"So long?"
"Oh yes. Some of the parts were entirely unheard of before, and many of the major components had to be built of parts that were designed for the job. When you design the minor components to assemble the major components—which also require design—you pyramid the time and difficulty."
"I hadn't thought of it that well."
"I wish you'd go over and tell them what's wrong. Kane, the publisher came in for the unveiling of the thing, and we'd hate to present him with a complete failure, in spite of its uselessness."
"Kane's here? Good, I'll go right over."
Maynard was youthful enough to be amazed that the weight of his rank opened a path through the grouped technicians to the complex instrument that lined the entire wall of the huge laboratory. Kane was near the center, and the only one in the group that knew Guy Maynard well enough to call him by his first name: therefore he was the first to speak.
"You invented this thing, Guy. Can you make it work?"
Guy blushed. "I didn't invent it—" he started and then saw Kane's puzzled look, which caused him to pause; then he nodded and finished: "—I merely worked on it theoretically. I did not have enough equipment in the lifeship to build any more than a few of the more complex circuits."
"Good enough," laughed Kane. "Well you may know more than we do at that. After all," he said in defense of his statement, "these men have been working on it for a couple of years."
A man with the rayed stars of a senior executive offered: "That's not strictly true, Mr. Kane. We started to work on it about three days ago—if you consider the instrument as a whole. There have been many groups working on the components separately, building them up. We assembled the whole last week."