"It's undoubtedly anti-gravity," he announced. "I've done considerable work on magnetic lines of force and theoretical work on possible creation of force fields for use as meteor screens. This math weaves in and out of mine like a pulse across a synchroscope. I'd been incredibly close to anti-gravity myself! That one blasted equation! Amazing!
"Lizio has been working with others on the autopilot computer. They suspected it was oriented off the galactic hub and the math verifies it. Doctor Englander from Palomar plotted courses to various star systems with the hub as reference point, and Lizio had the instrument punching tape from Englander's data.
"The unit not only plots courses to any star system in the galaxy, but apparently to any planet of any system! How could the memory bank have been developed? Have they better equipment for probing and photographing distant space? Have they known space travel for millennia and explored and catalogued the galaxy?
"Now, gentlemen, I hate to provoke a heated discussion but the computers back me up. The amount of anti-gravitational energy produced should drive the ship at over twenty times light-speed!"
"Wait, Al," Winthrop said. "Certainly Einstein's whole theory of—"
"You wait," Allan said with tired exasperation. "This math doesn't parallel Einstein's as we first thought! The differences I haven't determined. The computers have done that. They do in minutes what it would take years for me to compute. Perhaps you're faster!"
General Hill said sharply, "No arguments, please! Standards will double check. All the computers won't err, if these do. Let's assume these haven't erred. What does it mean, then?"
"That the ship came from Sirius in about half an Earth year," Winthrop said. "That it may have departed after they realized from visually observing our first atomic blast that there must be life here, probably a haven for them."
Englander laughed. "So they fled the beasties! Don't take your comics so seriously, George!"
"Are you sure it's a comic?" Winthrop snapped back. "Ask Rabin what he thinks!"