This, of course, offered another problem. Ships in space were in the position of being able to catch messages but were not able to answer back. It would take, perhaps, another emergency to set up conditions which demanded the reverse of the problem of contacting a ship in space.
But there was a more immediate problem. Spacecraft were protected from meteors by means of radar that was coupled to the steering panels of the ships; when a meteor threatened, the ship merely turned aside by that fraction of a degree that gave it safety.
It took, however, but a few meteors, and the resulting few fractions of a degree to shunt the swiftly moving ship out of the coverage-area of the ship-seeking beams from Venus Equilateral. Then the power and ingenuity of Venus Equilateral was wasted on vacant space and the messages intended for the ships went undelivered.
Since the ship must avoid meteors, and the meteors could not be diverted from their courses, there was but one answer: Swerve the ship and let the messages go hang, for a message is of no use to a riddled spacecraft!
But, thought several people, if the meteor cannot be steered, perhaps it might be removed....
[RECOIL]
Walter Franks sat in the director's office; his feet on the director's desk. He was smoking one of the director's cigarettes. He was drinking the director's liquor, filched shamelessly from the director's private filing cabinet where it reposed in the drawer marked "S." Drawer "B" would have given beer, but Walt preferred Scotch.
He leaned forward and dropped the director's cigarette into the director's wastebasket and then he pressed the button on the desk and looked up.
But it was not the director's secretary who entered. It was his own, but that did not disturb Franks. He knew that the director's ex-secretary was off on Mars enjoying a honeymoon with the director.