Classic Audiobook Collection - The Machine that Saved the World by Murray Leinster ~ Full Audiobook [scifi]

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

The Machine that Saved the World by Murray Leinster audiobook. Genre: scifi They were broadcasts from nowhere--sinister emanations flooding in from space--smashing any receiver that picked them up. What defense could Earth devise against science such as this? In the far future of 1972, on a secret military installation, Staff Sergeant Bellews is an expert on the latest scientific discovery: a way for ordinary machines like vacuums and lawnmowers to gather experience in their jobs, becoming error free over time. Then the strange broadcasts began to blow up transmitters everywhere. Were they from space? Enemies? the future? He didn't care until they started messin' with his machines. Then he took it personally. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 1 (00:17:53) Chapter 2 (00:35:49) Chapter 3 (00:55:44) Chapter 4 (01:15:07) Chapter 5 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Machine That Saved the World by Murray Lister, Chapter 1 They were broadcast from nowhere, sinister emanations flooding in from space, smashing any receiver that picked them up. What defense could Earth devise against science such as this? The first broadcast came in 1972, while Mahon modified machines were still strictly classified, and the world had only heard rumors about them. The first broadcast was picked up by a television ham in Oceola, Florida, who fumingly reported artificial interference on the amateur TV bands.

He heard and taped it for ten minutes, so he said, before it blew out his receiver. When he replaced the broken element, the broadcast was gone. But the Communications Commission looked at and listened to the tape and practically went through the ceiling. It stationed a monitor truck in Oceola for months. listening feverishly to nothing. Then for a long time there were rumors of broadcasts which blew out receiving apparatus, but nothing definite. Weird patterns appeared on screens, high-pitched or deep bass notes sounded,

and the receiver went out of operation. After the ham operator in Osceola, nobody else got more than a second or two of the weird interference before blowing his set during six very full months of C.C. agitation. Then a TV station in Seattle, abruptly broadcast interference superimposed on its regular network program. The screens of all sets tuned to that program suddenly showed exotic, curiously curved, meaningless patterns on top of a commercial spectacular broadcast. At the same time, incredible chirping noises came from the speakers, alternating with deep bass hootings which spoiled the ju-ju-jou music of the most expensive ju-ju band on the air.

The interference ended only with a minor breakdown in the transmitting station. It was the same sort of interference that the Communications Commission had thrown fits about in Washington. It threw further fits now. A month later, a vision phone circuit between Chicago and Los Angeles was unusable for ten minutes. The same meaningless picture pattern and the same preposterous. noises came on and monopolized the line.

It seized when a repeater tube went out and a parallel circuit took over. Again frantic agitation displayed by high authority. Then the interference began to appear more frequently, though still capriciously. Once a presidential broadcast was confused by interference apparently originating in the White House and again a three-way top-secret conference between the commanding officers of the three military departments seized when the unhuman sounding noises and the scrambled picture pattern inserted itself into the closed circuit discussion. The conference broke up amid consternation.

For one reason military circuits were supposed to be interference proof. For another, it appeared that if interference could be spotted to this circuit or this receiver, it was likely this circuit or that receiver could be tapped. For a third reason, the broadcasts were dynamite. As received, they were badly scrambled, but they could be straightened out. Even the first one from Osceola was cleared up and understood, enough so to make top authority tear its hair and allow only full-cleared scientific consultants in on the thing. The content of the broadcasts was kept considerably more secret than the existence of Mahone

units and what they could do, and Mahon units were both. brand-new, then and being worked with only at one research installation in the United States. The broadcasts were not so closely confined. The same wriggly patterns and alien noises were picked up in Montevideo, in Australia, in Panama City, and in grimly embattled England. All the newspapers discussed them, without ever suspecting that they had been translated into plain speech. They were featured as freak news, and each new account,

mentioned that the broadcast reception had ended with a breakdown of the receiving apparatus. Guarded messages passed among the high authorities of the nations that picked up the stuff. A cautious inquiry even went to the compubs. 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 strain 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 Mahone modified machines. It hinted at extremely important revelations it could make. The rest of the world deduced astutely that the com pubs were scared, too, and they were correct. Then, quite suddenly, a break came. All previous broadcast receptions had ended with the breakdown of the receiving instrument. Now a communicator named Betsy, modified in the Mahone 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 a Pentagon

and were translated into intelligible speech and pictures. this was when mettec sergeant bellews in charge of the rehab shop at research installation eighty three came into the affair specifically he entered the picture when a young second lieutenant came to the shop to fetch him to communication 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 Mahone 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 convoluted. lessons, others ranging from fire-controlled computers to teletypes and automatic lathes, simply waited with their standby lights flickering meditatively according to the manner and custom of Mahone modified machines. They were ready for duty again. The young lieutenant was politely urgent. But I've been there, protested Sergeant Belouse.

I checked. It's a communicator I named Betsy. She's all right. She's been mishandled by the kind of half-wits communication. communications has around, but she's a good, well-balanced experience machine. If she's turning out broadcasts, it's because they're coming 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 Belouse suspiciously. Why don't he call me? Because he wants to try some new adjustments on Betsy, Sergeant. You have away with Mahone machines. They'll do things for you. They won't do for anybody else. Sergeant Bellew snartered 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 Mettex, as in some fashion successors to the long-vanished veterinary surgeons of the Farriers' Corps, when horses were a part of the armful. forces. Mahone 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. But nobody without special Metak training ought to tinker with a Mahone modified machine. If he's got a fool with Betsy, said the sergeant bitterly, I guess I got to go over and boss the job. He pressed the button on his work-table.

The vacuum-cleaners stand-by-light calmed down. The button provided soothing sub-threshold stimuli to the Mahone unit, not quite giving it the illusion of operating perfectly, if a Mahon unit could be said to be capable of illusion, but maintaining it in the rest condition which was the foundation of Mahone unit operation, since a Mahon machine must never be turned off. The lieutenant started out the door. Sergeant Belouse followed at leisure.

He painstakingly avoided ever walking the regulation two paces behind a commissioned officer. Either he walked side by side, chatting, or he walked alone. Wise officers let him get away with it. Reaching the open air a good twenty yards behind the lieutenant, he cocked an approving eye at a police up unit at work on the lawn outside. Only a couple of weeks before, that unit had been in a bad way. stopped and shivered when it encountered an unfamiliar object. But now it rolled across the grass from one path edge to another.

When it reached the second path, it stopped, briskly moved itself its own width sideways, and rolled back. On the way, it competently manicured the lawn. It picked up leaves, retrieved a stray cigarette butt, and snapped up a scrap of paper blown from somewhere. Its tactile units touched a new planted shrub. It delicately circled the shrub, and went on upon its proper course. Once where the grass grew taller than elsewhere, it stopped and were, trimming the growth

back to regulation height. Then it went on about its business as before. Sergeant Belouse felt a warm sensation. That was a good machine that had been in a bad way, and he'd brought it back to normal happy operation. The sergeant was pleased. The lieutenant turned into the communication. building. Sergeant Belouse followed at leisure. A jeep went past him, one of the special

jeeps being developed at this particular installation, and its driver was talking to someone in the back seat, but the Jeep, matter-of-factly, turned out to avoid Sergeant Belouse. He glowed. He'd achieved it, another good machine gathering sound experience day by day. He went into the room where Betsy stood, the communicator which, alone among the receiving devices in the whole world picked up the enigmatic broadcasts consistently. Betsy was a standard Mark IV communicator, now carefully isolated from any aerial. She was surrounded by recording devices for vision and sound, and by the most sensitive and complicated instruments yet devised for the detection of shortwave radiation.

