FullReads

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!”