"We'll do that, after a little more experimenting. You see, I had no intention of giving us such a long push. I was going to throw the switches in and out, but you know what happened. However, there's one good thing about it—it's worth two years of anybody's life to settle that relativity-time thing definitely, one way or the other."
"I'll say it is. But say, we've got a lot of power on our ultra-wave; enough to reach Tellus, I think. Let's locate the sun and get in touch with Samms."
"Let's work on these controls a little first, so we'll have something to report. Out here's a fine place to try the ship out—nothing in the way."
"All right with me. But I would like to find out whether I'm two years older than I think I am, or not!"
Then for four hours they put the great super-ship through her paces, just as test-pilots check up on every detail of performance of an airplane of new and radical design. They found that the horrible vertigo could be endured, perhaps in time even conquered as space-sickness could be conquered, by a strong will in a sound body; and that their new conveyance had possibilities of which even Rodebush had never dreamed. Finally, their most pressing questions answered, they turned their most powerful ultra-beam communicator toward the yellowish star which they knew to be Old Sol.
"Samms ... Samms." Cleveland spoke slowly and distinctly. "Rodebush and Cleveland reporting from the 'Space-Eating Wampus', now directly in line with Beta Ursae Minoris from the sun, distance about two point two light years. It will take six bands of tubes on your tightest beam, LSV3, to reach us. Barring a touch of an unusually severe type of space-sickness, everything worked beautifully; even better than either of us dared to believe. There's something we want to know right away—have we been gone four hours and some odd minutes, or better than two years?"
He turned to Rodebush and went on:
"Nobody knows how fast this ultra-wave travels, but if it goes as fast as we did coming out it's no creeper. I'll give him about thirty minutes, then shoot in another...."
But, interrupting Cleveland's remark, the care-ravaged face of Virgil Samms appeared sharp and clear upon the plate and his voice snapped curtly from the speaker.
"Thank God you're alive, and twice that that the ship works!" he exclaimed. "You've been gone four hours, eleven minutes, and forty one seconds, but never mind about abstract theorizing. Get back here, to Pittsburgh, as fast as you can drive. That Nevian vessel or another one like her is mopping up the city, and has destroyed half the Fleet already!"