Sergeant Bellews brought out yet another box. He unrolled cables. He selected machines whose flickering lights seemed to bespeak eagerness to be of use. He coupled them to the newly unboxed machines, whose lights were vaguely steady. "Training cables," he said over his shoulder. "You get one machine working right, and you hook it with another, and the new machine kinda learns from the old one. Kinda! But it ain't as good as real experience. Not at first." * * * * * Presently the lights of the newly energized machines began to waver in somewhat the manner of the ready-for-operation ones. But they did not give so clear an impression of personality. "Look!" said Sergeant Bellews abruptly. "I got to check with you. The more I think, the more worried I get." "You begin to believe the broadcasts come from the future?" demanded Graves. "And it worries you? But they do not speak of Mahon units--" "I don't care where they come from," said the sergeant. "I'm worryin' about what they are! The guy in the broadcast--not knowing Mahon units--said we'd have to make half a dozen transmitters so they'd take over one after another as they blew out. You see what that means?" Lecky said crisply: "You pointed it out before. There is something in the wave-type which--you would say this, Sergeant!--which machines do not like. Is that the reasoning?" "Uh-uh!" The sergeant scowled. "Machines work by the golden rule. They try to do unto you what they want you to do unto them. Likes an' dislikes don't matter. I mean that there's something about that wave-type that machines _can't_ take! It busts them. If it sort of explodes surges of current in 'em--Look! Any running machine is a dynamic system in a object. A jet-plane operating is that. So's a water-spout. So's a communicator. But if you explode surges of heavy current in a dynamic system in a operating machine--things get messed up. The operating habit is busted to hell. I'm saying that if this wave-type makes crazy surges of current start up--why--if the surges are strong enough they'll bust not only a communicator but a jet-plane. Or a water-spout. Anything! See?" * * * * * Lecky blinked and suddenly went pale. "But," said Howell reasonably, "you said that Betsy handled it. Especially well when linked with other Mahon machines." "Yeah," said the sergeant. "I think," observed Graves jerkily, "that you are preparing new machines, without developed--personalities, because you think that if they make this special-type wave they'll be broken." "Yeah," said the sergeant, again. "The signal Betsy was amplifyin' coulda been as little as a micro-micro-watt. At its frequency an' type, she'd choke it down if it was more. But even a micro-micro-watt bothered Betsy until she got Al and Gus to help. She was fair screamin' for somebody to come help her hold it. But the three of them done all right." Howell conceded the point.