ors in a very large
area?"

"You're gettin' hot," said the sergeant grimly.

Lecky wetted his lips.

"I think," he said very carefully, "that you suspect it is a wave-type
which will break any dynamic system, in any sort of object a dynamic
system can exist in."

"Yeah," said the sergeant. He waited, looking at Lecky.

"And," said Lecky, "not only operating machines are dynamic systems.
Living plants and animals are, too. So are men."

"That's what I'm drivin' at," said Sergeant Bellews.

"So you believe," said Lecky, very pale indeed, "that we have been given
the circuit-diagram of a transmitter which will broadcast a wave-type
which destroys dynamic systems--life as well as the operation of
machines. Persons--in the future or an alien creature in a space-ship,
or perhaps even the Compubs--are furnishing us with designs for
transmitters of death, to be linked together so that if one fails the
others will carry on. And they lure us to destroy ourselves by lying
about who they are and what they propose."

"They're lyin'," said the sergeant. "They say they're in the future and
they don't know a thing about Mahon units. Else they'd use 'em."

Lecky wetted his lips again.

"And--if they are not in the future, they are trying to get us to
destroy ourselves because that would be safer and surer than trying to
destroy us by--say--transmitters of death dropped upon us by parachute.
Yet if we do not destroy ourselves, they will surely do that."

"If we don't bump ourselves off, it'll be because we got wise,"
acknowledged the sergeant. "If we get wise, we could bump them off by
parachute-transmitter. So they'll beat us to it. They'll have to!"

"Yes," said Lecky. "They'll have to. It has always been said that a
death-ray was impossible. This would be a death-broadcast. If we do not
broadcast, they will--whoever they are. It is--" He smiled mirthlessly
at the magnitude of his understatement. "It is urgent that we do
something. What shall we do, Sergeant?"

* * * * *

A squadron of light tanks arrived at Research Installation 83 that
afternoon, with a shipment of courier motorcycles. They had been
equipped with Mahon units and went to the post to be trained.

The Pentagon was debating the development of a Mahon-modified guided
missile, and a drone plane was under construction. But non-military
items also arrived for activation and test. Automatic telephone
switching systems, it appe