The Berkeley operator's voice indicated his relief. "I read you, Mayfield. I hoped you hadn't gone out of commission. The eggheads here seem to think your Maddox-Larsen combination is coming up with more dope on comet dust than anybody else in the country."
Ken grinned and patted himself and Maria on the back. "That's us," he said. She grimaced at him.
"Hush!" she said.
"I've got a big report here from Dr. French. Confirm if you're ready to tape it, and I'll let it roll."
Maria cut in to confirm that they were receiving and ready to record. The Berkeley operator chuckled as he came back. "That's the one I like to hear," he said. "That 'Scandahoovian' accent is real cute. Just as soon as things get rolling again I'm coming out there to see what else goes with it."
"He's an idiot," Maria said.
"But probably a pretty nice guy," Ken said.
They listened carefully as the Berkeley operator read a number of pages of reports by Dr. French and his associates, concerning experiments run in the university laboratories. These gave Ken a picture of the present stage of the work on the comet dust. He felt disheartened. Although the material had been identified as a colloidal compound of a new, transuranic metal, no one had yet been able to determine its exact chemical structure nor involve it in any reaction that would break it down.
It seemed to Ken that one of the biggest drawbacks was lack of sufficient sample material to work with. Everything they were doing was by micromethods. He supposed it was his own lack of experience and his clumsiness in the techniques that made him feel he was always working in the dark when trying to analyze chemical specimens that were barely visible.
When the contact was completed and the stations signed off, Maria told Ken what she had heard over the air during the time he was in the hospital. Several other amateur operators in various parts of the country had heard them with their own battery-powered sets. They had asked to join in an expanded news net.