Holden shook his head.
"It took slightly," said Cochrane, "slightly under three-fifths of a second."
Holden blinked. Cochrane said:
"A signal-rocket has an acceleration of about six hundred feet per second, level flight, no gravity component, mass acceleration only. It should have taken a hundred seconds plus to cross that crater—over twenty miles. It shouldn't have stayed on course. It did stay on course, inside the field. It did take under three-fifths of a second. The gadget works!"
Holden drew a deep breath.
"So now you need more money and you want me not to discharge my patient as cured."
"Not a bit of it!" snapped Cochrane. "I don't want him as a patient! I'm only willing to accept him as a customer! But if he wants fame, I'll sell it to him. Not as something to lean his fragile psyche on, but something to wallow in! Do you think he could ever get too famous for his own satisfaction?"
"Of course not," said Holden. "He's the same fool."
"Then we're in business," Cochrane told him. "Not that I couldn't peddle my fish elsewhere. I'm going to! But I'll give him old-customer preference. I'll want him out at the distress-torp tests this afternoon. They'll be public."
"This afternoon?" asked Holden. "Distress-torp?"