"I don't know," said Kingsley. "I'm trusting the Engineers.”
"Sure," said Herb, "we're all trusting the Engineers. I hope to Heaven they know what they're doing.”
Together the five of them trudged up the path to the main lock of the laboratory. "Something to eat," said Kingsley, "and a good sleep and we'll be starting out. All of us are pretty tuckered now.”
In the little kitchen they crowded around the table, gulping steaming coffee and munching sandwiches. Beside Kingsleys' plate was a sheaf of spacegrams that Ted had brought up for him to read. Kingsley leafed through them irritably.
"Cranks," he rumbled. "Hundreds of them. All with ideas crazier than the one we have. And the biggest one of them all is the government. Imagine the government forbidding us to go ahead with our work. Orders to desist!" He snorted. "Some damn law that the Purity league got passed a hundred years or more ago and still standing on the statutes. Gives the government power to stop any experiment which might result in the loss of life or the destruction of property.”
"The Purity league is still going pretty strong," said Gary, "although it works mostly undercover now. Too much politics mixed up in it.”
He dug into the pocket of his coat and hauled forth a sheet of yellow paper. "I got this a while ago," he said. "I plain forgot about it until now. Too much other excitement.”
He handed the sheet to Kinsgley. The folded paper crackled crisply as Kingsley unfolded it. It was a sheet off the teletype in the Space Pup and it read:
NELSON. ABOARD SPACE PUP ON PLUTO. SOLAR GOVERNMENT ORDERED OUT SOLAR POLICE SECRETLY TWO DAYS AGO TO ENFORCE ORDER TO STOP EDGE OF UNIVERSE TRIP. THIS IS A WARNING. KEEP YOUR NOSE OUT OF WHATEVER IS GOING ON.
Kingsley crumpled the message savagely in his fist. "When did you get this?" he thundered.