"Do go on," snapped Don. "It seems to me that we've just begun. We can take over the job of shipping on the beams. The matter-transmitter will take anything but life, so far. Pick it up here, shove it down the communications beams and get it over there. Just like that."
"That's wonderful," said Keg in a scathing voice. "But who and why will ship what?"
"Huh?"
"Once they get recordings of Palanortis Whitewood logs on Mars, will we ship? Once they get recordings of the Martian Legal to Northern Landing, who will take the time to make the run by ship?"
"Right," agreed Channing.
"The bulk of your business, my brilliant friend, comes not from lovesick swains calling up their gal friends across a hundred million miles of space. It comes from men sending orders to ship thirty thousand tons of Venusian Arachnia-web to Terra, and to ship ten thousand fliers to Southern Point, Venus, and to send fifty thousand cylinders of acetylene to the Solar Observatory on Mercury, and so forth. Follow me?"
"I think so," said Channing slowly. "There'll still be need for communications, though."
"Sure. And also spacelines. But there's one more item, fella."
"Yes?"
"You've got a terrific laboratory job ahead of you, Don. It is one that must be done—and quick! You owe it to the world, and to yourself, and to your children, and their children's children. You've brought forth the possibility of a system of plenty, Don, and left it without one very necessary item.