Here and Now. John Russell Fearn

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      Normally, Chris would probably have been scared by this peak outburst of the storm, but as it happened he had a different worry on his mind. The girl had vanished and the screen was totally blank and grey!

      Muttering to himself, Chris operated the controls at desperate speed, but all his efforts failed. He simply could not re-establish communication. At last he relaxed, listening to the rumbling of the thunder and the drumming of rain on the galvanised roof. He got to his feet at length, dragged the door open, then stumbled back a little before the deluge of rain and screaming wind that met him.

      Bending against it he staggered outside and waited for a flash of lightning. One came, less intense than the previous ones, and by its transient lavender glare he saw that his tall experimental aerial mast had been wrecked, its slender girders hanging down forlornly and the delicate, specially devised antennae twisted into so much wreckage.

      “Why tonight of all nights?” he demanded fiercely, and strode back into the laboratory. With savage movements he switched off the equipment and then reached for his jacket. There was just nothing more he could do tonight with the aerial shattered. The only hope was that he could re-establish contact the following evening.

      So on the next evening he was back again—around seven o’clock this time, it being one of his early nights away from his normal work. This time the weather was calm and summery again, which gave him the needed opportunity to re-erect the aerial mast and painstakingly rewire the antennae. It took him two hours all told, then he was ready once again to try and establish the contact of the previous evening.

      Only it was not quite so simple as that. He had for the moment forgotten that the reception had been no ordinary one. He had not been tuned to any particular station, cither amateur or professional, and yet he had received the vision without the sound. But whereabouts on the dial? For the life of him he could not now remember, and of course he had turned the dials in all directions since then in a vain endeavour to re-establish contact.

      “Only one way,” he muttered as he thought the matter out. “Go right round the dial very slowly until I get a reaction—”

      A banging on the laboratory door broke his meditations. He glanced towards it.

      “Come in, whoever you are. No charge!”

      It was tubby David Norton who entered, wearing as usual a sports jacket far too tight for him and faded grey flannel trousers. Considering he had a highly-paid job as a jet-plane engineer, his sartorial offerings were atrocious.

      “Hello there, mastermind….” He closed the door and then ambled forward, genial as ever, his thinning fair hair looking—as it always did—as though a brush and comb were needed. “Mmm, not too talkative tonight, Mr. Marconi. Anything wrong?”

      “Eh?” Chris glanced at him vaguely. “No—nothing’s wrong. At least not seriously.”

      Dave drew up a chair, reversed it, then sat so his elbows rested on the back.

      “What is it? Girl friend trouble?”

      “Come to think of it, yes,” Chris grinned.

      “What! Why, I always thought you were one of those fellows who doesn’t even know what a girl is.”

      “Times change, Dave, and with them people.”

      Dave frowned. “Stop being profound, Chris, and tell me what’s wrong. I didn’t wander all this way tonight just to hear you imitate Confucius. Too damned hot, anyway. Are we doing some television wandering, or not?”

      The vague look came back to Chris’s face. “That depends on a number of things, Dave. Remember the storm last night?”

      “Remember it! The news says it was one of the most violent storms in the last 100 years. What’s that got to do with it?”

      “At the height of it I picked up an unexpected transmission—a beautiful girl in full colour. Better than any film star I’ve ever seen. Only there wasn’t any sound.”

      Dave grinned. “Probably you were struck by lightning and didn’t know it. Girl indeed! Didn’t you read or hear the news today? Practically all the television stations, the pros I mean, had to shut down because of the electrical upset— What kind of a story are you trying to hand me, Chris?”

      “A true one. I’m sure I didn’t dream it, nor was I struck by lightning as you so brightly suggest. There was no sound, as I tell you, but this girl didn’t recognise English even when it was right before her eyes—” Chris moved urgently. “Come to think of it, the note I wrote should still be here. That will prove whether I imagined the whole thing or not.”

      He searched the bench quickly, finally brought the note to light, and handed it over. Dave read it through.

      “‘I am Station MKB, London Environ. Who are you?’ Well, didn’t she give some clue?”

      “No. That’s the infuriating part of it. I could see she could not understand this card, but she turned aside to write something. Then my aerial was struck by lightning and that was the finish.”

      The rather incredulous smile began to fade from Dave’s face. At length he was frowning.

      “But, Chris, this is more than queer. If she were one of the announcers for the European stations she’d know English as well as half a dozen other languages. No girl employed by a television company is such a mug that she doesn’t know English when she sees it.”

      “I don’t think it was a professional television company. I got the reception on a blank section of the tuning dial—blank as far as stations are concerned, anyhow. On the other hand, the background from where the girl was transmitting looked like a ballroom or something. Ham transmission fiends don’t usually have swell places to play around in.”

      “Mmm. Well, what’s the trouble? Can’t you try again?”

      “I don’t know where it was on the dial. I was just thinking, I’ll have to go round it slowly and try again.”

      “Okay—plenty of time. Let’s get started....”

      Dave glanced over the apparatus, which by this time was thoroughly warmed up, and switched on. Somewhat bored, he went through the routine receptions of the normal television stations and then continued with his various amateur friends. From each one he gathered enough to know that none of them had picked up the mystery girl the night before, and certainly none of them had been responsible for the transmission. By ten o’clock the wearying checkup was over—with only a complete blank to show for it.

      “This,” Dave said, busy making coffee, “is one of the queerest things I’ve struck—”

      Hammering on the laboratory door interrupted him, He went over and drew back the catch which he had slipped over whilst the ‘tour’ of the stations had been made. It was no surprise when Bruce Wetherall, the physicist, came in.

      “Just the man we need,” Dave greeted him. “There’s a problem afoot and maybe your massive brain can solve it.”

      Wetherall, as impeccable in his dress as Dave was slovenly, shrugged.

      “If I can help, all right. I had a bit of spare time, Chris, so I came to see how things are going,” СКАЧАТЬ