Nothing had yet been detected reaching Betsy, but something must. No machine could originate what Betsy had been exhibiting on her screen and emitting from her speakers. Sergeant Bellews tensed instantly. Betsy's standby-like quivered hysterically from bright to dim and back again. The raid of quivering was fast. It was very nearly a sine wave modulation of the light, and when a Mahone-modified machine goes into sine wave flicker, it is the same as Shane Stokes' breathing in a human. He plunged forward.

He jerked open Betsy's adjustment cover and fairly yelped his dismay. He reached in and swiftly completed corrective changes of amplification and scanning voltages. He balanced a capacity bridge. He smoothed a saw-tooth resonator. He seemed to know by sheer intuition what was needed to be done. After a moment or two the standby lamp wavered slowly from near extinction to half-brightness, then to full brightness and back again. It was completely unrhythmic and very close to normal." "'Who has done this?' demanded the sergeant furiously.

He had Betsy close to fatigue collapse. He ought to be court-martialed. He was too angry to notice the three civilians in the room with the Colonel and the Lieutenant who summoned him. The young officer looked uncomfortable, but the Colonel said authoritatively, "'Never mind that, Sergeant. Here Betsy was receiving something. It wasn't clear. You had not reported as ordered, so an attempt was made to clarify the signals. "'Okay, Colonel,' said Sergeant Bellews bitterly. "'You got the right to spoil machines, but if you want them to work right, you got to treat them right.' "'Just so,' said the Colonel.

"'Meanwhile, this is Dr. Howell, Dr. Graves, and Dr. Leakey. Sergeant Belus, gentlemen. Sergeant, these are not MDs. They've been sent by the Pentagon to work on Betsy. Betsy don't need working on, said Sergeant Belize, belligerently. She's a good, reliable experience machine. If she's handled right, she'll do better work than any machine I know. Granted, said the Colonel, she's doing work now that no other machine seems able to do,

drawing scrambled broadcasts from somewhere that can only be guessed at. They've been unscrambled, and these gentlemen have come to get the data on Betsy. I'm sure you'll cooperate. What kind of data do they want?' demanded Bellews. I can answer most questions about Betsy. Which, the Colonel told him, is why I sent for you. These gentlemen have the top scientific brains in the country, sergeant. Answer their questions about Betsy, and I think some very high brass will be grateful.

By the way, it is ordered that from now on no one is to remember. refer to Betsy, or any work on these broadcasts over any type of electronic communication, no telephone, no communicator, no teletype, no radio, no form of communication except Viva Voce. And that means you talking to somebody else, Sergeant, with no microphone around, understand, and from now on you will not talk about anything at all except to these gentlemen and to me." Sergeant Bellews said incredulously, "'Suppose I got to

to talk to somebody in the rehab shop. Do I signal with my ears and fingers?" "'You don't talk,' said the Colonel flatly. Not at all.' Sergeant Bellews shook his head, sadly. He regarded the Colonel with such reproach that the Colonel stiffened. But Sergeant Bellews had a gift for machinery. He had what amounted to genius for handling Mahone modified devices, so long as no more competent men turned up, He was apt to get away with more than average. The Colonel frowned and went out of the room. The tall young lieutenant followed him faithfully.

The sergeant regarded the three scientists, with the suspicious air he displayed to everyone, not connected with Mahone units in some fashion. Well, he said with March Reserve, what can I tell you first? Leaky was the smallest of the three scientists. He said ingratiatingly with the faintest possible access in his speech.

The nicest thing you could do for us, Sergeant, would be to show us that this Betsy, is it, with other machines before her, has developed a contagious machine insanity. It would frighten me to learn that machines can go mad, but I prefer it to other explanations for the messages she gives. "'Betsey can't go crazy,' said Bellews with finality. She's Mahone controlled, but she hasn't got what it takes to go crazy. A Mahone unit fixes a machine so it can loaf and be a permanent dynamic system that can keep acquiring habits of operating. It can take training. It can get to be experienced. It can learn the tricks of its trade, so to speak, but it can't go crazy.

Too bad, said Leakey. He added persuasively, but a machine can lie, Sergeant. Would that be possible? Sergeant Bellews snorted in denial. end of part one part two of the machine that saved the world by murray lindster this leber-box recording is in the public domain part two the broadcasts said leaky mildly claim a remarkable reason for certainty about an extremely grave danger which is almost upon the world if it's a 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 to yelling yelps every so often, anyhow. Listen to them, and nothing happens, except it's top priority. Top secret, extra crashed 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 focused. 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 Leakey calmly. Tell us where your Betsy gets the signal she,

reports in this fashion. There were whirring as recorders trained upon Betsy captured every flickering of her screen, and every peeping noise or deep-tone rumble. The screen pattern changed with a 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 Mahone 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 Comphubs 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 systems described so we can have practice to try to understand remember Leakey 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 dowerly. 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 part slowed down, and the deep-base 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-way-one. 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 Leakey very earnestly.

Truly Howell, it is a lie. Then where does the broadcast come from? Demanded Howell. Some say it's a calm pub trick, but if that 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 mustache, said jerkily, Nohowl. It is not an extraterrestrial 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, I do not sleep at all, said Leakey simply, because it says that two-way communication is to come. I can listen to these broadcasts, tranquilly, but I cannot bear the thought of answering them. That seems to me madness. Sergeant Bellews said approvingly, You got something there, yes, sir. Did you notice how Betsy's standby light was wobbling when she was bringing in that broadcast?

If she could sweat, she'd have been sweating. Leakey turned his head to stare at the sergeant. Machines, said Bellews profoundly, act according to the golden rule. they do unto you as they would have you do unto them. You treat a machine right, and it treats you right. You treat it wrong, and it busts itself, still trying to treat you right, see?' Leaky blinked. "'I do not quite see how it applies,' he said mildly.

"'Betzy's an old-experienced machine,' said the sergeant. "'A signal that makes her sweat like that has got something wrong about it. any ordinary machine had break down handling it graves said jerkily the other machines that received these broadcasts did break down sergeant all of them sure said the sergeant with dignity of course whose broadcasting may have been tinkering with their signals since they seen it wasn't getting through betsy can take it now when younger machines with less experience can't maybe a micro-microwatt of signal then it makes her sweat if she was broadcast and with hell of a lot more than a micro-micro-watt, it'd be bad. I bet you that every machine we make to broadcast breaks down. I bet. Howell said curtly,

reasonable enough. A signal to pass through time as well as space would be different from a standard wave type. Of course, that must be the answer. Sergeant Bellews said truculently. I got a hunch that whoever's broadcasting is bust in transmitters right and left. I never knew anything about this before, except that Betsy was picking up stuff that came from nowhere. But I bet if you look over the record tapes, you'll find they got breaks where one transmitter switched off or broke down and another took over. Leakey's eyes were shining.

He regarded Sergeant Bellews with a sort of tender respect. Sergeant Bellews, he said softly. I like you very much. You have told us undoubtedly true things. think nothing of it said the sergeant gratified i run the rehab shop here and i could show you things we wish you would said leaky the reaction of machines to these broadcasts is the one viewpoint we would never have imagined but it is plainly important will you help us sergeant i do not like to be frightened and i am sure i'll help said sergeant bellews largely first thing is to whip some stuff together so we can find out what's what you take a few mahone units and install em and train them right and they will do almost anything you've a mind for but you've got to treat em right machines work by the golden rule always come along sergeant bellews went to the rehab shop followed only by leaky all about the sun shone down upon buildings with a remarkably temporary look about them and on lawns with a remarkably lush look about them and signboards with very black lettering on gray paint backgrounds

there was a very small airfield inside the barbed wire fence about the post and the elaborate machine shops and rows and rows of barracks in a canteen and a u s o theater and a post-post office. Everything seemed quite matter of fact, except the machines. They were the real reason for the existence of the post. The barracks and married road dwellings had washing machines, which looked very much like other washing machines, except that they had standby lights which flickered meditatively when they weren't being used.

