"Leave him alone," said Arden sagely. "He's good as he is. To make him similar to you would be to spoil a good man. He'd then be neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. He doesn't think as you do, but instead proceeds in a straight line from remote possibility to foregone conclusion. Anything that gets needed en route is used, or gadgeteered and forgotten. That's where you come in, fellows. Inspect his by-products. They may be darned useful." "O.K. Anybody care for a drink?" "Yup. All of us," said Arden. "Don, how did you rate such a good-looking wife?" "I hired her," grinned Channing. "She used to make all my stenographic mistakes, remember?" "And gave up numerous small errors for one large one? Uh-huh. I recall. Some luck." "It was my charm." "Baloney. Arden, tell the truth. Didn't he threaten you with something terrible if you didn't marry him?" "You tell him," grinned Channing. "I've got work to do." * * * * * Channing left the establishment known as Joe's and advertised as the "Best bar in twenty-seven million miles, minimum," and made his way toward his office slowly. He didn't reach it. Not right away. He was intercepted by Charley Thomas who invited him to view a small experiment. Channing smiled and said that he'd prefer to see an experiment of any kind to going to his office, and followed Charley. "You recall the gadget we use to get perfect tuning with the alloy-selectivity transmitter?" "You mean that variable alloy disk all bottled up and rotated with a selsyn?" asked Don, wondering what came next. "Naturally I remember it. Why?" "Well, we've found that certain submicroscopic effects occur with inert objects. What I mean is this: Given a chunk of cold steel of goodly mass and tune your alloy disk to pure steel, and you can get a few micro-microamperes output if the tube is pointed at the object." "Sounds interesting. How much amplification do you need to get this reading and how do you make it tick?" "We run the amplifier up to the limit and then sweep the tube across the object sought, and the output meter leaps skyward by just enough to make us certain of our results. Watch!" Charley set the tube in operation and checked it briefly. Then he took Don's hand and put it on the handle that swung the tube on its gimbals. "Sort of paint the wall with it," he said. "You'll see the deflection as you pass the slab of tool steel that's standing there." Channing did, and watched the minute flicker of the ultra-sensitive meter. "Wonderful," he grinned, as the door opened and Franks entered. "Hi, Don. Is it true that you bombarded her with flowers?" "Nope. She's just building up some other woman's chances. Have you seen this effect?" "Yeah--it's wonderful, isn't it?"