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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.