Wilson groaned and reached for the telephone beside his bunk. "Wilson here," he said. "Go ahead!"
"Admiral Stone. Wilson, a new ship is on the way. I want you to get into this thing fully, so I'm briefing you now."
"New type of ship?"
"Well, not a new ship, but some new equipment. The Infrawave Section of the Space Department Radiation Laboratory has some experimental gear they want to try in actual service."
"Experimental gear?"
"Sheer experiment, Wilson. It's supposed to be an infrawave detecting and ranging device. It's shown low grade response so far, and it may be entirely useless to you. But Radiation feels that even something incomplete and erratic may be better than going it blind."
Wilson sat up, interested. "How does it work?"
"Darned if I know. It took a whole cruiser class to carry the junk that makes it tick. It's piled in with twine and baling wire, and when the crate took off the advanced techs were still connecting cables and adjusting the guts. Er—how're you feeling?"
"Tired and frustrated."
"Mind a bad joke?"