Chapter 3
In retrospect, events moved much faster than reason would suggest.The first signal from space had been received on a Friday. At thattime--when the first flutings were picked up by a tape recorder onKalua--the world had settled down to await the logical consequencesof its history. It was not a comfortable settling-down, because theconsequences were not likely to be pleasant. Earth was beginningto be crowded, and there were whole nations whose populationslabored bitterly with no hope of more than subsistence during theirlifetime, and left a legacy of equal labor and scarcer food for theirdescendants. There were hydrogen bombs and good intentions, andpolitics and a yearning for peace, and practically all individual menfelt helpless before a seemingly merciless march of ominous events. Atthat time, too, nearly everybody worked for somebody else, and a largepart of the employed population justified its existence by the lengthof time spent at its place of employment. Nobody worried about what hedid there.
In the richer nations, everybody wanted all the rewards earned forthem by generations gone by, but nobody was concerned about leavinghis children better off. An increasingly smaller number of people werewilling to take responsibility for keeping things going. There'd beena time when half of Earth fought valiantly to make the world safe fordemocracy. Now, in the richer nations, most men seemed to believe thatthe world had been made safe for a four-card flush, which was the handthey'd been dealt and which nobody tried to better.
Then the signals came from space. They called for a showdown, andvery few people were prepared for it. Eminent men were called on totake command and arrange suitable measures. They immediately acted aseminent men so often do; they took action to retain their eminence.Their first instinct was caution. When a man is important enough, itdoes not matter if he never does anything. It is only required of himthat he do nothing wrong. Eminent figures all over the world preparedto do nothing wrong. They were not so concerned to do anything right.
Burke, however, was not important enough to mind making a mistakeor two. And there were other non-famous people to whom theextra-terrestrial sounds suggested action instead of precautions.Mostly they were engineers with no reputations to lose. They'dscrabbled together makeshift equipment, ignored official channels, andin four days--Friday to Monday--they had eight hundred kilowatts readyto fling out toward emptiness, in response to the signal from M-387.
The transmission they'd sent out was five minutes long. It began witha re-transmission of part of the message Earth had received. Thisplainly identified the signal from Earth as a response to the crypticflutings. Then there were hummings. One dot, two dots, three, and soon. These hummings assured whoever or whatever was out yonder thatthe inhabitants of Earth could count. Then it was demonstrated thattwo dots plus two dots were known to equal four dots, and that fourand four added up to eight. The inhabitants of Earth could add. Therefollowed the doubtless interesting news that two and two and two andtwo was eight. Humanity could multiply.
Arithmetic, in fact, filled up three minutes of theeight-hundred-kilowatt beam-signal. Then a hearty human voice--thepresident of a great university--said warmly:
"_Greetings froth Earth! We hope for splendid things from this openingof communication with another race whose technical achievements fill uswith admiration._"
More flutings repeated that the Earth signal was intended for whoeveror whatever used flutelike sounds for signaling purposes, and themessage came to an end with an arch comment from the universitypresident: "_We hope you'll answer!_"
When this elaborate hodge-podge had been flung out to immensity, theprominent persons who'd devised it shook hands with each other. Theywere confident that if intelligent beings did exist where the mournfulmusical notes came from, interplanetary or interstellar communicationcould be said to have begun. The engineers who'd sweated together theequipment simply hoped their signal would reach its target.
It did. It went out just after the end of a reception of a five-minutebroadcast from M-387. Seventy-nine minutes should have passed beforeany other sound from M-387. But an answer came much more quickly thanthat. In thirty-four minutes, five and three-tenth seconds, a newsignal came from beyond the sky. It came in a rush. It came from thetransmitter out in orbit far beyond Mars. It came with the same volume.
It started with an entirely new grouping of the piping tones. Therewas a specific crispness in their transmission, as if a differentindividual handled the transmitter-keys. The flutings went on for threeminutes, then were replaced by entirely new sounds. These were sharp,distinct, crackling noises. A last sequence of the opening flutings,and the message ended abruptly. But silence did not follow. Instead, asteady, sonorous, rhythmic series of beeping noises began and kept oninterminably. They were remarkably like the directional signals of anairway beacon. When the news broadcasts of the United States reportedthe matter, the beeping sounds were still coming in.
