It was a weakling beam that came back in staccato surges. A fading, wavering, spotty signal that threatened to lie down on the job and sleep. It came and it went, often gone for seconds and never strong for so much as an instant. It vied, and almost lost completely, with the constant crackle of cosmic static. It fought with the energies of the Sun's corona and was more than once the underdog. Had this returning beam carried intelligence of any sort it would have been wasted. About all that could be carried on a beam as sorry as this was the knowledge that there was a transmitter--and that it was transmitting. But its raucous note synchronized with the paint-brush wiping of the transmitter. There was no doubt. Don Channing put an arm around Arden's waist and grinned at Walt Franks. "Go to work, genius. I've got the _Empress of Kolain_ on the pipe. You're the bright-eyed lad that is going to wake 'em up! We've shot almost twenty hours of our allotted fifty. Make with the megacycles, Walter. Arden and I will take in a steak, a moom pitcher, and maybe a bit of woo. Like?" he asked the girl. "I like," she answered. * * * * * Walt Franks smiled and stretched lazily. He made no move to the transmitter. "Don't go away," he cautioned them. "Better call up Joe and order beer and sandwiches for the boys in the back room. On you!" "Make with the signals first," said Channing. "And lay off the potables until we finish this silly job." "You've got it. Is there a common, garden variety, transmitting key in the place?" "Probably. We'll have to ask. Why?" "Ask me." Don removed his arm from Arden's waist. He picked up a spanner and advanced upon Franks. "No!" objected Arden. "Poison him--I can't stand the sight of blood. Or better, bamboo splinters under the fingernails. He knows something simple, the big bum!" "Beer and sandwiches?" asked Walt. "Beer and sandwiches," agreed Don. "Now, Tom Swift, what gives?" "I want to key the inner component of the beam. Y' see, Don, we're using the same frequency, by a half dozen megacycles, as their meteor spotter. I'm going to retune the inner beam to their frequency and key it. Realize what'll happen?" "Sure," agreed Don, "but you're still missing the boat. You can't transmit keyed intelligence with an intermittent contact." "In words, what do you mean, Don?" "International Code is a series of dots and dashes, you may know. Our wabbling beam is whipping through the area in which the _Empress of Kolain_ is passing. Therefore the contact is intermittent. And how could you tell a dot from a dash?" "Easy," bragged Walt Franks. "We're not limited as to the speed of deviation, are we?" "Yes--limited by the speed of the selsyn motors that transfer the phase-shifting circuits to the director radiators. Yeah, I get it, Edison, and we can wind them up to a happy six or eight thousand r.p.m. Six would get us a hundred cycles per second--a nice, low growl."