Hammell stared at the circuit.
Roberts frowned. “What did you do then?”
“I cut the current to the interface to the barest trickle. I reset the timer, snapped on the circuit—and yawned. I didn’t exactly feel tired, but I wanted to go to sleep. I fought it off till the timer went off, then the feeling that I wanted to go to sleep faded away, and I just sat there in a cold sweat.”
“And,” said Roberts, “you’re wondering whether it really happened or you imagined it?”
Morrissey nodded. “That’s it.”
“Let’s try it.”
Morrissey bent eagerly over the timer. There was the snap of a switch.
Roberts yawned.
Hammell put his hand to his head, swayed against the nearest bulkhead, massaged his eyes and forehead.
It came to Roberts that he had walked miles and miles today, and miles and miles yesterday, and no wonder he was tired. He was worn out. What he needed, what he wanted, was a long quiet sleep.
Hammell was already stretching out on the deck.
Morrissey was fighting off a yawn.
Roberts turned toward the tender’s control room, and its soft comfortable pilot’s chair. But it looked a long way away. He didn’t want to go all that distance. He wanted sleep now, not after a long hike. He wanted to sleep long and deep, and he took a step toward the control room, and then felt the soft cozy deck drifting up toward him as he slipped off into warm sleep, and swirling darkness and sleep.
* * *
Something was shaking him violently.
Roberts dizzily opened his eyes. The swirling scene steadied. There was a big face looking down on him, that resolved into Morrissey’s face, the electric-blue eyes worried.
“Sir, I’m sorry. I never realized it would hit you so hard.”
Roberts remembered the circuit, and pulled himself to his feet.
“Don’t blame yourself. Hammell and I were worn out.” Roberts’ head was throbbing where he’d banged the deck, but that was a minor matter. “You’ve got a new discovery here. This could be important.”
Hammell was bent over the circuit, his expression awed.
Morrissey said, “If only this had happened some other time, instead of down here, with hardly any equipment to work with.”
Roberts looked down at the circuit. “You were able to vary the current to the interface. Are there other circuit characteristics you can vary?”
“Sure. Until I had witnesses, I was afraid to try it. But let me just mark this, so I know roughly where I was—” Morrissey bent briefly over a variable condenser, straightened, said, “I’d better set the timer for a shorter interval, just in case.” Then he twirled a knob, snapped on the set, and—
Roberts felt jolted. He looked at Morrissey angrily.
Morrissey glanced at Hammell, still bent over the set.
“Give me a little room, will you?” snapped Morrissey.
Hammell straightened up. “I’ll give you all the room you want.”
Roberts became aware of an intolerable lapse in discipline. He said shortly, “Drop it. Both of you.”
“Sir,” snarled Hammell, “this juice-jockey is trying to shove me around.”
Morrissey’s eyes flashed. ” ‘Juice jockey’?” He cocked his fist.
Somewhere inside of Roberts, there seemed to be a little figure, jumping up and down, crying, “What’s happening?”
Aloud, Roberts said with grating emphasis, “That’s enough! Morrissey!”
Hammell eyed Morrissey’s cocked fist. He clenched his own fists.
Roberts glared at them. He would like to smash them both in the teeth.
The timer went off.
Roberts’ ill-temper evaporated.
Hammell and Morrissey stared at each other foolishly.
Morrissey lowered his fist.
Hammell suddenly laughed, and said, “What have we got here, anyway?”
Morrissey got out a small notebook, and began writing in it. “That’s what I’d like to know. Let’s try something else.”
* * *
Excited now, and more than a little scared, they tried setting after setting, with the current low and the timer set for less than a minute.
For less than a minute, Roberts looked at Morrissey and Hammell, and despite a fierce struggle to control himself, he wanted to blow their brains out.
Then the timer went off. Morrissey whistled, and tried another setting.
Roberts realized suddenly that his life had been a failure. He wanted money. With enough money, what couldn’t a man do? Stacks of crisp green bills seemed to float tauntingly before him. In his mind’s eye, he could see piles of gold and platinum bars and soft leather bags of diamonds. He wanted money.