The television receivers looked like other TV sets, except for minute and wavering standby lights which were never quite as bright or dim one moment as the next. The jeeps, used strictly within the barbed-wire fence around the post, had similar yellow glowings on their instrument boards, and they were very remarkable jeeps. They never ran off the gravel roads onto the grass, and they never collided with each other, and it was said that the nine-year-old son of a lieutenant-colonel had tried to drive, one and it would not stir. Its motor cut off when he forced it into gear. When he tried to restart it, the starter did not turn. But when an adult stepped into it, it operated perfectly,

only it braked and stopped itself, when a small child toddled into its path. There were some people who said that this story was not true, but other people insisted that it was. Anyhow, the washing machines were perfect. They never tangled clothes put into them. It was reported that Mrs. So-and-so's washing machine had found a load of clothes tangled and reversed itself and worked backward until they were straightened out. Television sets turned to the proper channels, different ones at different times of the day, with incredible facility. The smallest child could wrench at a tuning knob and the desired station came on.

All the operating devices of research installation 83 worked as if they looked as if they liked to, which might have been alarming, except that they never did anything of themselves. They initiated nothing, but each one acted like an old favorite possession. They fitted their masters. They seemed to tune themselves to the habits of their owners. They were infinitely easy to work right and practically impossible to work wrong. Such machines, of course, had not been designed to cope with enigmatic broadcasts or for military purposes. But the jet planes on the small airfield were very remarkable indeed, and the other and

lesser devices had been made for better understanding of the Mahone units which made machines into practically a new order of creation. Sergeant Bellews ushered Leakey into the rehab shop. There was the pleasant, disorderly array of devices with their wavering standby lights. They gave the effect of being alive, but it somehow was not disordered. They seemed not so much intent as meditative, and not so much watchful as interested. When the sergeant and his guest moved past them, the unrhythmic wave-rings of the small yellow lights seemed to change, hopefully, as if the machines anticipated being put to use,

which, of course, was absurd. Mahone machines do not anticipate anything. They probably do not remember anything, though patterns of operation, are certainly retained in a very great variety. The fact is that a Mahone unit is simply a device to let a machine stand idle without losing the nature of an operating machine. The basic principle goes back to antiquity. Ships in ancient days had manners and customs individual to each vessel. Some were sweet craft, easily handled, and staunch and responsive. Others were stubborn and begrudging of all helpfulness.

Sometimes they were even man-killers. These facts had no rational explanation, but they were facts. In similarly olden times, particular weapons acquired personalities to the point of having personal names. Excalibur, for example. Every fighting man knew of weapons which seemed to possess personal skill and ferocity. Later, workmen found that certain tools had a knack of fitting smoothly in the hand, seeming even to divine the grain of the wood they worked on.

The individual characteristics of violins were notorious, so that a violin which sang joyously under the bowl was literally priceless. And all these things, as a matter of observation and not of superstition, kept their qualities only when in constant use. Let a ship be hauled out of water and remain there for a time, and she would be clumsy on return to her name. native element. Let a sword or tool stay unused, and it seemed to dull. In particular, the finest violins lost its splendor of tone if left unplayed, and any violin left in a

repair shop for a month, had to be played upon constantly for many days before its living tone came back. The sword and the tool, perhaps, but the ship and the violin certainly acted as if they acquired habits of operation by being used, and lost them by disuse. When more complex machines were invented, such facts were less noticeable. True, no two automobiles ever handled exactly the same, and that was recognized. But the fact that no complex machine worked well until it had run for a time was never commented on, except in the observation that it needed to be warmed up. Anybody would have admitted that a machine in the act of operating was a dynamic system and a solid group of objects, but nobody reflected that a stopped machine was a dead thing.

Nobody thought to liken the warming-up period of an aeroplane engine to the days of playing before a disused dulled violin regained its tone. Yet it was obvious enough. A ship and a sword and a tool and a violin were objects. in which dynamic systems existed when they were used, and in which they ceased to exist when use stopped. And nobody noticed that a living creature is an object which contains a dynamic system when it is living, and loses it by death. For nearly two centuries, quite complex machines were started and warmed up and used, and

then allowed to grow cold again. In time the more complex machines were stopped only reluctantly. Computers, for example, came to be merely turned down below operating voltage when not in use, because warming them up was so difficult and exacting a task, which was an unrecognized use of the Mahone principle. It was a way to keep a machine activated while not actually operating. It was the state of rest, of loafing, of idleness, which was not the death of a running mechanism.

The Mahon unit was a logical development. It was an absurdly simple device, and not in the least like a brain, but to the surprise of everybody, including its inventor, a Mahone modified machine did more than stay warmed up. It retained operative habits as no complex device had ever done before. In time it was recognized that Mahone modified machines acquired experience and kept it so long as the standby light glowed and flickered in its socket. If the lamp went out, the machine died, and when re-energized was a different individual entirely without experience.

Sergeant Bellews made such large-minded statements, as were needed to brief leaky on the work done in this installation with Mahone control machines. They don't think, he explained negligently, any more than dogs think. They just react, like dogs do. They get patterns of reaction. They get trained. experienced. They get good. Over at the airfield, they're walking around beaming happy over the way the jets are flying themselves." Leakey gazed around the rehab shop. There were shells

of machines duly boxed and equipped with Mahone units, but not yet activated. Activation meant turning them on and giving them a sort of basic training in the tasks they were designed to do. But also there were machines which had broken down, invariably through misuse, said Sergeant Belouse acidly, and had been sent to the rehab shop to be retrained in their proper duties. "'G guys see him act insensible and obediently,' said Bellews with bitterness, and expect them to think. Over at the jet-field they finally come to understand.

His tone moderated. Now they got jets that put down their own landing gear and hollow and fuels running low, and do acrobatics happy if you only jiggle the stick. They might near fly themselves. I tell you, if well-trained Mahon jets every new tangle with old-style machines, it's going to be a caution to cats. It'll be like a pack of happy terriers piling in the hamsters. It'll be murder.

End of Part 2. Part 3 of the Machine That Saved the World by Murray Lindster. This Lieberbox recording is in the public domain. Part 3. He surveyed his stock. From a back corner he brought out a small machine with an especially meditative tempo in its standby lamp flicker. The tempo accelerated a little when he put it on a workbench. They got batteries to stay activated with, he observed, and only need real juice when they're working.

This here's a playback recorder they had over in recreation. Some guys trained it to switch frequencies, speed up and slow down stuff. They laughed themselves sick. There used to be a tough guy over there, a staff sergeant he was, that gave lectures on military morals and a deep bass voice. He was proud of that bull voice of his. He used it frequently. So they taped him.

And Al here, the name plainly referred to the machine, used to play it back switched up so he sounded like a squeaky girl. That poor guy! He liked to bust the blood vessel when he heard himself speaking soprana. He raised Hell and they sent Al here to be rehabilitated. But I switched another machine for him and sent it back instead. Of course, Al don't know what he's doing, but— He brought over another device slightly larger and with a screen.

