"This is it," Hunt said, waving one of the sheets in the air. "Listen to this. We've got it! Four minutes ago we fired a concentrated burst at maximum power. The announcement has just come over the loudspeaker down here that it scored a direct hit. Everyone is laughing and clapping each other on the back. Some of the women are crying with relief. That," said Hunt, slapping the papers down on the table and slumping back in his chair with exasperation, "is bloody ridiculous! Within four minutes of firing they had confirmation of a hit! How? How in God's name could they have? We know that when Minerva and Earth were at their closest, the distance between them would have been one hundred fifty to one hundred sixty million miles. The radiation would have taken something like thirteen minutes to cover that distance, and there would have to be at least another thirteen minutes before anybody on Luna could possibly know about where it struck. So, even with the planets at their closest positions, they'd have needed at least twenty-six minutes to get that report. Charlie says they got it in under four! That is absolutely, one-hundred-percent impossible! Don, how sure are you of those numbers?"

"As sure as we are of any other Lunarian time units. If they're wrong, you might as well tear up that calendar you started out with and go all the way back to square one."

Hunt stared at the page for a long time, as if by sheer power of concentration he could change the message contained in the neatly formatted sheets of typescript. There was only one thing that these figures could mean, and it put them right back to the beginning. At length he carried on: