Christine inspected Walt carefully. Then nodded. "Yup," she grinned. "Even you sound better than the Interplanetary Network!"
For once, Walt did not argue, having gained his point.
Interlude:
When the final problem of communicating with a ship in space was solved, the laboratories on Venus Equilateral returned to their original trends. These lines of research and study were wide and varied. Men dabbled brilliantly with insane, complex gadgets that measured the work-functions of metals in electron emission and they made conclusive measurements on the electrical conductivity under extremes of heat and cold. From the uranium pile that powered Venus Equilateral there came metals that had been under neutron bombardment long enough to have their crystal structure altered in unfathomable ways. These were investigated by men who toyed with them to ascertain whether or not they possessed any new properties that might make them useful. Many were the fields studied, too, because it is often that a chemist may be baffled by a problem that could be solved by a thorough education in electronics, for instance.
And from the diversified studies and researches there often came strange by-products. The quick leap of the physicist from a hare-brained theory to a foregone conclusion has been the subject of laughter, but it is no less related than the chain of events that led from an exposed photographic plate to Hiroshima.
Or the chain of events that led Wes Farrell from his observation of a technician cleaning up a current-sputtered knife switch to a minor space war....
[FIRING LINE]
Mark Kingman was surprised by the tapping on his window pane. He thought that the window was unreachable from the outside—and then he realized that it was probably someone throwing bits of dirt or small stones. But who would do that when the doorway was free for any bell-ringer?