over his mouth with a fierceness surprising in so
small a man. He whispered desperately into Howell's ear. Graves absurdly
began to bite his nails, staring at the communicator-screen. Sergeant
Bellews continued his calling, ever more urgently.
His voice echoed peculiarly in the Rehab Shop. It seemed suddenly a
place of resonant echoes. All the waiting, repaired, or
to-be-rehabilitated machines appeared to listen with interest while
Sergeant Bellews called:
"Come in, 2180! We been trying to reach you for a coupla weeks! We got
somebody else instead of you, and they been talkin' to us, and they say
that they're 3020 instead of 2180, but we've got to contact you! They
don't know anything about that germ that's gonna mutate and bump us off!
It's ancient history to them. We got to reach you! Come in, 2180!"
The flickering yellow lights of the machines wavered as if all the
quasi-living machines were listening absorbedly. The Rehab Shop was full
of shadows. And Sergeant Bellews sat before the dark-screened
communicator with sweat on his face, calling cajolingly to nothingness
to come in.
After five minutes the screen grew abruptly bright again. The brisk,
raceless broadcaster of the earlier broadcast--not the bearded man--came
back. He forced a smile:
"_Ah! 1972! At last you reach us! But we did not hope you could make
your transmitters so soon!_"
"We tried to analyze your wave," said Sergeant Bellews, with every
appearance of feverish relief, "but we only got it approximate. We tried
callin' back with what we got, and we got through time, all right, but
we contacted some guys in 3020 instead of you! We need to talk to
you!--Can you give me the stuff about that bug that's gonna wipe out
half of us? Quick? I got a recorder goin'."
* * * * *
The completely uncharacterizable man in the screen forced a second
smile. He held something to his ear. It would be a tiny sound-receiver.
Obviously the contact in time or place or nowhere was being viewed by
others than the one man who appeared. He was receiving instructions.
"_Ah!_" he said brightly, "_but now that you have the contact, you will
not lose it again! Leave your controls where they are, and our learned
men will tell your learned men all that they need to know. But--3020?
You contacted 3020? That is not in our records of your time!_"
He listened again to the thing at his ear. His expression became
suddenly suspicious, as if someone had ordered that as well as the words
which came next.
"_We do not understand how you could contact a time a thousand years
beyond us. It is possible that you attempt a joke. A--a kid, as you
would say._"
* * * * *
Sergeant Bellews beamed into the screen which so remarkably functioned
as a transmitting-eye also.
"Hell!" he said cordially. "You know we wouldn't kid you! You or our
great-great-great-grandchildren! We depend on you! We got to get you to
tell us how not to get wiped out! In 3020 the whole business is
forgotten. It's a thousand years old, to them! But they're passin' back
some swell machinery--"
He turned his head as if listening to something the microphone could not
pick up. But he looked appealingly at Lecky. Lecky nodded and moved
toward the communicator.
"Look!" said Sergeant Bellews into the screen. "Here's Doc Lecky--one of
our top guys. You talk to him."
He gave his seat to Lecky. Out of range of the communicator, he mopped
his face. His shirt was soaked through by the sweat produced by the
stress of the past few minutes. He shivered violently, and then clamped
his teeth and fumbled out sheets of paper. He beckoned to Graves. Graves
came.
"We--we got to give him a doctored circuit," whispered Sergeant Bellews
desperately, "and it's got to be good--an' quick!"
Graves bent over the paper on which the sergeant dripped sweat. The
sergeant murmured through now-chattering teeth what had to be devised,
and at once. It must be the circuit-diagram for a transmitter to be
given to the man whose face filled the screen. The transmitter must be
of at least twenty-kilowatt power. It must be such a circuit as nobody
had ever seen before.
It must be convincing. It should appear to radiate impossibly, or to
destroy energy without radiation. But it must actually produce a
broadcast signal of this exotic type--here the sergeant described with
shaky precision the exact constants of the wave to be generated--and the
broadcaster from nowhere must not be able to deduce those constants or
that wave-type from the diagram until he had built the transmitter and
tried it.
"I know it can't be done!" said the sergeant desperately. "I know it
can't! But it's gotta be! Or they'll parachute a transmitter down on us
sure."
Graves smiled a quick and nervous smile. He began to sketch a circuit.
It was a wonderful thing. It was the product of much ingenuity and
meditation. It had been devised--by himself--as a brain-teaser for the
amusement of other high-level scientific brains. Mathematicians
zestfully contrive problems to stump each other. Specialists in the
higher branches of electronics sometimes present each other with
diagrammed circuits which pretend to achieve the impossible. The problem
is to find the hidden flaw.
Graves deftly outlined his circuit and began to fill in the details.
Ostensibly, it was a circuit which consumed energy and produced
nothing--not even heat. In a sense it was the exact opposite of a
perpetual-motion scheme, which pretends to get energy from nowhere. This
circuit pretended to radiate energy to nowhere, and yet to get rid of
it.
* * * * *