"So why don't you, Fao and Deggi, put Jim in charge of construction?"
Fao threw back her silvery head and glared, but Delcamp jumped at the chance. "Would you, Jim?"
"Sure—unless Miss Talaho objects."
"She won't." Delcamp's eyes locked with Fao's, and Fao kept still. "Thanks immensely, Jim. And I know what you mean." He went over to a cabinet of wide, flat drawers and brought back a sheaf of drawings. Not blueprints, but original drawings in pencil. "Such as this. I haven't even got it designed yet, to say nothing of building it."
James began to leaf through the stack of drawings. They were full of erasures, re-drawings, and such notations as "See sheets 17-B, 21-A, and 27-F." Halfway through the pile he paused, turned backward three sheets, and studied for minutes. Then, holding that one sheet by a corner, he went rapidly through the rest of the stack.
"This is it," he said then, pulling the one sheet out and spreading it flat. "What we call Unit Eight—the heart of the drive." Then, tight-beamed to Garlock:
"This is the thing that you designed in toto and that I never could understand any part of. All I did was build it. It must generate those Prime fields."
"Probably," Garlock flashed back. "I didn't understand it any too well myself. How does it look?"
"He isn't even close. He's got only half of the constants down, and half of the ones he has got down are wrong. Look at this mess here...."