He switched on the transmitter, and Deborah offered to help Jim. They took the box-files over to the typewriting table and settled down to study the mass of typescript, making notes as they went along.
Rigby sat and monotonously tapped out his call-sign, and when this had gone on for a quarter of an hour without evoking any response from the amplifier Jim glanced up. “Not getting you?” he asked.
“Can’t tell yet. It takes ten minutes for my signal to reach them, and another ten for theirs to come back, making twenty in all.”
“Good God, I thought radio-signals travelled as fast as light!”
Digby laughed. “They do, and that’s the point. You know, the sun’s light takes eight minutes to get to us, and the spaceship is a bit further away than the sun.”
He had hardly finished speaking when th
