 While negotiating with Terran Electric's hardnosed chief lawyer Mark Kingman for a licence on Carroll and Baler's Martian power transmitter, which they had sold to TE, Channing works out a way to use the transmitter to harness solar energy.Channing cuts a deal with Kingman allowing Terran Electric to operate the solar power tube on planetary surfaces while Venus Equilateral operates it in space.It turns out, though, that an atmosphere blocks the tube's reception, so it can't operate on the surface of any inhabited world.