"No? Look, lawyer, you're not running a job that may be given a stay or a reprieve. The finders run on light velocities. The solar beam runs on the speed of light squared. We'll pass that thing at five thousand miles and at two thousand accumulative miles per second. A microsecond of misalignment, and we're missing, see? I think we're going to be forced to put correction circuits in so that the vector sums and velocities and distances will all come out with a true hit. It will not be like sighting down a searchlight beam at high velocity." "I see. You'll need compensation?" "Plenty, at this velocity and distance. This is the first time I've had a chance to try it out." The latter fact saved the _Relay Girl_. By a mere matter of feet, and inches; by the difference between the speed of light and the speed of light squared at a distance of five thousand miles, plus a slight miscompensation. The intolerably hot umbra of Murdoch's beam followed below the pilot's greenhouse of the _Relay Girl_ all the way past, a matter of several seconds. The spill-over was tangible enough to warm the _Relay Girl_ to uncomfortable temperatures. Then with no real damage done, the contact with ships in space was over, but not without a certain minimum of recognition. "Hell!" said Kingman. "That was a space craft." "Who?" "I don't know. You missed." "I'd rather have hit," said Murdoch coldly. "I hope I missed by plenty." "Why?" "If we scorched their tails any, there'll be embarrassing questions asked." "So--?" "So nothing until we're asked. Even then you know nothing." * * * * * In the _Relay Girl_, Channing mopped his forehead. "That was hell itself," he said. Arden laughed uncertainly. "I thought that it would wait until we got there; I didn't expect hell to come after us." "What--exactly--happened?" asked Walt, coming into the scanning room. "That--was a spaceship." "One of this system's?" "I wonder," said Don honestly. "It makes a guy wonder. It was gone too fast to make certain. It probably was Solarian, but they tried to burn us with something." "That makes it sound like something alien," admitted Walt. "But that doesn't make good sense." "It makes good reading," laughed Channing. "Walt, you're the Boy Edison. Have you been tinkering with anything of lethal leanings?" "You think there may be something powerful afloat?" "Could be. We don't know everything." "I've toyed with the idea of coupling a solar intake beam with one of those tubes that Baler and Carroll found. Recall, they smashed up quite a bit of Lincoln Head before they uncovered the secret of how to handle it. Now that we have unlimited power--or are limited only by the losses in our own system--we could, or should be able to, make something rather tough." "You've toyed with the idea, hey?" "Uh-huh." "Of course you haven't really tried it?" "Of course not." "How did it work?"