"Granted. Wes is brilliant. He is a physicist, though, and neither engineer nor inventor. I doubt that he is really interested in the physical aspects of anything that is not directly concerned with his eating and sleeping." "What are we going to do about him?" "Absolutely nothing. You aren't like him--" "I hope not!" "And conversely, why should we try to make him like you?" "That I'm against," chimed in a new voice. Arden Channing took each man by the arm and looked up on either side of her, into one face and then the other. "No matter how, why, when, who, or what, one like him is all that the solar system can stand." "Walt and I are pretty much alike." "Uh-huh. You are. That's as it should be. You balance one another nicely. You couldn't use another like you. You're speaking of Wes Farrell?" "Right." "Leave him alone," said Arden sagely. "He's good as he is. To make him similar to you would be to spoil a good man. He'd then be neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. He doesn't think as you do, but instead proceeds in a straight line from remote possibility to foregone conclusion. Anything that gets needed en route is used, or gadgeteered, and forgotten. That's where you come in, fellows. Inspect his by-products. They may be darned useful." "O.K. Anybody care for a drink?" "Yup. All of us," said Arden. "Don, how did you rate such a good-looking wife?" "I hired her," grinned Channing. "She used to make all of my stenographic mistakes, remember?" "And gave up numerous small errors for one large one? Uh-huh, I recall. Some luck." "It was my charm." "Baloney. Arden, tell the truth. Didn't he threaten you with something terrible if you didn't marry him?" "You tell him," grinned Channing. "I've got work to do." * * * * * Channing left the establishment known as Joe's; advertised as the "Best bar in twenty-seven million miles, minimum," and made his way to his office, slowly. He didn't reach it. Not right away. He was intercepted by Chuck Thomas, who invited him to view a small experiment. Channing smiled and said that he'd prefer to see an experiment of any kind to going to his office, and followed Chuck. "You recall the gadget we used to get perfect tuning with the alloy-selectivity transmitter?" "You mean that variable alloy disk all bottled up and rotated with a selsyn?" asked Don, wondering what came next. "Naturally I remember it. Why?" "Well, we've found that certain sub-microscopic effects occur with inert objects. What I mean is this: Given a chunk of cold steel of goodly mass and tune your alloy disk to pure steel, and you can get a few micro-microamperes output if the tube is pointed at the object." "Sounds interesting. How much amplification do you need to get this reading and how do you make it tick?" "We run the amplifier up to the limit and then sweep the tube across the object sought, and the output meter leaps skyward by just enough to make us certain of our results. Watch!"