Somebody had a bright notion with this one, too, he said. They figured they'd scramble pictures for secret transmission, like they scramble voice. But they found they had to have team-trained sets to work. and they weren't interchangeable. They sent Gus here to be activated and trained again. I kind of hate to do that. Sometimes you got to deactivate a machine, but it's like shooting a dog somebody's taught to steal eggs

who don't know it's wrong. He bolted the two instruments together. He made connections with flexible cables and tucked the cables out of sight. He plugged in for power and began to make adjustments. The small scientist asked curiously, What are you preparing, Sergeant? These two'll unscrambled that broadcast, said Sergeant Beluz with tranquil confidence.

Al's learned how to make tape and switch frequencies expert. Gus here, he's an unscrambler. They can make any kind of scanning pattern. Together they'll have a party doing what they're specially trained for. We'll hook them to Betsy's training terminals. He regarded the two machines warmly. Connected now, their standby lights. flickering at a new tempo.

They synchronized and broke synchrony and went back into elaborate, not quite resolvable patterns, which were somehow increasingly integrated as seconds went by. Those lights look kind of nice, don't they? As the sergeant, admiringly, makes you think of a couple of dogs

getting equated when they're going out on a job of hunting or something. But Leakey said abruptly in amazement, but Sergeant, In the Pentagon, it takes dazed on scramble or receive broadcasts such as Betsy received. It requires experts, said Sergeant Beluz. He picked up the two machines. Don't get me started about the kind of guys that Wrangell headquarters company jobs.

They got a special talent for Fallen Soft. But they haven't necessarily got anything else. Leakey follows Sergeant Bellews as the Sergeant Belus. picked up his new combination of devices and headed out of the rehab shop. Outside in the sunshine there were roarings to be heard. Leakey looked up. A formation of jets slam into view against the sky. A tiny speck trailing a monstrous plume of smoke shot upward from the jet field.

The formation tightened. The ascending jet jiggled as if in pure exuberance as it swooped upward. But the jiggle was beautifully designed to throw standard automatic gun sights off. A plane peeled off from the formation and dived at the ascending ship. There was a curious alteration in the thunder of motors. The rate of rise of the climbing jet dwindled almost to zero. Sparks shot out before it. They made a cone the diving ship could not avoid.

It sped through them and then went as if disappointedly to a lower level. It stood by to watch the rest of the dogfight. Nice, said Sergeant Beluz, appreciatively. That's a Mahone jet all by itself, training against regular ships. They have to let it shoot star bullets in training, or it'd get hot and bothered in a real fight when its guns went off. The lower jet streaked Skyward once more. Sparks sped from the formation.

They flared through emptiness where the Mahone jet had been, but now, was not. It scuttled abruptly to one side, as concerted streams of sparks converged, they missed. It darted into zestful exuberant maneuverings, remarkably like a dog dashing madly here and there in pure high spirits. The formation of planes attacked it resolutely. Suddenly the lone jet plunged into the midst of the formation. There were coruscations of little shooting stars, and one, two, three.

Three planes disgustedly descended to lower levels as out of action. Then the single ship shot upward, seemed eagerly to shake itself, plunged back, and the last ships tried wildly to escape, but each in turn was technically shot down. The Mahone jet headed back for its own tiny airfield. Somehow it looked as if, had it been a dog, it would be wagging its tail and panting happily. That one ship, said Leaky blankly. It defeated the rest. It's got a lot of experience, said the sergeant.

You can't beat experience. He led the way into communications center, in the room where Betsy stood. Howell and graves had been drawing diagrams at each other to the point of obstinacy. But don't you see? insisted Howell angrily. There can be no source other than a future time. We can't sense short waves through three-dimensional space to a gisteninger. given spot and not have them interceptible between?

Anyhow, the calm pubs wouldn't work it this way. They wouldn't put us on guard. And an extraterrestrial wouldn't pretend to be human if he honestly wanted to warn us of danger? He'd tell us the truth. Physically and logically, it's impossible for it to be anything but what it claims to be. Graves said doggedly, But a broadcast originating in the future is impossible. Nothing, snapped Howell, that a man can imagine, is impossible.

Then imagine for me, said Graves, that in 2180 they read in the history books about a terrible danger to the human race back in 1972, which was averted by a warning they sent us. Then from their history books, which we wrote for them, they learn how to make a transmitter to broadcast back to us. Then they tell us how to make a transmitter to broadcast ahead to them. They don't invent the transmitter. We tell them how to make it via a history book. We don't invent it.

They tell us from the history book. Now imagine for me how that transmitter got invented. You're quibbling, snapped Howell. You're refusing to face a fact because you can't explain it. I say face the fact and then ask for an explanation. Why not ask them, said Graves, how to make a round square or a five-sided triangle. Sergeant Bellews pushed to a spot near Betsy. He put down his now-linked Mahone machines and began to move away some of the recording apparatus focused on Betsy.

Hold on there, said Howell in alarm. Those are recorders. We'll let them record direct, said the sergeant. Leakey spoke feverishly in support of Bellews, but what he said was, in effect, a still marveling description of the possibilities of Mahone modified machines. They were, he said, with ardent enthusiasm, the next step in the historic process by which successively greater portions of the cosmos enter into a symbiotic relationship with man. Domestic animals entered into such a partnership eons ago. Certain plants, wheat, and the like, even became unable to exist without human attention,

and machines were wrought by man and for a long long. time served him reluctantly. Pre-Mahon machines were tamed, not domestic. They were themselves out and destroyed themselves by accidents. But now there were machines which could enter into a truly symbiotic relationship with humanity." "'What?' demanded Howell. "'What in hell are you talking about?' Leakey checked himself. He smiled abashedly. "'I think,' he said humbly, "'that I speak of the high destiny of mankind, but the part that applies at the moment is that Sergeant Bellews must not be interfered

with. He turned and ardently assisted Sergeant Bellews in making room for the just-bought devices. Sergeant Bellews led flexible cables from them to Betsy. He inserted their leads in her training terminals. He made adjustments within. It became notable that Betsy Standby Light took up new tempos in its wavering. There were elaborate interoperate. the weavings of rate and degree of brightening among the lights of all three instruments. There was no possible way to explain the fact, but a feeling of pleasure of zestful stirring was somehow expressed by the three machines which had been linked together into a cooperating group.

Sergeant Bellews eased himself into a chair. Now everything set, he observed contentedly. Remember, I ain't seen any of these broadcast unscrambled. I don't know what it's all about, but we got three Mahone machines set up now to work on the next crazy broadcast that comes in. There's Betsy and these two others. And all machines work according to the golden rule, but Mahon machines, they are honey babies. They'll bust themselves trying to do what you ask them, and I ask these babies for plenty. Only not enough to hurt him. Let's see what they turn out. He pulled a pipe and tobacco from his pocket. He

He filled the pipe. He squeezed the side of the bowl and puffed as the tobacco glowed. He relaxed, underneath the wall sign which sternly forbade smoking by all military personnel within these premises. It was nearly three hours, but it could have been hundreds, before Betsy's screen lighted abruptly. The broadcast came in, a new transmission. The picture pattern on Betsy's screen was obviously not the same as other broads.

from nowhere. The chirps and peepings and the rumbling deep sounds were not repetitions of earlier noise sequences. It should have taken many days of finicky work by technicians at the Pentagon before the originally broadcast picture could be seen and the sound interpreted. But a playback recorder named Al and a picture unscrambler named Gus were in close-circuit relationship with Betsy. She received the broadcast and they unscrambled the sound and vision parts of it immediately. The translated broadcast, as Gus and Al, presented it, was calculated to put the high brass of the defense forces into a frenzied tizzy. The anguished consternation of previous occasions would seem like very calm contemplation by comparison.

