Chapter I: Contact!

The bit of whitish substance fluoresced, which of course was quite natural. It also vibrated very faintly, which was unnatural. At least, this property had not been known previously--which is really saying little since the material had been compounded from artificial radioisotopes from the big piles. All too little was known about such items and the fact that this one was vibrating ever so faintly whenever the electron beam struck it was interesting both from a scientific and a lay curiosity standpoint.

Ed Bronson blinked a bit and decided that he had made some mistake. It had ceased to vibrate.

Ed cracked the experimental tube and removed the irregular lump. It had been hoped to produce a more brilliant and higher-contrast phosphor for television screens. But if it was going to vibrate--

Ed inserted the lump of phosphor back in the tube, pumped it and restarted the whole gear.

It vibrated again, ever so faintly, against the bottom of the glass. Bronson listened carefully, his engineer's mind trying to identify the sound. It was not the sixteen kilocycle sweep circuit--not the one that scanned the face of the television tube, because this was not a complete set-up and there was no scanning energy necessary. It was vaguely familiar.

It came and it went, that faint vibration. Sometimes it rattled violently, other times it purred gently. Always very faintly of course--for the term 'violently' means only by comparison.

Ed adjusted the field strength of the focusing magnet about the neck of the tube and the vibration strengthened to a noticeable degree. He juggled the controls but found he had hit the maximum or optimum response.

There was something about it.... It was like human whisperings too faint to be understood but not too faint to be unheard. Like the bloop-bleep of a leaky faucet that seems to be saying things about you just too quietly to be really understood. Like the imagined whisperings heard by the paranoiac....

Ed laughed. Hearing things!

Like hades he was hearing things. It was really there. The lump of phosphor moved a perceptible amount as a peak of rattle passed. And yet....

Ed Bronson uncoiled his wiry six feet from the chair and cracked the seal on the tube again. He lifted the top and squinted at the crystalline whiteness that had been rattling so maddeningly.

He went to a cupboard at the end of his laboratory and rummaged among small boxes that stood on one shelf--no two boxes seeming to be of the same size. The upshot of this rummaging was that Bronson had to spend some time repiling the boxes after he had found the contact microphone he was seeking. Eventually, however, Ed Bronson was repumping the tube.

Inside was the crystal phosphor and fastened to it was a sensitive contact microphone.

Once more Bronson keyed the switches, adjusted focus, and intensity. Then, from the speaker of the amplifier connected to the contact microphone, there came a cacophony of noise, howling whistles, deep-throated hums, and a horde of middle-register tones. Not music, and far from it. Just random--somethings.

Yet in the background, barely audible as such but most definitely identifiable, was the voice of a woman.

Any speaker would have ceased had she known her efforts were thus wasted. It was indistinguishable and unintelligible save for a scattered word here and there, which was unmistakably in English. Ed Bronson thought that it was like trying to eavesdrop on a conversation in a boiler factory.

* * * * *

He wondered what radio program he had tapped in on. He turned his radio on, and scanned the bands, even listening to the weaker stations--which, of course were far from being as ragged as this, regardless of their weakness--but came to the conclusion that there was nothing on the air that corresponded to the voice of the woman that emerged from his kinescope testing tube.

Bronson noted with questing interest that occasionally one or more of the interfering hoots, sirens and honks would cease for a moment or two. So also did the woman's voice. Ed prayed that when sufficient interference would cease, the woman would not choose that moment to cease also. He wanted to know more about this. There was more to it than met the eye.

If he could identify the speaker he might be able to establish a means of communication. Location was also important. Furthermore, if this were telephone or radio, he had a new means of receiving both. If it were telephone and it worked on any or all, Ed Bronson had a gadget that would make him the bane of all lovers of secrecy--including espionage agents, who, of course, hate penetration of their own little conclaves as deeply as they try to penetrate others'.

He--well, if it were radio he was intercepting he had nothing as interesting as a telephone tapping gadget. But....

The tones dropped in volume. A shrill whistle that made vicious interference with his hearing suddenly keyed off like the turning off of a light. A booming roar ceased also and others of less importance dropped or died. The cumulative effect of this was to permit the woman's voice to come through.

It was not the perfect voice of a magnificent contralto reproduced on the finest radio gear but a cool, clear contralto, transmitted by cheap, shoddy equipment and received on something both obsolete and inefficient.

Yet is was a woman's voice. And, with the luck of the patient scientist, she was saying, "... home? It's at Thirteen forty-seven Vermont Street, Postal Zone Eleven...."

And that was the first complete reception Ed Bronson heard. For, with the completion of the message, the cacophony of hoots, keenings and sirens blasted forth like a mad, insane symphony.

"I live at Thirteen forty-eight Vermont," shouted Bronson. "Across the street!"

He charged out, raced across the street and pressed the doorbell. He waited a moment and an elderly man came to the door.

"I'm Ed Bronson," explained he.

"I know you," snapped the other man. "Always gumming up my radio with your fool experiments. What do you want?"

"Is your daughter using the telephone?" he asked.

"She ain't home."

"Your wife?"

"She's with Regina."

"Well, was some woman using the--"

"Look, Bronson, I ain't got no women here when my wife ain't, see? Now what's your idea, huh?"

Bronson looked apologetic. This was Mr. Lewis McManner and both he and his family were the kind of people--one of which seems to live on every block--who chase robins from the front yard, call the police for ball-playing boys and manage to maintain an immaculate house because it never has a good chance to get cluttered with people.

"I've been working on an idea," he told McManner, "and I seem to have picked up someone who claimed that her address was Thirteen forty-seven Vermont Street."

"You'd think this was the only Vermont Street in the world!" snorted McManner, slamming the door.

