"Building the vessel would be easy enough, but X is as yet unknown upon Osnome."
"We've got a lot of it...."
"I could not accept it. The salt was different, since you have plenty. X, however, is as scarce upon Earth as salt is upon Osnome."
"Sure you can accept it. We stopped at a planet that has lots of it, and we've got an object-compass pointing at it so that we can go back and get more of it any time we want it. We've got more of it on hand now than we're apt to need for a long time, so have a hunk and get busy," and he easily carried one of the lumps out of his cabin and tossed it upon the dock, from whence it required two of Kondal's strongest men to lift it.
The look of care vanished from the face of the prince and he summoned another corps of mechanics.
"How thick shall the walls be? Our battleships are armed with arenak the thickness of a hand, but with your vast supply of salt you may have it any thickness you wish, since the materials of the matrix are cheap and abundant."
"One inch would be enough, but everything in the bus is designed for a four-foot shell, and if we change it from four feet we'll have to redesign our guns and all our instruments. Let's make it four feet."
Seaton turned to the crippled Skylark, upon which the first crew of Kondalian mechanics were working with skill and with tools undreamed-of upon Earth. The whole interior of the vessel was supported by a complex falsework of latticed metal, then the four-foot steel plates and the mighty embers, the pride of the great MacDougall, were cut away as though they were made of paper by revolving saws and enormous power shears. The sphere, grooved for the repellers and with the members, braces, and central machinery complete, of the exact dimensions of the originals, was rapidly moulded of a stiff, plastic substance resembling clay. This matrix soon hardened into a rock-like mass into which the doors, machine-gun emplacements, and other openings were carefully cut. All surfaces were then washed with a dilute solution of salt, which the workmen handled as though it were radium. Two great plates of platinum were clamped into place upon either side of the vessel, each plate connected by means of silver cables as large as a man's leg to the receiving terminal of an enormous wireless power station. The current was applied and the great spherical mass apparently disappeared, being transformed instantly into the transparent metal arenak. Then indeed had the Earth-men a vehicle such as had never been seen before! A four-foot shell of metal five hundred times as strong and hard as the strongest and hardest steel, cast in one piece with the sustaining framework designed by the world's foremost engineer—a structure that no conceivable force could deform or injure, housing an inconceivable propulsive force!
The falsework was rapidly removed and the sustaining framework was painted with opaque varnish to render it plainly visible. At Seaton's suggestion the walls of the cabins were also painted, leaving transparent several small areas to serve as windows.