you wish_."

_Click!_ The screen went dark. Lecky let out his breath. Sergeant
Bellews threw off the transmission switch. He began to shake. Howell
said indignantly:

"When I make a mistake, I admit it! That broadcast isn't from the
future! If it hadn't been a lie, he'd have known he had to tell us what
we wanted to know! He couldn't hold us up for terms! If he let us die he
wouldn't exist!"

"Y-yeah," said Sergeant Bellews. "What I'm wonderin' is, did we fool
him?"

"Oh, yes!" said Graves, with diffident confidence. "I don't know but
three men in the world who could find the flaw in that circuit." He
smiled faintly. "But it radiates all the energy that's fed into it." He
turned to Sergeant Bellews. "You gave me the constants of a wave you
wanted it to radiate. I fixed it. It will. But why that special
type--that special wave?"

Sergeant Bellews pulled himself together.

"Because," he said grimly, "that was the wave they wanted us to
broadcast. What I'm hoping is that you gave 'em a transmitter to do
exactly the same thing as the one they designed for us. If they're
fooled, they'll broadcast the wave they told us to broadcast. If it
busts machines, it'll bust their machines. If it stops all dynamic
systems dead--includin' men--they'll be stopped dead, too." Then he
looked from one to another of the three scientists, each one reacting in
his own special way. "Personally," said Sergeant Bellews doggedly, "I'm
goin' to have a can of beer. Who'll join me?"

* * * * *

The world wagged on. The automatic monitors in Communications Center
reported that another broadcast had been received by Betsy and
undoubtedly unscrambled by Al and Gus, working as a team. The reported
broadcast was, of course, an interception of the two-way talk from the
Rehab Shop.

The tall young lieutenant, working with his eyes kept conscientiously
shut, extracted the tapes and loaded them in a top-security briefcase. A
second courier took off for Washington with them. There a certified,
properly cleared major-general had them run off, and saw and heard every
word of the conversation between the Rehab Shop and--nowhere. He howled
with wrath.

Sergeant Bellews went into the guardhouse while plane-loads of
interrogating officers flew from Washington. Howell and Graves and Lecky
went under strict guard until they could be asked some thousands of
variations of the question, "Why did you do it?" The high brass qui