And they continued to come in for seventy-nine minutes. Then they brokeoff and the new transmission was repeated. The original message wasno longer sent. Robot transmitter or no robot transmitter, the firstmessage had been transmitted at regular intervals for something likeseventy-six hours and then, instantly on receipt of the beginning of ananswer, a new broadcast took its place.
The reaction had been immediate. The distance between M-387 and Earthcould be computed exactly. The time needed for the Earth signal toarrive was known exactly. And the instant--the very instant--the firstsound from Earth reached M-387, the second message had begun. There wasno pause to receive all the Earth greeting, or even part of it. Thereaction was immediate and automatic.
Automatic. That was the significant thing. The new message was alreadyprepared when the Earth signal arrived. It was set up to be transmittedon receipt of the earliest possible proof that it would be received.The effect of this rapid response was one of tremendous urgency--orabsolute arrogance. The implication was that what Earth had to say wasunimportant. The Earth signal had not been listened to. Instead, Earthwas told something. Something crisp and arbitrary. Maybe there could beamiable chit-chat later on, but Earth must listen first! The beepingscould not be anything but a guide, a directional indicator, to befollowed to M-387. The message, now changed, might amount to an offerof friendship, but it also could be a command. If it were a command,the implications were horrifying.
At the moment of first release, the news had only a limited effect.Most of Europe was asleep and much of Asia had not waked up yet. Butthe United States was up and stirring. The news went to every corner ofthe nation with the speed of light. Radio stations stopped all othertransmissions to announce the frightening event. It is of record thatfour television stations on the North American continent actually brokeinto filmed commercials to announce that M-387 had made a response tothe signal from Earth. Never before in history had a paid advertisementbeen thrust aside for news.
In the United States, then, there was agitation, apprehension,indignation, and panic. Perhaps the only place where anythinglike calmness remained was inside and outside the office of BurkeDevelopment, Inc., where Burke felt a singular relief at this evidencethat he wasn't as much of a fool as he feared.
"Well," he thought. "It looks like there _is_ something or somebody outthere. If I'd been sure about it earlier--but it probably wasn't time."
"What does this mean?" asked Sandy. "This horrible spell ofaround-the-clock working! Are you still trying to do something aboutthe space signals?"
"Listen, Sandy," said Burke. "I've been ashamed of that crazy dream ofmine all my life. I've thought it was proof there was something wrongwith me. I'll still have to keep it secret, or nice men in white coatswill come and get me. But I'm going to do what all enterprising youngmen are advised to do--dream greatly and then try to realize my dream.It's quite impossible and it'll bankrupt me, but I think I'm going tohave fun."
He grinned at the two sisters as he led them firmly to Sandy's car.
"Shoo!" he said pleasantly. "You'd better go home now. I'll be leavingin minutes, heading for Sch
enectady first. I need some electric stuff.Then I'll go elsewhere. There'll be some shipments arriving, Sandy.Take care of them for me, will you?"
He closed the car door and waved, still grinning. Pam fumed and startedthe motor. Moments later their car trundled down the highway towardtown. Sandy clenched her fists.
"What can you do with a man like that?" she demanded. "Why do I botherwith him?"
"Shall I answer," asked Pam, "or shall I be discreetly sympathetic? Iwouldn't want him! But unfortunately, if you do--"
"I know," said Sandy forlornly. "I know, dammit!"
Burke was not thinking of either of them then. He opened the officesafe, put the six-inch object inside, and took out his checkbook. Thenhe locked up, got into his car, and headed away from the plant and thetown he'd been brought up in. He was unshaven and uncombed and thiswas an inappropriate time to start out on a drive of some hundreds ofmiles, but it was a pleasing sensation to know that a job had turned upthat nobody else would even know how to start to work on. He drove verycheerfully to a cross-country expressway and turned onto it. He settleddown at once to drive and to think.
He drove practically all night. Shortly after sunrise he stopped tobuy a razor and brush and comb and to make himself presentable. Hewas the first customer on hand when a Schenectady firm specializingin electronic apparatus for seagoing ships opened up for business. Heordered certain equipment from a list he'd written on an envelope whileeating breakfast.
