meant Morse, naturally, but the whisky sours had muddled him a bit, so his first guess was more nearly right than anyone else’s. It was Marconi, in a way. In a very peculiar way.
“Marconi?” asked Maisie.
George, who hated to talk against a radio, leaned over and switched it off.
“I meant Morse,” he said. “Morse, as in Boy Scouts or the Signal Corps. I used to be a Boy Scout once.”
“You’ve sure changed,” Maisie said.
George sighed. “Somebody’s going to catch hell, broadcasting code on that wave length.”
“What did it mean?”
“Mean? Oh, you mean what did it mean. Uh—S, the letter S. Dit-dit-dit is S. SOS is dit-dit-dit dah-dah-dah dit-dit-dit.”
“O is dah-dah-dah?”
George grinned. “Say that again, Maisie. I like it. And I think you are dah-dah-dah too.”
“George, maybe it’s really an SOS message. Turn it back on.”
George turned it back on. The tobacco ad was still going. “—gentlemen of the most dit-dit-dit-ing taste prefer the finer taste of dit-dit-dit-arettes. In the new package that keeps them dit-dit-dit and ultra fresh—”
“It’s not SOS. It’s just S’s.”
“Like a tea-kettle, or—say, George, maybe it’s just some advertising gag.”
George shook his head. “Not when it can blank out the name of the product. Just a minute till I—”
He reached over and turned the dial of the radio a bit to the right and then a bit to the left, and an incredulous look came into his face. He turned the dial to the extreme left, as far as it would go. There wasn’t any station there, not even the hum of a carrier wave. But:
“Dit-dit-dit,” said the radio, “dit-dit-dit.”
He turned the dial to the extreme right. “Dit-dit-dit.”
George switched it off and stared at Maisie without seeing her, which was hard to do.
“Something wrong, George?”
“I hope so,” said George Bailey. “I certainly hope so.”
He started to reach for another drink and changed his mind. He had a sudden hunch that something big was happening, and he wanted to sober up to appreciate it.
He didn’t have the faintest idea how big it was.
“George, what do you mean?”
“I don’t know what I mean. But Maisie, let’s take a run down to the studio, huh? There ought to be some excitement.”
* * * *
April 5, 1957; that was the night the waveries came.
It had started like an ordinary evening. It wasn’t one, now.
George and Maisie waited for a cab, but none came so they took the subway instead. Oh yes, the subways were still running in those days. It took them within a block of the MID Network Building.
The building was a madhouse. George, grinning, strolled through the lobby with Maisie on his arm, took the elevator to the fifth floor, and for no reason at all gave the elevator boy a dollar. He’d never before in his life tipped an elevator operator.
The boy thanked him. “Better stay away from the big shots, Mr. Bailey,” he said. “They’re ready to chew the ears off anybody who even looks at ’em.”
“Wonderful,” said George.
From the elevator he headed straight for the office of J. R. McGee himself.
There were strident voices behind the glass door. George reached for the knob, and Maisie tried to stop him.
“But George,” she whispered, “you’ll be fired!”
“There comes a time,” said George. “Stand back away from the door, honey.”
Gently but firmly he moved her to a safe position.
“But George, what are you—?”
“Watch,” he said.
The frantic voices stopped as he opened the door a foot. All eyes turned toward him as he stuck his head around the corner of the doorway into the room.
“Dit-dit-dit.” he said. “Dit-dit-dit.”
He ducked back and to the side just in time to escape the flying glass as a paperweight and an inkwell came through the pane of the door.
He grabbed Maisie and ran for the stairs.
“Now we get a drink,” he told her.
* * * *
The bar across the street from the network building was crowded, but it was a strangely silent crowd. In deference to the fact that most of its customers were radio people, it didn’t have a TV set—but there was a big cabinet radio, and most of the people were bunched around it.
“Dit” said the radio. “Dit-dah-d’dah-dit-dahditdah dit—”
“Isn’t it beautiful?” George whispered to Maisie.
Somebody fiddled with the dial. Somebody asked, “What band is that?” and somebody said, “Police.” Somebody said, “Try the foreign band,” and somebody did. “This ought to be Buenos Aires,” somebody said. “Dit-d’dah-dit—” said the radio.
Somebody ran fingers through his hair and said, “Shut that damn thing off.” Somebody else turned it back on.
George grinned and led the way to a back booth where he’d spotted Pete Mulvaney sitting alone with a bottle in front of him. He and Maisie sat across from Pete.
“Hello,” he said gravely.
“Hell,” said Pete, who was head of the technical research staff of MID.
“A beautiful night, Mulvaney,” George said. “Did you see the moon riding the fleecy clouds like a golden galleon tossed upon silver-crested whitecaps in a stormy—”
“Shut up,” said Pete. “I’m thinking.”
“Whisky sours,” George told the waiter. He turned back to the man across the table. “Think out loud, so we can hear. But first, how did you escape the booby hatch across the street?”
“I’m bounced, fired, discharged.”
“Shake hands. And then explain. Did you say dit-dit-dit to them?”
Pete looked at him with sudden admiration. “Did you?”
“I’ve
