"That's what I like about this place," said Charley with a huge smile. "That's approximately seven micro-microamperes output after amplification on the order of two hundred million times. We're either working on something so small we can't see it or something so big we can't count it. It's either fifteen decimal places to the left or to the right. Every night when I go home, I say a little prayer. I say: 'Dear God, please let me find something today that is based upon unity, or at least no more than two decimal places' but it is no good. If He hears me at all, He's too busy to bother with things that the human race classifies as 'One.'" "How do you classify resistance, current, and voltage?" asked Channing, manipulating the tube on its gimbals and watching the effect. "One million volts across ten megohms equals one hundred thousand microamperes. That's according to Ohm's Law." "He's got the zero-madness too," chuckled Walt. "It obtains from thinking in astronomical distances, with interplanetary coverages in watts, and celestial input, and stuff like that. Don, this thing may be handy, some day. I'd like to develop it." "I suggest that couple of stages of tube-amplification might help. Amplify it before transduction into electronic propagation." "We can get four or five stages of sub-electronic amplification, I think. It'll take some working." "O.K., Charley. Cook ahead. We do not know whither we are heading, but it looks darned interesting." "Yeah," added Walt, "it's a darned rare scientific fact that can't be used for something, somewhere. Well, Don, now what?" "I guess we now progress to the office and run through a few reams of paper-work. Then we may relax." "O.K. Sounds good to me. Let's go." * * * * * Hellion Murdoch pointed to the luminous speck in the celestial globe. His finger stabbed at the marker button, and a series of faint concentric spheres marked the distance from the center of the globe to the object, which Murdoch read and mentioned: "Twelve thousand miles." "Asteroid?" asked Kingman. "What else?" asked Murdoch. "We're lying next to the Asteroid Belt." "What are you going to do?" "Burn it," said Murdoch. His fingers danced upon the keyboard, and high above him, in the dome of the _Black Widow_, a power intake tube swiveled and pointed at Sol. Coupled to the output of the power intake tube, a power-output tube turned to point at the asteroid. And Murdoch's poised finger came down on the last switch, closing the final circuit. Meters leaped up across their scales as the intangible beam of solar energy came silently in and went as silently out. It passed across the intervening miles with the velocity of light squared, and hit the asteroid. A second later the asteroid glowed and melted under the terrific bombardment of solar energy directed in a tight beam.