Happily he entered the Director's office once more. He carried with him all the things that he had removed just a few short weeks before. This time he was coming to stay. Arden entered the office behind him. "Home again?" she asked. "Yop," he grinned at her. "Open file B, will you, and break out a container of my favorite beverage?" "Sure thing," she said. There came a shout of glee. "Break out four glasses," she was told from behind. It was Walt Franks and Joe. It was Arden that proposed the toast. "Here's to a closed corporation," she said. They drank on that. She went over beside Don and took his arm. "You see?" she said, looking up into his eyes. "We aren't the same. Things have changed since Burbank came, and went. Haven't they?" "They have," laughed Channing. "And now that you are my secretary, it is no longer proper for you to shine up to me like that. People will talk." "What's he raving about?" asked Joe. Channing answered, "It is considered highly improper for a secretary to make passes at her boss. Think of what people will say; think of his wife and kids." "You have neither." "People?" asked Channing innocently. "No--you ape--the other." "Maybe so," nodded Don, "but it is still in bad taste for a secretary--" "No man can use that tone of voice on me!" stormed Arden with a glint in her eye. "I resign! You can't call me a secretary!" "But Arden--darling--" Arden relaxed into the crook of Channing's arm. She winked at Walt and Joe. "Me--," she said, "I've been promoted!" _Interlude:_ _Maintaining Communications through the worst of interference was a type of problem in which dire necessity demanded a solution. Often there are other problems of less demanding nature. These are sometimes called "projects" because they may be desirable but are not born of dire necessity._ _Barring interference, the problem of keeping communication with another planet across a hundred million miles of interplanetary space is partially solved by the fact that you can see your target! Keeping the cross-hairs in a telescope properly centered is a technical job more arduous than difficult._ _But seeing a spacecraft is another problem. Consider the relative sizes of spacecraft and planet. Where Terra is eight thousand miles in diameter, the largest of spacecraft is eight hundred feet long. Reduced to a common denominator and a simple ratio, it reads that the earth is 50,000 times as large as the largest spacecraft. Now go outside and take a look at Venus. At normal distances, it is a mote in the sky. Yet Venus is only slightly smaller than the earth. Reduce Venus by fifty thousand times, and no astronomer would ever suspect its existence._ _Then take the invisible mote and place it in a volume of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic miles and he who found the needle in a haystack is a piker by comparison._