saw it. More water with it next time, eh?”
“Very funny,” Chris responded sourly. “Thanks, all the same.” With that he switched off and glanced at Dave and Bruce. The latter said, with studied calm:
“That man is a moron with sub-zero intelligence. He ought to know that no ‘ham’ sees things that don’t exist. Dammit, he has enough struggle seeing the things that do. You saw something all right, Chris, though whether it was of profound importance or not I can’t say. One thing is obvious, though: that fathead at the Association obviously thinks it was a delusion and therefore will forget all about it. All the better, just in case we finally satisfy ourselves that the vision was important, after all.”
Dave grinned. “Good old Bruce! Always look to the future!”
“And to the financial possibilities thereof….” Bruce hunched forward on his stool and added seriously: “Just suppose, for instance, that you contacted Mars by accident? Or even Venus? That the storm track happened to bring in a television wave from outer space!”
Chris hesitated, obviously startled, but Dave as an amateur astronomer remained unmoved.
“All due respect, Bruce, but it’s bunk,” he said politely. “I don’t know enough about television signal strengths to say whether or not this apparatus could pick up a transmission over forty to sixty million miles of space, but I do know that the Martians or Venusians, granting their unlikely existence, would hardly take the form of a beautiful girl of Earth, and dressed in the conventional way too. No, I could better believe the transmission came from fabled Atlantis or somewhere.”
“That’s a possibility, I suppose,” Chris reflected, and Bruce turned himself to fresh speculations.
“For my part,” Dave said after a long interval, “I suggest one more turn round the dial and see if the chance of yesterday happens to repeat itself. Have another go at it.”
Chris nodded and switched on the power, but though he searched with toothcomb thoroughness for the next hour there was no trace whatever of the mystery transmission. Finally he gave a grim glance and snapped off the controls.
“Gone but not forgotten, I’m afraid,” he said. “Believe it or not, boys, I feel like somebody who has glimpsed El Dorado, and I’ll go on trying to find it again if it takes all my life. I refuse to believe it could only happen once in a lifetime.”
Dave and Bruce got to their feet, both of them yawning somewhat with boredom.
“From here on, Chris, it’s your pigeon,” Bruce said. “If you recapture the lovely lady let us know. Personally I don’t think that fluke will ever happen again.”
“Not even in a thunderstorm?” Chris asked, reaching for his jacket.
“Well, now….” Bruce mused and pursed his lips. “I suppose that, given the identical electrical conditions, you might be successful in repeating the effect. Too much to say right now. Hope for the best, eh?”
“And if there isn’t a thunderstorm within a reasonable time whilst the summer lasts I’ll try and conjure up similar electrical effects for myself,” Chris decided. “Darn me if I won’t!”
* * * *
For several weeks afterwards, whilst Britain at least enjoyed clear skies and soft breezes, Chris fumed at the lack of climatic outburst and could only proceed with normal television experiments until there might arrive a night such as had formerly proved so eventful.
Towards the end of August he got his wish. At work during the day he had noticed the sultry gathering of storm clouds as late afternoon came, and by seven o’clock when he had gained the hut laboratory there were all the signs of a beauty coming up to the accompaniment of distant rolls of thunder.
As he had expected, he was not alone in his laboratory for long, before fat and perspiring Dave arrived on his motorcycle; and then the impeccably cool Bruce in his sports car. Having both read the signs of the sky they meant taking advantage of the elements if it were at all possible.
“No guarantee, of course, that this storm will be as electrically fruitful as the last one,” Chris said as he switched on the power and checked the instruments with a nervous intensity. “We may not get anything at all except a shattered aerial.”
“Cheerful, isn’t he?” Bruce murmured. “You ought to earth that aerial and save damage....”
“Can’t be done. Once it’s earthed, reception intensity drops by half. Besides—”
Chris paused and glanced up briefly as a brilliant lightning flash made itself evident against the two windows. After an interval of a few seconds the thunder rolled heavily, growling thickly into the distance.
“There’s one thing I’ll say,” Dave remarked, perching his gross body on the nearby stool. “If this glorious wench is only going to appear during thunderstorms, her appearances will be mighty infrequent after September.”
Chris was not even listening. His attention was all for his instruments as he operated the tuning dial carefully. Upon the screen appeared the occasional sprays of energy as the lightning affected it, and one after the other the usual amateur and professional television channels flashed through on their predetermined wavelengths. Then, as the lightning was becoming more frequent, Chris moved the tuning dial into that blank area, somewhere in the midst of which lay the unknown station. By fractional degrees he kept moving it, hoping to land on the ideal spot.
Dave started to say something, but thunder drowned him out Not that it mattered anyway, for at this moment something was happening to the screen. It was flowing and ebbing with little rivers of colour. It looked like glass with melting oil paints upon it. In the speaker there was a sizzling of powerful static, underlined now and again by the greater electrical stab of lightning.
“I believe…I’m on to it.” Chris sounded as though he were half afraid to breathe. “That’s how it began the last time—a lot of flowing of colours which gradually took on shape, and then—”
He stopped talking, for little by little the colours were doing just as he had hoped they would, smearing into each other in the most amazing fashion, until at length they had the definite outline of a head and shoulders. As on that other night, Chris quickly altered the focusing controls, then Dave and Bruce gazed in transfixed admiration at the good-looking girl with the auburn hair who was gazing at them from the screen.
“Satisfied?” Chris demanded, with a quick glance of triumph over his shoulder. Then: “Dave—grab the camcorder over there on the bench and switch it on! Focus it on the screen! We want a recording of everything for later study…especially if the girl speaks to us.”
Dave obeyed with alacrity.
“Can you hear me?” Chris asked deliberately. “Nod if you can….”
As on the previous occasion the girl with the azurine eyes seemed to be watching his mouth. Either she did not understand or else no sound was coming through to her, for she turned aside and picked up a card on which was written a message. In amazement the three men stared at it as she held it in full view.
“What kind of a language is that?” Dave asked blankly, when a shattering explosion of thunder had died away.
He could be forgiven his incredulity, for here was a written language totally
