"You have none, then. You will have some available within a few days. That half-promise will stall them from making their own, and every day that they wait for your shipment is a day in our favor. To keep your own nose clean, I'll tell you when to ship the tube. It'll be a few days before I strike." "Why bother?" asked Kingman. "They won't be around to call names." "No, but their friends will, and we want to keep them guessing." "I see. Those tubes are huge enough to excite comment, and there will be squibs in all the papers telling of the giant going to Venus Equilateral, and the Sunday Supplements will all break out in wild guesses as to the reason why Venus Equilateral wants a two hundred megawatt tube. Too bad you couldn't keep your escape a longer secret." "I suppose so. But it was bound to be out sooner or later anyway. A good general, Kingman, is one whose plans may be changed on a moment's notice without sacrificing. We'll win through." The days wore on, and the big turret on the top of the _Black Widow_ took shape. The supertubes were installed, and Murdoch worked in the bowels of the ship to increase the effectiveness of the course-integrators to accommodate high velocities and to correct for the minute discrepancies that would crop up due to the difference in velocities between light and sub-electronic radiation. And on Venus Equilateral, the losing end of a war of nerves was taking place. The correspondence by 'type was growing into a reasonable pile, while the telephone conversations between Terran Electric and Venus Equilateral became a daily proposition. The big tubes were not finished. The big tubes were finished, but rejects because of electrode-misalignments. The big tubes were in the rework department. The big tubes were on Luna for their testing. And again they were rejects because the maximum power requirements were not met. They were returned to Evanston and were once more in the rework department. You have no idea how difficult the manufacture of two hundred megawatt tubes really is. So the days passed, and no tubes were available. The date passed which marked the mythical date of 'if'--_If_ Venus Equilateral had started their own manufacturing division on the day they were first ordered from Terran Electric, they would have been finished and available. Then, one day, word was passed along that the big tubes were shipped. They were on their way, tested and approved, and would be at Venus Equilateral within two days. In the due course of time, they arrived, and the gang at the Relay Station went to work on them. But Walt Franks shook his head. "Don, we'll be caught like a sitting rabbit." "I know. But--?" answered Channing. There was no answer to that question, and so they went to work again.