keep them unconscious while we adjust our interference to meet the second wave.”
“I see, vaguely. What do you need?”
“Dr. Norvel.”
“I’ll phone her.”
“A laboratory. An electronics laboratory.”
“I’ll get it.”
“Enough time.”
“All I can do on that score is hurry as fast as I can. As soon as I get your laboratory, I’ll send a car around for you.”
“Right.”
“I’ve got calls to make, then. You give me the details later.”
“Goodby.”
Julia hung up.
*
She felt elation. She went to the window and breathed deeply. The air was exciting.
Two hours later, she was in a staff car speeding toward an experimental laboratory on the outskirts of town.
She was hustled inside the building by a sergeant and a colonel; gray, cloudy dawn hovered in the east.
Dr. Norvel was already waiting.
“Let’s go to work,” the doctor said.
“Right.”
“What do you propose? The general said something about interfering with the frequency controlling your mind. How? We can’t even detect it.”
“We don’t need to. We generate a signal, vary the frequency until I lose my mutant powers—and that’s it! We generate as strong a signal as we can. Then we have every transmitter in the country put on a direct line to us. When the radar spots the first saucer, we let go with every kilowatt of power we’ve got.”
“Good, good, good,” Dr. Norvel said excitedly. “See if you can find some good coffee, you there, with the bird on your shoulder.”
The colonel said, “Yes, ma’m.”
“I’ll try to get some electronics men in to help,” Dr. Norvel said. “We may need plenty of help.”
“Is there a technical library around?” Julia asked. “I better read up on electronics.”
“There’s one in there,” the puzzled night watchman said.
“I want you to get me somebody from the Army that can get me equipment, and fast,” Dr. Norvel told the sergeant. He was standing helplessly by the door.
“I—”
“Hurry up, damn it!”
The sergeant shrugged in resignation. “All right, but they won’t like it. I’m the one you should have sent for the coffee.”
After, the sergeant was gone, the colonel came back.
By noon, the laboratory was alive with activity.
By six o’clock, the signal generator was beginning to grow.
Julia supervised the crew laying cable. The cable would be connected to the nearest radio transmitter.
“Your transmitter will handle our signal?” Julia asked.
“You give it to us, and we’ll tell you.”
A general interrupted Julia. “I’m from General Tibbets. How’s it going?”
“Can’t tell.”
“We’re trying to scatter paratroops—detachments of them. All over. How long do we have?”
“It’s up to them,” Julia said. “I don’t know when we’ll be finished here.”
“Our men should be stationed by morning.”
“I hope we’re through that early.”
“You disarm these damned mutants, and we’ll capture them.”
“Hope to.”
In the yard, a crew was unloading a new power supply.
“Knock a hole in the east wall and take it inside!” a harried officer bawled hoarsely.
“Some ass of a newspaper man did a report on unusual activity in the Pentagon and around Washington,” Dr. Norvel said. “He hinted it had something to do with the flying saucer reports of twenty some years ago.”
“How in hell did it leak?”
“ . . . the Pentagon’s issuing a denial.”
*
By midnight, Julia was superintending the construction of a second signal generator. Work on the first one was temporarily stalled; the technicians were waiting for a special transformer.
Dr. Norvel was waving an inked-in schematic diagram before the face of a gray haired man in an apron. “No, no, no,” she said. “It’s got to be this way to set up the right harmonics.”
A major came up and tugged apologetically at Julia’s arm. “Are you in charge here?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
“Well, if you are—please, Miss, my men have to rest. Can I let them go now?”
“We’re not quitting ‘til we finish—I’m sure of that.”
The major went away, looking for someone else in authority.
Walt, his mutant bridge restored, was inspecting the second signal generator with interest. With it, the technicians would determine the signal that interfered with his frequency. They would set it to throb out that signal.
One section of the transmitter cable ran to each signal generator. A sergeant had just finished installing a switch that would control the signal being fed into the output line. After the first mutant wave had been captured, the switch would be thrown to the left. The signal covering Walt’s powers would then be transmitted to the same network of radio and television stations that had carried the one covering Julia’s; and the second wave would be reduced to earth normal.
It was dawn before the first signal generator began operation. It was Sunday.
Julia sat at a desk, sipping coffee, holding a book suspended in front of her, six inches from the desk top. The last twenty-four hours had left a strain on her face. When the book fell, her mutant powers would be gone.
Smoking cigarette after cigarette, Dr. Norvel watched. After nearly fifteen minutes, she pleaded, “Drop, damn you, drop!”
