"Is she aligned with Sol?" asked Channing.
Walt squinted down the tube. "Couldn't be better," he said, blinking.
"Could it be that we're actually missing Sol?" asked Don. "I mean, could it be that line-of-sight and line-of-power aren't one and the same thing?"
"Could be," acknowledged Wes. Walt stepped to the verniers and swung the big intake tube over a minute arc. The meter jumped once more, and Channing stepped the sensitivity down again. Walt fiddled until the meter read maximum and then he left the tube that way.
"Coming up," said Channing. "We've now four times our original try. We now have enough juice to run an electric train—toy size! Someone think of something else, please. I've had my idea for the day."
"Let's juggle electrode-spacing," suggested Wes.
"Can do," said Walt, brandishing a huge spanner wrench in one gloved hand.
Four solid, futile hours later, the power output of the solar beam was still standing at a terrifying fourteen watts. Channing was scratching furiously on a pad of paper with a large pencil; Walt was trying voltage-variations on the supply-anodes in a desultory manner; Barney was measuring the electrode spacing with a huge vernier rule, and Wes was staring at the sun, dimmed to seeable brightness by a set of dark glasses.
Wes was muttering to himself. "Electrode-voltages, O.K. ... alignment perfect ... solar power output ... not like power-line electricity ... solar composition ... Russell's mixture—"
"Whoooo said that!" roared Channing.