“How long will that take?” Susie Smart asked.
“I haven’t ever tried to raise the relay network from here.” Glen Belsnor said, “I don’t know; we’ll have to see. Maybe we can do it right away. But at the most it shouldn’t take more than two or three days. The only problem would be–” He rubbed his bristly chin. “There may be a security factor. Treaton may not want this request run through the relay network, where anyone with a class one receiver can pick it up. His reaction then would be to ignore our request.”
“If they do that,” Babble spoke up, “we ought to pack up and leave here. Immediately.”
“Leave how?” Ignatz Thugg said, grinning.
Nosers, Seth Morley thought. We have no vehicles here except inert and fuel-zero nosers, and even if we could round up the fuel–say by syphoning from every fuel tank to fill up one–they don’t have tracking gear by which we could pilot a course. They would have to use Delmak-O as one of two coordinates, and Delmak-O is not on Interplan West charts–hence no tracking value. He thought, Is this why they insisted on our coming in nosers?
They’re experimenting with us, he thought wildly. That’s what this is: an experiment. Maybe there never were any instructions on the satellite’s tape. Maybe it all was planned.
“Make a sample try at picking up the relay people,” Tallchief said. “Maybe you can get them right now.”
“Why not?” Belsnor said. He adjusted dials, clamped an earphone to the side of his head, opened circuits, closed others down. In absolute silence the others waited and watched. As if, Morley thought, our lives depend on this. And–perhaps they do.
“Anything?” Betty Jo Berm asked at last.
Belsnor said, “Nothing. I’ll switch it on video.” The small screen jumped into life. Mere lines, visual static. “This is the frequency on which the relay operates. We should pick them up.”
“But we’re not,” Babble said.
“No. We’re not.” Belsnor continued to spin dials. “It’s not like the old days,” he said, “when you could tinker with a variable condenser until you got your signal. This is complex.” All at once he shut off the central power supply; the screen blanked out and, from the speakers, the snatches of static ceased.
“What’s the matter?” Mary Morley asked.
“We’re not on the air,” Belsnor said.
“What?” Startled exclamations from virtually all of them.
“We’re not transmitting. I can’t pull them and if we’re not on the air they sure as hell aren’t going to pull us.” He leaned back, convulsed with disgust. “It’s a plot, a friggin’ plot.”
“You mean that literally?” Wade Frazer demanded. “You mean this is intentional?”
“I didn’t assemble our transmitter,” Glenn Belsnor said. “I didn’t hook up our receiving equipment. For the last month, since I’ve been here, in fact, I’ve been making sample tests; I’ve picked up several transmissions from operators in this star system, and I was able to transmit back. Everything seemed to be working normally. And then this.” He stared down, his face working. “Oh,” he said abruptly. He nodded. “Yes, I understand what happened.”
“Is it bad?” Ben Tallchief asked.
Belsnor said, “When the satellite received my signal to activate the audio tape construct and complying transmitter, the satellite sent a signal back. A signal to this gear.” He indicated the receiver and transmitter rising up before him. “The signal shut down everything. It overrode my instructions. We ain’t receiving and we ain’t transmitting, no matter what I tell this junk to do. It’s off the air, and it’ll probably take another signal from the satellite to get it functioning again.” He shook his head. “What can you do but admire it?” he said. “We transmit our initial instruction to the satellite; in response it sends one back. It’s like chess: move and respond. I started the whole thing going. Like a rat in a cage, trying to find the lever that drops food. Rather than the one that transmits an electric shock.” His voice was bitter, and laden with defeat.
“Dismantle the transmitter and receiver,” Seth Morley said. “Override the override by removing it.”
“It probably–hell, undoubtedly–has a destruct component in it. It’s either already destroyed vital elements or it will when I try to search for it. I have no spare parts; if it’s destroyed a circuit here and there I can’t do anything toward fixing it.”
“The automatic pilot beam,” Morley said. “That I followed to get here. You can send out the message on it.”
