the dial very slowly until I get a reaction—”
A banging on the laboratory door broke his meditations. He glanced towards it.
“Come in, whoever you are. No charge!”
It was tubby David Norton who entered, wearing as usual a sports jacket far too tight for him and faded grey flannel trousers. Considering he had a highly-paid job as a jet-plane engineer, his sartorial offerings were atrocious.
“Hello there, mastermind….” He closed the door and then ambled forward, genial as ever, his thinning fair hair looking—as it always did—as though a brush and comb were needed. “Mmm, not too talkative tonight, Mr. Marconi. Anything wrong?”
“Eh?” Chris glanced at him vaguely. “No—nothing’s wrong. At least not seriously.”
Dave drew up a chair, reversed it, then sat so his elbows rested on the back.
“What is it? Girl friend trouble?”
“Come to think of it, yes,” Chris grinned.
“What! Why, I always thought you were one of those fellows who doesn’t even know what a girl is.”
“Times change, Dave, and with them people.”
Dave frowned. “Stop being profound, Chris, and tell me what’s wrong. I didn’t wander all this way tonight just to hear you imitate Confucius. Too damned hot, anyway. Are we doing some television wandering, or not?”
The vague look came back to Chris’s face. “That depends on a number of things, Dave. Remember the storm last night?”
“Remember it! The news says it was one of the most violent storms in the last 100 years. What’s that got to do with it?”
“At the height of it I picked up an unexpected transmission—a beautiful girl in full colour. Better than any film star I’ve ever seen. Only there wasn’t any sound.”
Dave grinned. “Probably you were struck by lightning and didn’t know it. Girl indeed! Didn’t you read or hear the news today? Practically all the television stations, the pros I mean, had to shut down because of the electrical upset— What kind of a story are you trying to hand me, Chris?”
“A true one. I’m sure I didn’t dream it, nor was I struck by lightning as you so brightly suggest. There was no sound, as I tell you, but this girl didn’t recognise English even when it was right before her eyes—” Chris moved urgently. “Come to think of it, the note I wrote should still be here. That will prove whether I imagined the whole thing or not.”
He searched the bench quickly, finally brought the note to light, and handed it over. Dave read it through.
“‘I am Station MKB, London Environ. Who are you?’ Well, didn’t she give some clue?”
“No. That’s the infuriating part of it. I could see she could not understand this card, but she turned aside to write something. Then my aerial was struck by lightning and that was the finish.”
The rather incredulous smile began to fade from Dave’s face. At length he was frowning.
“But, Chris, this is more than queer. If she were one of the announcers for the European stations she’d know English as well as half a dozen other languages. No girl employed by a television company is such a mug that she doesn’t know English when she sees it.”
“I don’t think it was a professional television company. I got the reception on a blank section of the tuning dial—blank as far as stations are concerned, anyhow. On the other hand, the background from where the girl was transmitting looked like a ballroom or something. Ham transmission fiends don’t usually have swell places to play around in.”
“Mmm. Well, what’s the trouble? Can’t you try again?”
“I don’t know where it was on the dial. I was just thinking, I’ll have to go round it slowly and try again.”
“Okay—plenty of time. Let’s get started....”
Dave glanced over the apparatus, which by this time was thoroughly warmed up, and switched on. Somewhat bored, he went through the routine receptions of the normal television stations and then continued with his various amateur friends. From each one he gathered enough to know that none of them had picked up the mystery girl the night before, and certainly none of them had been responsible for the transmission. By ten o’clock the wearying checkup was over—with only a complete blank to show for it.
“This,” Dave said, busy making coffee, “is one of the queerest things I’ve struck—”
Hammering on the laboratory door interrupted him, He went over and drew back the catch which he had slipped over whilst the ‘tour’ of the stations had been made. It was no surprise when Bruce Wetherall, the physicist, came in.
“Just the man we need,” Dave greeted him. “There’s a problem afoot and maybe your massive brain can solve it.”
Wetherall, as impeccable in his dress as Dave was slovenly, shrugged.
“If I can help, all right. I had a bit of spare time, Chris, so I came to see how things are going,” he explained. “Any nearer with your long-range modifications?”
“Not yet. It takes time.”
“True; but not too long, I hope. There are definite commercial possibilities in ultra-long-range transmitters, and I want to be in on the ground floor.”
Dave nodded moodily, but said no more. Bruce looked vaguely surprised as he perched on the nearby stool. He was a tall, ascetic man, several years older than the other two, with thin features and a perpetual eye to the main chance.
“At the moment,” Dave said, waddling across with three cups of coffee on a tray, “our television genius is absorbed in a mystery. And I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s the biggest puzzle I’ve struck for some time.”
“Oh?” Bruce took one of the coffee cups. “Am I supposed to know anything about it?”
“You soon can do,” Dave said, and gave the details whilst Chris contented himself with sombre, confirmatory nods. Bruce listened with the cold detachment of a professional physicist, looking as though he were waiting for something concrete on which to pass judgment.
“Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?” Chris asked ruefully when the story had been told.
“If anybody else but you had been involved, Chris, I’d say just that. But you’re not that kind of a chap. I’m prepared to believe that it happened all right.”
“Many thanks,” Chris murmured dryly, sipping his coffee.
“How far,” Bruce asked, “does this present apparatus of yours reach?”
“About a hundred miles. That means France mainly to the south, and up to maybe Manchester or Leeds in the north. East and west we have the ocean, so that’s out. This girl must have been within that radius somewhere.”
“Not necessarily,” Bruce said, surprisingly, and Chris and Dave looked at him sharply.
“I mean,” he explained, putting his coffee cup on the bench, “that there are such things as freak receptions, both in television and radio. Sometimes during intense solar activity a television transmission from thousands of miles away is picked up—and radio transmission too. Last night there was not so much solar activity as electrical disturbance caused by the storm. It possibly helped you to accidentally pick something up, and since it was far away it was not in any known place on your receiver dial.”
“Then it would be a ‘ham’. As Dave has pointed out, all the professional television announcers know English as well as other languages.”
“All right, then, a ‘ham’,” Bruce conceded. “Any station, even a very weak one, can sometimes get an electrical boost which carries the signal thousands of miles instead of hundreds. Certainly