And then the linking of radio and airplanes in his mind gave him an idea. He had felt all along that he was doing the correct thing in building a radio set rather than in manufacturing firearms with which to attack the Formians, or in trying to fabricate an airplane for a flight across the boiling seas.
His intuition had been correct; his subconscious mind must have guided him to make the radio in order to phone Cupia for a plane to come over to Vairkingi and get him. Why hadn’t he realized this before? It gave him new heart.
With a laugh he reflected that this afterthought was pretty much like those so characteristic of the man whom he had just left. Jud the Excuse-Maker, always bungling, and always with a perfectly good excuse or alibi, thought up afterward to explain why he did something which, when he did it, was absolutely pointless. Myles had always looked down on the Vairking noble because of this failing.
But now what he found himself going through exactly the same mental processes, he began to wonder if perhaps Jud were not guided by a fairly high-grade intuition. Perhaps Jud’s afterthoughts and excuses were but the breaking through of a realization of some real forethoughts on the part of Jud’s subconscious mind. Myles wondered. He was still wondering when he fell asleep that night.
The next morning he plunged into his work with renewed vigor. He now had copper wire, copper plates, wood, mica, solder, platinum, glass, and batteries—everything that he needed for his radio set except a better vacuum for his tubes; but without that he was as far from success as when he started.
Of course he knew what he needed—magnesium. But it was one thing to step into a drug store on the earth, or into a chemical laboratory in Cupia, and take magnesium off the shelves, and quite another matter to pick this elusive element out of thin air in Vairkingi.
Nevertheless, in spite of this lack, Myles kept on working. He wound his inductances, transformers, earphones, and rheostats. He assembled his variable condensers and microphones. He fashioned his sockets and lamp bases. He strung his antennae. He wired up his baseboard and panel.
Small sets were installed in Quivven’s rooms at the palace, at Jud’s house, and at the brickyard. Each of these was equipped with a transformer-coupling for Doggo’s antennae, as well as with mouthpieces for the others, so that now at last oral conversation was possible with his Formian friend. Later he would prepare a portable head-set such as he had worn in Cupia.
Laboratory experiments demonstrated the success of his sets in everything except durability of tubes. Yet in spite of this drawback he was able to communicate across his laboratory, and even with Jud’s house, and under favorable conditions with Quivven at the palace by using a cold-tube hookup. But this was not powerful enough to send as far as the brickyard, let alone Cupia.
At this juncture there appeared one morning at his gate a Vairking soldier in leather tunic and helmet, requesting entrance with important secret news. Myles grudgingly left his work-bench and gave audience. The fellow had a strangely familiar appearance and smiled in a quizzical manner; yet Myles could not place him.