"The devil!" said Cochrane, raging.
Jones turned to him. And Jones was not quite poker-faced, now. Not quite. He looked even pleased. Then his face went back to impassiveness again.
"It worked," he said mildly.
"I know it worked!" sputtered Cochrane. "But—where are we? How far did we come?"
"I haven't the least idea," said Jones mildly as before. "Does it matter?"
Cochrane glared at him. Then he realized how completely too late it was to protest anything.
The man he had seen absorbed in the handling of controls now lifted his hands from the board. The rockets died. There was a vast silence, and weightlessness. Cochrane weighed nothing. This was free flight again—like practically all of the ninety-odd hours from the space platform to the moon. The pilot left the controls and in an accustomed fashion soared to a port on the opposite side of the room. He gazed out, and then behind, and said in a tone of astonished satisfaction:
"This is good!—There's the sun!"
"How far?" asked Jones.
"It's fifth magnitude," said the pilot happily. "We really did pile on the horses!"