"Supposing that we offer you full and unrestricted rights to any or all developments you or we make on the Martian transmission tubes?"
"That might be better to our liking."
"We might buck you," said Kingman, but there was doubt in his voice.
"Yes? You know, Kingman, I'm not too sure that Venus Equilateral wants to play around with power except as a maintenance angle. What if we toss the solar beam to the public domain? That is within our right, too."
Kingman's green color returned, this time accompanied with beads of sweat. He turned to Farrell. "Is there nothing we can do? Is this patentable?"
"No—Yes," grinned Farrell.
Kingman excused himself. He went to the office provided for him and began to send messages to the Terran Electric Company offices at Chicago. The forty-minute wait between message and answer was torture to him, but it was explained to him that light and radio crossed space at one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second and that even an Act of Congress could do nothing to help him hurry it. Meanwhile, Channing's description tied up the Terran Beam for almost an hour at the standard rate of twelve hundred words per minute. Their answers came within a few minutes of one another.
Channing tossed the 'gram before Kingman. "Idea definitely patentable," said the wire.
Kingman stood up. Apparently the lawyer believed that his pronouncement would carry more weight by looming over the smiling, easy-going faces of his parties-of-the-second-part. "I am prepared to negotiate with your legal department; offering them, and you, the full rights to the transmission tube. This will include full access to any and all discoveries, improvements, and/or changes made at any time from its discovery to the termination of this contract, which shall be terminated only by absolute mutual agreement between Terran Electric and Venus Equilateral.
"In return for this, Venus Equilateral will permit Terran Electric to exploit the solar beam tube fully and freely, and exclusively—"