"Fair," grinned Walt. "I did it with miniatures only, of course, since I couldn't get my hooks on a full grown tube." "Say," asked Arden, "how did you birds arrive at this idea so suddenly? I got lost at the first premise." "We passed a strange ship. We heated up to uncomfortable temperatures in a matter of nine seconds flat. They didn't warm us with thought waves or vector-invectives. Sheer dislike wouldn't do it alone. I guess that someone is trying to do the trick started by our esteemed Mr. Franks here a year or so ago. Only with something practical instead of an electron beam. Honest-to-goodness energy, right from Sol himself, funnelled through some tricky inventions. What about that experiment of yours? Did you bring it along?" Walt looked downcast. "No," he said. "It was another one." "Let's see." "It's not too good." "Same idea?" Walt went to get his experiment. He returned with a tray full of laboratory glassware, all wired into a maze of electronic equipment. Channing went white. "You, too?" he yelled. "Take it easy, sport. This charges only to a hundred volts. We get thirteen hundred microfarads at one hundred volts. Then we drain off the dielectric fluid, and get one billion three hundred million volts' charge into a condenser of only one hundred micro-microfarads. It's an idea for the nuclear physics boys. I think it may tend to solidify some of the uncontrollables in the present system of developing high electron velocities." "That thirteen million dielectric constant stuff is strictly electrodynamic, I think," said Channing. "Farrell may have developed it as a by-product, but I have a hunch that it will replace some heretofore valuable equipment. The Franks-Farrell generator will out-do Van Der Graf's little job, I think." "Franks-Farrell?" "Sure. He thunk up the dielectric. You thunk up the application. He won't care, and you couldn't have done it without. Follow?" "Oh, sure. I was just trying to figure out a more generic term for it." "Don't. Let it go as it is for now. It's slick, Walt, but there's no weapon in it." "You're looking for a weapon?" "Uh-huh. Ever since Murdoch took a swing at Venus Equilateral, I've been sort of wishing that we could concoct something big enough and dangerous enough to keep us free from any other wiseacres. Remember, we stand out there like a sore thumb. We are as vulnerable as a half pound of butter at a banquet for starving Armenians. The next screwball that wants to control the system will have to control Venus Equilateral first. And the best things we can concoct to date include projectile-tossing guns at velocities less than the speed of our ships, and an electron-shooter that can be overcome by coating the ship with any of the metal-salts that enhance secondary transmission." "Remind me to requisition a set of full-sized tubes when we return. Might as well have some fun."