"I suppose so. It was bound to be out sooner or later anyway. A good general, Kingman, is one whose plans may be changed on a moment's notice without sacrificing. We'll win through."
The days wore on, and the big turret on the top of the Black Widow took shape. The super-tubes were installed, and Murdoch worked in the bowels of the ship to increase the effectiveness of the course-integrators and to accommodate high velocities and to correct for the minute discrepancies that would crop up due to the difference in velocities between light and sub-electronic radiation.
And on Venus Equilateral, the losing end of a war of nerves was taking place. The correspondence by 'type was growing into a reasonable pile, while the telephone conversations between Terran Electric and Venus Equilateral became a daily proposition. The big tubes were not finished. The big tubes were finished, but rejected because of electrode misalignments. The big tubes were in the rework department. The big tubes were on Luna for their testing. And again they were rejected because the maximum power requirements were not met. They were returned to Evanston and were once more in the rework department. You have no idea how difficult the manufacture of two-hundred megawatt tubes really is.
So the days passed, and no tubes were available. The date passed which marked the mythical date of 'if'—If Venus Equilateral had started their own manufacturing on the day they were first ordered from Terran Electric, they would have been finished and available.
Then, one day, word was passed along that the big tubes were shipped. They were on their way, tested and approved, and would be at Venus Equilateral within two days. In the due course of time, they arrived, and the gang at the relay station went to work on them.
But Walt Franks shook his head. "Don, we'll be caught like a sitting rabbit."
"I know. But—?" answered Channing.
There was no answer to that question, so they went to work again.
The news of Murdoch's first blow came that day. It was a news report from the Interplanetary Network that the Titan Penal Colony had been attacked by a huge black ship of space that carried a dome-shaped turret on the top. Beams of invisible energy burned furrows in the frozen ground, and the official buildings melted and exploded from the air pressure within them. The Titan station went off the ether with a roar, and the theorists believed that Murdoch's gang had been augmented by four hundred and nineteen of the Solar System's most vicious criminals.
"That rips it wide open," said Channing. "Better get the folks to withstand a siege. I don't think they can take us."