"Well," he said happily, "one orphan kitten has found a happy home!"
CHAPTER X
The Great Pyramid
Parnell Winston faced the group of Egyptian scientists in the crowded radio-telescope control room. Rick and Scotty waited impatiently for the scientist to begin. They knew something important was coming up, from remarks dropped by Winston earlier, but they didn't know what.
"Gentlemen," Winston began, "I and my young associates came at Dr. Kerama's request because of the assumption that internal or local difficulties had caused the strange peaks in your Sanborn tracings of the first tryouts of the new system. The assumption was a natural and logical one. However, we have demonstrated that it isn't true. The system is working so perfectly that I must congratulate you. It is seldom that anything so complex functions as well in the early stages."
Winston paused thoughtfully. "Of course Dr. Kerama realized that it would be highly unusual to have internal circuit trouble cause such signals. But what we have left, after eliminating the possibilities of both internal and local interference, is something even more unusual. In fact, it is fantastic."
Rick moved forward a little. He didn't want to miss any of this, because he knew Winston, and he had never before seen the scientist so excited.
"What we have is a source of neutral hydrogen out in space, over five thousand light years away from earth. This source is moving at such incredible velocity that it is very close to the speed of light."
There was a stunned silence in the room. Rick considered the implications of Winston's statement. The scientist had spent hours with Kerama and Farid going over the Sanborn tracings, checking the location of the source as shown by the big telescope's position. The change in the source's position, from the time of first discovery to yesterday's checking of the system, had given enough data to calculate its velocity with reasonable accuracy.