The morning papers, naturally, were full of the story of the answerto the Earth signal sent out to M-387. The morning comedians madejokes about it, and in every one of the business offices Burke visitedthere was some mention of it. He listened, but had nothing to say. Theoddity of his purchases caused no remark. His was a small firm, but aman working in research and development needs strange stuff sometimes.He ordered two radar units to be modified in a particular fashion,air-circulation pumps of highly specialized design to be changed inthis respect and that. He had trouble finding the electric generatorshe wanted and had to pay heavily for alterations in them, and even moreheavily for a promise of delivery in days instead of weeks. He bought aself-contained diving suit.
He was busy for three days, buying things by day, designing by nightand finding out new things to order. On the second day, United Statescounter-intelligence reported that the Russians were trying to signalM-387 on their own. An American satellite picked up the broadcast. TheRussians denied it, and continued to try. Burke made arrangements forthe delivery of aluminum-alloy bars, rods, girders, and plates; forplaster of Paris in ton lots; for closed-circuit television equipment.Once he called Sandy to give her an order to be filled locally. Itwas lumber, mostly slender strips of lathing, to be on hand when hereturned.
"All kinds of material is turning up," said Sandy. "There've been sixdeliveries this morning. I'm signing receipts for it because I don'tknow what else to do. But won't you please give me copies of the ordersyou've placed so I can check what arrives?"
"I'll put 'em in the mail--airmail," promised Burke. "But only sixdeliveries? There ought to be dozens! Get after these people on longdistance, will you?" And he gave her a list of names.
Burke said suddenly, "I had that dream again last night. Twice in aweek. That's unusual."
"No comment," Sandy said.
She hung up, and Burke was taken aback. But there was hardly anycomment she could make. Burke himself had no illusion that he wouldever come to a place where there were two moons in the sky and treeswith ribbonlike leaves. And if he did--unthinkable as that might be--hecould not imagine finding the person for whom he felt such agonizedanxiety. The dream, recurrent, fantastic, or whatnot, simply could notrepresent a reality of the past, present, or future. Such things don'thappen. But Burke continued to be moved much more by the emotional urgeof the repeated experience than by intellectual curiosity about hishaving dreamed repeatedly of signals exactly like those from space,long before such signals ever were.
He made ready to try to do something about those signals. And, allreason to the contrary notwithstanding, to him they meant a world withtwo moons and strange vegetation and such emotion as nothing on Earthhad ever quite stirred up--though he felt pretty deeply about Sandy,at that. So he went intently from one supplier of exotic equipment toanother, spending what money he had for an impossibility. Impossiblebecause Asteroid M-387 was not over two miles through at its largestdimension, and therefore could not possibly have an atmosphere andcertainly not trees, and it could not own even a single moon!
He spent one day at a small yachting port with a man for whom he'dworked out a special process of Fiberglas yacht construction. Throughthat process, Holmes yachts could be owned by people who weren'tmillionaires. Holmes was a large, languid, sunburned individual whobuilt yachts because he liked them. He had much respect for Burke, evenafter Burke asked his help and explained what for.
But that was the day the Russians launched an unmanned space-probeheaded toward M-387. That development may have influenced Holmes to doas Burke asked.
Later on, it transpired that the probe originally had been designedand built as a cargo-carrier to take heavy loads to Earth's moon. TheRussian space service had planned to present the rest of Earth with a_fait accompli_ even more startling than the first Sputnik. They hadintended to send a fleet of drone cargo-rockets to the moon and thenassemble them into a colony. Broadcasts would triumphantly explainthat the Soviet social system was responsible for another technicalachievement. But to get a man out to M-387 was now so much moreimportant a propaganda device that the cargo-carriers were convertedinto fuel-tankers and the first sent aloft.
At ten thousand miles up, when the third booster-stage should havegiven it a decisive thrust, one of the probe's rocket engines misfired.The space-probe tilted, veered wildly from its course, and went onaccelerating splendidly toward nowhere. And still the steady, urgentbeeping sounds continued to come to Earth, with every seventy-nineminutes a broadcast containing one section of crackling sounds and atone of extremest urgency.
The day after the probe's ineffectual departure, Burke got back tohis plant. He brought Holmes with him. Together, they looked over theaccumulated material for Burke's enterprise and began to sort out thetruckloads of plaster of Paris, masses of punched-sheet aluminum,girders, rods, beams of shining metal, cased dynamos, crated pumps,tanks, and elaborately padded objects whose purpose was not immediatelyclear. Sandy was overwhelmed by the job of inventorying, indexing, andotherwise making the material available for use as desired. Therewere bales of fluffy white cloth and drums and drums of liquids whichinsisted on leaking, and smelled very badly when they did. But Burkefound some items not yet on hand, and fretted, so Sandy brought hersister Pam into the office to add to the office force.
