"Me?"
"Uh-huh. When you shouted 'the heat's on!' Remember? We four had been down here cudgeling our brains for some way to get the draw on Blacky Jordan, but we overlooked a hell of an obvious trick until you mentioned heat. Then all of a sudden Doc Blaine and I saw the answer at the same time. Fortunately he had an omniwave unit there in his laboratory and that did the trick. See?"
"No," confessed Chip frankly. "I don't."
"Well, it's really very simple. Doc Blaine told us the omniwave transmitted every length of radiation from 30 kilos down to 4000 Angstroms. In other words, everything from long radio waves down to visible light rays."
"So?" said Chip.
"So, dopey-puss," said Syd amiably, "of course, that includes the infra-red rays. Heat waves. Waves that have the power to speed up molecular velocity in bodies. Or—" He grunted satisfaction—"hot enough to create a raging fever in any human being on the asteroid who wasn't dressed in a spacesuit!
"Well, right away I asked Doc Blaine how he'd taken care of that problem in distributing his omniwave radiation, and he said he had always used a cutout to eliminate that danger. So we just quietly removed the cutout, and turned on the omniwave full force, and—" Syd shrugged—"burnt those babies to a crisp! They didn't even know what ailed them! All they knew was that they were as hot as boiled potatoes, and wanted to get outside where they could cool off. The rest of us, dressed in bulgers, were O.Q."
"And," said Chip, "when they got outside we revolved the Aurora, and—"
"Finis!" agreed Syd cheerfully, "and a good day's work, too, if you ask me. Incidentally, Chip, while we're on the subject—"
Syd was a very talkative guy. He would have undoubtedly continued this harangue for a couple more hours. But at that moment his eyes happened to intercept another glance passing between Alison Blaine and Chip Warren. It was a glance that meant things. It was a glance that meant that maybe some day in the not-too-far-distant future the Lorelei might yet lure, but not necessarily to destruction, a mariner who had flown thousands of miles across space to answer her call.