The high brass of the armed forces should grow dizzy. Top echelon civil unificials should tend to talk incoherently to themselves, and scientific consultants, biologists in particular, ought to feel their heads spinning like tops. The point was that the broadcast had to be taken seriously, because it came from nowhere. There was no faintest indication of any signal outside of Betsy's sedately gray-painted case. But Betsy was not making it up. She couldn't. There was a technology involved which required the most earnest concern. of the message carried by it. And this broadcast explained the danger from which the alleged future wished to rescue its alleged past. A brisk, completely deracialized broadcaster, appeared

on Gus's screen. In-clipped, oddly stressed, but completely intelligible phrases, he explained that he recognized the paradox his communication represented. Even before 1972, he observed, There had been argument about what would happen if a man could travel in time and happen to go back to an earlier age and kill his grandfather. This communication was an inversion of that paradox. The world of 2180 wished to communicate back in time and save the lives of its great, great, great grandparents, so that it, the world of 2180, would be born. Without this warning and the information to be given, at least half the human beings. race of 1972 was doomed. In late 1971, there had been a mutation of a minor strain of

Staphylococcus somewhere in the Andes. The new mutation thrived and flourished, with the swift transportation of the period. It had spread practically all over the world unnoticed because it produced no symptoms of disease. Half the members of the human race were carriers of the harmless mutated Staphylococcus now, but it was about to mutate again in accordance with Gordon's law, the reference had no meaning in 1972, and the new mutation would be lethal. In effect, one human being and two carried in his body a semi-virus organization which he continually spread and which very shortly would become deadly. Half the human race was bound to die, unless it was instructed as to how to cope with it, unless the world of

2180 told its ancestors what to do about it. That was the proposal. Two-way communication was necessary for the purpose, because there would be questions to be answered, obscure points to be clarified, numerical values to be checked to the highest possible degree of accuracy. Therefore, here were diagrams of the transmitter needed to communicate with future time. Here were enlarged diagrams of individual parts. The enigmatic parts of the drawing produced a wave-type unknown in 1972, but a special type of wave was needed to travel beyond the three dimensions of ordinary space into the fourth dimension, which was time.

This wave-type produced unpredictable surges of power in the transmitter, wherefore at least six transmitters should be built and linked together so that if one ceased operation, another would instantly take up the task. The broadcast ended abruptly. Betsy's screen went blank. The colonel was notified. A courier took tapes to Washington by high-speed jet. Life in Research Establishment 83 went on sedately.

The barracks and the married quarters and the residences of the officers were equipped with Mahone modified machines which laundered diapers perfectly, and with dial telephones, which always rang right numbers, and there were police-up machines which took perfect care of lawns, and television receivers, tuned themselves to the customary channels for different hours with astonishing ease. Even jet planes equipped with Mahone units almost landed themselves, and almost flew themselves about the sky in simulated combat with something very close. to zest.

But the atmosphere in the room in communications was tense. I think, said Howell, with his lips compressed, that this answers all your objection, scrapes. Motive— No, said Leakey painfully. It does not answer mine. My objection is that I do not believe it. Huh, said Sergeant Bellew scornfully.

Of course you don't believe it. It's phony, clear through. Licky looked at him hopefully. You noticed something that we missed, Sergeant? Hell yes, said Sergeant Bellews. That transmitter diagram don't have a Mahone unit in it. Is that remarkable? demanded Howell. Remarkably dumb, said the sergeant.

They'd ought to know. The tall young lieutenant, who earlier had fetched Sergeant Bellews to communications, now appeared again. He gracefully entered the room where Betsy waited for more broadcast matter. Her standby light flickered with something close to animation, and the similar yellow bulbs on Al and Gus responded in kind. The tall young lieutenant said politely, I am sorry, but pending orders from the Pentagon. The colonel has ordered this room vacated. Only automatic recorders will be allowed here, and all records they produce will be sent to

Washington without examination. It seems that no one on this post has the necessary clearance for this type of material. Leaky blinked. Graves sputtered. But, dented, do you mean we can work out a way to receive a broadcast and not be qualified to see it? There's a common-sense view, said Sergeant Beluze oracularly, and the crazy view, and there's what the Pentagon says, which ain't either. He stood up. I see where I go back to my shop and finish rehabilitating the Colonel's vacuum cleaner. You gentlemen care to join me?" Howell said indignantly.

"'This is ridiculous. This is absurd.' "'U-huh,' said Sergeant Belize benignly. "'This is the armed forces. They'll be an order making some sort of sense come along later. Meanwhile, I can brief you guys on my home machines, so you'll be ready to start up again with better information when a clearance order does come through, and I got some beer in my quarters behind the rehab shop. Come along with me.' he led the way out of the room the young lieutenant paused to close the door firmly behind him and to lock it a board private with side-arms took post before it the lieutenant was a very conscientious young man but he did not interfere with the parade to sergeant bellew's quarters the young lieutenant was very military and the ways of civilians were not his concern if eminent scientists chose to go to sergeant bellew's quarters instead of the officers club to which their assimilated rank entitle them it was strictly their affair

end of part three part four of the machine that saved the world by murray lister this labor box recording is in the public domain part four they reached the the rehab shop, and Sergeant Belouse went firmly to a standby light-equipped refrigerator in his quarters. He brought out beer and deftly popped off the tops. The ice-box door closed quietly. Here's the crime, said Sergeant Belus amiably. He drank. Howl sipped gloomily. Graves drank thoughtfully. Leaky looked anticipative. Sergeant, he said, did I see a gleam in your eye just now? Sergeant Belize reflected, gently shaking his opened beer can with a rotary motion for no reason, whatever. Uh-huh, he rumbled. I wouldn't say a gleam, but you might have seen a glint.

I got some ideas from what I seen during that broadcast. I want to get to work on them. Here's the place to do the work. We got facilities here. Howell said, with precise hot anger, this is the most idiotic situation. I have ever seen even in government service. You ain't been around much, the sergeant told him kindly. It happens everywhere all the time. It ain't even an exclusive feature of the armed forces. He put down his beer can and patted his stomach.

There's guys who sit up nights working out standard operating procedures just to make things like this happen everywhere. The colonel had to do what he did. He's got artists too, but he felt bad. So he sent the lieutenant to tell us. He does the colonel's dirty jobs, and he loves his work. He moved grandly toward the rehab shop proper, which opened off the quarters he lived in, very much as a doctor's office is apt to open off his living quarters.

We follow? asked Leakey zestfully, you plan something? Natural, said Sergeant Bellews largely. He led the way into the rehab shop, which was dark and shadowy, and only very dimly lighted by flickering, wavering lights of many machines, waiting as if hopefully to be called on for action. There were the shelves of machines not yet activated. Sergeant Bellews led the way toward his desk. There was a vacuum cleaner on it, on standby.

He put it down on the floor. Lecky watched him with some eagerness. The others came in, howl dowerly, and graves wiping his moustache. The sergeant considered his domain. We'll be happy to help you, said Leakey. Thanks, said the sergeant. I'm under orders to help you, too, you know. Just suppose you asked me to whip up something to analyze what Betsy receives,

so it can be checked on that it is a new wave type. Can you do that? demanded Graves. We were supposed to work on that, but so far we've absolutely nothing to go on. The sergeant waved his hand negligently. You've got something now. Betsy's a Mahone modified device. Every receiver that picked up one of those crazy broadcasts

broke down before it was through. She takes him in her stride, especially with Hal and Gus to help her. Wouldn't it be reasonable to guess that Mahone machines are especially adapted to handle intertemporal communication? Very reasonable, said Howell, dowerly, very. The broadcast said that the world. wave-type produced unpredictable surges of current.

