“All right with me.”
“You’ll have to control from down here — there’s only one unit up in the observatory. It won’t matter, since you’ll be “working blind anyway. I’ll go up and tell them that you’re operating too — we have a relay unit with detection apparatus circling the planet now, and there’s no point in having the observers think the flatlanders are out in space.”
“Have you been getting activity from them?”
“Not much. Within the last three or four years we have picked up some radiation suspiciously like radar, but it’s all been constant frequency so far. We put quarter-wave coatings of plastic with a half-reflecting film of metal on all the torpedoes, and we haven’t had any trouble. They only use a dozen different frequencies, and we’re set up for all of them — when they change, we simply use another drone. I suppose they’ll start using two or more wave lengths in one area or maybe frequency modulation eventually, and we’ll have to get a non-reflective coating. That would be simpler anyway — only it’s more expensive. I learned that when I had the Karella coated. I wonder how we’ll get around it if they learn to pick up infra-red? The torps are enough hotter than the planet to show up like novae, when we happen to start them from the ship just outside the atmosphere.”
“Let ‘em hang in space until they cool off,” Ken and the mechanic replied in chorus. “Or send them all from here, as we’ve been doing,” added the latter. Laj Drai left without further remark.
“That fellow needs a whole scientific college,” the mechanic remarked as the door closed. “He’s so darned suspicious he’ll hire only one man at a time, and usually fires them before long.”
“Then I’m not the first?”
“You’re the first to get this far. There were a couple of others, and he got the idea they were poking into his business, so I never even found out what ideas they had. I’m no scientist, but I’m curious — let’s get this iron cigar into space before he changes his mind about letting it go.”
Ken gestured agreement, but hung back as the mechanic cut the test controller into the main outside beam circuit — two multiphase signals could be handled as easily as one on the beam, and both torpedoes would be close enough together so that one beam would suffice. The mechanic’s information was interesting; it had never occurred to him that others might have preceded him on this job. In a way, that was good — the others had presumably not been narcotics agents, or Rade would have told him. Therefore he had better protective coloration than he had supposed. Drai might even be getting used to having outsiders connected with his project.
But just what did this mechanic know? After all, he had apparently been around for some time, and Drai was certainly not afraid to talk in his presence. Perhaps he might be worked up into a really effective source of information; on the other hand, it might be dangerous to try — quite conceivably one of his minor duties was keeping a watchful eye on Sallman Ken’s behavior. He was a rather taciturn individual and Ken had not given him much attention so far.