Sandy and Pam worked quite as hard in the office as Burke and Holmesin the construction shed. They telephoned protests at delays, verifiedshipments, scolded shipping-clerks, argued with transportation-systemexpediters, wrote letters, answered letters, compared invoices withorders, sternly battled with negligence and delays of all kinds, andin between kept the books of Burke Development, Inc., up to date sothat at any instant Burke could find out how much money he'd spent andhow little remained. The two girls in the office were necessary tothe operations which at first centered in the construction shed, butshortly began to show up outside.
Four workmen arrived from the Holmes' Yacht shipyard. They looked atblueprints and drawings made by Holmes and Burke together, regardedwith pained expressions the material they were to use, and set towork. This was on the day the second Russian space-probe lifted fromsomewhere in the Caucasus Mountains at 1:10 A.M., local time.
The second probe did not veer off its proper line. Its four boostersfired at appropriate intervals and it went streaking off towardemptiness almost straight away from the sun. It left behind it a thinwhining transmission which was not at all like the beepings of theasteroid transmitter.
In two days a framework of struts and laths took form outside theconst
ruction shed. It looked more like a mock-up of a radio telescopethan anything else, but it was smaller and had a different shape. Itwas an improbable-looking bowl. Under Holmes' supervision, dozens ofsacks of plaster of Paris found their way into it, coating it roughlyon the outside and very smoothly within. It was then lined tenderlywith carefully cut sections of fluffy cloth, with bars and beams andgirders placed between the layers. Then reeking drums of liquid weremoved to the working-site and their contents saturated the glass-wool.
The smell was awful, so the workmen knocked off for a day until itdiminished. But Sandy and Pam continued to expostulate with shippersby long-distance, type letters threatening lawsuits if orders werenot filled immediately, and once found that items Burke indignantlydemanded had come in and Holmes had carted them off and used themwithout notifying anybody. That was the day Pam threatened to resign.
"It looks like a pudding," grumbled Pam, after Sandy had mollified herand Burke had apologized for having made her fight needlessly with twotransport-lines, a shipping department, and a vice-president in chargeof sales. "And they act like it was a baby!"
"It'll be a ship," said Sandy. "You know what kind."
"I'll believe it when I see it," said Pam. Then she demandedindignantly, "Has Joe looked at you twice since this nonsense started?"
"No," admitted Sandy. "He works all the time. At night he has areceiver tuned to the beepings to make sure he knows if the broadcastchanges again. The Russians are still trying to make a two-way contact.But the broadcast just keeps on, ignoring everybody." Then she said,"Anyhow, Joe's going to feel awful if it doesn't work. I've got to bearound to pick up the pieces of his vanity and put them together again."
"Huh!" said Pam. "Catch me doing that!"
At just that moment Holmes came into the office with a finger drippingblood. He had been supervising and, at the same time, assisting inthe building of an additional section of laths and struts and he wasannoyed with himself for the small injury which interfered with hiswork.
Pam did the bandaging. She cooed over him distressedly, and had himgrinning before the dressing was finished. He went back to work verymuch pleased with himself.
"I," said Sandy, "wouldn't act like you just did!"
"Sister, darling," said Pam, "I won't cramp your act. Don't youcriticize mine! That large wounded character is as attractive asanything I've seen in months."
"But I feel," said Sandy, "as if I hadn't seen Joe in years!"
Their viewpoint was strictly feminine and geared to female ideas andaspirations. But, in fact, they were probably as satisfied as two girlscould be. They were on the side lines of interesting happenings whichwere being prepared by interesting men. They were useful enough to theenterprise to belong to it without doing anything outstanding enough toamount to rivalry with the men. From a girl's standpoint, it wasn't atall bad.
But neither Burke nor Holmes even faintly guessed at the appraisalof their work by Sandy and Pam. To Holmes, the task was fascinatingbecause it was a ship he was building. It was not a beautiful object,to be sure. If the lath-and-plaster mould were removed, the thinginside it would look rather like an obese small whale. There wererecesses in its rotund sides in which distinctly eccentric apparatusappeared. Its interior was even more curious. And still it was a ship.Holmes found deep satisfaction in fitting its interior parts intoplace. It was like, but not the same as, equipping a small vessel withfathometers, radars, direction-finders, air-conditioners, stoves,galleys, heads and refrigerators without getting it crowded.
