chef's hat, wheeled a lunch cart into the lab.

"Oh... thanks." Tom scarcely looked up from his work as the cook set
out an appetizing meal of Texas hash, milk, and deep-dish apple pie on
the bench beside the young inventor's papers. Grumbling under his
breath, Chow sauntered out.

Tom went on working intently between mouthfuls. In another hour he
finished a set of pilot drawings. Then he called Hank Sterling and Arvid
Hanson and asked them to come to the laboratory.

They listened with keen interest as Tom explained his latest creation.

"No telling if it will work when the energy arrives from space," Tom
said, "but I think everything tracks okay. Hank, get these plans
blueprinted and assign an electronics group to the project. You'd better
handle the hardware yourself."

"Right." Hank rolled up the sketches.

"And, Arv," Tom went on, "I'd like a scale model made to guide them on
assembly. How soon can you have it?"

Hanson promised the model for some time the next day, and the two men
hurried off.

As usual, Arv proved slightly better than his word. The expert
modelmaker was devoted to his craft and as apt to forget the clock as
Tom himself, when absorbed in a new project. By working on in his shop
long after closing hours, Hanson had a desk-size model of the