
Across the world, ordinary radios and television sets are suddenly hijacked by bizarre bursts of noise and indecipherable patterns that smash the hardware as they pass. From a ham radio operator in a small Florida town to a presidential broadcast in Washington, the interference spreads with an eerie regularity, leaving governments baffled and military channels compromised. Authorities scramble to trace the source, fearing a weapon of unknown origin, while the public is left watching flickering screens and hearing alien chirps that defy explanation.
Behind the chaos, a secret research program is testing a revolutionary kind of machine—one equipped with the so‑called Mahon units that promise machines that never wear out and seem to think for themselves. As the strange signals are decoded, they reveal a message that could change technology forever, prompting rival nations to trade cryptic offers and launch covert inquiries. Listeners will be drawn into a tense early Cold‑War atmosphere where science, espionage, and the unknown collide, setting the stage for a world‑shaking discovery.
Language
en
Duration
~1 hours (83K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Greg Weeks, Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2008-08-02
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects

1896–1975
Best known for brisk, idea-packed science fiction, this prolific American storyteller helped shape classic genre themes long before many of them became standard. Writing under a pen name, he produced an enormous body of fiction and is still remembered for influential stories such as "First Contact" and "Sidewise in Time."
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