"Along what lines?" queried Dorothy and Crane simultaneously.
"Space ship, probably—Two's entirely too small to be of any account in intergalactic work," Seaton replied promptly. "Or maybe fourth-, fifth- and sixth-order projectors; or maybe some kind of an ultra-ultra radio or projector. How do I know, from here? But there's thousands of things that maybe we can do—we'll wait until we get there to worry about which one to try first."
XV.
Seaton strode over to the control board and applied maximum acceleration. "Might as well start traveling, Mart," he remarked to Crane, who had for almost an hour been devoting the highest telescopic power of number six visiplate to spectroscopic, interferometric, and spectrophotometric studies of half a dozen selected nebulae. "No matter which one you pick out we'll have to have quite a lot of positive acceleration yet before we reverse to negative."
"As a preliminary measure, might it not be a good idea to gain some idea as to our present line of flight?" Crane asked dryly, bending a quizzical glance upon his friend. "You know a great deal more than I do about the hypothesis of linear departure of incompatible and incommensurable spaces, however, and so perhaps you already know our true course."
"Ouch! Pals, they got me!" Seaton clapped a hand over his heart; then, seizing his own ear, he led himself up to the switchboard and shut off the space drive, except for the practically negligible superimposed thirty-two feet per second which gave to the Skylark's occupants a normal gravitational force.
"Why, Dick, how perfectly silly!" Dorothy chuckled. "What's the matter? All you've got to do is to—"
"Silly, says you?" Seaton, still blushing, interrupted her. "Woman, you don't know the half of it! I'm just plain dumb, and Mart was tactfully calling my attention to the fact. Them's soft words that the slatlike string bean just spoke, but believe me, Red-Top, he packs a wicked wallop in that silken glove!"
"Keep still a minute, Dick, and look at the bar!" Dorothy protested. "Everything's on zero, so we must be still going straight up, and all you have to do to get back somewhere near our own Galaxy is to turn it around. Why didn't one of you brilliant thinkers—or have I overlooked a bet?"