"Ah!" he said brightly, "but now that you have the contact, you will not lose it again! Leave your controls where they are, and our learned men will tell your learned men all that they need to know. But—3020? You contacted 3020? That is not in our records of your time!"
He listened again to the thing at his ear. His expression became suddenly suspicious, as if someone had ordered that as well as the words which came next.
"We do not understand how you could contact a time a thousand years beyond us. It is possible that you attempt a joke. A—a kid, as you would say."
Sergeant Bellews beamed into the screen which so remarkably functioned as a transmitting-eye also.
"Hell!" he said cordially. "You know we wouldn't kid you! You or our great-great-great-grandchildren! We depend on you! We got to get you to tell us how not to get wiped out! In 3020 the whole business is forgotten. It's a thousand years old, to them! But they're passin' back some swell machinery—"
He turned his head as if listening to something the microphone could not pick up. But he looked appealingly at Lecky. Lecky nodded and moved toward the communicator.
"Look!" said Sergeant Bellews into the screen. "Here's Doc Lecky—one of our top guys. You talk to him."
He gave his seat to Lecky. Out of range of the communicator, he mopped his face. His shirt was soaked through by the sweat produced by the stress of the past few minutes. He shivered violently, and then clamped his teeth and fumbled out sheets of paper. He beckoned to Graves. Graves came.
"We—we got to give him a doctored circuit," whispered Sergeant Bellews desperately, "and it's got to be good—an' quick!"