"Two hundred megawatts."
"O.K. I'll send 'em a coded requisition with my answer to their letter."
"What are you going to tell 'em?"
"Tell 'em not to investigate the energy-gun idea unless they want to for their own reasons," Channing grinned. "They'll probably assume—and correctly—that we're going to tinker ourselves."
"And?"
"Will do nothing since it is an extra-planetary proposition. Unless it becomes suitable for digging tunnels, or melting the Martian ice cap," laughed Channing.
Mark Kingman took the letter to Murdoch, who was hidden in the depths of the Black Widow. Hellion read it twice, and then growled.
"They smell something, sure," he snarled. "Why didn't we make that a perfect hit!"
"What are we going to do now?"