"There's the signal—all x, Barkovis? By the way it's condensing water, it seems to be functioning again."
"Perfect!" came the Titanian's enthusiastic reply, "You two planet-dwellers have done more in three short hours than the entire force of Titan could have accomplished in months. You have earned, and shall receive, the highest...."
"As you were, ace!" Stevens interrupted, embarrassed. "This job was just like shooting fish down a well, for us. Since you saved our lives, we owe you a lot yet. We're coming out—straight up!"
The Forlorn Hope shot upward, through mile after mile of steaming fog, until at last she broke through into the light, clear outer atmosphere. Stevens located the Titanian space-ship, and the two vessels once more hurtling together through the ether toward Titan, he turned to his companion.
"Take the controls, will you, Nadia? Think I'll finish up the tube. I brought along a piece of platinum from the power plant, and something that I think is tantalum from Barkovis' description of it. With those and the fractions we melted out, I think I can make everything we'll need."
Now that he had comparatively pure metal with which to work, drawing the leads and filaments was relatively a simple task. Working over the hot-bench with torch and welding projector, he made short work of running the leads through the almost plastic glass of the great tube and of sealing them in place. The plates and grids presented more serious problems; but they were solved and, long before Titan was reached, the tube was out in space, supported by a Titanian tractor beam between the two vessels. Stevens came into the shop, holding a modified McLeod gauge which he had just taken from the interior of the tube. When it had come to equilibrium, he read it carefully and yelled.
"Eureka, little fellow! She's down to where I can't read it, even on this big gauge—so hard that it won't need flashing—harder than any vacuum I ever got on Tellus, even with a Rodebush-Michalek super-pump!"
"But how about occluded and absorbed gas in the filaments and so on when they heat up?" demanded Nadia, practically.
"All gone, ace. I out-gassed 'em plenty out there—seven times, almost to fusion. There isn't enough gas left in the whole thing to make a deep breath for a microbe."
He took up his welding projector and a beam carried him back to the tube. There, in the practically absolute vacuum of space, the last openings in the glass were sealed, and man and great transmitting tube were wafted lightly back into the Terrestrial cruiser.