"Most of it," the reporter admitted. "Recording TV cameras, 16mm movie cameras, tape recorders, 35mm still cameras—the works. I wanted to get good coverage, and if you've got any men that you won't be using during the take-off, I'd like to borrow them to help me operate this stuff."
"Certainly; certainly. Come on, Bill, let's get this stuff over to Mr. Elshawe's suite."
The suite consisted of three rooms, all very nicely appointed for a place as far out in the wilderness as this. When Elshawe got his equipment stowed away, Porter invited him to come out and take a look at his pride and joy.
"The first real spaceship, Elshawe," he said energetically. "The first real spaceship. The rocket is no more a spaceship than a rowboat is an ocean-going vessel." He gestured toward the sleek, shining, metal ship. "Of course, it's only a pilot model, you might say. I don't have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend; I had to make do with what I could afford. That's an old Grumman Supernova stratojet. I got it fairly cheap because I told 'em I didn't want the engines or the wings or the tail assembly.
"But she'll do the job, all right. Isn't she a beauty?"
Elshawe had his small pocket recorder going; he might as well get all this down. "Mr. Porter," he asked carefully, "just how does this vessel propel itself? I understand that, at the trial, it was said that you claimed it was an antigravity device, but that you denied it."
"Those idiots!" Porter exploded angrily. "Nobody understood what I was talking about because they wouldn't listen! Antigravity! Pfui! When they learned how to harness electricity, did they call it anti-electricity? When they built the first atomic reactor, did they call it anti-atomic energy? A rocket works against gravity, but they don't call that antigravity, do they? My device works with gravity, not against it."
"What sort of device is it?" Elshawe asked.
"I call it the Gravito-Inertial Differential Polarizer," Porter said importantly.