Ordinary machines do find it difficult to work with whatever type of radiation that can be. Betsy chokes off those surges, observed the sergeant. With Gus and Al to help, she don't have no trouble. We hadn't ought to need to make any six transmitters if we put Mahone unit machines together for the job. Quite right, agreed Leakey mildly. And it is odd. Yeah, said the sergeant. It's plenty odd my great, great, great grandkids haven't got enough sense to do it themselves."

He went to a shelf and brought down a boxed machine, straight from the top-secret manufacturing of Mahon units. It had never been activated. Its standby light did not glow. Sergeant Bellews ripped off the carton and said, reflectively, you hate to turn off a machine that got its own ways of working. But a machine that ain't been activated has not got any personality, so you don't mind starting it up to turn it off later."

He opened the adjustment cover and turned something on. The standby light glowed. Closely observed it was not a completely steady glow. There were the faintest possible variations of brightness, but there was no impression of life. Graves said, why doesn't it flicker like the others?" No habits, said the sergeant, no experience. It's like a newborn baby. He'll get to have a personality after it's worked a while, but not now.

He went across the shop again. He moved out a heavy case and twisted the release and eased out a communicator of the same type, Mark 4 as Betsy back in the communications room. Howell went to help him. Graves tried to assist. Leaky moved other things out of the way. They were highly eminent scientists, and Mettec Sergeant Bellews was merely a non-commissioned officer in the armed forces, but he happened to have specialized information they had not.

Quite without condescension, they accepted his authority in his own field and therefore his equality. As civilians they had no rank to maintain, and they disagreed with each other, and would disagree with the sergeant only when they knew why, which was one of the reasons why they were eminent scientists. Sergeant Belouse brought out yet another box. He unrolled cables. He selected machines whose flickering lights seemed to bespeak eagerness to be of use.

He coupled them to the newly unboxed machines whose lights were vaguely steady. Training cables. He sat over his shoulder. You get one machine working right and you hook it with another, and the new machine kind of learns from the old one, kind of, but it ain't as good as real experience, not at first. Presently, the lights of the newly energized machines began to do. waver in somewhat the manner of the ready-for-operation ones, but they did not give so clear

an impression of personality. "'Look,' said Sergeant Bellews abruptly, "'I got to check with you. The more I think, the more worried I get.' "'You begin to believe the broadcasts come from the future?' demanded graves, 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 worrying about what they are.' the guy in the broadcasts not knowing mahone units said we'd have to make half a dozen transmitters so they'd take over one after another as they blew out you see what that means licky said crisply you pointed it out before there is something in the wave type which you would say this sergeant which machines do not like is that the reasoning uh-huh the sergeant scowled machines work by the golden rule they tried to do unto you-you what they want you to do unto them likes and dislikes don't matter i mean that there's something about that wave type that machines can't take it busts them if it sort of explodes surges of current in em look any running machine is a dynamic system in an object a jet plane operating is that so's a water spout so's a communicator but if you explode surges of heavy current in a dynamic system in an operating machine machine, things get messed up. The operating habit is busted to hell. I'm saying that if this wave type makes crazy surges of current startup, why, if the surges are strong enough, they'll bust not only a communicator, but a jet plane, or a water spot anything, see?" Leaky blinked and suddenly went pale.

But, said Howell reasonably. You said that Betsy handled it, especially well when linked with other Mahone machines. Yeah, said the sergeant. I think, observed Graves, jerkily, that you are preparing new machines without developed personalities, because you think that if they make this special type wave, they'll be broken. Yeah, said the sergeant again. The signal Betsy was amplifying could have been as little as a micro-micro-wad. At its frequency and type, she'd choke it down if it was more, but even a micro-micro-wad.

But even a micro-micro-watt bothered Betsy until she got Al and Gus to help. She was fair screaming for somebody to come and help her hold it, but the three of them done all right. Howell conceded the point. That seems sound reasoning. But you don't broadcast with a micro-micro-watt. You use a hell of a lot more power than that. The transmitter the guy in the screen said to make was a 20-kil-wight job. Not too much of a broadcast for sign waves, but a hell of a lot to be turned loose in waves

that have Betsy hollering at the power she was handling. It might break even the Mahone machines in this installation, demanded Howell. You're getting warm, said the sergeant. Graves said, you mean it might break all operating communicators in a very large area? You're getting hot, said the sergeant grimly. Leaky whetted his lips. I think, he said very carefully. that you suspect it is a wave type which will break any dynamic system in any sort of object a dynamic system can exist in.

Yep, said the sergeant. He waited, looking at Leakey. And, said Leaky, not only operating machines are dynamic systems. Living plants and animals are, too. So are men. That's what I'm driving at, said Sergeant Belus. So you believe, said Leaky very pale. indeed, that we have been given the circuit diagram of a transmitter which will broadcast a wave

type which destroys dynamic systems, life as well as the operation of machines. Persons in the future are an alien creature in a spaceship, or perhaps even the com pubs, are furnishing us with designs for transmitters of death, to be linked together so that if one fails the others will carry on, and they lure us to destroy ourselves by lying about who they are and what they propose? They're lying, said the sergeant. They say they're in the future, and they don't know a thing about Mahone units, else they use them. Leakey went at his lips again. And if they are not in the future, they are trying to get us to destroy ourselves, because

that would be safer and sure than trying to destroy 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. Acknowledge the sergeant. If we get wise, we could bump them off by parachute transmitter, so they'll beat us to it. They'll have to. Yes, said Leaky, they'll have to. It has always been said that a death ray was impossible. This would be a death broadcast. If we do not broadcast, they will, whoever they are. It is—he smiled mirthlessly at the magnitude of his understatement.

It is urgent that we do something. What shall we do, Sergeant? A squadron of light tanks arrived at research installation 83 that afternoon, with a shipment of courier motorcycles. They had been equipped with Mahone units and went to the post to be trained. The Pentagon was debating the development of a Mahone— modified guided missile and a drone plane was under construction, but non-military items also arrived for activation and test. Automatic telephone switching systems it appeared could be made much simpler if they could be 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 known that most accidents occurred with new cars and that ancient jalopis were relatively safe, even in the hands of juvenile delinquents, it was credible that part of the difference was in the operating habits of the car. It appeared that humanity was upon the threshold of a new era, in which the value of personality would reappear among the things taken for granted. Strictly speaking, of course, Mahone machines were not persons, but they reflected the personalities of their owners. It might again seem desirable to be a decent

human being, if only because machines worked better for them. But it would be tragic if Mahone machines were used to destroy humankind with themselves. Sergeant Bellews would have raged at the thought of training a Mahone unit to guide an atom bomb. It would have to be, in a fashion, deceived. He even disliked the necessity he faced that afternoon, while a courier winged his way to the Pentagon with the top secret tapes Betts. C&L and Gus had made.

The rehab shop was equipped not only to recondition machines, but to test them. One item of equipment was a generator of substitute broadcast waves. It could deliver a carrier wave down to half a micro-microwat of any form desired and up to the power of a nearby transmitter. It was very useful for calibrating communicators. But Sergeant Bellews modified it to allow a loud of variations in type as well as frequency and amplitude. I'm betting, he grunted, that there's different sorts of the wave type these guys want us to

broadcast. Like there's a spectrum of visible light, if we were colorblind and yellow to bust things, they transmit in red that we could see, and they'd tell us to broadcast something in yellow that it'd wipe us out. And we wouldn't have sense enough not to broadcast the yellow, because we would, we would, wouldn't know the difference between it and red until we did broadcast. Then it'd be too late. Howell watched with tight clamp jaws.

