Here and Now. John Russell Fearn
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possible loses its efficiency. On the first occasion lightning shattered the aerial and put a stop to everything: this time the storm has moved too far away to be useful electrically any longer.”
“Uh-huh,” Chris acknowledged. “I suppose that would fit the case. Since we obviously can’t wait for a convenient storm every time we want to establish contact, what’s the answer? It’s right up your street, Bruce, as a physicist. I understand radio and television, but electrical bridges and flukes are way outside my province.”
Bruce reflected. “I’ll probably dope out something—but it’ll take a bit of time, Meanwhile, we’re no nearer where the transmission is coming from.”
“Must be an amateur somewhere which the Association missed,” Chris decided. “Best thing I can do is contact them again and see if we—”
“Hold it!” Bruce knocked down his hand sharply as he reached out to the switches. “That would be about the most crazy thing you could do. If we handle this situation properly there may be a fortune in it. That girl has a voice that would make the world’s greatest prima donna sound like an amateur. On top of that she looks a pretty guileless girl and we could probably get her to do whatever we wanted and cash in on it.”
Dave looked vaguely uncomfortable as he mopped his chins. As for Chris, his look was plainly belligerent.
“Is that the best angle you can think up? Commercialise the girl straight away? I don’t want any of it. I’m interested in her for herself, to say nothing of the mystery which surrounds her.”
Bruce grinned. “Be simple if you want, feller, but my mind is on the financial angle. If we can only get this girl sorted out properly and find a way to have her here in the flesh there are no limits to what might be done…. Indeed, it may not be necessary for her to be personally contacted. She can be filmed in sound, as you’ve done already.”
The observation brought Chris quickly to his feet again. He went over to the bench and picked up the camcorder. Then he crossed to the television and presently all three men settled in silence to watch the recording. They listened to their own voices, and then that of the girl—and once again, as the point of her singing was reached they listened enthralled.
“Definitely that voice has got to be sold to the highest bidder,” Bruce decided as Chris switched off. “That’s going to be my stake in this from here on, and for that reason alone I’ll strain every scientific ability I’ve got to make a constant communication possible. As for the source of her transmission and her weird language, I leave that to you two geniuses.... Incidentally, you don’t still suspect Mars or Venus, do you?”
Chris spread his hands. “I don’t know what to think. But if it takes every penny I’ve got I’ll get the best linguists in the world to try and determine where this language hails from.”
“And give everything away?” Bruce asked curtly. “You can be very dim at times, Chris.”
“What else do you suggest?”
“Solving it between us, of course. When you find a gold mine you don’t immediately go to work telling everybody where it is! There are great possibilities here, but we’ve got to keep them to ourselves. Agreed?”
“Mmm, I suppose so.” Chris looked uncertain. “I only hope you’re not over-commercialising the situation, that’s all.”
“That’s hardly possible. The whole business might be worth a packet to both the musical and scientific world before we’re finished. I’d suggest you try and sort out the language yourself, if you can. That printed card was captured on the film, wasn’t it?”
“I think so. Tell you better when I’ve reran it... And I still think she belongs to another planet where, by some strange coincidence, the people look like us.”
“If all the girls look like her,” Dave murmured, “I hope the jet-plane firm I’m working for hurries up and completes its outer space runabout.”
For a moment the subject was changed. Both Bruce and Chris glanced in surprise.
“Outer space runabout?” Chris asked. “What are you talking about?”
Dave hesitated, then shrugged. “They’re extending the International Space Station, and it’s slow work, with the astronauts having to get around in spacesuits on the end of a line. My firm is working with the Americans on developing a small vehicle that they can get about in….” Dave hesitated, looking from one to the other. “Look, fellers, I let that slip without realising it. It’s a top secret. Not a word to anybody.”
“So be it,” Bruce assured him solemnly, raising his hand. Then he glanced at his watch. “Well, doesn’t seem as though there’s anything more to be gained by staying here, so I’ll retire to my lair and see if I can think up something to give this apparatus the required electrical boost.”
Chris nodded, switching off the apparatus. “Right—and the sooner the better. Meantime, Dave, if you want to help me during the next few nights in solving this language, problem I shan’t say no.”
“I’ll be here,” Dave promised, heading for the door. “Meantime, I’ll rerun this film and see if anything dawns on us when it’s run through.”
With one thing and another it was close on midnight when Chris finally left his laboratory hut, and he had little sleep that night for thinking about the amazing girl from nowhere whose name he did not even know. He kept thinking of the strange language he had heard and mentally comparing it with the card she had held up, and which had been clearly captured in the film. Where could she possibly hail from? Surely not from any planet in the solar system? Thus arguing and speculating to himself Chris finally fell asleep.
The next day, pursuing his normal workaday job as a photographer’s assistant, he took good care not to do anything that might cause his employer to complain. Right now he was not sure how much money he was going to need to further his experiments and to be thrown out of work would be catastrophic.... Just the same, there was nothing to prevent him doing a good deal of thinking as he worked, but most of it came to nothing. Many and varied were the attempts he made to explain away the mystery girl’s origin. He covered everything from Atlantis to time-travel and failed to discover anything that fitted.
So, presently, he came back to the main problem that could provide the key to everything—an understanding of the girl’s language. With that mastered everything would become plain sailing...or would it?
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