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“The broadcasts,” said Lecky mildly, “claim a remarkable reason for certainty about an extremely grave danger which is almost upon the world. If it’s the truth, Sergeant, it is appalling. If it is a lie, it may be more appalling. The Joint Chiefs of Staff take it very seriously, in any case. They–“

“I got cold shivers,” said Sergeant Bellews with irony. “I’m all wrought up. Huh! The big brass gets the yellin’ yollups every so often anyhow. Listen to them, and nothin’ happens except it’s top priority top secret extra crash emergency! What do you want to know about Betsy?”

There was a sudden squealing sound from the communicator on which all the extra recording devices were focussed. Betsy’s screen lighted up. Peculiarly curved patterns appeared on it. They shifted and changed. Noises came from her speaker. They were completely unearthly. Now they were shrill past belief, and then they were chopped into very small bits of sound, and again they were deepest bass, when each separate note seemed to last for seconds.

“You might,” said Lecky calmly, “tell us from where your Betsy gets the signal she reports in this fashion.”

There were whirrings as recorders trained upon Betsy captured every flickering of her screen and every peeping noise or deep-toned rumble. The screen-pattern changed with the sound, but it was not linked to it. It was a completely abnormal reception. It was uncanny. It was somehow horrible because so completely remote from any sort of human communication in the year 1972.

The three scientists watched with worried eyes. A communicator, even with a Mahon unit in it, could not originate a pattern like this! And this was not conceivably a distortion of anything transmitted in any normal manner in the United States of America, or the Union of Compubs, or any of the precariously surviving small nations not associated with either colossus.

“This is a repeat broadcast!” said one of the three men suddenly. It was Howell, the heavy-set man. “I remember it. I saw it projected–like this, and then unscrambled. I think it’s the one where the social system’s described–so we can have practice at trying to understand. Remember?”

* * * * *

Lecky said, as if the matter had been thrashed out often before:

“I do not believe what it says, Howell! You know that I do not believe it! I will not accept the theory that this broadcast comes from the future!”

The broadcast stopped. It stopped dead. Betsy’s screen went blank. Her wildly fluctuating standby light slowed gradually to a nearly normal rate of flicker.

“That’s not a theory,” said Howell dourly. “It’s a statement in the broadcast. We saw the first transmission of this from the tape at the Pentagon. Then we saw it with the high-pitched parts slowed down and the deep-bass stuff speeded up. Then it was a human voice giving data on the scanning pattern and then rather drearily repeating that history said that intertemporal communication began with broadcasts sent back from 2180 to 1972. It said the establishment of two-way communication was very difficult and read from a script about social history, to give us practice in unscrambling it. It’s not a theory to say the stuff originates in the future. It’s a statement.”

“Then it is a lie,” said Lecky, very earnestly. “Truly, Howell, it is a lie!”

“Then where does the broadcast come from?” demanded Howell. “Some say it’s a Compub trick. But if they were true they’d hide it for use to produce chaos in a sneak attack. The only other theory–“

* * * * *

Graves, the man with the short moustache, said jerkily:

“No, Howell! It is not an extra-terrestrial creature pretending to be a man of our own human future. One could not sleep well with such an idea in his head. If some non-human monster could do this–“