He thought, "I could go back now and tell him."
But he did not go back. He knew that he would never tell him. If Drayton asked him to help him with the details he would work them out all over again with him; but he would never show his own finished plans or his own model.
He didn't know whether it had been hard or easy for him to give up the Moving Fortress. He did it instinctively. There was--unless he had chosen to be a blackguard--nothing else for him to do.
Besides, the Moving Fortress wasn't his idea. Drayton had had it first. Anybody might have had it. He hadn't spoken of it first; but that was nothing. The point was that he had had it first, and Nicky wasn't going to take it from him.
It meant more to Drayton, who was in the Service, than it could possibly mean to him. He hadn't even got a profession.
As he walked back through the fields to the station, he said to himself that he didn't really care. It was only one more jolly sell. He didn't like giving up his Moving Fortress; but it wouldn't end him. There was something in him that would go on.
He would make another engine.
He didn't care. There was something in him that would go on.
"I can't see," Desmond had said, "why Captain Drayton should be allowed to walk off with your idea."
"He's worked five years on it."