And the ship, like the projectile, would land if the men who knew of her failed in their purpose.
Don Channing and Walt Franks found their man in the combined dining room and bar—the only one in many million miles. They surrounded him, ordered a sandwich and beer, and began to tell him their troubles.
Charles Thomas listened for about three minutes. "Boy," he grinned, "being up in that shiny, plush-lined office has sure done plenty to your think-tank, Don."
Channing stopped talking. "Proceed," he said. "In what way has my perspective been warped."
"You talk like Burbank," said Thomas, mentioning a sore spot of some months past. "You think a mass detector would work at this distance? Nuts, fellow. It might, if there were nothing else in the place to interfere. But you want to shoot out near Mars. Mars is on the other side of the Sun—an Evening Star to anyone on Terra. You want us to shoot a slap-happy beam like the mass detector out past Sol; and then a hundred and forty million miles beyond in the faint hope that you can triangulate upon a little mite of matter; a stinking six hundred-odd feet of aluminum hull mostly filled with air and some machinery and so on. Brother, what do you think all the rest of the planets will do to your little piddling beam? Retract, or perhaps abrogate the law of universal gravitation?"
"Crushed," said Franks with a sorry attempt at a smile.
"Phew!" agreed Channing. "Maybe I should know more about mass detectors."
"Forget it," said Charles. "The only thing that mass detectors are any good for is to conjure up beautiful bubble dreams, which anybody who knows about 'em can break with the cold point of icy logic."
"What would you do?" asked Channing.
"Darned if I know. We might flash 'em with a big mirror—if we had a big mirror and they weren't heading right into the Sun."