"Let's see," mused Franks, making tabulations on the tablecloth. "They're a couple of hundred million miles away. In order that your mirror present a recognizable disk, it should be about twice the diameter of Venus as seen from Terra. That's eight thousand miles in—at best visibility—say, eighty million or a thousand-to-one ratio. The Empress of Kolain is heading at us from some two hundred million, so at a thousand-to-one ratio our mirror would have to be twenty thousand miles across. Some mirror!"
Don tipped Walt's beer over the edge of the table, and while the other man was busy mopping up and muttering unprintables, Don said to Thomas: "This is serious and it isn't. Nobody's going to lose their skin if we don't, but a problem has been put to us and we're going to crack it if we have to skin our teeth to do it."
"You can't calculate their position?"
"Sure. Within a couple of thousand miles we can. That isn't close enough."
"No, it isn't," agreed Chuck.
Silence fell for a minute. It was broken by Arden, who came in waving a telegram. She sat down and appropriated Channing's glass, which had not been touched. Don opened the sheet and read: "Have received confirmation of your effort. I repeat, spare no expense!" It was signed: "Williams, Interplanet."
"Does that letter offer mean anything to you?" asked Arden.
"Sure," agreed Don. "But at the time we're stumped. Should we be doing something?"
"Anything, I should think, would be better than what you're doing at present. Or does that dinner-and-beer come under the term 'Expenses'?"