Marquis unrolled a small chart, holding it so both Dorothy and Nick could see. “This,” he explained, “you can check at your leisure, though I’m a monkey’s uncle if you find anything wrong with it. To sum it up briefly, the Columbia is not only the largest space-ship ever made but also the fastest and most powerful.”
“Very nice,” replied Nick, “but that alone isn’t good enough. We can still be the fastest thing aspace and not be capable of a voyage to Alpha Centauri and back within the span of a lifetime.”
“If this is correct,” interrupted Dorothy, jabbing at an equation with her index finger, “then we can do it easily.”
“It’s too damn bad,” mused Nick, “that my father was so secretive about things. Whatever it is we have here, I’ll bet he had just as good—if not better—on the Orion ten years ago.”
“Didn’t he leave any notes?” asked Vickers.
“None. Apparently he feared their falling into the wrong hands in case anything happened to him. The only thing he did leave was wave n, the one he promised to use for communications. That’s what the contracel formula came over.”
Dorothy’s nose wrinkled in puzzlement. “I was under the impression,” she said, “that the contracel formula was radioed to Earth mysteriously—only it was badly garbled, just fractions coming through. And you, Nick, were the only one who could make anything out of it.”
“Partly true,” he admitted. “The ‘mysterious’ radio message however was something I cooked up to keep the newspapers satisfied. I wanted to let out the publicity that the Hartnett expedition wasn’t completely done in, but I didn’t want to draw attention to wave n. The fewer people who know it exists, the better. If I hadn’t thrown them offtrack with a little hocus-pocus, the secret might be out.”
Vickers blinked. “Excuse me,” he put in—“in this case, I guess I am a goop. But can you explain the contracel to me? I never really got it.”