Morrissey changed the setting.
Roberts felt a desire for self-sacrifice. What, he asked himself dizzily, could be nobler? With a hard effort, he fought off the desire to offer himself to science for experimental purposes, then an urge to volunteer himself as a human bomb-carrier. Not out of hatred of the enemy. No, not that. Out of love for mankind. Out of—
Morrissey changed the setting.
Now Roberts felt the urgent desire to do right. What mattered most in life was the knowledge that he was doing right. He stood straighter. He asked himself, Was he doing right? Suppose—
Morrissey changed the setting.
In his mind’s eye, Roberts saw a lovely woman in a closely clinging dress. He saw her move her long legs as she walked toward him, smiled sweetly, and lifted her arms—
Wham!
Morrissey, Hammell, and Roberts hit the switch at the same time.
Hammell grinned. Morrissey swore. Roberts said, “Well, Morrissey, now we know what you’ve got here.”
“That’s more than I can say. What is it?”
“It’s a want-generator, that’s what it is. A desire-stimulator. And if we can’t get a stranglehold on this planet with it, and lever the population around so we can get that ship repaired, I’ll be surprised.”
Morrissey blinked. “How?”
“Why, what’s the cause of the trouble? The people here are destructive, and they’re disinterested in work. They hinder, not help. Right?”
“Right.”
“Then all we have to do is get them to want to create, rather than destroy, and to want to work, right? And here we have a want-generator, that plays the range of human desires like the keys of a piano. Once we find the right settings, where’s the problem?”
You’re right,” said Morrissey. “Here I’ve been complaining because we happened to find this when we’re stuck in this miserable place. It never occurred to me this might get us out of here.”
“It shouldn’t be any great problem” said Roberts. “Let’s keep trying till we get all the settings we need.”
In the next few hours, they felt one desire succeed another in seemingly endless variety, and then abruptly Roberts was filled with the undiluted urge to achieve.
“That’s it!” he said.
“You’ve hit it,” Hammell agreed. “There’s one setting.”
Morrissey carefully noted it, and went on, until suddenly they had a sensation they’d had before, of eagerly wanting to do something, make something, create—
“That’s it!”
Hammell nodded. “That gives us what we want. That is, what they should want.”
“Now,” said Roberts, “we’ve got to find out the range of this device, whether it can broadcast, or whether the set has to be physically present to work. We may have to make other sets—”
“If so, we’re hung up,” said Morrissey. “We don’t have the spares here to make another of these.”
“The technicians may have spares.”
“Their having them and our getting them are two different things. I had to trade them two guns from the emergency kit, and a lot of ammunition to get them to look after Cassetti, Matthis, and Warner. They’ll want something in return for spares, and they’re hard bargainers.”
Roberts looked at the set thoughtfully. “You don’t suppose there’s a ‘desire to be cooperative and helpful’ there, do you?”
“Hm-m-m,” said Morrissey. “Let’s see.” He reached for the timer, and suddenly Roberts had a distinct urge to take poison.
Hammell swore. “That’s not it.”
Morrissey tried again.
A peculiar murky indefinable longing none of them had experienced before came across.
Morrissey said, “I hope we can find something better than that.” He tried again, and again, until at last Roberts said, “Hold it!”
He had never felt more agreeable and obliging in his life.
Hammell sighed. “Right on the nose.”
Morrissey noted the setting, then glanced at his watch. “It’s getting pretty late. We’d better check again to be sure everything’s tight.”
Once they checked the tender, Roberts and Hammell again realized how tired they were. While Morrissey eagerly went back to work, Roberts and Hammell went to sleep.
* * *
The next morning saw the start of a bout of painstaking experiment. Where the first work had gone smoothly the next steps were maddening.
“Damn it,” said Morrissey, “it’s just impossible to broadcast this signal, or aim it, or focus it. At this rate, we’ll have to take the set into the city, and hide it there somewhere.”
Roberts had another worry. “If we trade with those technicians, we’ve somehow got to block out our own reception of that generosity signal. Otherwise, we’ll probably end up by giving them the set.”