When he had finished his story Nolan asked him, "Do you intend to go back to Arctic City, now that this is over?"
"No," Roger answered, "The pile at Arctic City is nearly completed. My part of the work is done anyway. I've been offered a job on the neutron rocket project at the Lunar laboratories, and Linda and I are leaving for the moon in about an hour. I enjoyed working there before. The moon colonists seem to have something that most earthmen lack.... I guess you'd call it a pioneering spirit, a desire to explore. They are willing to accept new ideas.
"But that's enough about myself. I've been wondering how you got away."
"Simple enough," Nolan replied. "The men who were left behind pulled out and left me at the camp when they heard about your rescue. They probably didn't care to kill me if they didn't have to. They left while I was asleep and probably went over the pole into Russia. They took my ship, but I was able to call for help with the radio. What happens to them doesn't matter anyway. We'll probably never hear of them again.
"I suppose it won't be long before we have colonies on all the planets with that neutron rocket you mentioned."
"It'll be a while yet," Roger said. "There are a lot of problems involved in the development of a neutron rocket, and as long as we have to use a fuel processed by passing hydrogen through an electric arc and into an expensive organic compound at low temperatures, space travel will be too expensive for anything more than the exploration expeditions that have been sent to Mars and Venus."
The voice of the announcer interrupted them. "The spaceship Goddard is loading passengers from tunnel eleven. All passengers must be aboard in twenty minutes."
Roger and Linda rose from the table. "That's our ship," Roger said. "We'd better get aboard. Goodbye, Professor Nolan. I hope we meet again."
"Goodbye, young fellow, and good luck." Nolan gripped Roger's hand.