“Any idea as to the source?”
“You know how wave n is. Edgar’s been cooped up in his cage for about seven hours now, and, if he survives, I damn well think he’ll have taken wave n to pieces and put it together again. Then we’ll know how to trace the signals.”
Dorothy Gilbert sat on a bench swinging her legs thoughtfully. “How’s the intensity, Joe?”
Timbie clutched his hair. “O gawd!” he groaned. “It just shouldn’t happen to a dog. This wave has the most unholy variations ever conceived by Lucifer. You remember how it was on Earth?”
“Yeah,” agreed Nick. “Pretty wavy to say the least.”
“Well it’s all of that here—only the little jigger has got itself another twist. Not only does the intensity vary according to no laws whatsoever, but every now and then, she comes through full blast, sans interference, backwards!”
“What!” There was a chorus on that.
“You heard rightly. I used to have a hobby back on Terra. Super-imposition of recordings. I’d take several records of music, and play them simultaneously, working in various others now and then and thus make a new recording. At times I’d run them in backwards, lyrics and all. So, after awhile, I got pretty accustomed to hearing common English words spoken backwards. And damned if some of the apparently garbled signals didn’t sound familiar until suddenly it struck me. I was just beginning to set them down when, whup! in comes the interference, then they’re straight again, but so faint I can’t make them out.”
“Joe,” called Dorothy softly, “are they always in reverse when they’re strong?”
“Why—yes, they are.”