"But what is the idea, Jim?"
He grinned at her. "That the Greks are liars!"
He was elated. He grinned at her puzzlement, and Lucy was so pleased at his expression that she didn't press the matter. She'd know what the idea was when he had her help him with it. And he wasn't leaving. She didn't want him to.
In the then state of the world's affairs, people who knew how bad things were and how much worse they could become were not standing on ceremony. The decision on Hackett's suggestion, for example, was lightning-like. Usually when a high-level decision has to be made, somebody—or several people—will hold it up until they can claim part of the credit for it. But nobody wanted credit for obstructing the benign program of the Greks. The world was still celebrating the sure prospect of pie in the sky and the imminent appearance of the big rock candy mountains through those marvelous, benevolent, more-than-kind-and-generous space-travelers.
Which was why a highly technical operation had been carried out with incredible secrecy. The small flat object Lucy had received from the Aldarian had been X-rayed from every possible angle. If what it did could be discovered, many examples of it—of any alien device—would be wanted immediately. So the study had been made from the beginning with the idea of immediate manufacture.
After the X-rays, the object was opened with great caution, at a temperature far below zero and in a tank of inert gas. It was disassembled while motion pictures of the operation were taken. Every smallest part was touched lightly to the finest abrasive and the alloy determined by microanalysis of the almost unweightable samples. And while the device was being reassembled, fanatically exact duplicates of every part were being made. And then experts tried to find out what the original would do.
It did nothing. Nothing whatever. The small movable stud moved. No result could be detected by any conceivable test.
Hackett's proposal was injected into the situation at that point. Parts for some hundreds of the devices were available when the non-operation of the original one became sure. One was assembled and sent to Hackett, while others were turned over to other cleared physicists for them to play with.
Hackett wasn't happy when the device was handed him. He wanted something made by the Greks, but he showed it to Lucy and she couldn't tell it from the one she'd received at the hospital.
"The report is that it doesn't do anything," he said wryly. "I doubt I can do anything with it. Maybe the Aldarians are honest. Maybe the original one got hit hard in that motorcar smash. A watch might stop from a jar, without showing damage that anybody but a watchmaker could see."
He sent a message pointing out that his proposal was for examination of a Grek device, not an Aldarian one. If Aldarians were truthful, he might find out nothing at all.
Still, he bought a small transistor radio and set to work in the woodshed of Miss Constance Thale's dwelling. He made a tiny screwdriver out of a pocket-knife. He set to work to find out what happened inside the device. In theory, in order for any device to do anything, it has to use energy. In order for energy to be used, there has to be a difference of energy-level somewhere. He began to look for that difference.
He was perfectly well equipped. Any race might use screws. They were as inevitable an invention as the wheel. These were left-hand screws and very tiny, but his pocketknife-converted-to-a-screwdriver worked perfectly well. And for a check of energy-levels the transistor radio was perfect. The loudspeaker would make an audible click with the fraction of a milliampere of current. He checked it with saliva and two metals, and it clicked. He made two wire-points and began to hunt for clicks when any two parts of the tiny things were shorted.
It was simply a reversal of normal examination procedure. Instead of finding how parts affected each other, he searched for a difference in energy. Parts might affect each other in a totally novel fashion which might not be familiar induction or familiar magnetism or familiar anything else. Thoroughly capable men had undoubtedly searched for familiar items or principles in the gadget. Hackett didn't.
So he found clicks. When the movable stud was in one position there were none. In the other, they were there. He disassembled the device and put it together in every possible fashion. In one arrangement there were no clicks with the stud here and there were clicks with the stud there. That was all he found out.
Lucy stood by, watching. Presently Hackett said, "It seems to work, but not to do anything."
"It—might be," said Lucy hesitantly, "that it does something we never want to have done. A savage wouldn't understand a watch. The savage doesn't measure time and he couldn't see that the watch did. It wouldn't occur to him. He wouldn't understand a notebook. He doesn't write memos. So it wouldn't occur to him that the notebook held information. He couldn't detect it. Maybe we can't imagine the purpose this serves."
Hackett looked up at her.
"I'm afraid," he said painfully, "that you are smarter than I am. That's undoubtedly it. The Aldarians are smarter than we are, and they want something accomplished that we can't imagine. All we know about it is that the Greks don't want it accomplished. You're smarter than I am, Lucy!"
Lucy's expression flickered. A woman learns early that men prefer to be considered superior to women. And Lucy wanted Hackett to prefer her. She said nothing more—which was regrettable. Hackett stood up and gave her the small device.
"Here's a replica of a souvenir and it's all yours," he said wryly. "I'll report your opinion, which is also mine. But what I need is a Grek gadget, made by a liar, to see if I can get some truth out of it."
He was horribly restless as he waited again. It was unfortunate that Hackett had praised Lucy for her brains. It made her reluctant to say more than she had —and she had something more to say. But a broadcast-power receiver came for Hackett to examine. It was enormously complicated. He set to work on it.
This was the same day that an iron curtain satellite picked up fragmentary signals at certain parts of its orbit at certain times. They were not human signals. It could be he said, positively, that they came from the moon.
"Which," said Hackett grimly, "is quite unneeded proof that the Greks are liars! They said they were going home. They didn't. They're off on the other side of the moon, and they're keeping in touch with the Aldarians they left here! They can smash us. And they will when the time is right." Then he said very bitterly, "But they won't have to fight us. We can't fight. And it looks like nine people out of ten are already praying for them to hurry back and take over!"
We were. There's no use trying to pretend otherwise. We were impatient for what the Greks had promised and we were certain they could produce. We who went through the affair of the Greks find the current generation astonished by us. But they'd probably have done the same thing in our places.
They've had us to tell them how the situation should have been handled. We didn't handle it that way. There was no one to tell us. We had to play it by ear. And we did very badly.
9
It took two days for ground monitor units to pick up the beamed signals from the moon. They were on a frequency of which no human use was then being made. They were wideband. And obviously they would not be mere audible signals if they were intended for deafened Aldarians to pick up. So the monitor station busily recorded them on television tape and then set to work to decode them into presumed pictures. It was necessary to figure out the number of images to the frame, and then the number of lines per frame, the scanning pattern and a few other things.