at least two
contacts in each of the university centers. Put at the top of your list
Berkeley, Pasadena, Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C.

"See if you can get relay contacts that will put us in touch with
Stockholm, Paris, London, Berlin, and Tokyo. If so, we can have contact
with the majority of the workers capable of contributing most to this
problem."

"I'll do my best," Ken promised.

Someone would be needed to operate the station and spend a good many
hours a week listening and recording. He didn't want to spend the time
necessary doing that, and he knew none of the other club members would,
either. At once he thought of Maria Larsen. She would undoubtedly be
happy to take over the job and feel she was doing something useful. On
the way home he stopped at her house and told her what he had in mind.
She readily agreed.

"I don't know anything about radio," she said. "You'll have to show me
what to do."

"We won't expect you to learn code, of course," he said. "When we do
handle anything coming in by code one of us will have to take it. We'll
try to contact phone stations wherever possible for this program we have
in mind. Most of the stuff will be put on tape, and Dad will probably
want you to prepare typed copies, too. You can do enough to take a big
load off the rest of us."

"I'll be happy to try."

They spent the rest of the day in the radio room of the science shack.
Ken taught Maria the simple operations of turning on the transmitter and
receiver, of handling the tuning controls, and the proper procedure for
making and receiving calls. He supposed there would be some technical
objection to her operation of the station without an operator's license,
but he was quite sure that such things were not important right now.

It was a new kind of experience for Maria. Her face was alive with
excitement as Ken checked several bands to see where amateurs were still
operating. The babble of high-frequency code whistles alternated in the
room with faint, sometimes muffled voices on the phone band.

"There are more stations than I expected," Ken said. "With luck, we may
be able to establish a few of the contacts we need, tonight."

After many tries, he succeeded in raising an operator, W6YRE, in San
Francisco. They traded news, and it sounded as if the west coast city
was crumbling swiftly. Ken explained what he wanted. W6YRE promised to
try to raise someone with a high-powered phone rig in Berkeley, nea