To be sure, no seagoing ship would have sections of hydroponicwall-garden installed, nor would an auxiliary schooner normally havesix pairs of closed-circuit television cameras placed outside for aview in each and every direction. This ship had such apparatus. Butto Holmes the building of what Burke had designed was an extremelyattractive task.
Burke had less fun. He'd set up a huge metal lathe in the constructionshed, and he labored at carving out of a specially built-upSwedish-iron shaft a series of twenty-odd magnet-cores like the tripleunit he considered successful. Each of the peculiar shapes had to becarved out of the shaft, and all had to remain part of the shaft whencompleted. Then each had to be wound with magnet-wire, coated withplastic as it was wound. Then a bronze tube had to be formed over all,with no play of any sort anywhere. The task required the workmanship ofa jeweller and the patience of Job. And Burke had had enough experiencewith new constructions to be acutely doubtful that this would be rightwhen it was done.
The Russians sent up a third space-probe, aimed at Asteroid M-387. Itfunctioned perfectly. Three days later, a fourth. Three days laterstill, a fifth. Their aim with the fifth was not too good.
The beeping sounds continued to come in from space. The second messageremained the same but the crackling sounds changed. There was asystematic and consistent variation in what they apparently had tosay. M.I.T. discovered the modification. When its report reached thenewspapers, Sandy invaded the construction shed to show Burke the newsaccount. Oil-smeared and harassed, he stopped work to read it.
"Hell!" he said querulously. "I should've had somebody watching forthis! I figured the second broadcast was telling us something thatwould change as time went on. They're telemetering something to us. I'dguess there's an emergency or an ultimatum in the works, and this istelling how fast it's coming to a crisis. But I'm already working asfast as I can!"
"Some cases marked 'Instruments' came this morning," Sandy told him."They're the solidest shipping cases I ever saw. And the bills forthem!"
"Wire Keller," said Burke. "Tell him they're here and to come along."
"Who's Keller?" asked Sandy. "And what's his address?"
Burke blew up unreasonably, and Sandy said "I quit!" In seconds, he hadapologized and assured Sandy that she was quite right and that he wasan idiot. Of course she couldn't know who Keller was. Keller was theman who would install the instruments in the ship outside. Burke gaveher his address. Sandy was not appeased.
Burke ran a grimy hand despairingly through his hair.
"Sandy," he protested, "bear with me just a little while! In just afew more days this thing will be finished, and I'll know whether I'mthe prize imbecile of history or whether I've actually managed to dosomething worth while! Bear with me like you would with a half-wit or adelinquent child or something. Please, Sandy--"
She turned her back on him and walked out of the shed. But she didn'tquit. Burke turned back to his work.
The Russians sent up another probe. It went off course. There were nowsix unmanned Russian probes in emptiness, of which four were lined upreasonably well along the route which a manned probe, if one were sentup, should ultimately travel. The advance probes formed an ingeniousapproach to the problem of getting a man farther out in space than anyman had been before, but it was horribly risky. But apparently theRussians could afford to take such risks. The Americans couldn't. Theyhad a settled policy of spending a dollar instead of a man. It washumanitarian, but it had one drawback. There was a tendency to keep onspending dollars and not ever let a man take a chance.
The Russians had four fuel-carrying drones in line out in space. If aship could grapple them in turn and refuel, it might make the journeyto M-387 in eight or ten weeks instead of as many months. But it wasnot easy to imagine such a success. And as for getting back....
The beeping sounds continued to be received by Earth.
A short man with thin hair arrived at Burke Development, Inc. Hisname was Keller, and his expression was pleasant enough, but he wasso sparing of words as to seem almost speechless. Sandy watched as heunpacked the instruments in the massive shipping cases. The instrumentsthemselves were meaningless to her. They had dials, and some had gongs,and one or two had unintelligible things printed on paper strips. Atleast one in the last category was a computer. Keller unpacked themreverently and made sure that not a speck of dust contaminated anyone. When he carried them out to the hull, still concealed by thelath-and-plaster exterior mould, he walked with the solemn care of ama
n bearing treasure.
