"Not quite that, but ever since I finished that fourth-order outfit I've been trying to figure out something to take the place of that lens we had in _Three_, so that I can go ahead on the fifth, but that seems to be one thing for which there is absolutely no substitute. It's like trying to unscrew the inscrutable--it can't be done." "If you can't get along without it, why didn't you bring it along, too?" "Couldn't." "Why?" she persisted. "Nothing strong enough to hold it. In some ways it's worse than atomic energy. It's so hot and under such pressure that if that lens were to blow up in Omaha it would burn up the whole United States, from San Francisco to New York City. It takes either thirty feet of solid inoson or else a complete force-bracing to stand the pressure. We had neither, no time to build anything, and couldn't have taken it through hyperspace even if we could have held it safely." "Does that mean--" "No. It simply means that we'll have to start at the fourth again and work up. I did bring along a couple of good big faidons, so that all we've got to do is find a planet heavy enough and solid enough to anchor a full-sized fourth-order projector on, within twenty light-years of a white dwarf star." "Oh, is that all? You two'll do that, all right." "Isn't it wonderful the confidence some women have in their husbands?" Seaton asked Crane, who was studying through number six visiplate and the fourth-order projector the enormous expanse of the strange Galaxy at whose edge they now were. "I think maybe we'll be able to pull it off, though, at that. Of course we aren't close enough yet to find such minutiae as planets, but how are things shaping up in general?" "Quite encouraging! This Galaxy is certainly of the same order of magnitude as our own, and--" "Encouraging, huh?" Seaton broke in. "If such a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist as you are can permit himself to use such a word as that, we're practically landed on a planet right now!" "And shows the same types and varieties of stellar spectra," Crane went on, unperturbed. "I have identified with certainty no less than six white dwarf stars, and some forty yellow dwarfs of type G." "Fine! What did I tell you?" exulted Seaton. "Now go over that again, in English, so that Peggy and I can feel relieved about it, too," Dorothy directed. "What's a type-G dwarf?" "A sun like our own old Sol, back home," Seaton explained. "Since we are looking for a planet as much as possible like our own Earth, it is a distinctly cheerful fact to find so many suns so similar to our own. And as for the white dwarfs, I've got to have one fairly close to the planet we land on, because to get in touch with Rovol I've got to have a sixth-order projector; to build which I've first got to have one of the fifth order; for the reconstruction of which I've got to have neutronium; to get which I'll have to be close to a white dwarf star. See?"