"But of course we are willing to give you the circuit by which we
communicate with the year 3020! Naturally! But it seems strange that you
suspect us! After all, if you do not tell us how to meet the danger your
broadcasts have told of, you will never be born!"
Sergeant Bellews mopped his face and moved into the screen's field of
vision.
"Doc," he said, laying a hand on Lecky's arm. "Doc Graves is sketchin'
what they want right now. You want to come show it, Doc?"
Graves took Lecky's place. He spread out the diagram, finishing it as he
talked. His nervous, faint smile appeared as the mannerism of
embarrassment it was.
"There can be no radiation from a coil shaped like this," he said
embarrassedly, "because of the Werner Principle.... Yet on examination
... input to the transistor series involves ... energy must flow ...
and when this coil...."
His voice flowed on. He explained a puzzle, presenting it diffidently as
he had presented it to other men in his own field. Then he had been
playing--for fun. Now he played for perhaps the highest stakes that
could be imagined.
He completed his diagram and, smiling nervously, held it up to the
communicator-screen. It was instantly transmitted, of course. To
nowhere. Which was most appropriate, because it pretended to be the
diagram of a circuit sending radiation to the same place.
* * * * *
The face on the screen twitched, now. The hand with the tiny earphone
was always at the ear of the man on the screen, so that he plainly did
not speak one word without high authority.
"_We will--examine this_," he said. His voice was a full two tones
higher than it had been. "_If you have been--truthful we will give you
the information you wish_."
_Click!_ The screen went dark. Lecky let out his breath. Sergeant
Bellews threw off the transmission switch. He began to shake. Howell
said indignantly:
"When I make a mistake, I admit it! That broadcast isn't from the
future! If it hadn't been a lie, he'd have known he had to tell us what
we wanted to know! He couldn't hold us up for terms! If he let us die he
wouldn't exist!"
"Y-yeah," said Sergeant Bellews. "What I'm wonderin' is, did we fool
him?"
"Oh, yes!" said Graves, with diffident confidence. "I don't know but
three men in the world who could find the flaw in that circuit." He
smiled faintly. "But it radiates all the energy that's fed into it." He
turned to Sergeant Bellews. "You gave me the constants of a wave you
wanted it to radiate. I fixed it. It will. But why that special
type--that special wave?"
Sergeant Bellews pulled himself together.
"Because," he said grimly, "that was the wave they wanted us to
broadcast. What I'm hoping is that you gave 'em a transmitter to do
exactly the same thing as the one they designed for us. If they're
fooled, they'll broadcast the wave they told us to broadcast. If it
busts machines, it'll bust their machines. If it stops all dynamic
systems dead--includin' men--they'll be stopped dead, too." Then he
looked from one to another of the three scientists, each one reacting in
his own special way. "Personally," said Sergeant Bellews doggedly, "I'm
goin' to have a can of beer. Who'll join me?"
* * * * *
The world wagged on. The automatic monitors in Communications Center
reported that another broadcast had been received by Betsy and
undoubtedly unscrambled by Al and Gus, working as a team. The reported
broadcast was, of course, an interception of the two-way talk from the
Rehab Shop.
The tall young lieutenant, working with his eyes kept conscientiously
shut, extracted the tapes and loaded them in a top-security briefcase. A
second courier took off for Washington with them. There a certified,
properly cleared major-general had them run off, and saw and heard every
word of the conversation between the Rehab Shop and--nowhere. He howled
with wrath.
Sergeant Bellews went into the guardhouse while plane-loads of
interrogating officers flew from Washington. Howell and Graves and Lecky
went under strict guard until they could be asked some thousands of
variations of the question, "Why did you do it?" The high brass quivered
with fury. They did not accept decisions made at non-commissioned-officer
level.
Communication with their great-great-great-grandchildren, they
considered, should have been begun with proper authority and under
high-ranking auspices. They commanded that 2180 should immediately be
re-contacted and properly authorized and good-faith conference begun all
over again. The only trouble was that they could get no reply.
The dither was terrific and the tumult frantic. When, moreover, even
Betsy remained silent, and Al and Gus had nothing to unscramble, the
high brass built up explosive indignation. But it was confined to
top-security levels.
The world outside the Pentagon knew nothing. Even at Research
Installation 83 very, very few persons had the least idea what had taken
place. The sun shone blandly upon manicured lawns, and the officers'
children played vociferously, and washing-machines laundered diapers
with beautiful efficiency, and vacuum cleaners and Mahon-modified jeeps
performed their functions with an air of enthusiastic contentment. It
seemed that a golden age approached.
It did. There were machines which were not merely possessions.
Mahon-modified machines acquired reflections of the habits of the
families which used them. An electric icebox acted as if it took an
interest in its work. A vacuum cleaner seemed uncomfortable if it did
not perform its task to perfection. It would seem as absurd to exchange
an old, habituated family convenience as to exchange a member of the
family itself. Presently there would be washing-machines cherished for
their seeming knowledge of family-member individual preferences, and
personal fliers respected for their conscientiousness, and one would
relievedly allow an adolescent to drive a car if it were one of proven
experience and sagacity....
