Lane smiled bitterly. "If I hadn't turned up, Downing, you'd have spent the next fifteen years combing this system for confirmation, wouldn't you?" "Naturally. Now let's find that machine. I've got a little project of rivet-clipping ahead." Thompson intervened. "Seems to me that you've both accomplished plenty. Lane here gained the confidence of the catmen and Downing has the fleet equipped with heavy stuff." "Who?" asked Lane. "I have a hunch that it was your doing, Billy." "And any confidence-getting he did was strictly fear of our natural environment coming here," returned Stellor Downing. "All right, break it up." "We're all to return here as soon as we get the machine destroyed," said Lane. "They want to know what the answer is, just as we do. I have a hunch that finding the machine itself will tell us plenty." VII. Toralen Ki turned from the communicator. "Hotang," he called. "They have the answer!" "Good. Then our time has not been wasted! For now we have the other one back." "The technicians on Tlembo have just given me full and complete instructions on how to lower the sensitivity of the detector to a proper level." "Not shielding?" asked Hotang Lu skeptically. Toralen Ki laughed. "What manner of shielding would stop the suppressor wave? Nothing, I know. Absolutely nothing can deflect or stop it." Toralen opened the detector case and started to fumble inside. He was not deft, and the tools from the equipment case did not fit his hand. But in an hour he had made the changes suggested by the technicians on Tlembo--but aided finally by one of Thompson's crew of technicians who went to work on the thing with dexterity but complete ignorance of its principles of operation. * * * * * Then with the one detector in operation, in Thompson's ship, the flight took off and began to take the last measures necessary to the completion of their task. Hour after hour they went, out into the space beyond the last planet of the catmen, and out and out, running slowly so that they would neither collide with the machine nor overrun it. It was a matter of days. "Dead ahead," said Thompson on the communicator. "Target?" asked Lane. "Meteor, it looks like." "Might be camouflage," suggested Downing. "Remember if it must be destroyed, it is a sign that those who made it knew that it would be against the wishes of _somebody_." "Did either of you think that it might be a good thing?" "You mean the machine might be benign?" "Yes," answered Thompson. "That's why you are going to analyze it before we destroy it," said Lane. "Yes?" "If we destroy it and discover it is benign, then we can reproduce it. Follow?" "Excellent idea," said Thompson. "Kennebec thought of that?"