"That's why we, on Venus Equilateral, are ahead of the whole ding-busted solar system in tube development," said Don. "We'll run the thing out in the open--and I _do_ mean open! Instead of the tube having the insides exhausted, the operators will have their envelopes served with fresh, canned air." "Like a cartoon I saw somewhere," grinned Walt. "Had a bird in full armor tinkering with a radio set. The caption was: 'Why shield the set!'" "Phooey," said Ted Walton, "Look, Tom Swift, is this another one of the Franks' brainchildren?" "Tom Swift?" asked Wes. "Yeah. That's the nom de plume he invents under. The other guy we call Captain Lightning." "Oh?" asked Farrell, "Do you read him, too?" "Sure," grinned Walton. "And say, speaking of comics, I came upon an old, old volume of Webster's International Dictionary in a rare-edition library a couple of months ago in Chicago, and they define 'Comic' as amusing, funny, and ludicrous; not imaginative fiction. How things change." "They do." "But to get back to this gold-berg, what is it?" "Ted," said Channing soberly, "sit down!" Walton did. "Now," grinned Channing, "this screwball gadget is an idea whereby we hope to draw power out of the sun." Walton swallowed once, and then waved for Joe. "Double," he told the restaurateur. Then to the others he said, "Thanks for seating me. I'm ill, I think. Hearing things. I could swear I heard someone say that this thing is to take power from Sol." "That's it." "Um-m-m. Remind me to quit Saturday. This is no job for a man beset by hallucinations." "You grinning idiot, we're not fooling." "Then you'd better quit," Walton told Don. "This is no job for a bird with delusions of grandeur, either. Look, Don, you'll want this in the experimental blister at South end? On a coupler to the beam-turret so that it'll maintain direction at Sol?" "Right. Couple it to the rotating stage if you can. Remember, that's three miles from the South end." "We've still got a few high-power selsyns," said Walton, making some notations of his own on the tablecloth. "And thanks to the guys who laid out this Station some years ago, we've plenty of unused circuits from one end to the other. We'll couple it, all right. Oh mother. Seems to me like you got a long way off of your intended subject. Didn't you start out to make a detector for driver radiation?" "Yup." "And you end up tapping the sun. D'ye think it'll ever replace slave labor?" "Could be. Might even replace the coal mine. That's to be seen. Have any idea of how long you'll be?" "Make it ten hours. I'll get the whole crew on it at once." "Fine." "But look. What's the reason for this change in program?"