"Let's eat," suggested Walt. "I'm hungry, and now that I think of it, I have not eaten since we left the Station. Arden, you are hereby elected to the post of galley chief. Get Jimmy from the dome if you need help." "Help? What for?" "He can help you lift it out of the oven. Don must have a cast-iron stomach." "That's hearsay. I'll show you! As soon as I find the can opener, breakfast will be served." "Make mine dinner," said Charley. "We've been awake all the time." "O.K., we will have a combined meal, from grapefruit to ice cream. Those who want any or all parts may choose at will. And fellows, please let me know as soon as you get something tangible." "That's a promise," said Walt. "Take it easy, and don't worry. We'll be catching up with them one of these days." * * * * * "Hadley, how much coating have we got on those cathodes?" "Not too much. We had about twenty G-hours to begin with. We went to a half-G for about twenty hours, and now we're running on a quarter-G, which would leave us go for forty hours more. That's a grand total of about sixty hours." "And the batteries?" "In pretty good shape." "Well, look. If it should come to a choice between floor and signal gun, we'll choose the gun. We've about twelve hours left in the cathodes, and since everybody is now used to quarter-G we might even slide it down to an eighth-G, which would give us about twenty-four hours." "Your gun is still putting out?" "So far as I can tell. Ten hours from now, we should know, I think, predicating my guess on whatever meager information they must have." "We could save some juice by killing most of the lights in the ship." "That's a thought. Johannson, have one of your men run around and remove all lights that aren't absolutely necessary. He can kill about three quarters of them, I'm certain. That'll save us a few kilowatt hours," said Channing. "And another thing. I'm about to drop the power of our electron gun and run it continuously. If the boys are anywhere in the neighborhood, they'll be needing the continuous disturbance for direction finding. I'd say in another five hours that we should start continuous radiation." "You know, Channing, if this thing works out all right, it will be a definite vote for pure, deductive reasoning." "I know. But the pure deduction is not too pure. It isn't guesswork. There are two factors of known quantity. One is that I know Walt Franks, and the other is that he knows me. The rest is a simple matter of the boys on the Station knowing space to the last inch, and applying the theory of probabilities to it. We'll hear from them soon, or I'll miss my guess. You wait." "Yeah," drawled Captain Johannson, "we'll wait!" * * * * *