"Sure. By the same reasoning that he uses to send a letter from Equilateral Station instead of just slipping it in on the Terra beam. Faulty." "Phony." The door opened abruptly and Walt Franks entered. "D'ja hear the latest?" he asked breathlessly. "No," said Channing. He was reaching for another glass automatically. He poured, and Walt watched the amber fluid creep up the glass, led by a sheet of white foam. "Then look!" Walt handed Channing an official envelope. It was a regular notice to the effect that there had been eleven failures of service through Venus Equilateral. "Eleven! What makes?" "Mastermind." "What's he done?" "Remember the removal of my jurisdiction over the beam control operators? Well, in the last ten days, Burbank has installed some new features to cut expenses. I think that he hopes to lay off a couple of hundred men." "What's he doing, do you know?" "He's shortening the dispersion. He intends to cut the power by slamming more of the widespread beam into the receptor. The tighter beam makes aiming more difficult, you know, because at seventy million miles, every time little Joey on Mars swings his toy horseshoe magnet on the end of his string, the beam wabbles. And at seventy million miles, how much wabbling does it take to send a narrow beam clear off the target?" "The normal dispersion of the beam from Venus is over a thousand miles wide. It gyrates and wabbles through most of that arc. That is why we picked that particular dispersion. If we could have pointed the thing like an arrow, we'd have kept the dispersion down." "Right. And he's tightened the beam to less than a hundred miles dispersion. Now, every time that a sunspot gets hit amidships with a lady sunspot, the beam goes off on a tangent. We've lost the beam eleven times in a week. That's more times than I've lost it in three years!" "O.K.," said Channing. "So what? Mastermind is responsible. We'll sit tight and wait for developments. In any display of abilities, we can spike Mr. Burbank. Have another drink?" "Got any more? If you're out, I've got a couple of cases cached underneath the bed in my apartment." "I've plenty," said Channing. "And I'll need plenty. I have exactly twenty-two hours left in which to produce something comparable to the telephone, the electric light, the airplane, or the expanding Universe! Phooey. Pour me another, Arden." * * * * * A knock at the door; a feminine voice interrupted simultaneously. "May I come in?" It was Walt's secretary. She looked worried. In one hand she waved another letter. "Another communique?" asked Channing. "Worse. Notice that for the last three hours, there have been less than twelve percent of messages relayed!" "Five minutes' operation out of an hour," said Channing. "Where's that from?" "Came out on the Terra beam. It's marked number seventeen, so I guess that sixteen other tries have been made."