Nobody could be seen. Only the empty back yard. Washing hanging from the line next door. Dull gray smoke from an incinerator.
He placed himself at the table, strapped the set of earphones over his head, and began dipping the cat's whisker against the crystal. Each time, he heard static. Again and again he dipped it, and at last he heard -- or imagined he heard -- faint tinny scratchy voices. So he left the cat's whisker where it was and began slowly running the bead along the tuning coil. One voice separated itself from the others, a man's voice, but too faint for the words to be made out.
Maybe I need more antenna, he thought.
More wire.
Leaving the clubhouse -- locked -- he roamed about the yard, searching for wire. He poked his head into the garage. At the far end was his dad's workbench. He started at one end of the bench, and by the time he reached the other he had found a great roll of uninsulated steelish-looking wire that probably was for hanging up pictures or for a wire clothesline if his dad ever got around to putting it up.
They won't mind, he decided.
He carried the picture wire to the clubhouse, climbed the side of the clubhouse to the roof, and attached the wire to the antenna that came up from the crystal set. Out of the two wires he made one vast antenna which trailed the length of the yard.
Maybe it ought to be high, he decided.
Finding a heavy spike he tied the free end of the antenna to it, got his throwing arm limbered up, and then heaved the spike up on to the roof of the house. The antenna drooped. That won't do, he thought. It should be tight.
Returning to the house he climbed the stairs to the top floor. One window opened on to the flat part of the roof; he unlatched that window and in a moment he was scrambling out onto the roof.
From downstairs his mother called, "Sammy, you're not going out on the roof, are you?"
"No," he yelled back. I _am_ out, he told himself, making in his mind a fine distinction. The spike with the antenna dangling from it lay on the sloping part of the roof, but by lying flat and inching along he was able to grab hold of it. Where to tie it?
Only place was the TV antenna.
He tied the end of his antenna to the metal pipe of the TV mast, and that was that. Quickly he crawled back inside the house, through the window, and ran downstairs and out into the yard to the clubhouse.
Shortly he had seated himself at the table, before the crystal set, and was running the bead along the tuning coil.
This time, in his earphones, the man's voice could be heard clearly. And a whole raft of other voices babbled in; his hands shook with excitement as he tuned them apart. From them he picked the loudest.
A conversation of some kind was in progress. He had got it part way through.
"...those long kind that look like sticks of bread. Practically break your front teeth when you bite on them. I don't know what they're for. Weddings maybe, where there's a lot of people you don't know and you want the refreshments to last..."
The man talked leisurely, the words spaced far apart.
"...not the hardness but the anise. It's in everything, even in the chocolate ones. There's one kind, white, with walnuts. Always makes me think of those bleached skulls you find out on the desert... rattlesnake skulls, jackrabbit skulls... small mammals. What a picture, right? Sink your teeth into a fifty-year-old rattlesnake skull..." The man laughed, still leisurely, almost an actual ha-ha-ha-ha. "Well, that's about all, Leon. Oh, one more thing. You know that thing your brother Jim said about ants going faster on hot days? I looked that up and I can't find anything about that. You ask him if he's sure, because I went out back and looked at ants for a couple of hours since I talked to you last, and when it got good and hot they looked to be walking around at about the same speed." I don't get it, Sammy thought.
He tuned the coil to another voice. This one talked briskly.
"...CQ, calling CQ; this is W3840-Y calling CQ; calling CQ; this is W3840-Y asking is there a CQ; is there a CQ anybody; W3840-Y asking for a CQ; CQ; CQ; this is W3840-Y calling CQ; CQ; come in CQ; is there a CQ; this is W3840-Y calling CQ; CQ..." It continued on and on. So he tuned further.
The next voice droned so slowly that he gave up almost at once.
"...no... no... again... what?... to... the... no, I don't believe so..."
This is just crud, he thought in disappointment. But anyhow he had gotten it to work.
He tried further.
Squeaks and hissing made him wince. Then frantic dot-dot noises. Code, he knew. Morse code. Probably from a sinking ship in the Atlantic, with the crew trying to row through the flaming oil.
The next one was better.
"...at 3:36 exactly. I'll track it for you." A long silence.
"Yes, I'll track it from this end. You just sit tight." Silence. "Yes, you sit tight. Got me?" Silence. "Okay, wait for it. What?" Long, long silence. "No, more like 2.8. 2.8. You got that? North East. Okay, Okay. Right."
He looked at his Mickey Mouse wristwatch. The time was just about 8:36; his watch ran a little off, so he couldn't be sure.
Just then, in the sky above the clubhouse, a remote rumble made the objects around him shudder. And at the same time the voice in his earphones said,
"Did you get it? Yes, I see it changing direction. Okay, that's all for this afternoon. Up to full, now. Yes. Okay. Signing off."
The voice ceased.
Hot dog, Sammy said to himself. Wait'll Dad and Uncle Ragle hear this.
Removing his earphones he ran from the clubhouse, across the yard, into the house.
"Mom!" he shouted, "where's Uncle Ragle? Is he in the living room working?"
His mother was in the kitchen scrubbing the drainboard. "Ragle went to mail off his entry," she said. "He finished up early."
"Oh stunk!" Sammy shouted, devastated.
"All right, young man," his mother said.
"Aw," he muttered. "I got a rocket ship or something on my crystal set; I wanted him to hear it." He whirled about in a circle, not knowing what to do.
"Do you want me to listen?" his mother said.
"Okay," he said grudgingly. He started from the house and his mother followed along with him.
"I can only listen for a couple of minutes," she said. "And then I have to get back in the house; I have a lot to do before dinner."
At four o'clock Ragle Gumm mailed his registered package of entries at the main post office. Two hours ahead of the deadline, he told himself. Shows what I can do when I have to.
He took a cab back to the block in which he lived, but he did not get off in front of the house; he got off at the corner, by the rather old two-story house, painted gray, with a leaning front porch.
No chance of Margo stumbling in on us, he realized. It's all she can do to run next door.
Climbing the steep flight of steps to the porch he rang one of the three brass doorbells. Far off, past the lace curtains on the door, down the long, high-ceiling corridor, a chime rang.
A shape approached. The door opened.
"Oh, Mr. Gumm," Mrs. Keitelbein said. "I forgot to tell you what day the class meets."
"That's right," he said. "I was walking by and I thought I'd go up the steps and ask you."
Mrs. Keitelbein said, "The class meets twice a week. At two on Tuesday and three on Thursday. That's easy to remember."
With caution, he said, "Have you had good luck signing people up?"
"Not too awfully good," she said, with a wry smile. Today she did not seem so tired; she wore a blue-gray smock, flat heels, and she lacked the frailness, the aura of the aging spinster lady who kept an altered cat and read detective novels. Today she reminded him more of active churchwomen who put on charity bazaars. The size of the house, the number of doorbells and mailboxes, suggested that she earned at least part of her livelihood as a landlady. Apparently she had divided up her old house into separate apartments.