“Automatic pilot beams work for the first eighty or ninety thousand miles and then peter out. Isn’t that where you picked up yours?”
“More or less,” he admitted.
“We’re totally isolated,” Beslnor said. “And it was done in a matter of minutes.”
“What we must do,” Maggie Walsh said, “is to prepare a joint prayer. We can probably get through on pineal gland emanation, if we make it short.”
“I can help on preparing it, if that’s the criterion,” Betty Jo Berm said. “Since I’m a trained linguist.”
“As a last resort,” Belsnor said.
“Not as a last resort,” Maggie Walsh said. “As an effective, proven method of getting help. Mr. Tallchief, for example, got here because of a prayer.”
“But it passed along the relay,” Belsnor said. “We have no way to reach the relay.”
“You have no faith in prayer?” Wade Frazer asked, nastily. Belsnor said, “I have no faith in prayer that’s not electronically augmented. Even Specktowsky admitted that; if a prayer is to be effective it must be electronically transmitted through the network of god-worlds so that all Manifestations are reached.”
“I suggest,” Morley said, “that we transmit our joint prayer as far as we can through the automatic pilot beam. If we can project it eighty or ninety thousand miles out it should be easier for the Deity to pick it up . . . since gravity works in inverse proportion to the power of the prayer, meaning that if you can get the prayer away from a planetary body–and ninety thousand miles is reasonably away–then there is a good mathematical chance of the various Manifestations receiving it, and Specktowsky mentions this; I forget where. At the end, I think, in one of his addenda.”
Wade Frazer said. “It’s against Terran law to doubt the power of prayer. A violation of the civil code of all Interplan West stages and holdings.”
“And you’d report it,” Ignatz Thugg said.
“Nobody’s doubting the efficacy of prayer,” Ben Tallchief said, eyeing Frazer with overt hostility. “We’re merely disagreeing on the most effective way of handling it.” He got to his feet. “I need a drink,” he said. “Goodbye.” He left the room, tottering a little as he went.
“A good idea,” Susie Smart said to Seth Morley. “I think I’ll go along, too.” She rose, smiling at him in an automatic way, a smile devoid of feeling. “This is really terrible, isn’t it? I can’t believe that General Treaton could have authorized this deliberately; it must be a mistake. An electronic breakdown that they don’t know about. Don’t you agree?”
“General Treaton, from all I’ve heard,” Morley said, “is a thoroughly reputable man.” Actually, he had never heard of General Treaton before, but it seemed to him a good thing to say, in order to try to cheer her up. They all needed cheering up, and if it helped to believe that General Treaton was definitely reputable then so be it; he was all for it. Faith in secular matters, as well as in theological matters, was a necessity. Without it one could not go on living.
To Maggie Walsh, Dr. Babble said, “Which aspect of the Deity should we pray to?”
“If you want time rolled back, say to the moment before any of us accepted this assignment,” Maggie said, “then it would be to the Mentufacturer. If we want the Deity to stand in for us, collectively to replace us in this situation, then it would be the Intercessor. If we individually want help in finding our way out–”
“All three,” Bert Kosler said in a shaking voice. “Let the Deity decide which part of himself he wishes to use.”
“He may not want to use any,” Susie Smart said tartly. “We better decide on our own. Isn’t that part of the art of praying?”
“Yes,” Maggie Walsh said.
“Somebody write this down,” Wade Frazer said. “We should start by saying, ‘Thank you for all the help you have given us in the past. We hesitate to bother you again, what with all you have to do all the time, but our situation is as follows.’ ” He paused, reflecting. “What is our situation?” he asked Belsnor. “Do we just want the transmitter fixed?”
“More than that,” Babble said. “We want to get entirely out of here, and never have to see Delmak-O again.”
“If the transmitter’s working,” Belsnor said, “we can do that ourselves.” He gnawed on a knuckle of his right hand. “I think we ought to settle for getting replacement parts for the transmitter and do the rest on our own. The less asked for in a prayer the better. Doesn’t The Book say that?” He turned toward Maggie Walsh.