In that case, the young inventor reflected, it was only a freak of nature that the Faber and nose-cone factories had been wrecked by the shock.  But in spite of the seismographic clues, Tom was not entirely convinced.  A nagging doubt still buzzed in the back of his mind.

The next morning Tom hurried off to his private glass-walled laboratory at Enterprises, eager to continue work on his container, or robot body, for the brain from space.

Tom frowned as he studied the rough sketch he had drawn in his office the afternoon before.  “This setup’s full of bugs!” he muttered.

Nevertheless, Tom decided, the basic idea was sound.  Grabbing pencil and slide rule, he began to dash off page after page of diagrams and equations.

“Chow down!” boomed a foghorn voice.  Chow Winkler, wearing a white 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 space-brain robot ready for Tom’s inspection when the young inventor arrived at the plant early the following morning.

“Wonderful, Arv!” Tom approved.  “Every time I see one of your models of a new invention, I’m sure it’ll work!” Hanson grinned, pleased at the compliment.

Tom hopped into a jeep and sped across the plant grounds to deliver the model to Hank Sterling and his project crew.  Work was already well along on the electronic subassemblies and the strange-looking “body” was taking shape.

That afternoon Ames and Dilling returned from Washington.  The report they gave to Tom bore out his hunch that the rebel Brungarian scientists might well be able to divert the space energy.

The next day was Friday.  Tom was hoping, although none too optimistically, that the container might be completed before the week end.  To his delight, an Enterprises pickup truck pulled up outside the laboratory later that afternoon and Hank rolled the queer-looking device inside.