It was what I had intended. Hanley's greater power might be able to amplify those murmurs into audible strength.
"I'm getting them, Phil."
He swung them back to me. Grotesquely distorted, blurred with tube-hum and interference crackle, they roared in my ear-grids so loudly that I saw the nearby guard turn his head as though startled. Listening....
But evidently he concluded it was nothing.
I cut down the volume. Hanley switched in.
"By God. Phil! This—"
"Off, Chief! Let me hear, too!"
He cut away. Those distorted voices! They came from Perona and the bandits to me across this five hundred foot moonlit bowl; from me, thirteen hundred miles up to Hanley's instruments; and back to me once more. But the words, most of them, now were distinguishable.
Perona's voice: "I tell it to you. De Boer ... and a good chance for you to make the money."