That day Sandy saw him talking to Burke. Burke spoke, and Keller smiledand nodded. Only once did he open his mouth to say something. Then hecould not have said more than four words. He went happily back to hisinstruments.
The next day, Burke made what was intended to be a low-power test ofthe long iron bar he'd machined so painstakingly and wound so carefullybefore enclosing it in the bronze outer case. He'd worked on it formore than two weeks.
He prepared the test very carefully. The six-inch test model had lainon a workbench and had been energized through a momentary-contactswitch. The full-scale specimen was clamped in a great metal lathe,which in turn was shackled with half-inch steel cable to thefoundations of the construction shed. If the pseudo-magnet flewanywhere this time it would have to break through a tremendousrestraining force. The switch was discarded. A condenser woulddischarge through the windings via a rectifier. There would be a singledamped surge of current of infinitesimal duration.
Holmes passed on the news. He got along very well with Pam these days.At first he'd been completely careless of his appearance. Then Pam tookmeasures to distract him from total absorption in the construction job,and he responded. Nowadays, he tended to work in coveralls and changeinto more formal attire before approaching the office. Sandy came uponhim polishing his shoes, once, and she told Pam. Pam beamed.
Now he came lounging into the office and said amiably, "The moment oftruth has arrived, or will in minutes."
Sandy looked anxious. Pam said, "Is that an invitation to look on atthe kill?"
"Burke's going to turn juice into the thing he's been winding by handand jittering over. He's worried. He can think of seven thousandreasons why it shouldn't work. But if it doesn't, he'll be a prettysick man." He glanced at Sandy. "I think he could do with somebody tohold his hand at the critical moment."
"We'll go," said Sandy.
Pam got up from her desk.
"She won't hold his hand," she explained to Holmes, "but she'll bethere in case there are some pieces to be picked up. Of him."
They went across the open space to the construction shed. It was aperfectly commonplace morning. The very temporary mass of lumber andlaths and plaster, forming a mould for something unseen inside, was theonly unusual thing in sight. There were deep truck tracks by the shed.One of the workmen came out of the air-lock door on the bottom of themould and lighted a cigarette.
"No smoking inside," said Holmes. "We're cementing things in place withplastic."
Sandy did not hear. She was first to enter the shed. Burke was movingaround the object he'd worked so long to make. It now appeared to besimply a piece of bronze pipe some fifteen feet long and eight inchesin diameter, with closed ends. It lay in the bed of an oversized metallathe, which was anchored in place by cables. Burke took a painstakingreading of the resistance of a pair of red wires, then of white ones,and then of black rubber ones, which stuck out of one end of the pipe.
"The audience is here," said Holmes.
Burke nodded. He said almost apologetically, "I'm putting in a minimumof power. Maybe nothing will happen. It's pretty silly."
Sandy's hands twisted one within the other when he turned his back toher. He made connections, took a deep breath, and said in a strainedvoice, "Here goes."
He flipped a switch.
There was a cracking sound. It was horribly loud. There was a crash.Bricks began to fall. The end of the metal-lathe bounced out of acorner. Steel cables gave off high-pitched musical notes which wentdown in tone as the stress on them slackened. One end of the lathe wasgone--snapped off, broken, flung away into a corner. There was a holein the brick wall, over a foot in diameter.
The fifteen-foot object was gone. But they heard a high-pitchedshrilling noise, which faded away into the distance.
That afternoon the Russians announced that their manned space-probe hadtaken off for Asteroid M-387. Naturally, they delayed the announcementuntil they were satisfied that the launching had gone well. When theymade their announcement, the probe was fifty thousand miles out, theyhad received a message from its pilot, and they predicted that theprobe would land on M-387 in a matter of seven weeks.
In a remote small corner of the afternoon newspapers there was an itemsaying that a meteorite had fallen in a ploughed field some thirtymiles from where Burke's contrivance broke loose. It made a cratertwenty feet across. It could not be examined because it was coveredwith frost.
Burke had the devil of a time recovering it. But he needed it badly.Especially since the Russian probe had gone out from Earth. Heexplained that it was a shipment to his plant, which had fallen out ofan aeroplane, but the owner of the ploughed field was dubious. Burkehad to pay him a thousand dollars to get him to believe.
That night he had his recurrent dream again. The fluting signals werevery clear.