"O.K., sir. I'm riding personal."
"Kick out the meteor-spotter coupling circuits and forget the alarm."
"Right, Mr. Hendall, but will you confirm that in writing?"
Hendall scribbled on the telautograph and then abandoned the small 'scope. The flashing in the celestial globe continued, but the ship no longer danced in its path. Hendall went up into the big dome.
The big twenty-inch Cassegrain showed nothing at all, and Hendall returned to the bridge scratching his head. Nothing on the spotting 'scope and nothing on the big instrument.
That intermittent spot was large enough to mean a huge meteor. But wait. At the speed of the Empress, it should have retrogressed in the celestial globe unless it was so huge and so far away—but Sol didn't appear on the globe and it was big and far away, bigger by far. Nothing short of a planet at less-than-planetary distances would do this.
Not even a visible change in the position of the spot.
"Therefore," thought Hendall, "this is no astral body that makes this spot!"
Hendall went to a cabinet and withdrew a cable with a plug on either end. He plugged one end into the test plug on the meteor spotter and the opposite end into the speaker. A low humming emanated from the speaker in synchronism with the flashing of the celestial globe.
It hit a responsive chord.