There was a long silence from the other end. After a minute, Elshawe said: "Ole? You there?"
"Oh. Yeah ... sure. Just thinking. Terry, what do you think of this whole thing? Does Porter have something?"
"Damned if I know. If I were in New York, I'd say he was a complete nut, but when I talk to him, I'm halfway convinced that he knows what he's talking about."
There was another long pause. This time, Elshawe waited. Finally, Oler Winstein said: "You think Porter's likely to do something drastic?"
"Looks like it. The CAA has already forbidden him to lift that ship. The Space Force flatly told him that he couldn't take off without permission, and they said he wouldn't get permission unless he let them look over his gizmo ... whatever it is."
"And he refused?"
"Well, he did let Colonel Manetti look it over, but the colonel said that, whatever the drive principle was, it wouldn't operate a ship. He said the engines didn't make any sense. What it boils down to is that the CAA thinks Porter has rockets in the ship, and the Space Force does, too. So they've both forbidden him to take off."
"Are there any rocket motors in the ship?" Winstein asked.
"Not as far as I can see," Elshawe said. "He's got two big atomic-powered DC generators aboard—says they have to be DC to avoid electromagnetic effects. But the drive engines don't make any more sense to me than they do to Colonel Manetti."
Another pause. Then: "O.K., Terry; you stick with it. If Porter tries to buck the Government, we've got a hell of a story if his gadget works the way he says it does. If it doesn't—which is more likely—then we can still get a story when they haul him back to the Bastille."