Chuck set the tube in operation and checked it briefly. Then he took Don's hand and put it on the handle that swung the tube on its gimbals. "Sort of paint the wall with it," he said. "You'll see the deflection as you pass the slab of tool steel that's standing there." Channing did, and watched the minute flicker of the ultra-sensitive meter. "Wonderful," he grinned, as the door opened and Walt Franks entered. "Hi, Don. Is it true that you bombarded her with flowers?" "Nope. She's just building up some other woman's chances. Have you seen this effect?" "Yeah--it's wonderful, isn't it?" "That's what I like about this place," said Chuck with a huge smile. "That's approximately seven micro-microamperes output after amplification on the order of two hundred million times. We're either working on something so small we can't see it, or something so big we can't count it. It's either fifteen decimal places to the left or to the right. Every night when I go home I say a little prayer. I say: 'Dear God, please let me find something today that is based upon unity, or at least no more than two decimal places,' but it is no good. If He hears me at all He's too busy to bother with things that the human race classifies as 'One.'" "How do you classify resistance, current, and voltage?" asked Channing, manipulating the tube on its gimbals and watching the effect. "One million volts across ten megohms equals one hundred thousand microamperes. That's according to Ohm's Law." "He's got the zero-madness, too," chuckled Walt. "It obtains from thinking in astronomical distances, with interplanetary coverages in watts, and celestial input, and stuff like that. Don, this thing may be handy some day. I'd like to develop it." "I suggest that couple of stages of tube-amplification might help. Amplify it before transduction into electronic propagation." "We can get four or five stages of sub-electronic amplification, I think. It'll take some working." "O.K., Chuck. Cook ahead. We do not know whither we are heading, but it looks darned interesting." "Yeah," added Walt, "it's a darned rare scientific fact that can't be used for something, somewhere. Well, Don, now what?" "I guess we now progress to the office and run through a few reams of paper work. Then we may relax." "O.K. Sounds good to me. Let's go." * * * * * Hellion Murdoch pointed to the luminous speck in the celestial globe. His finger stabbed at the marker button, and a series of faint concentric spheres marked the distance from the center of the globe to the object, which Murdoch read and mentioned: "Twelve thousand miles." "Asteroid?" asked Kingman. "What else?" asked Murdoch. "We're lying next to the Asteroid Belt." "What are you going to do?"