"Pete,” he said, “you've sprung a good many prisons, haven't you?” “There ain't a jug in the System that can hold me,” Pete boasted, “and that's a fact."
"I believe there's one that could,” Greg told him. “One that no man has ever escaped from, or ever will."
"What's that?” demanded Pete.
"The Vulcan Fleet,” said Greg.
Pete looked into the eyes of the man before him and read the purpose in those eyes. “Don't send me there! Send me any place but there!"
Greg turned to Russ and nodded. Russ's fingers played their tune of doom upon the keyboard. His thumb depressed a lever. With a roar five gigantic material energy engines screamed with thrumming power.
Pete disappeared.
The engines roared with thunderous throats, a roar that seemed to drown the laboratory in solid waves of sound. A curious refractive effect developed about the straining hulks as space near them bent under their lashing power.
Months ago Russ and Greg had learned a better way of transmitting power than by metal bars or through conducting beams. Beams of such power as were developing now would have smashed atoms to protons and electrons. Through a window in the side of the near engine, Greg could see the iron ingot used as fuel dwindling under the sucking force.