"It'll be tricky work, and you'll have to wait until your cut edge has cooled before you hook on the rods," mused Don. "But that's the ticket." "Which floors do you want?" "Have you got a scale drawing of the _Ariadne_?" "Sure." "Then this is where my tablecloth artistry falls flat. The focussing of an electron beam depends upon the electrode spacing and the voltage. Since our voltage is fixed if we take it from the drivers' electrodes, we'll have to do some mighty fine figuring. I'll need that scale drawing." Channing's tablecloth engineering was not completely wasted. By the time the scale drawing was placed before him, Channing had half of the table filled with equations. He studied the drawing, and selected the levels which were to serve as electrodes. He handed the drawings to Hadley, and the power engineer began to issue instructions to his gang. Then the central well began to swarm with space-suited men who bore cutting torches. Hot sparks danced from the cut girders that held the floorings, and at the same time, a crew of men were running cables from the various levels to the instrumented room. More hours passed while the circular sections were insulated with the plastic rods. The big dome above was cut in sections and removed, and then the sky could be seen all the way from the bottom of the ship where the pilot's greenhouse should have been. Channing looked it over and then remarked: "All we need now is an electron collector." "I thought you wanted to shoot 'em off," objected Hadley. "I do. But we've got to have a source of supply. You can't toss baseballs off of the Transplanet Building in Northern Landing all afternoon, you know, without having a few brought to you now and then. Where do you think they come from?" "Hadn't thought of it in that way. What'd happen?" "We'd get along for the first umpty-gillion electrons, and then all the soup we could pack on would be equalized by the positive charge on the ship and we couldn't shoot out any more until we got bombarded by the sun--and that bombardment is nothing to write home about as regards quantity. We're presenting too small a target. What we need is a selective solar intake plate of goodly proportions." "We could use a mental telepathy expert, too. Or one of those new beam tubes that Baler and Carroll dug up out of the Martian desert. I've heard that those things will actually suck power out of any source, and bend beams so as to enter the intake vent, or end." "We haven't one of those, either. Fact of the matter is," grinned Channing, ruefully, "we haven't much of anything but our wits." "Unarmed, practically," laughed Hadley. "Half armed, at least. Ah, for something to soak up electrons. I'm now wondering if this electron gun is such a good idea." "Might squirt some protons out the other direction," offered Hadley.