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keep what little Eddington dignity that’s left, alive.”
    Eddington glanced at the clock face, illumed by the kerosene lamp. It was two weeks less five minutes since Chandliss had called. He began to dial, slowly.
    How to say it? Straight was best—“Sorry, Allen old boy, can’t help you out. Good luck, though, and if you can, let me know how it turns out.” No, that wasn’t straight, but it was best.
    “What city?”
    “Ketchum.”
    “What frequency are they on?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “Hang on, then.” After a burst of static, Eddington heard, “Eh, this is Ketchum. Radioman Giant Jim.”
    “Go ahead, England,” said the Boise operator. “Hello! Allen Chandliss, please.”
    “Who?” The voice sounded very far away. “Allen Chandliss. He should be waiting there for my call.”
    “Ah—you’re the England-man,” Radioman said suddenly, his voice turning cold. “Whitecoats! Tinkerers and conjurers! Men of wonder with feet of clay. I wish you were here—we could burn you beside him.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “We were better off with devils that declared themselves. A hundred square feet of solar cells up in the hills, and for nothing but his toddlely little gimgaws! When people here were crying for power. How could you people do this to us?”
    “Do what? Calm down and talk sense, man. He’s an astronomer—studying the sky.”
    “Was! Was! Now he goes to trial in Pocatello—unless something happens.” Radioman laughed, a wicked snicker. “Damn you all! Killers—you killed us all. I wisht Tom would let us have him—I wisht you was here. God, I hate you. You’re not even human—couldn’t be. You didn’t love the rest of us enough—”
    Eddington hung up, shaking. The anger, the hurt, the contempt—Eddington had known it existed, understood that it was now part of the fabric just as Protestants grew up hating Catholics mid Arabs grew up hating Jews, but he had managed to avoid having it directed his way. It was not that which unsettled him. Suddenly, his simple equation of the situation had disintegrated. Chandliss was in the hands of the proudly ignorant—leaving Eddington as possibly the only other man in the world who knew what could be heard from the sky in the general direction of Cassiopeia, queen of Aethiopia, mother of Andromeda. That put a different light on things entirely.
    His bicycle leaning against the back wall of the SKYNET control room, Eddington waited in the half-lit chamber for Cassiopeia to climb above the horizon. The receiver and recorder—tape only, regrettably—were warmed up and ready, and Eddington was impatient to be done and get out. Judicious use of a pin had guaranteed that the meter registering power demand at the base would show no unexpected surges, but he did not want to count on that; eventually someone would note his handiwork and wonder.
    Eddington had preprogrammed the coordinates into the tracking computer, and now he asked the computer to find them. Outside, the great white dish stirred, breaking loose from the neutral position with a squeal that would have alarmed Eddington had he heard it. When nothing but low-grade scruff appeared at the given frequency, Eddington took manual control, walking the dish in a slowly widening circle until, at last, the needles surged and the scope came alive with toothlike green lines. He sat watching, shaking his head in amazement, for a full minute before he thought to start the recorder turning.
    The guard at the gate let him pass out without question, as he was no later than he occasionally had been due to extra work. As he pedaled toward Cambridge and Crown House, his heart pounded not with exertion but with excitement. Though it seemed that Chandliss would never know it, he had been right. The source, which Eddington impulsively dubbed AC-1 in memory of its discoverer, was not natural—could not be natural. No natural source that powerful could have been overlooked, and yet the signature of