"I'm all ready."
The hand and arm of a space-suited figure lifted, for attention. Dabney's voice came worriedly from the headphones of every suit:
"I wish it understood," he said in some agitation, "that this first attempted application of my discovery is made with my consent, but that I am not aware of the mechanical details. As a scientist, my work has been in pure science. I have worked for the advancement of human knowledge, but the technological applications of my discovery are not mine. Still—if this device does not work, I will take time from my more important researches to inquire into what part of my discovery has been inadequately understood and applied. It may be that present technology is not qualified to apply my discovery—"
Jones said without emotion—but Cochrane could imagine his poker-faced expression inside his helmet:
"That's right. I consulted Mr. Dabney about the principles, but the apparatus is my doing, I take the responsibility for that!"
Then Cochrane added with pleasant irony:
"Since all this is recorded, Mr. Dabney can enlarge upon his disinterest later. Right now, we can go ahead. Mr. Dabney disavows us unless we are successful. Let us let it go at that." Then he said: "The observatory's set to track?"
A muffled voice said boredly, by short-wave from the observatory up on the crater's rim:
"We're ready. Visual and records, and we've got the timers set to clock the auto-beacon signals as they come in."
The voice was not enthusiastic. Cochrane had had to put up his own money to have the nearside lunar observatory put a low-power telescope to watch the rocket's flight. In theory, this distress-rocket should make a twenty-mile streak of relatively long-burning red sparks. A tiny auto-beacon in its nose was set to send microwave signals at ten-second intervals. On the face of it, it had looked like a rather futile performance.