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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….