"I couldn't have done that job," he admitted, "so I didn't think anybody could. Hm. Didn't all this cost a lot of fuel?"
Jones actually smiled.
"I worked out something. We don't use as much fuel as we did. We're probably using too much now. Al—go ahead and lift. I want to check what the new stuff does, anyhow. Take off!"
The pilot threw a switch, and Jones threw another, a newly installed one, just added to his improvised control-column. A light glowed brightly. Al pressed one button, very gently. A roaring set up outside. The ship started up. There was practically no feeling of acceleration, this time. The ship rose lightly. Even the rocket-roar was mild indeed, compared to its take-off from Luna and the sound of its first landing on the planet just below.
Cochrane saw the valley floors recede, and mountain-walls drop below. From all directions, then, vegetation-filled valleys flowed toward the ship, and underneath. Glaciers appeared, and volcanic cones, and then enormous stretches of white, with smoking dots here and there upon it. In seconds, it seemed, the horizon was visibly curved. In other seconds the planet being left behind was a monstrous white ball, and there were patches of intolerable white sunlight coming in the ports.
And Cochrane felt queer. Jones had given the order for take-off. Jones had determined to leave at this moment, because Jones had tests he wanted to make.... Cochrane felt like a passenger. From the man who decided things because he was the one who knew what had to be done, he had become something else. He had been absent two nights and part of a day, and decisions had been made in which he had no part—
It felt queer. It felt even startling.
"We're in a modification of the modified Dabney field now," observed Jones in a gratified tone. "You know the original theory."
"I don't," acknowledged Cochrane.
"The field's always a pipe, a tube, a column of stressed space between the field-plates," Jones reminded him. "When we landed the first time, back yonder, the tail of the ship wasn't in the field at all. The field stretched from the bow of the ship only, out to that last balloon we dropped. We were letting down at an angle to that line. It was like a kite and a string and the kite's tail. The string was the Dabney field, and the directions we were heading was the kite's tail."