Lee looked up and saw that everyone in the dining hall was watching him. He stood up.
"Sorry; I didn't mean to get so vehement," he mumbled to the engineer. "Guess I'm a bit edgy today."
He walked quickly out of the dining area and returned to his office.
Slowly, quietly, the work went on. Dr. Petchkovich spent six weeks on Mercury, supervising at first hand the investigation of the area where the machine's antennas were focused. He returned to Titan in high excitement.
"We have definitely proved that there is a disturbance in the interplanetary magnetic field at the focal point of the machine's antennas," he announced to the department heads, when they convened in the conference room to hear his report.
"How strong a disturbance?" Dr. Kulaki asked.
Petchkovich hesitated a moment. "Well, it's only one part in a hundred thousand...."
The excitement died quickly. It was a discovery, yes. But it did not bring them any closer to understanding the machine and its purpose.