Craven laughed, throatily. "Yes, I have. I've found a lot. Manning thinks he can keep us out here, but he's wrong. We'll be in the Solar System less than a week after he gets there."
Chambers stifled a gasp, tried to speak calmly. "You mean this?"
"Of course I mean it. I don't waste my time with foolish jokes."
"You have the secret of material energy?"
"Not that," the scientist growled, "but I have something else as valuable. I have the secret of Manning's drive: I know what it is that enables him to exceed the speed of light ... to go ten thousand times as fast as light ... the Lord knows how much faster if he wanted to."
"No ordinary drive would do that," said Chambers. "It would take more than power to make a ship go that fast."
"You bet your life it would, and Manning is the boy who's got it. He uses a space field. I think I can duplicate it."
"And how long will it take you to do this work?"
"About a week," Craven told him. "Perhaps a little longer, perhaps a little less. But once we go, we'll go as fast as Manning does. We'll be short on power, but I think I can do something about that, too."
Chambers took a chair beside the desk. "But do we know the way home?"