For several minutes Arcot waited while connections were being made with the Moon; then for many more minutes he talked earnestly with the observer in this distant station, and at last satisfied, he hung up. He had outlined his ideas concerning the black star, based upon the perturbation of the planets; then he had asked them to investigate the possibilities, and see if they could find any blotting out of stars by a lightless mass. Finally he returned to Morey and Wade who had been working on the crystal plate. Wade had an expression of exasperation on his face, and Morey was grinning broadly. "Hello, Arcot--you missed all the fun! You should have seen Wade's struggle with that plate!" The plate, during his absence, had been twisted and bent, showing that it had undergone some terrific stresses. Now Wade began to make a series of highly forceful comments about the properties of the plate in language that was not exactly scientific. It had value, though, in that it seemed to relieve his pent-up wrath. "Why, Wade, you don't seem to like that stuff. Maybe the difficulty lies in your treatment, rather than in the material itself. What have you tried?" "Everything! I took a coronium hack saw that will eat through molybdenum steel like so much cheese, and it just wore its teeth off. I tried some of those diamond rotary saws you have, attached to an electric motor, and it wore out the diamonds. That got my goat, so I tried using a little force. I put it in the tension testing machine, and clamped it--the clamp was good for 10,000,000 pounds--but it began to bend, so I had to quit. Then Morey held it with a molecular beam, and I tried twisting it. Believe me, it gave me real pleasure to see that thing yield under the pressure. But it's not brittle; it merely bends. "And I can't cut it, or even get some shavings off the darned thing. You said you wanted to make a Jolly balance determination of the specific gravity, but the stuff is so dense you'd need only a tiny scrap--and I can't break it loose!" Wade looked at the plate in thorough disgust. Arcot smiled sympathetically; he could understand his feelings, for the stuff certainly was stubborn. "I'm sorry I didn't warn you fellows about what you'd run into, but I was so anxious to get that call through to the Moon that I forgot to tell you how I expected to make it workable. Now, Wade, if you'll get another of those diamond-tooth rotary saws, I'll get something that may help. Put the saw on the air motor. Use the one made of coronium." Wade looked after the rapidly disappearing Arcot with raised eyebrows, then, scratching his head, he turned and did as Arcot had asked.