Manuel quickly punched the number for the private telephone line of Mike Hennessey, the station president. After what seemed like an eternity, Mike answered.

“Mike,” he said, “this is Manuel. I’m at the transmitter, but there’s no way I can hold frequency in this heat. If we stay on the air with the frequency jumping like this, the FCC will be all over us. . . .”

After a moment of silence, a voice boomed back, “Forget the FCC! We just got a news bulletin out of Washington, and a meteor is traveling through space toward us. It’s going to splash down before dark tonight somewhere out past Catalina. ”

“Yeah, Mike,” Manolo yelled back. “I heard about it on the radio. Go ahead.”

“The traffic chopper says the freeways are packed and all the access roads are completely choked off. And, get this . . . people are so freaked down here, they’re dying of heart attacks just sitting still in traffic. Can you believe that?”

Mike continued, “I don’t know if we can do anything more, but maybe we can save some lives. Are you with me on this?”

With tears in his eyes, Manuel said, “Yeah, Mike. I’m with you, man.”

“We owe this town something, so let’s just keep the station on the air until this thing is over.” There was a pause on the line, and Mike’s gruff voice softened slightly. “And, Manolo—if I don’t see you again, God bless you.”

“God bless you, too, Mike. I’ll keep us on the air as long as I can.

But please start evacuating while you can. Don’t take any chances.”

Manuel switched off the portable phone and began going over a mental checklist of all the things he had to do. He was sweating— more from fear than the heat, he realized. He pushed his damp, dark hair back from his face, rolled up his sleeves, and prepared to get to work. As he yanked off his tie, he said out loud, “Okay, Manuel, you’re a professional. You can do this. There’s a job to be done here. Just stay calm and do it, man. Just do it.”

As he raced through the procedures, reducing power and setting up his equipment, Manuel remembered the basics. Traditional analog broadcast television transmitters receive sound and pictures produced by microphones and cameras, then direct the sound and pictures into a frequency band called a channel. The sound and pictures are amplified, one stage after another, until they are combined and passed through an electronic pipe or wave guide, then to a broadcast antenna that, in turn, multiplies the power of the signal by a factor of ten or twenty or even more, and then sends the signals through the air to receiving antennas connected to the television sets in millions of homes.

Manolo knew that the average television viewer couldn’t care less about the technical details as long as he or she got a clear picture. But if something broke down and the system malfunctioned, then those same viewers would start screaming. His only task now was to keep the rig working the best way he knew how.