The Year When Stardust Fell Part 12

"We won't expect you to learn code, of course," he said. "When we do handle anything coming in by code one of us will have to take it. We'll try to contact phone stations wherever possible for this program we have in mind. Most of the stuff will be put on tape, and Dad will probably want you to prepare typed copies, too. You can do enough to take a big load off the rest of us."

"I'll be happy to try."

They spent the rest of the day in the radio room of the science shack.

Ken taught Maria the simple operations of turning on the transmitter and receiver, of handling the tuning controls, and the proper procedure for making and receiving calls. He supposed there would be some technical objection to her operation of the station without an operator's license, but he was quite sure that such things were not important right now.

It was a new kind of experience for Maria. Her face was alive with excitement as Ken checked several bands to see where amateurs were still operating. The babble of high-frequency code whistles alternated in the room with faint, sometimes m.u.f.fled voices on the phone band.

"There are more stations than I expected," Ken said. "With luck, we may be able to establish a few of the contacts we need, tonight."

After many tries, he succeeded in raising an operator, W6YRE, in San Francisco. They traded news, and it sounded as if the west coast city was crumbling swiftly. Ken explained what he wanted. W6YRE promised to try to raise someone with a high-powered phone rig in Berkeley, near the university.

They listened to him calling, but could not hear the station he finally raised.

"What good will that do?" Maria asked. "If we can't hear the station in Berkeley...."

"He may be working on a relay deal through the small rig. It's better than nothing, but I'd prefer a station we can contact directly."

In a few minutes, the San Francisco operator called them back. "W6WGU knows a ham with a 1000-watt phone near the university," he said. "He thinks he'll go for your deal, but he's not set up for battery. In fact, he's about ready to evacuate. Maybe he can be persuaded to stay. I'm told he's a guy who will do the n.o.ble thing if he sees a reason for it."

"There's plenty of reason for this," said Ken.

"Let's set a schedule for 9 p.m. I ought to have word on it by then."

They agreed and cut off. In another hour they had managed a contact with a Chicago operator, and explained what they wanted.

"You're out of luck here," the ham replied. "This town is falling apart at the seams right now. The whole Loop area has been burned out.

There's been rioting for 18 hours straight. The militia have been trying to hold things together, but I don't think they even know whether anybody is still on top giving the orders.

"I'll try to find out what the eggheads at the university are doing, but if they've got any kind of research running in this mess, it'll surprise me. If they are still there, I'll hang on and report to you. Otherwise, I'm heading north. There's not much sense to it, but when something like this happens a guy's got to run or have a good reason for staying put.

If he doesn't he'll go nuts."

The Chicago operator agreed to a schedule for the following morning.

Maria and Ken sat in silence, not looking at each other, after they cut off.

"It will be that way in all the big cities, won't it?" Maria asked.

"I'm afraid so. We're luckier than they are," Ken said, "but I wonder how long we'll stay lucky." He was thinking of Frank Meggs, and the people who had swamped his store.

At 9 p.m., W6YRE came back on. The Berkeley 1000-watt phone was enthusiastic about being a contact post with the university people. He had promised to make arrangements with them and to round up enough batteries to convert his transmitter and receiver.

They had no further success that night.

Ken's father shook his head sadly when told of the situation in Chicago.

"I had counted on them," he said. "Their people are among the best in the world, and they have the finest equipment. I hope things are not like that everywhere."

Members of the science club took turns at the transmitter the following days for 20-hour stretches, until everything possible had been done to establish the contacts requested by Professor Maddox.

In Chicago there appeared to have been a complete collapse. The operator there reported he was unable to reach any of the scientific personnel at the university. He promised a further contact, but when the time came he could not be reached. There was no voice at all in the Chicago area. Ken wondered what had become of the man whose voice they had heard briefly.

He was certain he would never know.

Although there was much disorder on the west coast, the situation was in somewhat better control. The rioting had not yet threatened the universities, and both Berkeley and Pasadena were working frantically on the problem with round-the-clock s.h.i.+fts in their laboratories. They had welcomed wholeheartedly the communication network initiated by the Mayfield group.

In Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. tight military control was keeping things somewhat in order. In Stockholm, where contact had been established through a Was.h.i.+ngton relay after 2 days of steady effort, there was no rioting whatever. Paris and London had suffered, but their leading universities were at work on the problem. Tokyo reported similar conditions.

Ken grinned at Maria as they received the Stockholm report. "Those Swedes," he said. "They're pretty good at keeping their heads."

Maria answered with a faint smile of her own. "Everybody should be Swedes. No?"

The fall winds and the black frost came early that year, as if in fair warning that the winter intended a brutal a.s.sault upon the stricken world. The pile of logs in the community woodlot grew steadily. A large crew of men worked to reduce the logs to stove lengths.

They had made a crude attempt to set up a circular saw, using animal power to drive it. The shaft was mounted in hardwood blocks, driven by a complicated arrangement of wooden pulleys and leather belts. The horses worked it through a treadmill.

The apparatus worked part of the time, but it scarcely paid for itself when measured against the efforts of the men who had to keep it in repair.

The food storage program was well underway. Two central warehouses had been prepared from the converted Empire Movie Theater, and the Rainbow Skating Rink.

Ken wished their efforts at the college laboratory were going half as well. As the days pa.s.sed, it seemed they were getting nowhere. The first effort to identify any foreign substance in the atmospheric dust was a failure. Calculations showed they had probably not allowed sufficient time to sample a large enough volume of air.

It was getting increasingly difficult to keep the blower system going.

All of their original supply of small engines had broken down. The town had been scoured for replacements. These, too, were failing.

In the metallurgical department hundreds of tests had been run on samples taken from frozen engines. The photomicrographs all showed a uniform peculiarity, which the scientists could not explain. Embedded in the crystalline structure of the metal were what appeared to be some kind of foreign, amorphous particles which were concentrated near the line of union of the two parts.

Berkeley and Pasadena confirmed these results with their own tests.

There was almost unanimous belief that it was in no way connected with the comet. Ken stood almost alone in his dogged conviction that the Earth's presence in the tail of the comet could be responsible for the catastrophe.

Another theory that was gaining increasing acceptance was that this foreign substance was an unexpected by-product of the hydrogen and atomic bomb testing that had been going on for so many years. Ken was forced to admit the possibility of this, inasmuch as radiation products were scattered heavily now throughout the Earth's atmosphere. Both Russia and Britain had conducted extensive tests just before the breakdowns began occurring.

The members of the science club had been allowed to retain complete control of the air-sampling program. They washed the filters carefully at intervals and distilled the solvent to recover the precious residue of dust.

As the small quant.i.ty of this grew after another week of collecting, it was treated to remove the ordinary carbon particles and acc.u.mulated pollens. When this was done there was very little remaining, but that little something might be ordinary dust carried into the atmosphere from the surface of the Earth. Or it might be out of the tail of the comet.

Dust from the stars.

By now, Ken and his companions had learned the use of the electron microscope and how to prepare specimens for it. When their samples of dust had become sufficient they prepared a dozen slides for photographing with the instrument.

As these were at last developed in the darkroom, Ken scanned them eagerly. Actually, he did not know what he was looking for. None of them did. The prints seemed to show little more than shapeless patches. In the light of the laboratory he called Joe Walton's attention to one picture. "Look," he said. "Ever see anything like that before?"

Joe started to shake his head. Then he gave an exclamation. "Hey, they look like the same particles found in the metals, which n.o.body has been able to identify yet!"

Ken nodded. "It could be. Maybe this will get us only a horselaugh for our trouble, but let's see what they think."

They went into the next laboratory and laid the prints before Ken's father and his a.s.sociates. Ken knew at once, from the expressions on the men's faces, that they were not going to be laughed at.

"I think there may be something here," said Professor Maddox, trying to suppress his excitement. "It is very difficult to tell in a picture like this whether one particle is similar to any other, but their size and configuration are very much alike."