Stevens stopped abruptly and stared at the vociferous sounder.
"Don't stop to listen—keep on writing!" commanded Nadia.
"Can't," replied the puzzled mathematician. "It doesn't make sense. It sounds intelligent—it's made up of real symbols of some kind or other, but they don't mean a thing to me."
"Oh, I see—he's sending mush on purpose. Read the last phrase!"
"Oh, sure—'mush' is right," and with no perceptible break the signals again became intelligible.
"... if they can translate that they are better scholars than we are signing off until hear from you brandon."
The sounder died abruptly into silence and Nadia sobbed convulsively as she threw herself into Stevens' arms. The long strain over, the terrible uncertainty at last dispelled, they were both incoherent for a minute—Nadia glorifying the exploits of her lover, Stevens crediting the girl herself and his two fellow-scientists with whatever success had been achieved. A measure of self-control regained, Stevens cut off his automatic sender, changed the adjustments of his directors and cut in his manually operated sending key.
"What waves are you using, anyway?" asked Nadia, curiously. "They must be even more penetrating than Roeser's Rays, to have such a range, and Roeser's Rays go right through a planet without even slowing up."
"They're of the same order as Roeser's—that is, they're sub-electronic waves of the fourth order—but they're very much shorter, and hence more penetrating. In fact, they're the shortest waves yet known, so short that Roeser never even suspected their existence."
"Suppose there's a Jovian space-ship out there somewhere that intercepts our beams. Couldn't they locate us from it?"