"And that," acknowledged the Jovian, "is identically the principle upon which our secret is based. Our instruments do not enable an object to move at a speed greater than that of the limiting velocity of light. Such a thing is, by definition and natural law, quite impossible. No, the principle we employ is utterly different. The object itself does not move at all. It merely stands still ... for a brief time cast into a state of infinite entropy...."
"And then—?" asked Dr. Bryant.
"Space warps itself about the object, unfolding to place it in an entirely new sector. Thus, you see, our speed-heightening device does not depend upon velocity at all, but on the unchangeable mechanics of Space and Time. It is, in brief, a method of flight through the Fourth Dimension!"
CHAPTER XII
Betrayed
The worst enemies make the staunchest allies. That old truism never proved itself more surely than to Gary Lane and his comrades in the ensuing days. Those same Jovians who, considering them enemies, had been swift to condemn them to death with but a travesty of trial now, allied to their cause, proved themselves most eager of aides.
While technicians hastened to equip the Liberty with that secret device which would enable the ship to project itself through quadridimensional space to the ulterior universe, other craftsmen labored diligently to refurbish the ship, check its armaments, and render it in all ways completely shipshape for the journey to follow.
Nor made the Jovians any effort to conceal that which was being done aboard the Liberty. They worked openly, their engineers offering painstaking explanations of the device's operation to those who cared to learn. And, of course this number was great. Almost all the Liberty's personnel was eager to learn the secret of that novel flight method which was to henceforth govern their ship. As the sublime simplicity of the plan revealed itself physicists and spacemen alike were awed.
"Not so much," said Captain Hugh Warren wonderingly, "at the method itself as at the fact that nobody ever thought of it before. Why, when you hear it explained it's like child's play!"
Dr. Bryant smiled thinly. "And is that not always true of great inventions? The wheel, the steam engine, the gasoline motor, the rocket drive—all these things seemed simple commonplaces to the civilizations which used them. But each was, to a former civilization which knew it not, a mystery at once profound and obscure. So it is with the Jovian fourth-dimensional drive.