"Tommy, take a 'gram and slam it out of here on the rush. Some fool dame is going to try to fly through the lens!"
"Oh, no!"
"Yes! Can't get Terra on the phone, confound it, so fire a 'gram, but quick! Tell her that the restrictions are still in force, and that we aren't fooling! Also that it is illegal, dangerous, and foolhardy and that we absolutely forbid her to try!"
"Yes sir!" answered Tommy and left immediately. The ticking of the teletype machine in the outer office came faintly to John's ears, but the knowledge of the message's departure did not ease the tension.
Ten minutes later an answer came back:
HAVE RECEIVED PERMISSION FROM TRIPLANET COUNCIL TO FLY FROM TERRA TO PLUTO THROUGH AXIS OF LENS. PERMISSION GRANTED BECAUSE OF STATEMENT OF NO DANGER EXPRESSED BY DOCTOR HOLMANN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRO-GRAVITIC PHENOMENA. SAVE YOUR ELECTRICITY, I LEFT TERRA ON TUESDAY MORNING!
SANDRA DRAKE
"Holy St. Peter!" exploded McBride. Tommy winced in sympathy, because he knew what was coming. "Doc Holmann! My father studied electro-gravitics under him. He was an old fuddy-duddy then. The old drip owns that university, that's why he's still in the E. G. chair. I'll bet you a hunk of the lens itself that the old goat doesn't even know that we are now using magneto-gravitics in the front lens element. That's the stinker!"
"Is it so dangerous?" asked Tommy. "If she uses the usual methods of coming to Pluto, she'll be going well towards ten thousand miles per second by the time she passes the front surface."
"That's the trouble," groaned McBride. "Like all other space crates, her hull will be made of cupralum alloy, which is as paramagnetic as alnico is diamagnetic. She'll hit that magneto-gravitic warp that makes up the fore element, with that antimagnetic hull and it will be like a pane of glass being struck by a minute pellet of steel. She'll cause the collapse of the front element, and with the load-loss, the electro-gravitic elements of the aft element will fall out of alignment. Heaven only knows what'll happen. Well, we'll all know soon enough!"