Produced by Greg Weeks, Graeme Mackreth and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcribers note.
This etext was produced from Amazing Stories December 1957. Extensiveresearch did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on thispublication was renewed.
THE MACHINE THAT SAVED THE WORLD
By
MURRAY LEINSTER
_They were broadcasts from nowhere--sinister emanations flooding in fromspace--smashing any receiver that picked them up. What defense couldEarth devise against science such as this?_
Did the broadcasts foretell flesh-rending supersonicblasts?]
The first broadcast came in 1972, while Mahon-modified machines werestill strictly classified, and the world had heard only rumors aboutthem. The first broadcast was picked up by a television ham in Osceola,Florida, who fumingly reported artificial interference on the amateur TVbands. He heard and taped it for ten minutes--so he said--before it blewout his receiver. When he replaced the broken element, the broadcast wasgone.
But the Communications Commission looked at and listened to the tape andpractically went through the ceiling. It stationed a monitor truck inOsceola for months, listening feverishly to nothing.
Then for a long while there were rumors of broadcasts which blew outreceiving apparatus, but nothing definite. Weird patterns appeared onscreens high-pitched or deep-bass notes sounded--and the receiver wentout of operation. After the ham operator in Osceola, nobody else gotmore than a second or two of the weird interference before blowing hisset during six very full months of CC agitation.
Then a TV station in Seattle abruptly broadcast interferencesuperimposed on its regular network program. The screens of all setstuned to that program suddenly showed exotic, curiously curved,meaningless patterns on top of a commercial spectacular broadcast. Atthe same time incredible chirping noises came from the speakers,alternating with deep-bass hootings, which spoiled the ju-ju music ofthe most expensive ju-ju band on the air. The interference ended onlywith a minor break-down in the transmitting station. It was the samesort of interference that the Communications Commission had thrown fitsabout in Washington. It threw further fits now.
* * * * *
A month later a vision-phone circuit between Chicago and Los Angeles wasunusable for ten minutes. The same meaningless picture-pattern and thesame preposterous noises came on and monopolized the line. It ceasedwhen 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 stillcapriciously. Once a Presidential broadcast was confused by interferenceapparently originating in the White House, and again a three-waytop-secret conference between the commanding officers of three militarydepartments ceased when the unhuman-sounding noises and the scrambledpicture pattern inserted itself into the closed-circuit discussion. Theconference broke up amid consternation. For one reason, militarycircuits were supposed to be interference-proof. For another, itappeared that if interference could be spotted to this circuit or thisreceiver it was likely this circuit or that receiver could be tapped.
For a third reason, the broadcasts were dynamite. As received, theywere badly scrambled, but they could be straightened out. Even the firstone, from Osceola, was cleaned up and understood. Enough so to make topauthority tear its hair and allow only fully-cleared scientificconsultants in on the thing.
The content of the broadcasts was kept considerably more secret than theexistence of Mahon units and what they could do. And Mahon units werebrand-new, then, and being worked with only at one research installationin the United States.
The broadcasts were not so closely confined. The same wriggly patternsand alien noises were picked up in Montevideo, in Australia, in PanamaCity, and in grimly embattled England. All the newspapers discussed themwithout ever suspecting that they had been translated into plain speech.They were featured as freak news--and each new account mentioned thatthe broadcast reception had ended with a break-down of the receivingapparatus.
Guarded messages passed among the high authorities of the nations thatpicked up the stuff. A cautious inquiry went even to the Compubs.
The Union of Communist Republics answered characteristically. It asked aquestion about Mahon units. There were rumors, it said, about a newprinciple of machine-control lately developed in the United States. Itwas said that machines equipped with the new units did not wear out,that they exercised seeming intelligence at their tasks, and that theypromised to end the enormous drain on natural resources caused by thewearing-out and using-up of standard-type machinery.
The Compub Information Office offered to trade data on the broadcastsfor data about the new Mahon-modified machines. It hinted at extremelyimportant revelations it could make.
The rest of the world deduced astutely that the Compubs were scared,too. And they were correct.
* * * * *
Then, quite suddenly, a break came. All previous broadcast receptionshad ended with the break-down of the receiving instrument. Now acommunicator named Betsy, modified in the Mahon manner and at work inthe research installation working with Mahon-modified devices, began topick up the broadcasts consistently, keeping each one on its screenuntil it ended.
Day after day, at highly irregular intervals, Betsy's screen lighted upand showed the weird patterns, and her loudspeakers emitted the peepingsand chirps and deep-bass hootings of the broadcasts. And the high brasswent into a dither to end all dithers as tapes of the received materialreached the Pentagon and were translated into intelligible speech andpictures.
* * * * *
This was when Metech Sergeant Bellews, in charge of the Rehab Shop atResearch Installation 83, came into the affair. Specifically, he enteredthe picture when a young second lieutenant came to the shop to fetch himto Communications Center in that post.
The lieutenant was young and tall and very military. Sergeant Bellewswas not. So he snorted, upon receipt of the message. He was at work on avacuum cleaner at the moment--a Mahon-modified machine with a flickeringyellow standby light that wavered between brightness and dimness withmuch more than appropriate frequency. The Rehabilitation Shop was whereMahon-modified machines were brought back to usefulness when somebodymessed them up. Two or three machines--an electric ironer, forone--operated slowly and hesitantly. That was occupational therapy. Awashing-machine churned briskly, which was convalescence. Others,ranging from fire-control computers to teletypes and automatic lathes,simply waited with their standby lights flickering meditativelyaccording to the manner and custom of Mahon-modified machines. They wereready for duty again.
The young lieutenant was politely urgent.
"But I been there!" protested Sergeant Bellews. "I checked! It's acommunicator I named Betsy. She's all right! She's been mishandled bythe kinda halfwits Communications has around, but she's a good,well-balanced, experienced machine. If she's turning out broadcasts,it's because they're comin' in! She's all right!"
"I know," said the young lieutenant soothingly. His uniform and hismanners were beautiful to behold. "But the Colonel wants you there for aconference."
"I got a communicator in the shop here," said Sergeant Bellewssuspiciously. "Why don't he call me?"
"Because he wants to try some new adjustments on--ah--Betsy, Sergeant.You have a way with Mahon machines. They'll do things for you they won'tdo for anybody else."
Sergeant Bellews snorted again. He knew he was being buttered up, buthe'd asked for it. He even insisted on it, for the glory of theMetallurgical Technicians' Corps. The big brass tended to
regard Metechsas in some fashion successors to the long-vanished veterinary surgeonsof the Farriers' Corps, when horses were a part of the armed forces.Mahon-modified machines were new--very new--but the top brass naturallyremembered everything faintly analogous and applied it all wrong. SoSergeant Bellews conducted a one-man campaign to establish the dignityof his profession.
But nobody without special Metech training ought to tinker with aMahon-modified machine.
"If he's gonna fool with Betsy," said the Sergeant bitterly, "I guess Igotta go over an' boss the job."
He pressed a button on his work-table. The vacuum cleaner's standbylight calmed down. The button provided soothing sub-threshold stimuli tothe Mahon unit, not quite giving it the illusion of operatingperfectly--if a Mahon unit could be said to be capable of illusion--butmaintaining it in the rest condition which was the foundation ofMahon-unit operation, since a Mahon machine must never be turned off.
The lieutenant