"Look!" said Sergeant Bellews abruptly. "I got to check with you. The more I think, the more worried I get."
"You begin to believe the broadcasts come from the future?" demanded Graves. "And it worries you? But they do not speak of Mahon units—"
"I don't care where they come from," said the sergeant. "I'm worryin' about what they are! The guy in the broadcast—not knowing Mahon units—said we'd have to make half a dozen transmitters so they'd take over one after another as they blew out. You see what that means?"
Lecky said crisply:
"You pointed it out before. There is something in the wave-type which—you would say this, Sergeant!—which machines do not like. Is that the reasoning?"
"Uh-uh!" The sergeant scowled. "Machines work by the golden rule. They try to do unto you what they want you to do unto them. Likes an' dislikes don't matter. I mean that there's something about that wave-type that machines can't take! It busts them. If it sort of explodes surges of current in 'em—Look! Any running machine is a dynamic system in a object. A jet-plane operating is that. So's a water-spout. So's a communicator. But if you explode surges of heavy current in a dynamic system in a operating machine—things get messed up. The operating habit is busted to hell. I'm saying that if this wave-type makes crazy surges of current start up—why—if the surges are strong enough they'll bust not only a communicator but a jet-plane. Or a water-spout. Anything! See?"
Lecky blinked and suddenly went pale.
"But," said Howell reasonably, "you said that Betsy handled it. Especially well when linked with other Mahon machines."
"Yeah," said the sergeant.