But at least he had been able to lower the frequency on which the satellite’s transmitter broadcast to a band which the people below could receive on a common AM radio. That had been his one big achievement; that, by itself, had made him into what he was.
The reading of the Maugham book ended, then automatically restarted itself; it droned from the start once more for the next area below. Walt Dangerfield ignored it and continued to consult his medical reference microfilms. I think it’s only spasms of the pyloric valve, he decided. If I had phenobarbital here… but it had been used up several years ago; his wife, in her last great suicidal depression, had consumed it all—consumed it and then taken her life anyhow. It had been the abrupt silence of the Soviet space station, oddly enough, that had started her depression; up until then she had believed that they would all be reached and brought safely back down to the surface. The Russians have starved to death, all ten of them, but no one had foreseen it because they had kept up their duty-oriented line of scientific patter right into the last few hours.
“Hoode hoode hoo,” Dangerfield said to himself as he read about the pyloric valve and its spasms. “Folks,” he murmured. “I have this funny pain brought on by over-indulgence… what I need is four-way relief, don’t you agree?” He snapped on his microphone, cutting out the tape-in-progress. “Remember those old ads?” he asked his darkened, unseen audience below. “Before the war—let’s see, how did they go? Are you building more H-bombs but enjoying it less?” He chuckled. “Has thermonuclear war got you down? New York, can you pick me up, yet? I want every one of you within the reach of my voice, all sixty-five of you, to quick light up a match so I’ll know you’re there.”
In his earphones a loud signal came in. “Dangerfield, this is the New York Port Authority; can you give us any idea of the weather?”
“Oh,” Dangerfield said, “we’ve got fine weather coming. You can put out to sea in those little boats and catch those little radioactive fish; nothing to worry about.”
Another voice, fainter, came in now. “Mr. Dangerfield, could you possibly please play some of those opera arias you have? We’d especially appreciate ‘Thy Tiny Hand is Frozen’ from La Boheme.”
“Heck, I can sing that,” Dangerfield said, reaching for the tape as he hummed tenorishly into the microphone.
Returning to Bolinas that night, Eldon Blaine fed the first of the antibiotics to his child and then quickly drew his wife aside. “Listen, they have a top-notch handy up in West Marin which they’ve been keeping quiet about, and only twenty miles from here. I think we should send a delegation up there to nap him and bring him down here.” He added, “He’s a phoce and you should see the ‘mobile he built for himself; none of the handies we’ve had could do anything half that good.” Putting his wool jacket back on he went to the door of their room. “I’m going to ask the Committee to vote on it.”
“But our ordinance against funny people,” Patricia protested. “And Mrs. Wallace is Chairman of the Committee this month; you know how she feels, she’d never let any more phoces come here and settle. I mean, we have four as it is and she’s always complaining about them.”
“That ordinance refers only to funny people who could become a financial burden to the community,” Eldon said, “I ought to know; I helped draft it. Hoppy Harrington is no burden; he’s an asset—the ordinance doesn’t cover him, and I’m going to stand up to Mrs, Wallace and fight it out. I know I can get official permission; I’ve got it all worked Out how we’ll do the napping. They invited us to come up to their area and listen to the satellite, and we’ll do that; we’ll show up but not just to listen to Dangerfield. While they’re involved in that we’ll nap Happy; we’ll put his phocomobile out of action and haul him down here, and they’ll never know what happened. Finders keepers, losers weepers. And our police force will protect us.”
Patricia said, “I’m scared of phoces. They have peculiar powers, not natural ones; everybody knows it. He probably built his ‘mobile by means of magic.”
Laughing with derision, Eldon Blaine said, “So much the better. Maybe that’s what we need: magic spells, a community magician. I’m all for it.”
“I’m going to see how Gwen is,” Patricia said, starting toward the screened-off portion of the room where their child lay on her cot. “I won’t have any pant of this; I think it’s dreadful, what you’re doing.”
Eldon Blaine stepped from the room, out into the night darkness. In a moment he was striding down the path toward the Wallaces’ house.
As the citizens of West Marin County one by one entered the Foresters’ Hall and seated themselves, June Raub adjusted the variable condenser of the twelve-volt car radio and noticed that once again Hoppy Harrington had not shown up to hear the satellite. What was it he had said? “I don’t like to listen to sick people.” A strange thing to say, she thought to herself.
From the speaker of the radio static issued and then first faint beepings from the satellite. In a few more minutes they would be picking it up clearly… unless the wet-cell battery powering the radio chose to give out again, as it had briefly the other day.
The rows of seated people listened attentively as the initial words from Dangerfield began to emerge from the static.”… lice-type typhus is said to be breaking out in Washington up to the Canadian border,” Dangerfield was saying. “So stay away from there, my friends. If this report is true it’s a very bad sign indeed. Also, a report from Portland, Oregon, more on the cheerful side. Two ships have arrived from the Orient. That’s welcome news, isn’t it? Two big freighters, just plain packed with manufactured articles from little factories in Japan and China, according to what I hear.”
The listening roomful of people stirred with excitement.
“And here’s a household tip from a food consultant in Hawaii,” Dangerfield said, but now his voice faded out; once more the listening people heard only static. June Raub turned up the volume, but it did no good. Disappointment showed clearly on all the faces in the room.
If Hoppy were here, she thought, he could tune it so much better than I can. Feeling nervous, she looked to her husband for support.
“Weather conditions,” he said, from where he sat in the first row of chairs. “We just have to be patient.”
But several people were glaring at her with hostility, as if it was her fault that the satellite had faded out. She made a gesture of helplessness.
The door of the Foresters’ Hall opened and three men awkwardly entered. Two were strangers to her and the third was the glasses man. Ill-at-ease, they searched for seats, while everyone in the room turned to watch.
“Who are you fellows?” Mr. Spaulding, who operated the feed barn, said to them. “Did anyone say you could come in here?”
June Raub said, “I invited this delegation from Bolinas to make the trip up here and listen with us; their radio set is not working.”
“Shbh,” several people said, because once again the voice from the satellite could be heard.
“… anyhow,” Dangerfield was saying, “I get the pain mostly when I’ve been asleep and before I eat. It seems to go away when I eat, and that makes me suspect it’s an ulcer, not my heart. So if any doctors are listening and they have access to a transmitter, maybe they can give me a buzz and let me know their opinion. I can give them more information, if it’ll help them.”