"'Here' is right," said the pilot cheerfully. "In case you birds are wondering about our position, Telfu is right below us by ten million miles." "Suppose she's got anything left of that set?" asked McBride. "Imagine so. The thing couldn't have gone to pieces like the Wonderful One Horse Shay. Give a call and see. If Sandra's not kidding, she'll be listening." "Kidding or not," laughed McBride, "Sandra will be listening." Hammond turned on the communications set and coughed into the microphone, watching the meters swing. Then, satisfied, he said: "This is the _Haywire Queen_ answering S. D. I. from Telfu. Calling Sandra Drake. If you are listening, break in. This is Hammond of the _Haywire Queen_ listening for a repeat of previous S. D. I." Hammond broke into Telfan and repeated the message. Then the answer-light winked on the panel and he heard: "This is Sandra Drake. Is it really you?" "No," said Hammond. "Just a reasonable facsimile. What's the matter?" "Oh!" said Sandra. There was a world of feeling in the word. "This has been the longest seven days in my life. It worked, then." "What worked then?" "The communications set." "Obviously. What did you do to it?" "Not much, personally. I sort of managered it, though. They lent me their best gravitic students and we went to work on the thing. We remade everything in the set--everything that could stand it, that is--about four times their size. That's where I came in. Some things couldn't be increased in size without ruining the tuning, and I knew which ones. Is my output all right?" "Shaky, but strong enough for service." "I'm running without an output stage. We used the output stage to drive a super-power stage made of the beefed-up parts and when the works went blooey, it took the Telfan output and my output with it. I'm running off to my own driver stage." "You've been a busy little girl," said Hammond. "What did you use for power?" "I talked them into giving me every power plant in the district so that I could call you. It all went in eight minutes flat. The _Lady Luck_ is a mess--again." "Are you brave or foolish?" asked Hammond. "Both," answered Sandra. "After all, this is no tea party. There isn't a good generator on the _Lady Luck_; I ruined them all trying to call you. Can you understand how urgent this is?" "I think so," said Hammond. "How did you wreck the whole shooting-match?" "I used the gravitic generators to generate local fields and used 'em as communications-band reflectors. Part of it was theory on the part of the Telfans and part of it was ideas given me by your experiments with the super-drive. Anyhow, I'll bet that Soaky is fifty degrees hotter, now, with all the soup we put into the transmitter. That'll make your problem easier--hey?" "Yup," smiled Hammond. "Just like the guy whose only reason for sending telegrams was that he hated to see the mail-carrier work so hard." "Well, fifty degrees is one percent of the way, anyway."