The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Machine That Saved The World, by
William Fitzgerald Jenkins

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Title: The Machine That Saved The World

Author: William Fitzgerald Jenkins

Release Date: August 2, 2008 [EBook #26174]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcribers note.

This etext was produced from Amazing Stories December 1957. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this
publication was renewed.

THE MACHINE
THAT SAVED
THE WORLD

By

MURRAY
LEINSTER

_They were broadcasts from nowhere--sinister emanations flooding in from
space--smashing any receiver that picked them up. What defense could
Earth devise against science such as this?_

[Illustration: Did the broadcasts foretell flesh-rending supersonic
blasts?]

The first broadcast came in 1972, while Mahon-modified machines were
still strictly classified, and the world had heard only rumors about
them. The first broadcast was picked up by a television ham in Osceola,
Florida, who fumingly reported artificial interference on the amateur TV
bands. He heard and taped it for ten minutes--so he said--before it blew
out his receiver. When he replaced the broken element, the broadcast was
gone.

But the Communications Commission looked at and listened to the tape and
practically went through the ceiling. It stationed a monitor truck in
Osceola for months, listening feverishly to nothing.

Then for a long while there were rumors of broadcasts which blew out
receiving apparatus, but nothing definite. Weird patterns appeared on
screens high-pitched or deep-bass notes sounded--and the receiver went
out of operation. After the ham operator in Osceola, nobody else got
more than a second or two of the weird interference before blowing his
set during six very full months of CC agitation.

Then a TV station in Seattle abruptly broadcast interference
superimposed on its regular network program. The screens of all sets
tuned to that prog