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The Union of Communist Republics answered characteristically. It asked a question about Mahon units. There were rumors, it said, about a new principle of machine-control lately developed in the United States. It was said that machines equipped with the new units did not wear out, that they exercised seeming intelligence at their tasks, and that they promised to end the enormous drain on natural resources caused by the wearing-out and using-up of standard-type machinery.

The Compub Information Office offered to trade data on the broadcasts for data about the new Mahon-modified machines. It hinted at extremely important revelations it could make.

The rest of the world deduced astutely that the Compubs were scared, too. And they were correct.

* * * * *

Then, quite suddenly, a break came. All previous broadcast receptions had ended with the break-down of the receiving instrument. Now a communicator named Betsy, modified in the Mahon manner and at work in the research installation working with Mahon-modified devices, began to pick up the broadcasts consistently, keeping each one on its screen until it ended.

Day after day, at highly irregular intervals, Betsy’s screen lighted up and showed the weird patterns, and her loudspeakers emitted the peepings and chirps and deep-bass hootings of the broadcasts. And the high brass went into a dither to end all dithers as tapes of the received material reached the Pentagon and were translated into intelligible speech and pictures.

* * * * *

This was when Metech Sergeant Bellews, in charge of the Rehab Shop at Research Installation 83, came into the affair. Specifically, he entered the picture when a young second lieutenant came to the shop to fetch him to Communications Center in that post.

The lieutenant was young and tall and very military. Sergeant Bellews was not. So he snorted, upon receipt of the message. He was at work on a vacuum cleaner at the moment–a Mahon-modified machine with a flickering yellow standby light that wavered between brightness and dimness with much more than appropriate frequency. The Rehabilitation Shop was where Mahon-modified machines were brought back to usefulness when somebody messed them up. Two or three machines–an electric ironer, for one–operated slowly and hesitantly. That was occupational therapy. A washing-machine churned briskly, which was convalescence. Others, ranging from fire-control computers to teletypes and automatic lathes, simply waited with their standby lights flickering meditatively according to the manner and custom of Mahon-modified machines. They were ready for duty again.

The young lieutenant was politely urgent.

“But I been there!” protested Sergeant Bellews. “I checked! It’s a communicator I named Betsy. She’s all right! She’s been mishandled by the kinda halfwits Communications has around, but she’s a good, well-balanced, experienced machine. If she’s turning out broadcasts, it’s because they’re comin’ in! She’s all right!”

“I know,” said the young lieutenant soothingly. His uniform and his manners were beautiful to behold. “But the Colonel wants you there for a conference.”

“I got a communicator in the shop here,” said Sergeant Bellews suspiciously. “Why don’t he call me?”

“Because he wants to try some new adjustments on–ah–Betsy, Sergeant. You have a way with Mahon machines. They’ll do things for you they won’t do for anybody else.”

Sergeant Bellews snorted again. He knew he was being buttered up, but he’d asked for it. He even insisted on it, for the glory of the Metallurgical Technicians’ Corps. The big brass tended to regard Metechs as in some fashion successors to the long-vanished veterinary surgeons of the Farriers’ Corps, when horses were a part of the armed forces. Mahon-modified machines were new–very new–but the top brass naturally remembered everything faintly analogous and applied it all wrong. So Sergeant Bellews conducted a one-man campaign to establish the dignity of his profession.