"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.