Fredric Brown - The Second Fredric Brown Megapack

He grabbed Maisie and ran for the stairs.

“Now we get a drink,” he told her.

The bar across the street from the network building was crowded, but it was a strangely silent crowd. In deference to the fact that most of its customers were radio people, it didn’t have a TV set—but there was a big cabinet radio, and most of the people were bunched around it.

“ Dit ” said the radio. “ Dit-dah-d’dah-dit-dahditdah dit —”

“Isn’t it beautiful?” George whispered to Maisie.

Somebody fiddled with the dial. Somebody asked, “What band is that?” and somebody said, “Police.” Somebody said, “Try the foreign band,” and somebody did. “This ought to be Buenos Aires,” somebody said. “Dit-d’dah-dit —” said the radio.

Somebody ran fingers through his hair and said, “Shut that damn thing off.” Somebody else turned it back on.

George grinned and led the way to a back booth where he’d spotted Pete Mulvaney sitting alone with a bottle in front of him. He and Maisie sat across from Pete.

“Hello,” he said gravely.

“Hell,” said Pete, who was head of the technical research staff of MID.

“A beautiful night, Mulvaney,” George said. “Did you see the moon riding the fleecy clouds like a golden galleon tossed upon silver-crested whitecaps in a stormy—”

“Shut up,” said Pete. “I’m thinking.”

“Whisky sours,” George told the waiter. He turned back to the man across the table. “Think out loud, so we can hear. But first, how did you escape the booby hatch across the street?”

“I’m bounced, fired, discharged.”

“Shake hands. And then explain. Did you say dit-dit-dit to them?”

Pete looked at him with sudden admiration. “Did you?”

“I’ve a witness. What did you do?”

“Told ’em what I thought it was and they think I’m crazy.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” said George. “Then we want to hear—” He snapped his fingers. “What about TV?”

“Same thing. Same sound on audio and the pictures flicker and dim with every dot or dash. Just a blur by now.”

“Wonderful. And now tell me what’s wrong. I don’t care what it is, as long as it’s nothing trivial, but I want to know.”

“I think it’s space. Space is warped.”

“Good old space,” George Bailey said.

“George,” said Maisie, “please shut up. I want to hear this.”

“Space,” said Pete, “is also finite.” He poured himself another drink. “You go far enough in any direction and get back where you started. Like an ant crawling around an apple.”

“Make it an orange,” George said.

“All right, an orange. Now suppose the first radio waves ever sent out have just made the round trip. In fifty-six years.”

“Fifty-six years? But I thought radio waves traveled at the same speed as light. If that’s true, then in fifty-six years they could go only fifty-six light-years, and that can’t be around the universe because there are galaxies known to be millions or maybe billions of light-years away. I don’t remember the figures, Pete, but our own galaxy alone is a hell of a lot bigger than fifty-six light-years.”

Pete Mulvaney sighed. “That’s why I say space must be warped. There’s a shortcut somewhere.”

“ That short a shortcut? Couldn’t be.”

“But George, listen to that stuff that’s coming in. Can you read code?”

“Not any more. Not that fast, anyway.”

“Well, I can,” Pete said. “That’s early American ham. Lingo and all. That’s the kind of stuff the air was full of before regular broadcasting. It’s the lingo, the abbreviations, the barnyard to attic chitchat of amateurs with keys, with Marconi coherers or Fessenden barreters—and you can listen for a violin solo pretty soon now. I’ll tell you what it’ll be.”

“What?”

“Handel’s Largo. The first phonograph record ever broadcast. Sent out by Fessenden from Brant Rock in 1906. You’ll hear his CQ-CQ any minute now. Bet you a drink.”

“Okay, but what was the dit-dit-dit that started this?”

Mulvaney grinned. “Marconi, George. What was the most powerful signal ever broadcast and by whom and when?”

“Marconi? Dit-dit-dit? Fifty-six years ago?”

“Head of the class. The first transatlantic signal on December 12, 1901. For three hours Marconi’s big station at Poldhu, with two-hundred foot masts, sent out an intermittent S, dit-dit-dit , while Marconi and two assistants at St. Johns in Newfoundland got a kite-borne aerial four hundred feet in the air and finally got the signal. Across the Atlantic, George, with sparks jumping from the big Leyden jars at Poldhu and 20,000-volt juice jumping off the tremendous aerials—”

“Wait a minute, Pete, you’re off the beam. If that was in 1901 and the first broadcast was about 1906 it’ll be five years before the Fessenden stuff gets here on the same route. Even if there’s a fifty-six light-year short cut across space and even if those signals didn’t get so weak en route that we couldn’t hear them—it’s crazy.”

“I told you it was,” Pete said gloomily. “Why, those signals after traveling that far would be so infinitesimal that for practical purposes they wouldn’t exist. Furthermore they’re all over the band on everything from microwave on up and equally strong on each. And, as you point out, we’ve already come almost five years in two hours, which isn’t possible. I told you it was crazy.”

“But—”

“Shh. Listen,” said Pete.

A blurred, but unmistakably human voice was coming from the radio, mingling with the cracklings of code. And then music, faint and scratchy, but unmistakably a violin. Playing Handel’s Largo.

Only suddenly it climbed in pitch as though modulating from key to key until it became so horribly shrill that it hurt the ear. And kept on going past the high limit of audibility until they could hear it no more.

Somebody said, “Shut that God damn thing off.” Somebody did, and this time nobody turned it back on.

Pete said, “I didn’t really believe it myself. And there’s another thing against it, George. Those signals affect TV too, and radio waves are the wrong length to do that.”

He shook his head slowly. “There must be some other explanation, George. The more I think about it now the more I think I’m wrong.”

He was right: he was wrong.

“Preposterous,” said Mr. Ogilvie. He took off his glasses, frowned fiercely, and put them back on again. He looked through them at the several sheets of copy paper in his hand and tossed them contemptuously to the top of his desk. They slid to rest against the triangular name plate that read:

B. R. Ogilvie

Editor-in-Chief

“Preposterous,” he said again.

Casey Blair, his best reporter, blew a smoke ring and poked his index finger through it. “Why?” he asked.

“Because—why, it’s utterly preposterous.”

Casey Blair said, “It is now three o’clock in the morning. The interference has gone on for five hours and not a single program is getting through on either TV or radio. Every major broadcasting and telecasting station in the world has gone off the air.”

“For two reasons. One, they were just wasting current. Two, the communications bureaus of their respective governments requested them to get off to aid their campaigns with the direction finders. For five hours now, since the start of the interference, they’ve been working with everything they’ve got. And what have they found out?”

“It’s preposterous!” said the editor.