Bronson turned from the front door and retraced his steps. Despite his disappointment, he could not help but grin at himself. After all, how many 1347 Vermont Streets might there be between Puget Sound and Key West? And, were he to try mailing each a letter, someone would most certainly object loudly enough to cause Ed Bronson to explain that he had heard a woman's voice mention the number and that he wanted to meet her. He could visualize the psychiatric ward looming to receive him while they tapped his knees and inspected his brain to find out whether he was safe to let loose without a muzzle.

Yet Bronson sobered soon enough. He was an engineer. He knew that what had been done once could be done again. Perhaps the way to get in touch with this woman was to try to tap back. At least he could listen to everything she said in the hope that she would repeat other information.

* * * * *

With a prayer Bronson separated a sizable hunk of the phosphor to work upon, while the other "sang." He breathed no sigh of relief until he had half of the original phosphor back in the tube with the works completely covered, as before, by the mad mass of meaningless hoots and catcalls. Then he went to work on the other piece. He did have a parallel set-up right on the same bench. There was something about this....

During the hours that followed there were three breaks in the whistlings. The first produced only the words "nature of the situation--" The second time the woman said, "--something _must_ be done, of course, but you tell me what. I--" which also left Bronson completely in the dark. The third time, she said "--so this part of the Carlson family is going to bed!"

After which there was no woman's voice riding along with the myriad of sounds. They were as before, like a radio that has gone off the air, leaving an increased racket of background noise. It was maddening and futile.

All he had to show for her hours of telephoning was her name. Carlson.

All he had to do was to get the telephone directories of all the cities in the United States of America and perhaps Canada, then run through the listings of 'Carlson' until he hit one that lived on 1347 Vermont Street.

It might as well have been 'Smith' as far as running them down went. He could try Central City. After all, he could easily have made an error in listening.

But that was futile. Bronson sought the entire list of Carlsons and found none who lived on Vermont Street or any phonetic variation. Grumbling and baffled, he returned to his labors.

That, at least, proved more profitable. It was midnight when Bronson discovered that tapping one of the bits of phosphor caused a response in the other when they were energized by the electron bombardment from the television tube works.

From that point to vibrating the hunk of phosphor with the adapted insides of an old earphone and getting a response, took another hour of whittling, filing and working. He discarded that method of modulation two hours later when he discovered that an audio modulation of the electron stream in the kinescope tube produced the same effect.

Then, dead tired, Ed Bronson went to bed. He'd have called the woman right then and there had she been handy, but she had gone.

Bronson was truly beat. Had he stopped to think about it he would have known that something big was in the wind. For he was tapping no telephones. He had accidentally discovered some sort of communication receiving principle and had then devised a transmitter.

His first thought on the following morning was to try the receiver. She was there, all right, and so was a hooting cry of the dissonant pipe-organings.

Bronson shrugged and fired up his transmitting gadget. "Miss Carlson!" he called into the microphone. "Calling Miss Carlson of Thirteen forty-seven Vermont Street. Can you hear me?"

Then he listened.

* * * * *

Her voice paused briefly, took a new tone, but was still covered by the whinings.

"Miss Carlson, this is Ed Bronson. I cannot hear you clearly because of much interference. If you can hear me, make a lilting rill with your voice. This I can distinguish among the many stable-toned notes that are coming in at the time."

The voice rilled up and down several times. Then there was considerable speech which Bronson could not understand.

The upshot of this, however, was a gradual shutting down of the hootings and honkings until the receiver was clear. Then her voice came through again.

"Mr. Bronson. I have requested silence for one minute. Where are you?"

"Thirteen forty-eight Vermont Street, Central City Eleven."

"That is across the street," she said.

"Perhaps," he answered.

"Well, it is," she said. "Unless we're in different Central Cities."

"Central City, New Mexico, eighteen miles from Albuquerque?"

"That's it. But we have little time, really, because we didn't get the clear as soon as we asked for it. They hung over a bit--the commercials, I mean."

"Commercials?" he asked. Dumfounded, he began to wonder. Commercial, in radio parlance, meant any transmitter on the air for commercial purpose and the presupposition that this system of communications must be quite well known.

How then had Ed Bronson, an electronics engineer, managed to live through the commercialization of an entirely new field of communications?

"The commercial laboratories," she said.

"Oh? Then this is a laboratory experiment?"

"More than that--"

Bronson heard with dismay the first thin whistle resume.

He interrupted.

"Miss Carlson," he pleaded quickly, "we're going to be cut off again. Meet me on the corner of Vermont and Thirteenth, please?"

"Yes but--"

That was all. The keening, piping howl came with ear-shattering loudness once more.

Bronson turned off his gear and headed for the corner of Vermont and 13th. Let 'em hoot and howl.

He'd speak to the girl in person!

An hour later, Ed Bronson still stood there, leaning disconsolately against a lamp post in the bright daylight. A ring of cigarette butts surrounded his feet.

Whatever it was it was important and he, Bronson, had the key. All he had to do was to find the door!

* * * * *

Bronson returned home. The trouble--one of them, anyway--was that his amplifier was a high fidelity affair, capable of flat transmission of sounds as far as the human ear could hear.

That made for good music and that's what the amplifier had been built for.

So Bronson went home determined to build a series of sharp filters. First he would curtail the band-width of the amplifier until it peaked around eight hundred cycles per second, near the musical note 'A' one octave above the standard Concert Pitch 'A'.

Then he would build a set of sharply-tuned filters that would cut 'holes' in the remaining spectrum where the tonal interferences came. It would make her speech less natural but far more intelligible.

Bronson needed more evidence before he did anything serious about it.

It was nearing five o'clock in the morning before he finished his job, and started to listen once more.