* * * * *
The life of an ordinary person would be enormously enriched. A
Mahon-modified machine would not even wear out. It took care of its own
lubrication and upkeep--giving notice of its needs by the behavior of
its standby-lamp. When parts needed replacement one would feel concern
rather than irritation. There would be a personal relationship with the
machines which so faithfully reflected one's personality.
And the machines would always, always, always act toward humans
according to the golden rule.
But meanwhile the Rehab Shop was taken over by officers of rank. They
tried frantically to resume the communication that had been broken off.
Suspecting that Sergeant Bellews had shifted controls, they essayed to
shift them back. The communicator which was Betsy's factory twin went
into sine-wave standby-modulation, and suddenly smoked all over and was
wrecked. The wave-generator went into hysterics and produced nothing
whatever. Then there was nothing to do but pull Sergeant Bellews out of
the clink and order him to do the whole business all over again.
"I can't," said Sergeant Bellews indignantly. "It can't be done. Those
guys are busy buildin' a transmitter according to the diagram Doc Graves
gave them. They won't pay no attention to anything until they'd tried to
chat with their great-great-great-grand-children in 3020. They were
phonys, anyhow! Pretendin' to be in 2180 and not knowin' what Mahon
units could do!"
Lecky and Graves and Howell were even less satisfactory. They couldn't
pretend even to try what the questioning-teams from the Pentagon wanted
them to do. And Betsy remained silent, receiving nothing, and Gus and Al
waited meditatively for something to unscramble, and nothing turned up.
And then, at 3:00 P.M. Greenwich mean time, on August 9, 1972, nearly
every operating communicator in the fringe of free nations around the
territory of the Union of Communist Republics--all communicators blew
out.
There were only four men in the world who really knew why--Sergeant
Bellews and Lecky and Graves and Howell. They knew that somewhere behind
the Iron Curtain a twenty-kilowatt transmitter had been turned on. It
produced a wave of the type and with the characteristics that would have
been produced by a transmitter built from the diagram sent through Betsy
and Al and Gus for people in the United States to build. Obviously, it
had been built from Graves' diagram broadcast to somewhere else and it
broadcast what the United States had been urged to broadcast.
* * * * *
It blew itself out instantly, of course. The wave it produced would stop
any dynamic system at once, including its own. But it hit Stockholm and
traffic jammed as the dynamic systems of cars in operation were
destroyed. In Gibraltar, the signal-systems of the Rock went dead. All
around the fringe of the armed Communist republics machines stopped and
communications ended and very many persons with heart conditions died
very quietly. Because their dynamic systems were least stable. But
healthy people--like Mahon-modified machines--had great resistance ...
outside the Iron Curtain.
There was, though, almost a vacuum of news and mechanical operations at
the rim of a nearly perfect circle some four thousand miles in diameter,
whose center was in a Compub research installation.
It was very bad. Such a panic as had never been known before swept the
free world. Some mysterious weapon, it was felt, had been used to
cripple those who would resist invasion, and the Compub armed forces
would shortly be on the march, and Armageddon was at hand. The free
world prepared to die fighting.
But war did not come. Nothing happened at all. In three days there were
sketchy communications almost everywhere outside that monstrous circle
of silence. But nothing came out of that circle. Nothing.
In two weeks, exploring parties cautiously crossed the barbed-wire
frontier fences to find out what had happened. Those who went farthest
came back shaken and sick. There were survivors in the Compubs, of
course. Especially near the fringes of the circle. There were some
millions of survivors. But there was no longer a nation to be called the
Union of Communist Republics. There were only frightened, starving
people trudging blindly away from cities that were charnel-houses and
machines that would not run and trees and crops and grasses that were
stark dead where they stood. It would be a long time before anybody
would want to cross those lifeless plains and enter the places which
once had been swarming hives of homes and people.
* * * * *
And presently, of course, Sergeant Bellews was let out of the
guardhouse. He could not be charged with any crime. Nor could Graves nor
Lecky nor Howell. They were asked, confidentially, to keep their mouths
shut. Which they would have done anyhow. And Sergeant Bellews was asked
with reluctant respectfulness, just what he thought had really happened.
"Some guys got too smart," he said, fuming. "A guy that'll broadcast a
wave that'll wreck machines ... I haven't got any kinda use for him!
Dammit, when a machine treats you accordin' to the golden rule, you
oughta treat it the same way!"
There were other, also-respectful questions.
"How the hell would I know?" demanded Sergeant Bellews wrathfully. "It
coulda been that we did make contact with 2180, and they were smart an'
told the Compubs to try out what we told 'em. But I don't believe it. It
coulda been a kinda monster from some other planet wanting us wiped out.
But he learned him a lesson, if he did! And o' course, it coulda been
the Compubs themselves, trying to fool us into committing suicide so
they'd--uh--inherit the earth. I wouldn't know! But I bet there ain't
any more broadcasts from nowhere!"
He was allowed to return to the Rehab Shop, and the flickering standby
lights of many Mahon-modified machines seemed to glow more warmly as he
moved among them.
And he was right about there not being any more broadcasts from nowhere.
There weren't.
Not ever.
THE END