"You've got it! By the nine gods of Clusium! With the punch this thing gives us used as a rocket, we'd have power enough to fly to the moon if we wanted to. Why a rocket airplane at all? Why not a pure rocket? Let's go."
It was another week before workmen, even toiling with all the machine-shop facilities of Philadelphia at their disposal, and working day and night, could turn out the machine to Sherman's design, and it was two more before the apparatus was installed. The trial trip was set for the early morning when there would be least chance of atmospheric disturbance.
The Monitor (she had been named for the famous fighting craft with which the American navy ushered in a new age in the history of war) now stood near the center of the flying field at the Philadelphia airport—a long, projectile-like vessel with gleaming metal sides, set with heavy windows, ten feet in diameter and nearly twice as long. At her stern a funnel-like opening led to the interior. This was the exhaust for the power-plant. At her bow the sharp nose was blunted off and its tip was occupied by the lens of a high-powered parabolic searchlight, slightly recessed, and with the discharge tubes for the atomic nuclei arranged around its edge so they would be thrown directly into the light-beam as soon as generated.
As the four approached her she had been placed on the ramp from which she was to start, slanting slightly upward, with a buffer of timber and earth behind it, to take up the enormous recoil her power plant was expected to develop.
"How do you get in?" asked Gloria, walking around the Monitor and discovering no sign of a door.
"Oh, that's a trick I borrowed from our friends the Lassans," explained Sherman. "Look here." He led her to a place half way along one side, where two almost imperceptible holes marred the shining brightness of the new vessel's sides. "Stick your fingers in."
She did as directed, pressed, and a wide door in the side of the projectile swung open. "Bright thought. No handles to break off."
They stepped in, bending their heads to avoid the low ceiling.
"She isn't as roomy or comfortable or as heavily armored as the one I mean to build later," explained Sherman, "but this is only an experimental craft, built in a hurry, so I had to take what I could get.... Now here, Murray you sit here. Your job is going to be to mind the gravity beam that furnishes us our power. Every time you get the signal from me, you throw this power switch. That will turn on all three switches at the stern, and shoot the gravity beam out for the exhaust.... You see, we can't expect to keep up a steady stream of explosions with this kind of a machine. We wouldn't be able to control it. We'll travel in a series of short hops through the air, soaring between hops, like a glider."