The buzzer sounded. "Here's your hot coffee, Mr. Caples," said Taplin. When the girl had gone again, Donner continued patiently, speaking in Halleck's direction without anger.
"So far, we had spent less than three thousand dollars, including salaries, materials, overhead, everything. The experiment seemed to be finished. I wrote up my report and showed it to Kane before filing it in the project folder with Reed's letter and the memo and everything else concerned. I supposed Kane would be on his way east and I'd be expected to verify his statement of the results. But he didn't come in to say good-by.
"One morning, I stopped in at the isolated shop and found Heiniger still working with the power unit. Naturally, I asked what he was doing.
"'Getting it ready to mount in the projectile, Mr. Donner,' he said.
"I said, 'What projectile?'
"Then he explained how Kane (and I) had leased a surplus one-man rocket from the White Sands Project and that he and Ruhl were to rig the solar unit in it. Rather than let Heiniger know something was wrong, though I felt like blowing my top, I asked him how on Earth an electrical plant could power a rocket.
"'There's nothing to it,' he said. 'It's all in Mr. Kane's translations of those tablets of his.'"
"I was beginning to wonder if this was really happening or if I was dreaming. Heiniger described some sort of method for setting up a magnetic field in front of the rocket so that it could be pulled, rather than pushed, at almost any speed through the atmosphere that the pilot wished—five, ten, twelve thousand miles an hour—whatever the pilot could take.