Jan Dirk

“ For each change of a hundredth part of a wave-length which Dick made with the dials a new flood poured in: discussions of inventions unknown to Earthmen, which might advance them a hundred thousand years—secrets which would revolutionize Earth’s every art. And all within the power of two men to disclose!
Of a sudden, growing gradually louder and louder and louder until it dominated all the minor whispers, rose one voice above the others, in the booming tones of a leader of his kind. “Aie! Aie! This is Marlars, chief and war lord over this red planet, which is the lord of all the red planets. ”

“ Of course an X-ray tube operates in accordance with the electron theory, but it shoots the electrons off—it doesn’t throw them out as an electromagnetic field of force, which is probably the fashion in which our earthly radio waves are propagated. In other words, although I was still using the electrons in my work, I had an entirely new type of receiving set, and one which, although it might not actually hear messages from another planet, would perhaps be the stepping stone on which some future inventor might build success. ”

“ Or had our system of radio reception perhaps developed along entirely different lines than theirs? Had they used some principle entirely foreign to the electron theory in their radio work—say some unknown projector ray or light repulsion of the sort which makes the tail of a comet point always away from the sun? It seemed possible, even probable. Then I asked myself what medium of language an exterior planet would use in an attempt at communication, and two things immediately suggested themselves: geometry and music! ”

“ Now, think of the thousands of people in this country who use radio receiving sets. They can tune them, after a fashion; they hear over long distances, mostly because of luck, and so they think themselves scientific research workers, and speak of their sets, which really do all the work, contemptuously—patronizingly. Yet those same sets, even if they have built them themselves (which is not usually the case) are really miracles to them, if they would only admit it.”
“All done?” Stan inquired solicitously.
“All done,” said Dick, wonderingly. ”

“ The projector? It’s just an unusually large tube similar to an X-ray tube, which I have constructed to withstand extremely high voltages. It produces a tremendous flow of force, which I have named the V-Ray, and which by means of the leaden shield I can direct upon any portion of the net below. Now I believe that with the ray forcing a stream of electrons, or perhaps it would be more correct to say energy, into the tubes, the set will be sensitive to radio waves of a type unknown here on Earth. ”

“ Down in a lower compartment there seems to be an orthodox receiving set with eight oversize tubes. All the wiring is oversize, too, and so are the transformers. Up above the set there are a lot of little control appliances, evidently of your own invention, and the biggest X-ray tube I’ve ever seen, with some sort of a focusing device pointed down into the lower compartment. ”

“ The Los Angeles fellows, I suppose, thought that the northern fellows were having some sort of local interference, so they, too, shut down, one by one. 5ZA had been working his spark, down in New Mexico, but he seemed to fade out at about the same time the San Francisco stations did. ”