units--said we'd have to make half a dozen transmitters so they'd take
over one after another as they blew out. You see what that means?"

Lecky said crisply:

"You pointed it out before. There is something in the wave-type
which--you would say this, Sergeant!--which machines do not like. Is
that the reasoning?"

"Uh-uh!" The sergeant scowled. "Machines work by the golden rule. They
try to do unto you what they want you to do unto them. Likes an'
dislikes don't matter. I mean that there's something about that
wave-type that machines _can't_ take! It busts them. If it sort of
explodes surges of current in 'em--Look! Any running machine is a
dynamic system in a object. A jet-plane operating is that. So's a
water-spout. So's a communicator. But if you explode surges of heavy
current in a dynamic system in a operating machine--things get messed
up. The operating habit is busted to hell. I'm saying that if this
wave-type makes crazy surges of current start up--why--if the surges
are strong enough they'll bust not only a communicator but a jet-plane.
Or a water-spout. Anything! See?"

* * * * *

Lecky blinked and suddenly went pale.

"But," said Howell reasonably, "you said that Betsy handled it.
Especially well when linked with other Mahon machines."

"Yeah," said the sergeant.

"I think," observed Graves jerkily, "that you are preparing new
machines, without developed--personalities, because you think that if
they make this special-type wave they'll be broken."

"Yeah," said the sergeant, again. "The signal Betsy was amplifyin'
coulda been as little as a micro-micro-watt. At its frequency an' type,
she'd choke it down if it was more. But even a micro-micro-watt bothered
Betsy until she got Al and Gus to help. She was fair screamin' for
somebody to come help her hold it. But the three of them done all
right."

Howell conceded the point.

"That seems sound reasoning."

"But you don't broadcast with a micro-micro-watt. You use a hell of a
lot more power than that! The transmitter the guy in the screen said to
make was a twenty-kilowatt job. Not too much for a broadcast of sine
waves, but a hell of a lot to be turned loose, in waves that have Betsy
hollerin' at the power she was handlin'!"

"It might break even the Mahon machines in this installation?" demanded
Howell.

"You're gettin' warm," said the sergeant.

Graves said:

"You mean it might break all operating communicat