"I don't know whether you can get enough power, but you can try. Go to it. Do you know anything about radio?"
"A little."
"All right. Pick whoever you want for an assistant and try it out. Any more ideas?"
"What day is it?" asked Ola Mae Roberts.
Nobody had thought of it, and it suddenly dawned on the assemblage that the last thing they remembered was when the snow on the roof-tops bespoke a chilly February, while now all the trees were in leaf and the air was redolent of spring.
"Why—I don't know," said Ben. "Anybody here got any ideas on how to find out?"
"It would take an experienced astronomer and some calculation to determine with accuracy," said Beeville. "We'd better set an arbitrary date."
"O. K. Then it's May 1, 1947. That's two years ahead of time, but it will take that long to find out what it really is."
The assumption that sleep would be unnecessary proved correct. All night long, cars roared up to the door and away again on their quests. The number of people found was small—the cream had apparently been gathered that morning. O'Hara brought in a metallic scrubwoman from one of the downtown buildings, the tines that represented her teeth showing stains of rust where she had incautiously drunk water; Stevens turned up with a slow-voiced young man who proved to be Georgios Pappagourdas, the attaché of the Greek consulate whose name had been in the papers in connection with a sensational divorce case; and Mrs. Roberts came in with two men, one of them J. Sterling Vanderschoof, president of the steamship lines which bore his name.
At dawn Dangerfield came in. He had set up a powerful receiving set by means of storage batteries but could find no messages on the air, and could find no source of power sufficient for him to broadcast.