Slowly, carefully, Russell Page tapped keys on the control board, setting up an equation. Sucking thoughtfully at his pipe, he checked and rechecked them.
Harry Wilson regarded him through squinted eyes.
"What the hell is going to happen now?” he asked.
"We'll have to wait and see,” Russ answered. “We know what we want to happen, what we hope will happen, but we never can be sure. We are working with conditions that are entirely new."
Sitting beside a table littered with papers, staring at the gigantic machine before him, Gregory Manning said slowly: “That thing simply has to adapt itself to spaceship drive. There's everything there that's needed for space propulsion. Unlimited power from a minimum of fuel. Splitsecond efficiency. Entire independence of any set condition, because the stuff creates its own conditions."
He slowly wagged his head.
"The secret is some place along the line,” he declared. “I feel that we must be getting close to it."
Russ walked from the control board to the table, picked up a sheaf of papers and leafed through them. He selected a handful and shook them in his fist.
"I thought I had it here,” he said. “My math must have been wrong, some factor that I didn't include in the equation."
"You'll keep finding factors for some time yet,” Greg prophesied.