He had committed himself to the authenticity of the broadcasts claiming to be from a future time. Now he was shaken, but only enough to admit the need for tests. Graves sat unnaturally still. Leakey looked at Sergeant Belouse, with a peculiarly tranquil expression on his face. Only, grunted the sergeant, "'It ain't frequency. We got to figure but type. Nobody hardly uses anything but sign waves for communication. But I got to make this gadget turn out a freak wave type by guests and golly.

I got a sort of test for it, though.' He straightened up and connected a cable from the generator to the Mark IV communicator, which was a factory twit of Betsy. I'm going to feed this communicator, half a micro-microwad of stuff like the broadcast, I think, he announced grimly. I saw the diagrams of the transmitter they want us to make. I'm guessing the broadcast wave they use is close to it, but not exact. Close because it's bad for machines.

Not exact because they're alive while they use it. I hope I don't hit anything on the nose, okay? Leaky said Chitley. I have never been more frightened. Go ahead. Sergeant Beluz depressed a stud. The communicator screen lighted up instantly. It was receiving the generator's minute output and accepted it as a broadcast, but the signal

was unmodulated, so there was no image nor any sound. The communicator standby light flickered steadily. Sergeant Belize adjusted a knob on the generator. The communicator standby flicker changed in amplitude. Bellews turned the knob back. He adjusted another control. The standby light wavered crazily. Raves said nervously.

I think I see. You're trying to make this communicator react as Betsy did. When it does, you will consider that your generator was creating a wave like the broadcasts from nowhere. Yeah, said Bellews. It ain't scientific, but it's the best I can. can do. He worked the generator controls with infinite care. Once the communicator's standby light approached sine wave modulation, he hastily shifted away from the settings which caused it. He muttered, close. Then suddenly, the communicator's lamp began to waver in an extraordinary

hysterical fashion. Sergeant Bellews turned down the volume swiftly. He wiped sweat off his forehead. I think I got the trick, he said heavily. It's a hell of a wave type. Are you guys game to feed it into this communicator's output amplifier? I have six sets of cold chills running up and down my spine, said Leaky. I think you should proceed. Howell said angrily, it's got to be tried, hasn't it? It's got to be tried, acknowledged Sergeant Bellews.

He shifted the generator's cable from the communicator's input to the feed-in for pre-amplified signal. The communicator screen went dark. It no longer received a simulated broadcast signal. It was now signaling, calling. But the instant the new signal started out, the standby light flickered horribly. Sergeant Bellews grimly plugged in other machines. To the three scientists, they look like duplicates of Gus and Al, to closed-circuit relationship with Betsy's twin. The standby light calmed. Now we test. He said grimly. Got a watch?

Leakey extended his wrist. Watch it, said Sergeant Belus. He stepped up the output. My watch is stopped, said Leakey, through white lips. Graves looked at his own watch. He shook it and held it to his ear. He looked sick. Howl growled and looked at his own.

That wave stops watches, he admitted, unwillingly. But not Mahone machines easy, said Sergeant Bellews heavily, and not us. There was almost three micro-micro-wats going out then. That's three millionth of a millionth of an amp-second at one volt. We... End of part four. Part five of the machine that saved the world by Murray Lindster. This Libravox recording is in the public domain.

Part five. His voice stopped as if with a click. The screen of Betsy's factory twin communicator lighted up. A man's fan. face peered out of it. He was bearded, and they could not see his costume, but he was frightened. What? What is this? called his voice shrilly from the speakers. Sergeant Bellews said very sharply, Hey, you ain't the guy we've been talking to. The screen went dark.

Sergeant Belize put his hand over the microphone opening. He turned fiercely upon the rest. Look, he snapped. We were broadcasting their trick wave. the wave they used to talk to us, and they picked it up. But they weren't expecting it. They were set to pick up the wave they told us to transmit. See? That guy'll come back. He's got to. So we got to play along.

He'll want to find out if we got wise and won't broadcast ourselves to death. If he finds out we know what we're doing, they'll pair his shoe to transmitter down on us before we can do it to them. Back me up. Get set. He removed his hand from the microphone. "'Call in twenty-one-80,' he chatted urgently. "'Call on the guy that just contacted us. "'Come in, twenty-one-80.

You're not the guy we've been talking to, but come in. Come in, twenty-one-80.' Howl said stridently, "'But if that's twenty-one-80, how'd we parachute—' Leakey clapped a hand over his mouth, with a fierceness surprising and so small a man. He whispered desperately into Howell's ear. Graves absurdly began to bite his nails, staring at the communicator screen. Sergeant Belouse 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 are to be rehabilitated machines, appeared to listen with interest, while Sergeant Belize called, Come in 2180, we've been trying to reach you for a couple of weeks. We got somebody else instead of you and they've been talking to us, and they say that they're 30-20 instead of 21-80,

but we've got to contact you. They don't know anything about that germ that's going to 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 absurdly. The rehab shop was full of shadows, and Sergeant Belouse 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, graceless broadcaster of the earlier broadcasts, 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 transmitter so soon! We try to analyze your wave, said Sergeant Bellews, with every appearance of feverish relief. but we only got it approximate. We tried calling back with what we got, and we got through time all right,

but we contacted some guys in 30-20 instead of you. We need to talk to you. Can you give me the stuff about that bug that's going to wipe out half of us? Quick, I got a recorder going." The completely uncharacterizable man in the screen forced a second to 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 thirty-twenty? You contacted thirty-twenty? That is not in our records of your time. He listened again to this thing in 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 would tempt a joke, 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 are our great, great, great-grandchildren. We depend on you. We got to get you to tell us how to not get wiped out. In 30-20, the whole business is forgotten. It's a thousand years old, to them. But they're passing back some swell machinery.' He turned his head as if listening to something the microphone could not pick up.

But he looked appealingly at Leaky. Leaky nodded and moved toward the communicator. Look, said Sergeant Bellews into the screen. Here's Doc Leakey, one of our top guys. You talk to him. He gave his seat to Leakey. 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. We—we got to give him a doctorate circuit, whispered Sergeant Bellows desperately. and it's got to be good and quick. Grave spent over the paper on which the sergeant dripped sweat. The sergeant murmured through now chattering teeth what had to be devised and at once. It must be the circuit diagram for a transmitter to be given to the man whose face filled the screen.

The transmitter must be of at least twenty kilowatt power. It must be such a circuit as nobody has ever seen before. It must be convincing. It should appear to radiate in my own. possibly, or to destroy energy without radiation, but it must actually produce a broadcast signal of this exotic type. Here the sergeant described with shaky precision the exact constants of the wave to be generated, and the broadcaster from nowhere must not be able to deduce these constants or that wave

type from the diagram until he had built the transmitter and tried it. I know it can't be done, said the sergeant desperately. I know it can't. But it's got to be. Or they'll parachute a transmitter down on us, sure. Graves smiled a quick and nervous smile. He began to sketch a circuit. It was a wonderful thing.

It was the product of much ingenuity in meditation. It had been devised by himself as a brain teaser for the amusement of other high-level scientific brains. Mathematicians zestfully contrived problems to stump each other. Specialists in the higher branches of electronics sometimes present each other with diagram circuits which pretend to achieve the impossible. The problem is to find the hidden flaw. Graves deftly outlined his circuit and began to fill in the details. Ostensibly it was a circuit which consumed energy and produced nothing, not even heat.

