The Machine That Saved The World Read online

another box. He unrolled cables. Heselected machines whose flickering lights seemed to bespeak eagerness tobe of use. He coupled them to the newly unboxed machines, whose lightswere vaguely steady.

  "Training cables," he said over his shoulder. "You get one machineworking right, and you hook it with another, and the new machine kindalearns from the old one. Kinda! But it ain't as good as real experience.Not at first."

  * * * * *

  Presently the lights of the newly energized machines began to waver insomewhat the manner of the ready-for-operation ones. But they did notgive so clear an impression of personality.

  "Look!" said Sergeant Bellews abruptly. "I got to check with you. Themore I think, the more worried I get."

  "You begin to believe the broadcasts come from the future?" demandedGraves. "And it worries you? But they do not speak of Mahon units--"

  "I don't care where they come from," said the sergeant. "I'm worryin'about what they are! The guy in the broadcast--not knowing Mahonunits--said we'd have to make half a dozen transmitters so they'd takeover one after another as they blew out. You see what that means?"

  Lecky said crisply:

  "You pointed it out before. There is something in the wave-typewhich--you would say this, Sergeant!--which machines do not like. Isthat the reasoning?"

  "Uh-uh!" The sergeant scowled. "Machines work by the golden rule. Theytry 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 thatwave-type that machines _can't_ take! It busts them. If it sort ofexplodes surges of current in 'em--Look! Any running machine is adynamic system in a object. A jet-plane operating is that. So's awater-spout. So's a communicator. But if you explode surges of heavycurrent in a dynamic system in a operating machine--things get messedup. The operating habit is busted to hell. I'm saying that if thiswave-type makes crazy surges of current start up--why--if the surgesare 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 newmachines, without developed--personalities, because you think that ifthey 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 botheredBetsy until she got Al and Gus to help. She was fair screamin' forsomebody to come help her hold it. But the three of them done allright."

  Howell conceded the point.

  "That seems sound reasoning."

  "But you don't broadcast with a micro-micro-watt. You use a hell of alot more power than that! The transmitter the guy in the screen said tomake was a twenty-kilowatt job. Not too much for a broadcast of sinewaves, but a hell of a lot to be turned loose, in waves that have Betsyhollerin' at the power she was handlin'!"

  "It might break even the Mahon machines in this installation?" demandedHowell.

  "You're gettin' warm," said the sergeant.

  Graves said:

  "You mean it might break all operating communicators in a very largearea?"

  "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-typewhich will break any dynamic system, in any sort of object a dynamicsystem 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 giventhe circuit-diagram of a transmitter which will broadcast a wave-typewhich destroys dynamic systems--life as well as the operation ofmachines. Persons--in the future or an alien creature in a space-ship,or perhaps even the Compubs--are furnishing us with designs fortransmitters of death, to be linked together so that if one fails theothers will carry on. And they lure us to destroy ourselves by lyingabout who they are and what they propose."

  "They're lyin'," said the sergeant. "They say they're in the future andthey 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 todestroy ourselves because that would be safer and surer than trying todestroy 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 byparachute-transmitter. So they'll beat us to it. They'll have to!"

  "Yes," said Lecky. "They'll have to. It has always been said that adeath-ray was impossible. This would be a death-broadcast. If we do notbroadcast, they will--whoever they are. It is--" He smiled mirthlesslyat the magnitude of his understatement. "It is urgent that we dosomething. What shall we do, Sergeant?"

  * * * * *

  A squadron of light tanks arrived at Research Installation 83 thatafternoon, with a shipment of courier motorcycles. They had beenequipped with Mahon units and went to the post to be trained.

  The Pentagon was debating the development of a Mahon-modified guidedmissile, and a drone plane was under construction. But non-militaryitems also arrived for activation and test. Automatic telephoneswitching systems, it appeared, could be made much simpler if they couldbe trained to do their work instead of built so they couldn't help it.

  Passenger-cars other than jeeps showed promise. It had long been knownthat most accidents occurred with new cars, and that ancient jalopieswere relatively safe even in the hands of juvenile delinquents. It wascredible that part of the difference was in the operating habits of thecars.

  It appeared that humanity was upon the threshold of a new era, in whichthe value of personality would reappear among the things taken forgranted. Strictly speaking, of course, Mahon machines were not persons.But they reflected the personalities of their owners. It might againseem desirable to be a decent human being if only because machinesworked better for them.

  But it would be tragic if Mahon machines were used to destroy humankindwith themselves! Sergeant Bellews would have raged at the thought oftraining a Mahon unit to guide an atom bomb. It would have to be--in afashion--deceived. He even disliked the necessity he faced thatafternoon while a courier winged his way to the Pentagon with thetop-secret tapes Betsy and Al and Gus had made.

  The Rehab Shop was equipped not only to recondition machines but to testthem. One item of equipment was a generator of substitute broadcastwaves. It could deliver a carrier-wave down to half a micro-micro-wattof any form desired, and up to the power of a nearby transmitter. It wasvery useful for calibrating communicators. But Sergeant Bellews modifiedit to allow of variations in type as well as frequency and amplitude.

  "I'm betting," he grunted, "that there's different sorts of thewave-type those guys want us to broadcast. Like there's a spectrum ofvisible light. If we were color-blind and yellow'd bust things, they'dtransmit in red that we could see, and they'd tell us to broadcastsomething in yellow that'd wipe us out. And we wouldn't have senseenough not to broadcast the yellow, because we wouldn't know thedifference between it and red until we did broadcast. Then it'd be toolate."

  Howell watched with tight-clamped jaws. He had committed himself to theauthenticity of the broadcasts claiming to be from a future time. Now hewas shaken, but only enough to admit the need for tests. Graves satunnaturally still. Lecky looked at Sergeant Bellews with a peculiarlytranquil expression on his fa
ce.

  "Only," grunted the sergeant, "it ain't frequency we got to figure, buttype. Nobody hardly uses anything but sine waves for communication, butI got to make this gadget turn out a freak wave-type by guess and golly.I got a sort of test for it, though."

  * * * * *

  He straightened up and connected a cable from the generator to the MarkIV communicator which was a factory twin of Betsy.

  "I'm gonna feed this communicator half a micro-micro-watt of stuff