“As it gained velocity, it lost density. Everything does that, Leonard. I intensified the rapidity of the changes, as I told you. We shall take it slower. Hours, for what you saw in minutes.”
He tossed away his cigarro and stood up over the instrument table. “When we start, Leonard, here is exactly what will happen. Our gravity will be cut off. Not wholly, I have only gone to extremes in describing the theory.
“With a lessened attraction from the earth, the moon will draw us. And passing it, some other planet will draw us onward. And later, the stars themselves.”
He indicated his switches. “I can make the bow or the stern, or one side or the other, attractive or repulsive to whatever body may be nearest. And thus, in a measure, navigate. But that, Leonard, will be necessary for a few hours only, until we are well out beyond the stars.”
He said it quite quietly. But I gasped. “Beyond the stars . . . in a few hours?”
“Yes,” he said. “In our case, differing from my experiment with the model, we carry the Elton Beta ray, the ‘red ray,’ with us. The gravity principle we use only at the start, to avoid a possible collision. With the red ray preceding us, we will follow it. Ultimately at four hundred thousand miles a second.
“But the source of the ray, being with us, will give the ray constant acceleration, which we in turn will attain. Thus an endless chain of acceleration, you see? And by this I hope to reach the high speeds necessary. We are going very far, Leonard.”
“That model,” I said, “grew larger. It spread—or did I fancy it?—over all the sky.”
He smiled again. “I have not much left to tell you, Leonard. But what there is—it is the simplest of all, yet the most astounding.”
Jim’s voice interrupted us. “We’ve finished, Dr. Weatherby. Everything is aboard. It’s nearly dawn. How about starting?”