"If you've any more silly notions you'd better get rid of them right now. You may never get another chance. Yesterday Melvin and I discussed the details as fellow-scientists. Suppose you tell her just how much the Government is contributing, son."
"Forty thousand dollars!" Melvin said promptly, rolling the figure over his tongue as though it had some mysterious magic of its own which could elevate him to man's estate—if he repeated it often enough.
"A research grant," Elwood added as if thinking aloud for his own benefit. "I had a tough time persuading them to let me do all the construction work right here in my own laboratory. I've probably cut more yards of official red tape than any odd duck since Archimedes."
He smiled a little ruefully. "In case you're interested—I've had to pay through the nose for the technical assistance I've been getting. Those owl-faced characters you've seen drifting in and out won't work for peanuts."
"But all of the rockets in the stereo-cineramas are much bigger!" Mary Anne protested. "Why is that, daddy?"
"We've just about seen the end of the huge outmoded, stratosphere observation-type rockets," Elwood replied, including both children in his glance. "In the future observation rockets will be much smaller and there is little to be gained by attempting to send a large rocket to the moon. The cost would be a thousand times as great."
"But daddy, how could such a little rocket ever get as far as the moon."
"Perhaps the worst mistake an individual or a society can make is to confuse size with power," Elwood said. "There is a tiny bee which, in proportion to its size, can travel faster than our cleverest flight specialists in their jet planes."
"But daddy—"
"Don't look so incredulous, honeybunch. You remind me of your mother. Melvin knows just how much progress we've made in atomic research since Eniwetok. Tell her, son."