As if in answer to her words the visi set revealed the face of the quiz master on the screen. He was saying:
"Remember tomorrow at this same hour I will have a message of unparalleled importance for the people of the nine planets. Tomorrow night I urge you, I command you, to tune in."
With a whistling intake of breath the old woman turned to one of the Venusians.
"Bring all our equipment in here," she ordered. "Hurry!"
She untied the ribbon under her chin and took off her cap. She rolled up her sleeves, and as the Venusians came marching into the space ship with bundles of equipment, she fell to work.
Silently Ezra Karn and I watched her. First she completely dismantled the visi set, put it together again with an entirely altered hookup. Next she unrolled a coil of flexible copper mesh which we had brought along as a protective electrical screening against the marsh insects. She fastened rubberite suction cups to this mesh at intervals of every twelve inches or more, carried it down to the freighter's hold and fastened it securely against the stepto glass wall.
Trailing a three-ply conduit up from the hold to the corridor she selected an induction coil, several Micro-Wellman tubes and a quantity of wire from a box of spare parts. Dexterously her fingers moved in and out, fashioning a complicated and curious piece of apparatus.
At length she finished.
"It's pretty hay-wire," she said, "but I think it will work. Now I'll tell you what I'm going to do. When Doctor Universe broadcasts tomorrow night, he's going to announce that he has set himself up as supreme dictator. He'll have the Green Flame radiations coming from this ship under full power. I'm going to insert into his broadcast—the laughing of the Varsoom!"
"You're going to what?"