In a sense it was the exact opposite of a perpetual motion scheme, which pretends to get energy from nowhere. This circuit pretended to radiate energy to nowhere and yet to get rid of it. Presently, Leakey could be heard expostulating gently, but of course we are willing to give you the circuit by which we communicate with the year 30-20 naturally. But it seems strange that you suspect us. After all, if you do not tell us how to meet the danger your broadcasts have told of, you will never be born." Sergeant Bellews mobbed his face and moved in the into the screen's field of vision." Doc? he said, laying a hand on Leakey's arm.

Doc Graves is sketching what they want right now. You want to come show it, Doc? Graves took Leakey's place. He spread out the diagram, finishing it as he talked. His nervous, faint smile appeared as the mannerism of embarrassment it was. There can be no radiation from a coral shape like this, he said embarrassingly, because of the Werner principle, yet on examining it was. information, input to the transistor series involves energy must flow, and when this coil, his voice

flowed on. He explained a puzzle, presenting it differently, as he had presented it to the other men in its own field. Then he had been playing for fun. Now he played for perhaps the highest stakes that could be imagined. He completed his diagram and smiling nervously, held it up to the communicator's screen. It was instantly transmitted, of course, to nowhere, which was most appropriate, because it pretended to be the diagram of a circuit sending radiation to the same place.

The face on the screen twitched now. The hand with the tiny earphone was always at the ear of the man on the screen, so that he plainly did not speak one word without high authority. We will examine this, he said. His voice was a full two tones higher than it had been. If you have been truthful, we will give you the information you wish. Click. The screen went dark.

Leaky 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. "'Yeah,' said Sergeant Bellews. "'What I'm wondering 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 consonance of a wave you wanted it to radiate.

"'I fixed it. It will.' "'But why that special type, that's sort of a wave. Special wave." Sergeant Bellews pulled himself together. Because, he said grimly, that was the way they wanted us to broadcast. What I'm hoping is that you gave him a transmitter to do exactly the same thing as the one they designed for us. If they're fooled, they'll broadcast the way they told us to broadcast.

If it busts machines, it'll bust their machines. If it stops all dynamic systems dead, including men, they'll be able to broadcast. 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 Beluz doggedly, "'I'm going to have a can of beer. Who'll join me?' "'The world wagged on.

The automatic monitors and 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 Bellows went into the guardhouse while plain loads of interrogating officers flew from Washington. Howl and Graves and Leakey 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 officers 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 recontacted and properly authorized in 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 officer's children played vociferously, and washing machines laundered diapers with beautiful efficiency, and vacuum cleaners and Mahone-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. Mahone modified machines acquired reflections of the habits of the families which used them.

An electric ice-box 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 flyers respected for their conscientiousness, and one would relieveedly allow an adolescent to drive a car if it were one of proven

experience and sagacity. The life of an ordinary person would be enormously enriched. A Mahone-modified machine would not even wear out. It took care of its own lubrication and upkeep, giving notice of its needs by the behavior of its standby lamp. When parts needed replacement, one would feel concern rather than irritation. There would be a personal relationship with the machines which so faithfully reflected one's personality.

And the machines would always, always, always act toward humans, according to the golden rule. But meanwhile, the rehab shop was taken over by officers of rank. They tried frantically to resume the communication that had been broken off. Suspecting that Sergeant Belouse had shifted controls, they essayed to shift them back. The communicator, which was Betsy's factory twin, went into sign-wave standby modulation, and suddenly smoked all over and was wrecked. The wave generator went into hysterics and produced nothing whatever. Then there was nothing to do but pull Sergeant Beluz out of the clink

and order him to do the whole business all over again. "'I can't,' said Sergeant Belize indignantly. It can't be done. Those guys are busy building a transmitter, according to the diagram Doc Graves gave them. They won't pay no attention to anything until they'd tried to. to chat with their great-great-great-grandchildren in 30-20. They were phonies, anyhow, pretending to be in 2180 and not knowing what Mahone units could do?

Leaky and Graves and Howell were even less satisfactory. They couldn't pretend even to try what the questioning teams from the Pentagon wanted them to do, and Betsy remained silent, receiving nothing, and Gus and Al waited meditatively for something to unscramble, and nothing turned out. up. And then, at 3 p.m. Greenwich meantime, on August 9, 1972, nearly every operating communicator in the fringe of free nations around the territory of the Union of Communist Republics, all communicators blew out. There were only four men in the world who really knew why. Sergeant Bellews and Leakey and Graves and Howell. They knew that somewhere behind the Iron Curtain,

A 20-kilawatt transmitter had been turned on. It produced a wave of the type and with the characteristics that would have been produced by a transmitter built from the diagram sent through Betsy and Al and Gus for people in the United States to build. Obviously, it had been built from Graves' diagram broadcast to somewhere else, and it broadcast what the United States had been urged to broadcast. It blew itself out instantly, of course. The wave it produced would stop any dynamic system at once, including its own.

But it hit stock home and traffic jammed as the dynamic systems of cars in operation were destroyed. In Gibraltar, the signal systems of the rock, went dead. All around the fringe of the armed communist republics, machines stopped, and communications ended, and very many persons with heart conditions died very quietly, because their dynamic systems were least stable. But healthy people, like Mahone modified machines, had great resistance outside the Iron Curtain. There was, though, almost a vacuum of news and mechanical operations

at the rim of a nearly perfect circle, some 4,000 miles in diameter, whose center was in a Com-Pub research installation. It was very bad. Such a panic as had never been known before. before swept the free world. Some mysterious weapon it was felt had been used to cripple those who would resist invasion, and the calm-pub armed forces would shortly be on the march, and Armageddon was at hand. The free world prepared to die fighting.

But war did not come. Nothing happened at all. In three days there were sketchy communications almost everywhere outside that monstrous circle of silence. But nothing came out of that circle. Nothing. In two weeks, exploring parties cautiously crossed the barbed-wire frontier fences to find out what had happened.

Those who went farthest came back shaken and sick. There were survivors in the compubs, of course, especially near the fringes of the circle. There were some millions of survivors, but there was no longer a nation to be called the Union of Communist Republics. there were only frightened starving people trudging blindly away from cities that were charnel houses and machines that would not run in trees and crops and grasses that were stark dead where they stood It would be a long time before anyone would want to cross those lifeless plains and enter the places which once had been swarming hives of homes and people. And presently, of course, Sergeant Bellews was let out of the guardhouse. He could not be charged with any crime, nor could graves, nor leaky, nor howl.

They were asked, confidentially, to keep their mouths shut, which they would have done anyhow, and Sergeant Belus was asked with reluctant respectfulness just what he thought had really happened. Some guys got too smart, he said, fuming. A guy that'll broadcast a wave that'll wreck machines. I haven't got any kind of use for him. Damn it, when a machine treats you according to the golden rule, you ought to treat you the same way.

There were other also respectful questions. How the hell would I know? demanded Sergeant Belus wrathfully. It could have been that we did make contact with 2180, and they were smart, and told the Com-Pubs to try out what we told him. But I don't believe it. It could have been a kind of monster from some other planet wanting us wiped out, but he learned him a lesson if he did.

And, of course, it could have been the Com-Pubs themselves, trying to fool us into committing suicide so they'd inherit the Earth. I wouldn't know. But I bet there ain't any more. broadcast from nowhere. He was allowed to return to the rehab shop, and the flickering standby lights of many Mahone modified machines seemed to glow more warmly as he moved among them. And he was right about there not being any more broadcasts from nowhere.

There weren't. Not ever. The End of Part Five. End of the Machine That Saved the World by Murray Linster.