"I am Robert Wilson, Chairman of the Board. The other members are Phil Silverman, James Dougherty, Will Irwin, and Sam Reardon." He indicated in turn the other men at the table. "I see you claim to be the Prime Discoverers of a new Solar System. That's wonderful! We're expanding so rapidly, what with the increasing birth rate on Terra and the other colonized planets, that we already and always need more room. Tell us more about your find." "It's a five-planet system with a sun much like Sol, only about a quarter larger. The coordinates are Right Ascension 17.45, Declination Minus 11.4, distance about sixty-two light years." Swiftly Mr. Carver gave the pertinent facts about the habitability of planets Two and Three, and presented their books of data, and their cases of photographs. "How come we haven't received your signals--or didn't you place any?" Irwin asked. "We did place them, sir, but we noticed several days ago, coming in, that we could not hear them with our own receivers. It is my opinion that the distance is too great for the strength of the senders." "That's possible," Silverman spoke up. "Your claim is farther away than any yet presented to us. I happen to know that the signal-senders furnished by our Board technicians ordinarily have a theoretical range of not quite fifty light-years." Mr. Carver half-rose, then settled back and spoke with a level voice, while his eyes swept from one to the other of the five men. "I want to report honestly on this case, sirs. Just before we left, we started back along a course that would take us fairly close to all our planets and the sun, to make sure our senders were functioning correctly. We started from Two, where we had just completed marking-out our city site, went past One and around the sun, planning to make a big swing to the other planets and so back home. The senders of One, Two and the sun were working all right, but as we neared Three we heard, instead of our own, signals stating that the system had been charted and claimed by Michael Bogin and his...." "Slik Bogin!" Several of the Board members exclaimed in concert, and Chairman Wilson added, grimly, "So he's at work again." Mr. Carver waited until they were silent, then continued, "We think he either destroyed our senders or substituted his own tapes in ours. However, we put our sun-signal into an orbit so close to the sun's surface we doubt if he'll be able to do anything about it. It's only about ten million miles...." "Ten million!" Reardon almost yelled the question, and the others sat upright in excited astonishment, doubt showing in their faces. "How could you do that?" "I figured a van Sicklenberg, sir, to give our sender a circular orbit apexing at ten million miles," Jon Carver explained simply. "We used the servo-mechs in our lock to throw the sender out when at minimum distance."