legends · 4 min read ·
Night Watch Relay
A radio amateur on a moor is asked to relay a count to a station that already knows his number.
**Station log — call sign G4RLK, portable, Halvard Point, 40 metres**
**Operator:** Stan Mercer · **Date:** 22 October · **Band:** 7.100 MHz
· · ·
**23:04** — CQ CQ CQ, G4RLK. Nothing heard. Band quiet, static light.
**23:11** — Heard a carrier on 7.102. Signal weak, slow fade. No callsign.
**23:12** — Replied. No answer. Carrier continues.
**23:19** — Carrier now clear. A voice, male, flat, reading figures: "Three, four, nine, one." Repeated twice.
**23:21** — Logged the figures. Checked against the Halvard Point grid reference. They do not match any location in the area.
· · ·
I had been on the air for nine years and had never heard a carrier that didn't end when I stopped transmitting. This one stayed up. It sat under my signal like a second floor below a room, and it had a patience that made me want to turn the set down.
I went back to the logbook and wrote the figures in the margin. Three, four, nine, one. They didn't look like a grid reference or a frequency or a call sign. They looked like a count.
At 23:40 the voice came back.
"Three, four, nine, one, zero, two."
It stopped there. Then it started again, from the top, and added a number each time through, until the figures ran into one long string, and the carrier thickened and held.
· · ·
**23:58** — Relay request. Heard on 7.100, the frequency I was transmitting on. Source unknown, signal strong.
**00:02** — Relay: "Is G4RLK listening?"
**00:02** — Replied: "G4RLK is listening."
**00:03** — Relay: "Then please relay the count to Station Nine."
**00:03** — Asked: "What is Station Nine?"
**00:04** — Relay: "The station that is keeping the count. It hears the count from you and sends it back."
· · ·
I should have stopped there. I had a flask of tea, a torch, and a battery pack, and the nearest road was four kilometres away over the moor. I did not stop. I wanted to know what was counting.
I replied, "How many are counting?"
The answer came very slowly, one figure at a time, as if the voice were reading each digit from a card.
"Nine. You are the tenth. Please relay."
I wrote *tenth* in the log. Then I looked up from the desk, and in the dark beyond my torch there was a faint movement in the heather, a little way off, where no one should have been. A shape in a long coat, standing with its back to me, facing the moor, the way a station operator faces a window when they're waiting for a signal to come in.
It turned its head, slowly, toward the set.
The carrier cut out. Dead silence. The static stopped.
Then a voice came through, very close now, almost in my ear, though the set was on the desk and the earpiece was in its case.
"Relay, please."
· · ·
**00:14** — Relayed figures: 3-4-9-1-0-2. Transmitted on 7.100.
**00:16** — Received: "Confirmed. Station Nine has the count. You may stand down."
**00:17** — Asked: "Is there anything else?"
**00:17** — Received: "Yes. Please remain on the frequency."
· · ·
I didn't leave. I sat with my hand on the key and the figure in the heather had not moved. Each time I looked, it was a little nearer the desk, and each time the carrier came back, the voice counted one more, and the count was mine.
At 01:20 the relay operator in the other station came back on. Its voice was calm and flat, like a shipping forecast.
"G4RLK, you are doing well. Please keep the set on. Station Nine would like you to take the next relay."
"Which one?"
"Yours."
· · ·
**QSL card (received 23 October, by post, no return address):**
*Thank you for your contact. Signal received 00:14, Halvard Point. You were heard clearly by Station Nine.*
*Count: 10. You were the tenth.*
*Please keep listening.*
*73 — Station Nine*
· · ·
**Logbook — note in Stan Mercer's handwriting, 24 October**
The QSL came by post this morning. It was stamped with the local sorting office mark. The envelope had my call sign in the address, and the card inside was printed on the same thin grey board as the older cards in my box, with a little engraved radio tower in one corner.
I've taken the set back to the shack and put the headphones on. The band is quiet. There's no carrier on 7.100. There's nothing on 7.102.
But when I switch the set off, I can still hear the figures, very faintly, in the back of the room, like someone repeating a count to themselves to make sure they haven't missed one.
*Three, four, nine, one, zero, two, and me.*