And the next minute—
It was a long, silvery, torpedo-shaped hull, completely filling the small clearing. Rocket tubes jutted from its tapering tail; narrow fins creased its smooth flanks. A round airlock door stood open, waiting.
Joe raised the strange robot globe and depressed the keys. Out on the plain a space ship came into being.
"A—A rocket ship!" Bowen gasped.
"More than that!" Joe was grinning as he moved out toward the open airlock. "She's equipped with water and air purifying devices and food synthesis tanks that'll supply one man as long as ten years! She has antigravity equipment that can lift her right off the Earth—and a rocket drive that'll accelerate to a velocity of two hundred and seventy-eight miles per second! That's roughly a million miles an hour! That means I can reach Mars' orbit in just over thirty hours!"
"But—but what're you going to do with it?" Barbara stammered.
"Do?" Joe leaped into the airlock, his robot clutched under his arm, and faced them with a laugh. "I'm going to the only place I'll be safe, Barbara! And I'll find out who built the canals on Mars! And what mysteries lie below the cloud-blanket of Venus! And whether any of the moons of Jupiter are inhabitable—"