"I'm afraid so. We're luckier than they are," Ken said, "but I wonder how long we'll stay lucky." He was thinking of Frank Meggs, and the people who had swamped his store.
At 9 p.m., W6YRE came back on. The Berkeley 1000-watt phone was enthusiastic about being a contact post with the university people. He had promised to make arrangements with them and to round up enough batteries to convert his transmitter and receiver.
They had no further success that night.
Ken's father shook his head sadly when told of the situation in Chicago. "I had counted on them," he said. "Their people are among the best in the world, and they have the finest equipment. I hope things are not like that everywhere."
Members of the science club took turns at the transmitter the following days for 20-hour stretches, until everything possible had been done to establish the contacts requested by Professor Maddox.
In Chicago there appeared to have been a complete collapse. The operator there reported he was unable to reach any of the scientific personnel at the university. He promised a further contact, but when the time came he could not be reached. There was no voice at all in the Chicago area. Ken wondered what had become of the man whose voice they had heard briefly. He was certain he would never know.
Although there was much disorder on the west coast, the situation was in somewhat better control. The rioting had not yet threatened the universities, and both Berkeley and Pasadena were working frantically on the problem with round-the-clock shifts in their laboratories. They had welcomed wholeheartedly the communication network initiated by the Mayfield group.
In Washington, D.C. tight military control was keeping things somewhat in order. In Stockholm, where contact had been established through a Washington relay after 2 days of steady effort, there was no rioting whatever. Paris and London had suffered, but their leading universities were at work on the problem. Tokyo reported similar conditions.
Ken grinned at Maria as they received the Stockholm report. "Those Swedes," he said. "They're pretty good at keeping their heads."
Maria answered with a faint smile of her own. "Everybody should be Swedes. No?"